An Option for the Lazy Home-School Mom

By gypsymemoirs | Posted on January 17, 2012 | 1 Comment

On Thursday, Lukus and I have an appointment to check out a school for Taytem, and I have a lot of mixed feelings about this.  I know, I know, we’re devoted home-schoolers, but this isn’t any ordinary school.  This is a private, classical academy that only has two school days a week, with the rest of the week completed at home.  In a lot of ways, it’s like having the best of both worlds, but I’m still nervous.

See, the thing is, I had this wonderful image in my mind about home-schooling – an image that so many other home-school bloggers present so beautifully.  I imagined waking up at 6 a.m. with plenty of time to get my own stuff taken care of: time with God, working-out, a shower AND time to put make-up on, then breakfast ready for my family to wake up to.  We’d eat together, Lukus would read some scriptures before heading off to work, then the girls and I would do a couple of chores before heading outside for some sunshine and fresh air.  Once we’d expended a bit of outdoor energy and enjoyed some nature, we’d go inside with a pre-planned self-learning activity for Eisley while Taytem and I got through Bible, math and grammar.  We’d take a little break for a healthy snack, maybe play outside a bit more, then head back inside for Eisley to take a nap and for Taytem to work on history, science, Spanish and art.  Then Taytem would take a nap while I worked on my blog, got some laundry done and a bathroom cleaned.  I’d read a chapter in a book, study some photography skills or work on a design project.  Then I’d start dinner just as my girls were waking up and they’d get out some of their arts and crafts materials while I cooked a healthy and appetizing chicken bruschetta.  A day of wonder!

And it certainly IS a day of wonder – as in “I wonder how I pulled that day off that one time, but not anymore,” or “I wonder if that day will ever happen again?” or “I wonder if that day ever existed at all?”

But because Lukus and I are usually up until 12:30, and I literally cannot function without 8.5 hours of sleep, our day usually looks like this:  Lukus gets up at 6 a.m., works-out, then leaves for work at 8:30 before I’m even awake.  My alarm clock is Eisley, sitting in her crib saying, “Mama, I eat!  Mama, I eat!” with the same annoying urgency as a real alarm clock, except Eisley does not have a snooze button.  I drag myself out of bed and instead of taking a shower and changing my clothes, my day starts in p.j.’s changing a poopy diaper.  We wrap up “brunch” at 9:30 or 10, and my girls start whining and arguing when I tell them they need to get dressed and go play outside, because I have yet to have a quiet moment to gather my thoughts for the day.

Instead of going outside, they follow me around while I pick up the messes they left the night before, and after a few moments of this, it occurs to me that this is not my job.  I tell Taytem to take care of her messes and go clean up her room.  She whines.  Eisley, in the meantime, is thwarting my efforts and Taytem’s by dumping things out while we’re putting things away.  I find Taytem in her room, thirty minutes later, room untouched by cleaning efforts, and Taytem is cutting paper into teeny tiny pieces that will end up all over the floor.  Still in my pajamas, I’m about ready to give up on any progress for the day and I get on-line.  I check e-mails, waste time on Facebook, delude myself that I’m not wasting time on Pinterest, and read a couple of my favorite blogs – all while my children are telling me that they’re already hungry again.  I give them a lunch that is a compromise between healthy and what they’ll actually eat, then I turn on My Friend Rabbit for them to watch while I get the breakfast dishes washed.  Finally – one moment of progress!

While my children are occupied, I take the opportunity to start on my blog.  But Taytem has a honing device for whenever I’m writing my blog, and she heads upstairs to tell me she’s hungry again.  I swear, you’d think my child was Michael Phelps the way she’s constantly famished.  I tell her she can find her own snack, and please give me a few minutes to finish my writing.  She interrupts eight more times while asking about this or that snack, or if I can help her open something, or if she can just look at my blog.  Blogging takes about 5 times longer than it should.  It’s finally nap-time, and I manage to get the bottom floor of the house at least picked up, and by then, my 4 o’clock slump sets in that tells me I’m exhausted.  My shoulders start to ache and I get desperately sleepy.  I insist that there’s no good reason for me to be so exhausted, but my body argues with me and it usually wins.  This is a body chemistry issue that is being addressed by my doctor, so hopefully, this will not be the case for much longer.  In the meantime, I know I can’t take a nap or I won’t sleep all night, so I “rest” by watching Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, or “pinning” on Pinterest.  Then I accidentally fall asleep.  Lukus comes home to his wife in bed, just the way he left her that morning, with little evidence that she was ever awake at all.

And because I took a nap, I can’t sleep that night, and the cycle begins anew all over again.

I need help – professional help.  As in “someone else needs to help me educate my children at least two days a week because I’m mildly self-destructive and can’t seem to get my act together” kind of help.  So our appointment is on Thursday.  I’ll let you know if a maid that helps do the laundry and dishes is included in the tuition fees.  I’m guessing it’s not, but no one had ever heard of “two-day-a-week school” either, so anything’s possible.  Except me getting up at 6 a.m.  Apparently, that’s the one thing on earth that’s not possible.

Posted in Happy Home-schooling, Uncategorized |

The Oatmeal Pot & The Dumbest Thing a Husband Can Say

By gypsymemoirs | Posted on January 12, 2012 | 2 Comments

My husband still has his nose this morning – but barely.  I’ve talked about this nose before, how strong and handsome of a nose he has.  I tend to marvel at his nose because noses are not typically a noticeably attractive feature, what with it being surrounded by the “windows to the soul” and “winning smiles” and such.  But it’s the thought of his endearing nose that restrains me in those rare moments when I want to give him a good punch.

I’m not a violent person.  I’ve only ever hit one person in my life and it was a creepy boy in youth group that kept trying to slide his hand up my leg, so after one very clear warning, I stood up and slapped him square across the face – my one, solitary encounter with physical violence.

But sometimes, the people we love the most can also get under our skin the most, and if they keep crawling under our skin, they eventually find that trigger under our arm that makes us want to haul off and make violent contact with their flesh.

Last night was one of those nights.  Lukus and I were both extremely tired, Eisley was being especially difficult as she kept demanding to eat some non-existent chips, and Taytem was stalling on her bedtime.  We were barely holding on to patience, with every word being carefully measured out of our mouths.  Now, in our early days of marriage, we took every little moody tone as a personal offense, not allowing the other person to ever speak with irritability without taking great offense.  After a few years, we learned to extend some grace to one another, that it was not worth taking personally, and to give the other some space until the irritability passed.  We’ve been fairly successful too, when the irritability descends into disrespect, to be able to say, “I understand you’re frustrated about something, but please don’t take it out on me,” and the other will say, “You’re right, I’m sorry,” and we move on.

But every now and then…every now and then, someone says or does something so insensitive that it’s almost like they’ve turned into a caricature from Everybody Loves Raymond.  Like when a husband has gone to great lengths to provide a romantic evening, and when it comes time to turn the lights down low, the wife puts on her sweat pants and rolls over to go to sleep.

Last night, my husband’s body was momentarily possessed by the spirit of Raymond.  I had been working for two days straight on some major cleaning projects around the house.  I had carried large pieces of furniture downstairs by myself to complete the project.  Not to mention that I had been taking care of my girls all day, cleaned their bathroom, put away some laundry, and actually made our bed for the first time in four months.  I had worked really hard that day, and was fairly satisfied with my efforts, hoping that they would be noticed and appreciated.  And they were.

By our Korean student.

But in a moment of weakness, in that stressful window between getting home at bedtime with the girls and actually getting them into bed, my husband chose that moment to complain about a pot of day-old oatmeal that was sitting on the kitchen counter.  Granted, my husband is very helpful around the house, and he doesn’t ask for much, but he really hates dirty dishes building up on the counter.  He often does them voluntarily, and all he asks is that I don’t let the pan of eggs sit until it’s like stripping 40 year old wallpaper, and that I don’t let things like oatmeal turn to glue.  It’s a perfectly reasonable request, and I should have taken care of it.  But I just hadn’t gotten to it, and it wasn’t like I was expecting him to take care of it.

But I, too, succumbed to tiredness, and with a fair amount of defensiveness, said, “Well, I’m sorry, but I had to change Eisley immediately after breakfast, and then I spent the rest of the day doing those two big cleaning projects, as well as cleaning the girl’s bathroom and putting away laundry, not to mention that the girls kept me pretty busy all day.”

And then, to my astonishment, he said it – something every clear-headed husband knows not to say to his wife.  Ever.  EVER.  ”Yeah, but none of those things are very important.  I’ve done all of that before.”

Now, I’m not the kind of gal who bursts into tears when something hurtful is said to me.  Instead, I get hot all over, and my eyes settle into an angry stare that makes even me uncomfortable.  And I get sort of Incredible Hulk-angry.  I waited for Lukus to realize his mishap and to apologize, but he remained stubbornly on the path that he was perfectly justified in what he had said.  He said it all very calmly and rationally, which only made me more angry.  This is when I started fixating on his nose, trying to remember how much I loved it, so I told him he really needed to leave me alone that instant.

I set myself to taking my anger out on the dishes, scrubbing furiously with scalding hot water, not out of spite, but because, ironically, washing dishes is what I do when I’m very angry and attempting to think rationally and objectively.

I allowed myself to cycle through all of the angry things I wanted to say, all of the self-justification, and then, I eventually slipped into mindless scrubbing.  When my thoughts turned back on, I began to consider how to be objective.  I was definitely hurt by what I interpreted as ungratefulness and lack of respect for what I do every single day, so I knew it wasn’t something I could just let go of.  So I set about trying to find the healthiest way to express my hurt, because I have an innate tendency to want to argue a case, and I’m very good at arguing a case – stacking up the facts, what was said, making comparisons about why my position is more right and his is wrong.  I’m very, very good at it, possibly because I watched a lot of Law & Order growing up.

But I remembered a marriage seminar we had attended last year, and how they talked about that the facts don’t matter – the feelings do.  Stating a case like a lawyer only makes the other person feel like they’re on trial, and people are always prepared to defend themselves when they’re on trial.  The most effective and honest way to handle those hurtful moments with someone is to simply tell them how you interpreted their words, and how that made you feel.  Simple enough, right?

At least it should be.  But when you’re angry at someone, it’s one of the hardest things to do to be vulnerable and simply say, “I’m hurting right now.”  Women seem to be a little more capable of this than men, but I seem to be one of only a few women that was born on Mars rather than Venus, so I tend to dislike gender generalizations.  Getting angry is what is instinctive to me, and it’s also what’s instinctive to Lukus, so we have to work extra hard sometimes because we don’t always naturally balance each other out.

Still angry, I went to find him to tell him how I felt: that I felt like I had worked very hard that day, and he hadn’t noticed my progress.  That his complaint had been annoying, but even more so, to say that nothing I had done that day was important was very hurtful.  He was already waiting with an apology; but I had just scrubbed a sink-full of dishes trying to figure out my approach, and I couldn’t let him off that easy, so there were a few sarcastic comments from my corner of the living room before I let myself simply be honest.  But he heard me, and the spirit of Raymond left him, and Lukus returned to his senses without losing his beautiful nose.

And I had washed the oatmeal pot.

But tomorrow, tomorrow I will be calling around about the cost of outsourcing for just dishwashing.

 

Posted in Blissful Families, Uncategorized |

My Top 5 Home Goals for 2012

By gypsymemoirs | Posted on January 11, 2012 | 1 Comment

So yeah, I realize that it was only yesterday that I was saying that I’m not a “home blogger”, and yet here I am, about to talk about my house.  I’m flaky, get over it.  But I do positively adore home design, and after all, we are in the midst of a major renovation over here – though I’m not sure if “in the midst” still applies after a year and half of doing nothing about the exposed beams and bare concrete, but I prefer to pretend that we are still being productive rather than watching long chunks of Mad Men episodes late into the night.

The Nester posted her 2012 Home Goals today, so I’m linking up to share what I *hope* Lukus and I will be able to accomplish this year.  Though finishing our kitchen was my “home goal” last year…

And this is all the progress we’ve made so far…

Clearly, we got very little done on our house last year, and it doesn’t look like those lime-green countertops are going anywhere anytime soon.  With Lukus finishing up his master’s degree, some health issues on my part, and opening our home to two international students, our home has definitely been put on the back burner.  In fact, our only completed projects on this house are still just our master bathroom…

and our pantry…

But I’m feeling good ‘n healthy these days, and the dust has settled with getting our students situated, so I’m ready to start tackling some projects head on once again.

#1 – Of upmost importance to me on the homefront this year is to learn how to take better photos of my home (and everything else that happens to be in front of my camera – like two little blonde rascals I know).  I’ve been doing a little self-study, and I plan to attend the Blissdom Conference for bloggers in February to hopefully gain some more tips on photo-taking.  Plus, we’re trying to stay a little budget conscious this first quarter, so taking pictures is a nice, free way start out this year’s approach to my home.

#2 – I need to get organized.

Gee, that’s embarrassing.  When our two students moved in with us (Hyung Kun from Korea, and Rusul from Saudi Arabia, both young 20′s males), it really made this big house feel more like a home with more people filling it out (the extra money for room and board didn’t hurt either).  But since the student English program requires that they each have their own room, emptying out closets and built-in bookshelves to make room for their stuff meant a serious loss of storage.  Which brings me to my next goal…

#3 – Have a garage sale!  Can you believe I’ve never had a garage sale?!  I’m a total garage sale virgin, but considering that all of this stuff:

is currently shoved into my garage, while I have that monstrous pile on my desk, I think we’re gonna have to make some more room around here.

#4 – I want to turn my living room, which looks like this…

…into a little more something like this….

I want to cover our black floors in cork, get an enormous plushy rug, a rustic coffee table (possibly a DIY?), and just have an overall infusion of warmth, softness and comfort.  I mean, sure, our kitchen still has lime-green countertops, exposed concrete, five large paint swatches that I have yet to choose from, and no backsplash – but it’s the living room that bugs me most.  I want to walk into my living room and feel like it’s the most comfortable place on earth to curl up with a book, or wrestle with my girls, or snuggle with my husband during a movie.  Right now, it’s just one, big, unenthusiastic, “Meh.”

#5 – This is much less of a tangible goal than the others, but because we now house students, we host a Bible study, have family and friends over, and we often have political groups come over for campaign strategizing, I want our home to develop that tangible sense of “welcome”.  Have you ever watched the show Parenthood?  I just feel like the grandparents’ home has that peaceful, welcome vibe that I want; I can smell the pie in the oven and the popcorn through the t.v. screen.  That’s probably the entire reason I watch the show, because honestly, nothing ever really happens on the show.  But I just know that if I stepped through that screen and entered one of the guest bedrooms, there would be a good book ready to read on the nightstand, some plush towels for my bath, and my favorite watermelon jelly beans in a dish on the dresser.  It would be ready for me.

More than anything, that’s how I want my house to feel.  I want to have a pantry full of snacks for our students and for little friends that come over to play.  I want to have coffee ready for those late night meetings, or wine for when friends talk until 2 a.m.  I want artisan soap in my guest bathrooms, a fire going on chilly nights, or all the windows open on a pretty day.  I want my house to say to my family, to my friends, and to all who enter, “I’ve been waiting for you!  Come on in and feel loved.”  It’s what people try to create through make-overs and renovations, but really, I think it’s much easier than that.  It’s having thoughtful, little things at the ready.  But even more so, no matter how tired I am, or how much I’m in need of some quiet, it’s opening the door with a sincere, bright-eyed smile and a really good hug, and saying, “Come in!  Have you eaten yet?”

Of course, I’d like to build a real dining room table (instead of the 6′ fold up table we currently use), DIY some concrete countertops for the kitchen, strip the black and gold wallpaper in the downstairs bath and repaint EVERYTHING in that room, make-over our laundry room, rip out all of the landscaping around the house and put in hardy desert succulents, repaint the exterior….and on and on.  But let’s see how things go, shall we?

 

Posted in Artful Homes |

Figuring It Out

By gypsymemoirs | Posted on January 10, 2012 | 1 Comment

I was quite surprised at the number of hits I got on yesterday’s post, more than any other post I’ve ever written in fact, and oddly enough, it made me realize that I just don’t want to write about politics anymore.  For one thing, that letter helped me pretty much get off my chest a lot of things I’ve been wanting to say for quite some time, and all my previous efforts to write about my political philosophy felt like I was trying to capture a greased pig (which I’ve tried before; it isn’t easy).  For another thing, as much as I enjoy discussing politics, I much prefer the typical face-to-face talks over coffee or fighting about it over Thanksgiving dinner – like normal people.  But treatise-writing is not my bag of chips, possibly because I write things like “not my bag of chips.”  I don’t think Thomas Jefferson would have used a phrase like that in any of his essays.

The reason why I tried to force the political commentary here was because I didn’t want to be a “mom blogger” or a “home blogger”.  I greatly admire those genres of blogging, but I wanted my blog to be for the mom who stands doing dishes while pondering how to solve the world’s problems – like I do.  Or for the woman who would rather talk about immigration than cloth vs. store bought diapers.  Those blogs are already out there, and I read them sometimes and enjoy them.  But as much as I love being a stay-at-home mom, when I spend all day every day with my children, they kind of tend to be the last thing I want to talk about when I get the chance to talk to other adults.  I blog to share my heart and to engage in community, and there’s more in my heart than just my children and how to stencil my entryway.

But I don’t have it figured out.  I don’t know what this blog is supposed to be, but I know I love doing it.  I haven’t figured out all of the cool photography tricks, or how to change some of my graphics, but I’m learning.  My blog is a year-and-a-half old this month, and like human one-and-a-half year olds, it’s still just toddling around bumping into things and drooling on itself as it speaks in broken sentences.

To be honest, it’s hard not to get discouraged when you’ve been at something for some time and it hasn’t had it’s breakthrough moment yet, you know what I mean?  I just know there are those of you out there that have been working so hard at developing your own business, or ministry, or are trying to homeschool, or what have you, and you love it, and it’s like your baby, but it’s still a constant battle to stay above water with it.  Or you’re the mom whose child is just fighting you on the same thing every. single. day. and you just keep plugging through, trusting that at some point, peace and resolution will come.  Or you’ve just moved to a new town – three years ago – and you still haven’t been able to make those close friends, or feel quite at home, but you just know that you’re where you’re supposed to be, but nothing’s happening yet.

So collectively, we wait, we hope, we groan a little, then give ourselves a little pep talk. We remind ourselves that for others that it came so easily to, that that is their story, and we have a story of our own to write, and hopefully, it will be so much more interesting than “easy”.  We pray, we continue moving ever so slowly forward, we make corrections.  We learn new skills and new approaches, we introduce ourselves to new people.  We maybe say “no” to some of the things that we have emotional attachments to, but were holding us back.  We take a risk, close our eyes, and cross our fingers that it works.  We choose to trust that eventually, something will click, or something will change, and no matter what, we’ll be okay.

So thank you in advance to those who choose to stick around through the clumsy toddler stage, and the awkward puberty stage, to the fully-grown only slightly immature adult stage of this blog.  I truly appreciate your company.

Posted in Gypsy Souls |

Polite Title: Post-Holidays at Home – Real Title: Ungrateful Hag of an Ugly Jerk-House

By gypsymemoirs | Posted on January 5, 2012 | 4 Comments

Whelp, the big, dramatic, sexy, six-month make-over of The Ugly House is still a year and a half in progress, and so far, it feels like all we’ve done is remove a hairy mole when we’ve still got an entire facelift, hairstyling, butt-firming, and Paula Abdul teeth whitening to do.  Figuratively speaking.  I honestly don’t know how some of those DIY/Home bloggers (which I’m not) turn their houses around so quickly, but it quite disgusts me.  And it doesn’t help that I live with a messy (though he makes up for it in good looks) husband, two college boys, and two small girls who could find a way to make a bigger mess out of a hurricane-ravished site.  At least our two international students aren’t messy (though I’m possibly in denial because I haven’t stepped foot in their bathroom all week).  I just keep reminding myself that the extra income from housing them, as well as their cute faces, make it worth it.  The cute faces of my girls though, are starting to wear thin.

After the chaos of Christmas and me being sick for over a week, this is what our house looked (okay, still looks) like:

Wop-wop-wop.  How does anyone get any major projects done (like building an arched wall to cover the exposed beams in our dining room, or DIY-ing some concrete countertops, etc.) in the midst of THIS?  I feel like I’m constantly falling behind – constantly picking up after children, constantly fighting a mountain of laundry, constantly having to rearrange rooms to accommodate a new student, constantly hanging up my husband’s jacket from off the dining room table….the list goes on.

If it just felt like normal chores – like cleaning a bathroom, or mopping the floors – it would be one thing.  Those things can go at least a week without HAVING to be done again.  It’s the dailiness of the massive messes that gets to me; feeling like there’s always a pile of SOMETHING that needs to be faced down.  And those piles are always telling me in such a snarky way, “You can’t even manage to face me, how do you think you’re ever gonna get another real house project done?”  It’s like trying to offer a complete make-over to a bitter, ungrateful hag.  If only my house knew what I was trying to do for it – give her a lighter feel, an updated look, a new self-esteem to compete with all the younger, thinner houses out in the suburbs.  But no, every time I try to detox my house and get it on a healthy diet of regular sweeping, bathroom cleaning and dish-scrubbing, I turn around to find my house gorging on piles of junk.

But no more!  I am NOT going to let those piles intimidate me anymore.  I’m goin’ Jillian Michaels all UP in their bidness.  Either the piles go, or the piles go ignored and I start on my big projects anyway.  We’ll turn this ungrateful hag of a house into a charming Taylor Swift of a house whatever it takes.

Please tell me there are others of you out there with rebellious houses that refuse to clean up after themselves and put on a nice smile for company?  Lie to me if you have to, but please tell me, that in spite of all the amazing blogs I see each week where they’ve renovated an entire kitchen in 4.5 minutes, or built a beautiful wrap-around deck with paperclips and recycled cardboard while blindfolded, that I am not too painfully slow and a total failure at keeping house?  I can’t let this Ugly House get to me.

 

Posted in Artful Homes |