One thing that made the job tough were all the reminders of a life interrupted. I found the children’s schoolbags in one box, complete with their school work from their last day of school plus library and reading books (oops!). And while consolidating the boxes in one room keeps the rest of the house more or less under control and liveable, it also makes it much more challenging having so many boxes in one small space. I could barely get in my room, let alone start opening boxes in there! Most of what is in the room now is quilt / craft supplies. Yes, I am suitably horrified by how much fabric / thread / batting I have accumulated and hoarded over the years. But be proud of me: I haven’t opened a Keepsake Quilting email in months and have yet to visit the quilt store that is within walking distance of my house. Small steps.

I know there are things that I don’t actually need to have out now, but I have to unpack all the boxes to make sure that nothing is conspicuously missing and / or broken. So far, so good overall. However it’s not a lot of fun unpacking a box containing a jumble of magnets, pens, and sunglasses or boxes containing snarls of randoms electronics / computer cables. (Also, why do I have so many staplers and staples??) Also, just because there are toys on the top of the box, does not mean there won’t be some precious art object buried below. How the framed papyrus pictures – wrapped only in a sheet of paper and shoved in a box seemingly at random with toys and sporting equipment – did not break is nothing short of a miracle.

The harder part of this job is deciding what will stay and what will go. When we moved to Michigan and merged our lives, we had at least two kitchen’s worth of supplies and enough bed linens and towels to open a B&B. Do I simply keep what I want and sell the rest at a garage sale? Or does it make more sense to sort the extra bits into starter boxes for when the children move out? It can be expensive to buy all these things new and in many cases my old “vintage” hand-me-down kitchenware is better quality than what you can buy today anyway. Same goes with the linens. Have you seen what even halfway decent quality sheets cost these days?

Then there are things I want to keep for purely sentimental reasons. For instance, there are many books that my children have outgrown. It is quite easy to put some of them in the (ever growing) garage sale pile. Others, however, are special. I can practically recite some of them from memory because they were favorites. It doesn’t seem so very long ago that I was snuggling with a freshly bathed toddler reading these books every night at bedtime. How can I get rid of our copy of Goodnight Moon? Or the Mother Goose book, inscribed by my husband’s now late grandmother?

It is a similar scenario with toys. There are some toys it is easy to part with and others the decision is much more difficult. When the children were very small, I bought a few pieces of the Fisher Price Little People toys of my own youth on eBay and then brought them abroad with me in my suitcases. When we returned this year and were reunited with all of our things, it included the Fisher Price toys that my husband had kept from his childhood. We now have a Tudor house, two farms (with moo-ing doors), a Main Street, a Schoolhouse with bus, a plane, a yacht, and a castle – plus all the Little People, animals, furniture and many vehicles and other accessories. They are great toys, but our children have pretty much outgrown all these things. I’d kind of like to keep them because you can’t get them anymore, but they also take up a lot of storage space!

(This may not be much of a choice: Seeing that my husband has kept his toys for 40-odd years, I somehow doubt he’d be willing to part with them now!)

Because my own family moved frequently, I have very little left from my own childhood. There’s a part of me that would like to save all these things for my own children to look at later, and perhaps share with their children. On the other hand, that could be a long time from now! Given the nature of my life so far, I doubt that even if we buy a house in the next couple of month we’ll stay there forever. Do I really want to haul all this stuff around for the next twenty years or so?

In spite of all the angst and indecision, I have made some progress, though it wouldn’t really show in that hell room downstairs. I did find finally find my dining room table though.

Wonder how long I can keep it this way?

I had to take my son to the doctor for a second time when he was since last month (where did January go, by the way??) We went to an urgent care facility because it was a weekend and ended up sitting in the waiting room for about an hour before we got in to see the doctor. Many other people were also waiting, including a young couple with a toddler. The toddler was not pleased by the waiting and was alternately running around and wailing. My son was watching the toddler and getting irritated by the crying. He made a few comments about the child and what he thought the parents ought to do, none of which were helpful or practical. Then he asked me “Where do babies come from anyway? I mean, do you just like get them randomly?”

I paused for a moment before I answered and in that short moment thought oh my god he wants to talk about that now and I want to tell him myself so he has good information and not whatever nonsense his friends might tell him but honestly I didn’t want to start that conversation at that time and place because I was sure that it would lead to more questions and possibly some strange faces. So, I calmly said, “I don’t really want to have that conversation here, in this waiting room.” He nodded, without protest, and then asked, “What’s your favorite food?” All that private panic because the boy was bored! (I haven’t heard a word about babies since.)

Over this weekend we had a family movie night and watched Freaky Friday with Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan (before she went nuts). The movie was cute and the kids enjoyed it. Afterwards, my daughter looked at me and said, “It would be easy being you – all I’d have to do is clean!” Um… I guess she hasn’t looked in that room full of boxes lately! If “all” I had to do was clean, that room wouldn’t look like that!

(I on the other hand wouldn’t go back to 6th grade for any amount of money – the girl drama this week has been insane and heart-wrenching to watch.)

Last night I made a stir fry for dinner and decided to try and entice my son into eating it (not his favorite dinner) by including fortune cookies at the end. We all chose our cookies and read our fortunes out loud. My daughter’s fortune was “You will soon discover your hidden talent.” My son looked at her and said, “You have a hidden talent?!?” The tone of his voice was so indignant, like she’d been keeping secrets from him.

In other news, the children have been such slobs in their “kid zone” downstairs, openly disregarding my absolutely no food downstairs rule that I took drastic action. After I had threatened to cancel the cable TV downstairs and then spent two hours cleaning up their space and still found food wrappers and bottles under the furniture and in the corners, I decided I could be sneaky too. I found their floor, organized all their things so they could actually find and use them, and then unplugged the cable wire and told them I’d cancelled service. They were fairly contrite and resigned when they came home from school and discovered the TV no longer worked. Their only question was for how long.

Frankly, they don’t seem to miss it much and I’m enjoying the silence. I might just cancel it for real. Having no TV has very effectively put a stop to the food smuggling too.

I’ve had two children home sick from school all week. For once, I followed my instincts and took them to the doctor sooner than later and it was a good thing I did because they both had strep throat. They are both on antibiotics now and have a four day weekend over which to fully recover (and catch up on all their homework).

I myself have spent most of the week washing my hands, washing clothes, fetching snacks and drinks for my patients, and continuing to unpack boxes. I can finally see some progress! In spite of the poor condition of many of the boxes, most of the contents made it just fine – with a few notable exceptions. I found a second pottery piece that broke in transit, this time the lovely mask I made. (Right along the hairline, where a crack had developed in the glaze firing) I found a loose handful of change wrapped up in a wad of paper the size of a softball, but the mask only rated a couple of sheets of paper. Sigh.

However, in the spirit of opening myself to the wisdom and power of the Universe, I’ve decided to look for the positive sides of these situations. With regard to the sick children, at least they were both sick at the same time which (I hope) means they will return to school simultaneously as well. And having them both get sick (a fairly rare occurrence) prompted me to finally find a family doctor who was accepting new patients – not that I was able to get in to see him this time, but I’ll be ready for next time.

As for my pottery, I was whining about mentioned it on Facebook, and a friend of mine from Cairo wrote me a message: his MIL lives in a city about 20 minutes away from me and not only is she a garage sale / thrift store fiend (like me!) but she is also a potter. He gave me her email and said she might be able to help me repair my broken pieces. How is that for the Universe providing a solution to a problem?

So why did I pop awake at 3am this morning, the one morning this week when school is closed and I knew I didn’t have to get up? You could say that the Universe was trying to gift me with some quiet time to get a bit of writing done before the usual distractions of the day begin. Or you could just assume the Universe has a sense of humor…

I’m still working on unpacking boxes and so far so good for the most part. It’s amazing how much trash you can manage to stash away in the corners and closets of your home just in case. Having just spent several thousand dollars to ship empty appliance boxes, plastic grocery bags, rag clothes, and expired medications ask me how I know.

I have been working my way through things, box by box. Some things I need to unwrap just to see if they made it okay and am just as quickly putting them back in their boxes for now. Most things made it just fine, however the couple of things I have found that broke so far were very wrenching. One was a large ceramic plate that goes with a beautiful Vietnamese tea set that I bought in the Russian Market in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The other casualty was the large pottery lizard I made myself in Cairo. Why on earth they thought it would be okay to stand it on end on its tail – the most vulnerable part of the entire piece – is a mystery to me. Ironically, another large plate that matched the dishes which were part of our furnished apartment made it just fine, though in fact it ought to have stayed behind. Oh well.

I’ve also had two sick children home this week. When my son told me he didn’t feel well on Monday morning, I was skeptical. He’d been just fine all weekend when it came to birthday parties and a sleepover so it seemed a little convenient that he’d be sick just in time for school. As it turned out, he wasn’t faking. After he had a fever for the second day running and his throat became so sore he found it painful to speak, I took them both to the doctor. The doctor suspects strep throat. I’m hoping that I can nip it in the bud in my daughter’s case, but it looks as if they will be home for the remainder of the week.

While I was at the store waiting for their prescriptions to be filled, I took a spin around and found some raspberries on the discount rack. I love raspberries. I decided to buy these to make a raspberry sauce. Since we still have a few carrot cup-cakes in the freezer from my birthday last week (with frosting in the fridge) I was thinking of sticking the raspberry sauce in the freezer and keeping it for Valentine’s Day when I could make a shortcake to go with it. Having taken a look in my stuffed-to-the-gills freezer I think I’ve gotten way far ahead of myself! Perhaps I should just make some waffles instead.

Anything to get away from boxes for a while…

Why, for instance, do I have so many clothes??? Sure, there are seasons and different occasions, blah blah blah, but even accounting for that, I have way to many. Just because they still fit does not mean I have to keep them all! And I haven’t even gotten to my shoes or purses yet.

(I strive to be one of those super practical European-types with twelve fabulous mix and match pieces that they accessorize with nothing more than a scarf. As if!)

The children have pretty much outgrown all the clothes that were shipped for them so I stashed them in a couple of empty suitcases for a spring garage sale. I’d like to do the same with my own clothes, but the problem with sorting them at present is I barely have space to move in my work room. If I take them out of the boxes, where would I put them anyway?

The children have “helped” unpack their toys by taking everything out of the boxes and spreading everything all over every available inch of floor space that they can find in their “zone”. I know they are happy to see their things after so long a time – which is the only reason I put up with the mess for even a day – but enough is enough. I’m already mentally setting prices on all the plastic animals and dinosaurs, all the magnetic building sticks and balls, all the castle pieces. Why sell them? Because while the children are happy to spread them out, guess who ends up picking everything up again? The children will probably resist selling things – until I offer to let them keep the money from the sales. I’m tricky like that.

I did find my red Circle of Life quilt as well as all the others – one box marked “toys” contained toys and four of my quilts! I’ll be happy to get back to working on finishing up my red quilt as soon as I have restored some order to my home and find my sewing box…

I have written before about what I think of resolutions: I rarely bother to make them. It’s not as if there aren’t areas that could use improvement, but I prefer to tackle these things on a day-to-day basis.

This year, I do have one thing in mind however – a follow-up exam with a dermatologist. Last spring I had a small rough patch under my left eye that I didn’t like the look of. No one else seemed to notice it or think it looked odd if I pointed it out, but the minute I saw a dermatologist she directed me to peel my entire face and also chest area. The cream she prescribed was a chemotherapy cream that only reacted with sun-damaged skin and it was truly alarming to see the extend of the damage when nearly my entire face turned into a red, crusty scab.

My doctor suggested a follow-up in the fall which I was unable to keep, but I will be doing so as soon as possible in January. And if I have to do another peel, so be it. It’s unpleasant, but it’s better than the alternative – an alternative which is described in this video, Dear 16-year-old Me.

Watch it – and if you have any young people in your life, pass it on. There are so many things you can’t control in life, but using sunscreen? Not so very hard.

I wish so much I could go back in time and warn myself – probably age 10 would have been even better. Since I can’t, I’ll just have to continue to do my very best to protect my own children’s skin with sunscreen, protective swimwear, and good sense.

Stepping off my soapbox now. What goals will you set for the coming year?

It doesn’t really make any sense. On the one hand, we worry about building up our children’s self esteem, and yet if someone expresses pride in something that they have achieved, often that person is admonished for being full of themselves or conceited. A small child can show someone a picture they’ve drawn and be pretty sure that they will get positive feedback no matter what the quality of their art. When exactly does that change?

I’m proud of the fact that I taught myself to quilt and to cook and am pretty good at both now, and I’m proud of the fact that I learned to drive a stick shift at my advanced age and in a time of already high anxiety, but if I said these things out loud to anyone they’d probably immediately think negatively of me. You’re supposed to wait for other people to compliment you, not do it yourself.

I’m not suggesting we create a society of obnoxious, arrogant, blowhard jerks, but let’s think this through. If we could somehow foster a feeling of pride in accomplishments and a high sense of self-value in our children, we wouldn’t need to worry so much about their self-esteem or what affect advertising is having on their body image. Maybe girls wouldn’t fall into bad choices trying to please others if they only valued themselves more. Maybe boys wouldn’t engage in high risk behaviors trying to impress others if they were already proud of themselves.

There are no easy answers to this, but it is definitely something I’ll be thinking of with regard to my own children…

Both the kids profess to still believe in Santa, though I think that time is running short – at least for my daughter. She’s asked me point blank about the Tooth Fairy (I evaded the question) but has not asked about Santa. One reason that I think that Santa survives scrutiny is because he is so much nicer than me.

I don’t buy my children things constantly – I’m pretty much a birthday / Christmas kind of mom. I’ll get supplies they need for school or sports, but other stuff? Special occasion or allowance. Santa ends up bringing all the things they children have been begging for all year that I have said ‘no’ to – like the Pillow Pets I have denied the all year. He also WOWS them with gifts that they didn’t know they wanted – this year he brought them a portable ping-pong table. How can mom compete with that?

Not only that, Santa fills their stockings with candy and goodies that Mom has to try and put the brakes on – after all, Santa isn’t here to pay their dental bills. Santa is a great guy, isn’t he? I kind of wish he still brought me things!

At any rate, we have all survived another Christmas, even if there wasn’t any snow. Bring on the new year…

My daughter was very enthusiastic and started shopping with her own money at a craft fair we attended last week, where she got a tube of red and green M&Ms and a bottle cap necklace. We got the rest at the grocery store: a pack of gum, a chocolate Santa, and a small ornament.

All together, the presents may have cost $8. Tops.

Monday, my daughter stayed home from school sick, but asked me to take the card and M&Ms to the school so her Secret Santa giftee would not be disappointed in not getting anything. Tuesday the school was closed due to a gas leak. Wednesday school resumed and my daughter brought two presents to school for her giftee, and was naturally looking forward to collecting her three goodies.

She came home pretty disappointed. What did she get? A crumpled up notebook paper containing an old eraser, a used pencil, and one dice.

Are you kidding me? This was an *optional* activity. You don’t sign up if you can’t do better than the trash you find lurking at the bottom of your backpack. It does not take a lot of imagination to buy a candy bar or a pack of gum (and I guarantee my daughter the candy hound would have been thrilled with either). I can only assume that the boy (yes, it was a boy, how did you guess??) did not have support from home, but I’d be surprised if he didn’t have enough spare change to treat himself to something from the vending machine.

I’d like to think that if she found out about this, his mother would be embarrassed. Even if the kids forged the note and did it on his own, with gift giving skills such as these I feel very sorry for his future wife!

My initial reaction, aside from Mama Bear Fury, was to try to make it up to my daughter in some way, perhaps by bringing her little presents after school myself. One of the hardest things that I have faced as a mother is dealing with my children’s disappointment when people / life lets them down. In the end I decided that it wasn’t my job or in her best interest to smooth it over. There is a lot to be learned by disappointment. For one thing, it surely does make you appreciate the good things in life more, right?

Instead, I wrote her teacher an email to express my daughter’s disappointment and ask that she try to emphasize the expectations of this activity a bit better in future. Then I talked to my daughter about the point of the holiday, which is giving. She is getting great pleasure from seeing how pleased her giftee is with what she has been given and that will have to be enough.

Doesn’t mean that my heart isn’t still bleeding or my blood boiling.

It’s not easy being a mom…

There were things my own mother cooked that I liked better than other things and a few things that I didn’t like at all but I ate whatever she cooked. It just never occurred to me to complain about dinner (at least not to her face and until I’d moved out!)

I don’t think it is too much to ask of my own children that they extend the same courtesy to me. I don’t make them eat things that they have tried and genuinely given a fair chance but don’t like. Not everyone is going to like everything. (My mother did not make me eat acorn squash for instance) If I choose to make something for dinner that I know ahead of time is going to be more pleasing to the adults in the house than the children, I will make an alternate selection for them (doesn’t happen much!) But if I make something that the children have eaten 100 times before without complaint and they just aren’t in the mood for it? Tough. Have a bowl of cereal or go to bed hungry. I’m not a short-order cook.

I made it pretty clear a few years ago that I wasn’t going to make macaroni and cheese every night and that I wasn’t interested in hearing negative commentary either. My daughter got the message and rarely if ever says anything negative about dinner. She is a good eater and the way to judge her enthusiasm is whether or not she takes a second helping.

My son on the other hand can be a real pain. If it were up to him, we would only ever eat macaroni and cheese, pizza, and bean burritos. He has no problem making faces or pouting at the table, particularly if I serve chili. He too is a good eater (quantity) but lately his range of acceptable choices seems to be shrinking. Last week he made a big fuss about a meal I have served many, many times before and that he has always liked. I was fed up so I sent him to his room with nothing. He was mad and stubborn enough that he decided to stay there even after I told him he could return if he liked. Eventually he came back to the table, after the rest of us had finished eating, and ended up eating two big platefuls.

When I remarked upon it he said, “It’s good. I forgot that I liked it.”

All that drama because he forgot he liked it? Oy-vey! He’s only 9 years old. If this is going to be a battle of wills, then I’m probably going to be entirely gray by the time he is old enough to move out. I sure hope that he learns his lesson or it might one day his wife be sending him from the table hungry!