The Glad Game, Take 1.

This week I have been working on becoming a little more like Pollyanna. I didn't string up crystals in the living room or take a patchwork quilt to Mrs. Tarbell and we haven't been eating steak and ice cream. Yet. But I have been working on playing a modified version of the “glad game.” I am attempting to take potentially bad situations or circumstances and look at them in a different way, and if possible I'm hoping to embark on a new journey of gratitude, contentment, satisfaction: thanks.

One reason is because I have been reading this book. It is a challenge to be thankful for the minute blessings that routinely happen each day without focusing, like we do, on the blah moments.

I was on Chapter 3 of the book when a blissful day, a Wednesday, approached. The birds were chirping outside the open windows, and although I normally detest the sound of birds in the morning (I dislike birds in general) I was thankful for the sounds of spring and warmer air.

The morning started off perfectly. I was showered and ready before 7 am, I spent some precious time with the angelic baby, fed and chatted with my other cherubs, and in no rush snuggled everyone into carseats. The healthful lunch was packed, we were on time, and I was feeling good as I turned into the parking lot because we had read all the books for Griffin's pizza chart, resulting in a free tiny pizza for later--joy of joys! Everything was neatly organized in his school bag for the day. He was well rested and we were good to go.

I walked him through the doors and bent to give him a squeeze (just a quick side hug to avoid complete K-5 humiliation) when I noticed that all the little girls were wearing dresses and all the little boys had collared shirts and neatly combed hair. I looked down at Griffin to assess my next move.

His eyes were goopy and running because he only has one tear duct in each eye and it's allergy season and I forgot to give him a little Zyrtec and some eye drops. Tufts of hair were shooting up vertically from his cowlick and his front tooth (which was on the verge of falling out for 3 weeks) was dangling loosely in the middle of a huge gap in his mouth. He was wearing a black Star Wars sweatshirt and some jeans.

I went from feeling like mom of the year to pitying the poor bedraggled-bedhead-goopy-eyed Star Wars wearing boy that was waiting for my next move. I forgot about Pollyanna and wasn't very thankful for anything as I dragged the other two less than cherubic kids on an unwanted Target trip to buy a picture-appropriate polo. The day spiraled out of my hands, and the glad game was momentarily on hold.

~

Earlier this week I sold a stroller on Craigslist. When the buyer emailed asking for our address I noticed she was using a Blackberry. I gave her our address and politely listed a few key landmarks near our house, and I thought our call had dropped because the line was silent. I finally realized that she would obviously use her Blackberry GPS to navigate her way to our house and she didn't need (or want) to know about the crossroads, stores, churches, or llamas she would pass along the way.

I know it's silly not to use a GPS on a road trip, but I miss atlases. I have been on many road adventures throughout the years and I enjoy reading a map, following directions, scanning landmarks and logging miles. I want to know how many miles it will be before I reach a city, before I'm halfway to my destination, and I want to know what cities are just out of reach on either side of the highway. I don't want to listen to a robotic voice telling me I need to turn right in two miles or that I need to turn around at the next exit because I'm going the “wrong way.” I haven't tried to buy an atlas recently, but I have a feeling most of them are gone with the wind by now. I do know that I have always felt most comfortable with a map in my hand, a plan of action, an agenda, a schedule; I hate surprises and I don't like waiting until the last minute for anything. I'm beginning to think my obsession with control might be directly linked to the lack of thankfulness in my life.

Why do I care about Griffin showing up for K-5 school pictures wearing Star Wars? What is the big deal about using a GPS and only focusing on the tiny digital screen road in front of me? Why do I want to control things when I continuously prove that I can't? And why is it so much easier to play the glad game when everything is going according to my spectacular plans and I have everything mapped out and scheduled in front of me?

It has been another week of cleaning the kitchen three times a day, attempting to keep ahead of schedule, running out of milk and realizing I'm unqualified to do it all. It is hard to maintain order and schedule and control while swerving in and out of three little heads and six small feet, but it is also very easy to play the glad game when I'm surrounded by easy laughs, quick forgiveness and the electricity of exciting daily discoveries.  I am anxious to pursue the glad game more, to make it a habit, because the gifts truly are immeasurable and in every direction imaginable-- whether you use an Atlas or a GPS.  I have also seen that when I allow a little bit of Pollyanna into my life, the realistically optimistic and hopefully thankful Pollyanna, I am much less overwhelmed by my own imperfections. Look out Mrs. Tarbell, I'm bringing you a quilt to sew for the Bazaar.  

**And if you have never seen Pollyanna, this was always our favorite part. The scary sermon by Reverend Ford. Yikes!

Fuzzy Memories and Chinchilla Earmuffs

Today I took the road less traveled and got a speeding ticket. I was driving along Frontage road near the highway; in the middle of a sleepy daydream I was jolted awake by the bleeping siren and neon blue lights of a shiny Dodge Charger and a Ray-Ban-wearing patrolman. I was not in a hurry and I was not driving fast, but I was not paying attention and I was suddenly searching for registration and proof of insurance instead of enjoying a quiet car and a cloudless blue sky. My moment went from insignificant to fateful in a matter of seconds.

I have a horrible memory. Even with the siren and the lights and the accelerated heart rate I experienced today, I will quickly forget the details of what happened if I don't have it in writing (or in court records). Now that my kids are getting older, I have been thinking about what their first memories will be and wondering how much they will retain inside their tiny personal vaults forever. What things will make first impressions in their little minds and what moments will they choose to tuck away in boxes deep in their small souls? They are constantly watching and absorbing; it is exciting and terrifying.

I am in awe of people with brilliant memories. To be a great writer, I think you must either have the discipline to journal constantly or the ability to retain and recall events from the past as though they happened yesterday. I love the writing of Annie Dillard and am amazed and jealous of her ability to retell a childhood story down to the the tiniest details. If you haven't read “An American Childhood,” I recommend it. It is one of the few books I have read more than once; Annie Dillard is the queen of recalling detail and my all-time essay heroin.

All writers and artists are somewhat dependant on memories to prompt new projects and creative ideas. I have always wished I could recall childhood stories like many of my friends, siblings and even my grandparents. My grandma's 70 year old memories are more vivid and clear than many events that happened to me last week. She has a gift for verbally telling a tale, and the art of repeating stories hundreds of times has burned vivid details deeply into her mind. At any rate, my memory is poor and I sometimes rely on my older brother Chad's spongy wizard brain to fill in the blanks of childhood for me.

I was skyping with Chad a few weeks ago and we both agreed there is one memory that will always be our ace in the hole, our trump, our pièce de résistance. It's funny because the details of our experience are murky and scarce for both of us. I'm honestly not sure if there is a story jumbled in the mess of it at all, and I decided to leave it vague—like our memories, rather than ask Mom and Dad to fill in the blanks.

My fondest memory isn't the story of the French foreign exchange student who lived with us but didn't shower for two weeks, although I did discover that my sense of smell truly does heighten and enhance my memories. It isn't the story of having my front tooth knocked out on Christmas Eve in high school or the time my friends and I were detained in police cars after we were caught toilet papering.

Our most precious memories revolve around one little animal with velvety dense fur, beady little eyes and a long poofy tail. In our family there will always be one word that causes our ears to perk up. A word that might sound foreign to some, but is familiar to us. A word that scurries in gently like a fuzzy whisper or the sound of tiny paws running across fresh wood chip shavings. Chinchilla.

If “every man's memory is his private literature” as Aldous Huxley believed, then our chinchilla chapter is full of rising action and conflict. It all started when I was 14 and my entrepreneurial dad was flipping through the LaRue journal. There was an ad for chinchilla farming and I honestly don't know how it all began, but while other kids our age were lazily sleeping in or playing nintendo, Chad and I found ourselves knee deep in filthy wood chips with a barn full of fuzzy chinchillas.

I won't waste time explaining what a beautiful chinchilla “ground squirrel” is. I will leave that to Chinchilla planet.  I will only say that chinchillas are rodents in every sense of the word with the exception of their lush velvety fur. And unfortunately we did not give them little names and keep them for pets in our barn and hold them and teach them circus tricks. Against our teenage wills, we fed and watered and became part of the chinchilla breeder world. Disgruntled, we switched out the wood shavings on Saturday mornings and mumbled things under our breath. Bellyaching, we dumped dirty chips over a ravine on our property and kept track of new chinchilla babies. Sulky and vexed, we complained about the smell and were embarrassed to have 100 things caged in our barn that made us completely different from everyone else we knew.

In the end, which was shortly after the beginning, when it turned out not to be the best time to enter the fur industry, I can't even recall how long we raised chinchillas in our barn.  In fact, I don't know what happened to our chinchilla farm at all, and it's probably better that way.  When I asked Chad where the chinchillas went he said he had always imagined dad in the garage making chinchilla earmuffs. Out of curiosity I googled chinchilla earmuffs and found this: Natural Chinchilla earmuffs for $139. 

For us, the chinchilla story has turned into folklore. It is our ballad and I'm not sure I want to know all the details of why we had them and where they went. The chinchillas brought Chad and I together in a mess of caged ground squirrels and wood chips, shovels and wheelbarrows, brooms and the absence of a Saturday morning in bed. A sound or word will still trigger memories from our bizarre barn business, and the funny thing is, what was once a time of annoyance, disgust, and teenage uprising is now one of our fondest memories and biggest laughs.

There are days when I worry that my kids will experience something traumatic or I will mess up and they will be scarred for life, and I am comforted by the now soft memory of chinchillas. Not only are kids ultra resilient, but if my entrepreneurial spirit takes them on a few crazy rides here and there, it might give them good story fodder down the road. I am also learning that a poor memory is sometimes a blessing; if there is only room for a few memories in the treasury, I can choose the constructive and learn from the lousy.

My kids are losing teeth, learning to pump on a swing set, and growing out of their clothes faster than I can tie a pair of shoes. I'm hopeful that they will be reflective, and I'm anxious to see what childhood memories they will safely preserve. For me, once the chinchilla chapter ended, my memories soon grew fuzzy and funny and perhaps slightly elaborated until eventually it was just nice to have a uniquely eccentric story. New chapters have quickly come, I'm sure there will be a few more sirens and tickets before it's all said and done, and the infinite memories break down into compost in a wood chip ravine.  

Shadowless Groundhogs and the Mary Poppins Syndrome

Like most of you, I was glued to the TV last week waiting to see if Punxsutawney Phil, America's favorite groundhog, would predict an early spring. As the fortunate people at Gobblers Knob celebrated, I attempted to embrace a few more weeks of wintery kid boredom, season colds and flu remnants, branchless trees and colorless grass.

Thankfully I live in the South where the sun is shining and the sky is blue. It is especially hard to complain on a day when it is 50 degrees and we are playing outside. Nevertheless, the winter is long and we are relieved by a shadowless groundhog and hopeful for an early spring.  And if you think you have S.A.D. (Season Affects Disorder) you might want to read this.

We tend to watch more movies in the winter because of the long evenings and the endless, winter afternoons. Last week we watched Mary Poppins, and although I grew up watching Mary Poppins, I've probably seen it over fifty times, this time I watched it with a fresh set of mommy eyes, and I wound up taking away a few things I never noticed as a kid. 

When I was little, I daydreamed about having Mary Poppins for my Nanny. She was amazing: her magical ability to clean the nursery, riding a cartoon carousel, tea parties on the ceiling, etc. She was marvelous. I somehow overlooked all her quirky and mysterious qualities. And I never realized one of her defining characteristics is vanity even though she spells it out in one of her earliest scenes: “Mary Poppins: Practically Perfect in Every Way.”

This vanity really started bothering me in a roundabout way until I eventually began wondering how my own kids perceive me. Do I constantly correct their shortcomings while pointing out my own rightness and “perfection” with a magical measuring tape?

It forces me to really think about vanity, and humility, as a mother. If you ask a mother if her job is glamorous, she will laugh at you. Most people would look at a sleepy, make-up-less mother and say she is generally fulfilling a very humbling and self-less role. I used to think that just by being a mother, by changing diapers and cleaning up puke and scrubbing toilets and wiping noses and being sleep deprived and not killing my kids I was somehow ranked higher in the trophy case of life with a little plaque that said “humble” in super inconspicuous letters.

I'm starting to think that humility has little to do with cleaning up after people or filthy jobs or sleepless nights. I can act like a humble mother all day long, but true humility is a choice, and I believe my kids will be the first to know the difference between the two.

So although it is humbling to wipe away a hidden Picasso-esque booger masterpiece from the wall behind the bunkbeds, I have trouble telling myself I am cleaning it out of humility when I definitely did NOT choose to clean it in the first place. I'm beginning to think humility, in motherhood, is not just about me resigning to cleaning up messes and doing it. I think humility is about my attitude towards each daily task I face as a mom and wife. It's about bringing my own rank down a few notches to serve my kids—not just as a nanny or a maid, but by occasionally choosing to set aside my own “important” daily tasks in order to submit myself to their real needs.  Sometimes I may need to lower myself to really serve them—not just by picking up or cooking, but by sitting on the floor to build a lego ship or brush barbie's tangles. 

I have been really considering the difference between keeping my kids busy and entertained with activities and outings versus the times I truly humble myself to color in a book with crayons or read or sing or play hide and seek. Thomas More reminds us: “The ordinary arts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.” I'm sure this is especially true when raising kids.  I'm not suggesting that we need to sit ten inches from our kids every minute so that they are completely unable to play alone or with each other, but at the same time I wonder how often we tell ourselves we are above simply playing with our kids or that we have "better things to do" than spend time interacting with them and listening to them.

Along this same line, a friend and I were talking recently about how quick we are to judge other moms in parenting skills, household upkeep, etc. I am guilty. And although my house is far from spotless and is decorated like a children's museum that often smells like stale tacos, I admit I harbor some pride in the state of my house and my ability to know where everything is.

Several months ago my pride took a hit when I lost my first library book. I was ashamed when the library sent a few notices that began to look progressively “serious.” I was especially annoyed with myself since I could not even remember checking “Sophie's Wheels” out in the first place. I looked everywhere. I paid a few fines. I scoured the house again. I paid another fine. Eventually I was too ashamed to return to the library and took a complete hiatus. 

By the time I got an official-looking final notice in the mail telling me I had to pay for the book or I would be turned over to a collection agency, I was irritated and blame-shifting. I immediately drove to the library where I paid a rather hefty chunk for “Sophie's Wheels” (which I'm sure is a great book and worth every penny....) Of course “Sophie's Wheels” showed up later that week when I parked on a steep incline and it slid out from the seat and under the gas pedal of the van. It was another humbling reminder that I don't have it altogether, I am incomplete and I am flawed, and I always will be. Am I willing to recognize it and admit it in my home in front of my family or will I blame someone else? 

**I also learned that the Greenville Library System will actually write you a check if you pay for a book and return it later.

Helen Keller said, “I long to accomplish a great and noble task; but my chief duty is to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.” In motherhood, I hope I can do this. Others may look at what we are doing as moms and generically say we are humbling ourselves to serve our kids and our home. Motherhood is a noble calling, and I am thankful for the chance to serve my kids at home!  For me, I question whether each small (insignificant) task is humility if I don't purposefully choose to serve others. Do I assume that by simply doing my motherly tasks I'm somehow gaining points for myself even if my attitude is prideful?

Humility isn't accidental. It is the opposite of pride and arrogance and it isn't just about endlessly making meals and cleaning, it is about setting aside my feelings of superiority, even to my kids to serve them daily. (As a sidenote, when I talk about serving my kids, I'm not talking about meeting their every whim and spoiling them rotten. I'm talking about humbling myself to listen to their words, caring about them enough to play on their level even when I'd rather do motherly chores, resisting anger when I'm annoyed, being patient and talking nicely, not whining about the endless messes, etc.) It all boils down to humility.

In the end, while I am very anxious for spring weather and I am eager to send my kids outside into fresh air, I hope that in these remaining winter weeks I will spend my time wisely. I pray that I won't wish away this time when I am trapped inside the house like a hybernating bear with my sometimes stinky cubs. And mostly, I want to move away from my Mary Poppins frame of mind. Occassionally I want to have a tea party on the ceiling without reminding my kids of my complete perfection and superiority.  Rather than wallowing in my daily acts of “humility” and wearing them around for others to pity while my kids see me checking my practically perfect reflection, I'd rather balance my time more wisely and attempt to humbly serve my kids and my husband.  If we all did that, I have a feeling it would be pretty super-cala-fragalistic-expialadoshus.

Whatever makes us feel superior to other people, whatever tempts us to convey a sense of superiority, that is the gravity of our sinful nature, not grace. --Phillip Yancey

Flashing Lights and Winter Woes

**Disclaimer: For the past few nights I have been up with a cough. I find myself sleepy and sentimental, so if this post is a little more emotional than usual, please bear with me.

On our way home from Ohio this Christmas, my three kids, husband and I were driving through the foothills of Kentucky on 75 when suddenly the check engine light started flashing like crazy. I grew up in a home where cars regularly had flashing check engine lights and we simply covered it with black electrical tape, but to Steve it was new and scary. We slowly and carefully prayed our way through the next three states, hoping that our 1997 Plymouth Voyager would give us one last trip home.

As we sat for six hours in van-related thought and conversation, I kept thinking about how although I had never been “proud” to drive a little white mini-van from the 90's, I had taken for granted the fact that it would be around to get us where we needed to go for at least a few more years. As much as I had kicked and screamed about having to drive a mini-van in the first place, I realized not only had our tiny Voyager made us mini-van fans (with its sticky sliding doors and low gas mileage), it had also found an endearing spot in our hearts.

Cynthia Ozick, one of my favorite essayists, said, “When something does not insist on being noticed, when we aren't grabbed by the collar or struck on the skull by a presence or an event, we take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.” How true is that? How often does it take a flashing “check engine light” to get our attention? I started thinking about all the things I take for granted daily, the endless list of things I fail to appreciate, the lack of gratefulness I show to everyone and everything around me, and I was completely overwhelmed.

The very fact that we made it to our home from the highway was something to be thankful for since 37,261 Americans are killed annually in crashes (U.S. Census Bureau). I am not the kind of person who is afraid to drive my car or fly in a plane, but the fact that we have the luxury of driving in cars and flying in planes and safely returning to our homes in the first place is really pretty remarkable if you stop and think about it.

One week after Christmas vacation we made the decision to cut our cable. Those who know me will sympathize with how much I have grown to love the convenience of cable TV and most of all, the undisputed best modern day invention: the DVR. It was painful to pack up the box to Dish Network and heartbreaking to lose hours of saved material on the DVR. I had more than begun to take advantage of the ability to pause, rewind and fast forward live television and I had forgotten how to sit and actually watch a commercial. I took for granted that my DVR box would always say, “Good morning! What do you want to watch today?” I miss my 140 channels and I hate the black pointed bunny ear antenna above my bookshelves. After a week though, I am honestly realizing I do not miss aimlessly lying in bed watching shows I don't really care about. I am already enjoying going to bed earlier and reading more. But I digress.

If there is one thing that never ceases to amaze me, if there is one thing we all take for granted daily it is the created universe. Just the ability to sit here typing this—I am held down by gravity, I am breathing oxygen in a perfect atmosphere as the perfectly sized Earth perfectly rotates around a Sun that would burn us if we were closer and freeze us if we were any further away. I could go on and on about this. Many more facts here.

In fact, the simple act of breathing is a work of art that leaves me speechless when I really think about it. When I take a breath, there are so many intricacies that go into making my heart and lungs work in perfect unison and it is really almost shocking that more things don't going wrong or that we aren't sick all the time. For those of us who are visual, here is a neat video: 

A few years ago I read Where is God when it hurts? by Philip Yancey and although it's not the kind of feel good book you want to just pass out randomly to your friends, I learned a lot by reading it. He talks repeatedly about working with leprosy patients in India. I never knew that leprosy is actually a disease of the nervous system; basically those with leprosy lose the ability to feel things and therefore hurt themselves routinely because they lack the ability to tell when they are in danger (i.e. touching a burning stove, wearing shoes that don't fit and ruining their feet, etc.) I had never looked at the ability to “feel” as a blessing before. I had never realized that even the ability to hurt is sometimes a good thing. We take for granted the fact that when we hurt, whether by slamming our fingers in the car door or when we are slighted by someone we love, if we lack the ability to feel intense pain, we would also lack the ability to know love or joy. We would be apathetic robots with an “I have it all together” status, but feeling nothing.

If you break your leg, you want to run when your crutches are gone. If you lose your job, you are much happier to get up and go to work after a year of unemployment. If you lose a child, you are much more thankful for the babies you have. When we hurt and when we lose, we cherish more. I can grumble about being up all night with a crying baby, but am I thankful when I get a full night of sleep, and what is the alternative to a crying baby? I can whine about my husband working late, but am I thankful that he has a good, steady job?

All this is nothing new and I write it mostly for myself. I am sarcastic and melancholy and I have the emotional capacity of a grape nut. I know it's impossible to skip around singing praises for every breath we take and every blessing we receive, and frankly I would be tempted to trip you if you skipped past me. However, if we stop daily to appreciate just a fraction of the amazing things happening in our lives, we might all be a little less crabby. If I pretend like the orange check engine light is flashing every time I enter the Voyager, I might savor the times when we reach our destination, instead of fussing and whining when we inevitably break down.

“When it comes to life, the critical thing is whether you take things for granted, or take them with gratitude.” G.K. Chesterton

Searching new wrinkles for missing items: socks and brain cells.

I lost my keys in Ohio at Christmas; it took us over two weeks to finally find them securely zipped in the pocket of my husband's jacket. I recently ran out of diapers for the baby; I had no diapers in the house except the one he was wearing and we had to make an emergency pre-catastrophic trip to the store. Yesterday I attempted to take a running leap and show my son the proper way to sled down a small hill. I ended up ear down in the snow with a golf ball-sized purple bruise on my leg this morning. I am beginning to wonder; have my kids sucked the last bits of sharpness out of my brain with a twisty straw, or is this what happens while coasting across the proverbial post-thirty plateau?

On top of my recent brain lapses and new physical “developments,” I have completely lost the ability to tell the age of anyone older than ten. I think high school students look like they are about 7 and to me, people in the 18-24 range look barely old enough to take driver's ed. I am also slowly losing my ability to navigate quickly through the latest technology, but I am an expert at cleaning puke from of the tiniest carseat crevasses. If I ever had a sense of what hair or clothes are in style, I don't anymore, but I can lock and load the coffee pot with one hand while talking on the phone. Easily.

Not long ago I was organized. Not long ago I could blend in as a young student on any campus. I could instantly fold and put away laundry, and I could remember online passwords without looking. I have to question these new developments taking place in my life.

So far the 30's are not what I expected. It's not about matching polyester suits or SAS orthepedic shoes (yet), but it is about Oil of Olay and hair dye and irregular but much needed trips to the dentist for fillings.

Shortly after the new year I read this article about things babies born in 2011 will never know and it made me wonder whether anyone will really miss electrical wires or encyclopedias or watches or cursive (sorry mom!). What will this article look like 30 years from now? Will we be saying goodbye to musical instruments or classrooms with teachers or horses (I am always worried about horses since they are an expensive pet/hobby and serve no real purpose other than as animal actors in westerns and old pre-car movies.)

Then my mind naturally wandered and I started thinking about life expectancy. Did you know that in Medieval Britain if you lived past age 30 you were older than most of your neighbors? Even in the early 20^th century few people lived past age 45. I know that I'm young, this is mostly tongue in cheek, but at the same time can you imagine what most of those people had accomplished in their entire young lives vs. most thirty-somethings today? Excluding people like Mark Zuckerberg, of course. And Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia, and the creator of one of the largest empires in history, died when he was only 32!

For you Mathemeticians (I am personally a math-hater), here is a helpful complex equation to help you figure out your own life expectancy:

All of this, as always, naturally turns my thoughts to the great women of the plains: the Pioneer Women. Maybe because I was born in South Dakota I always glamorized the idea of being a pioneer. I focused on the wild expanses of prairie and the fresh air and the outdoorsy-ness of it all. I always wanted to be like Alexandra Bergson in O Pioneers!, one of my favorite books by Willa Cather. The Pioneer woman was the female version of the cowboy. She represented a hero venturing into unexplored territory, searching for new life and amazing adventures. She was armed with a bonnet and a sod house and a fire stove and I never thought about the daily labor and filth and sleep depravity that must have been normal to her. It never occurred to me that there was probably a trail of dirty diapers following each poor Pioneer woman across the endless plains and infinitly bumpy roads. I didn't think about the lack of boxed macaroni and cheese, the absence of microwaves and dishwashers and deodorant. It wasn't very glamorous at all.

At the same time I have a feeling if Sarah Plain and Tall or Laura Ingalls Wilder had been faced with the daily task of running “quickly” to Wal-Mart (i.e. helping 3 kids eat, dress, wash, buckle carseats, find a place in the cart allowing for enough spots for each child and toilet paper, milk and fruit snacks then hurrying back home before meal or naptime) she might have needed a to-do list and a pumpkin spice latte, too.

Since brain cells don't regenerate (we are born with a certain amount and they steadily just die from doing daily activities—all of which is accelerated by lack of sleep, stress... sound familiar?) then what are we to do? As a thirty-something mom of three beautifully vigorous kids steadily sucking the brain cells out of me, I must choose to be thankful for diapers to change, noses to wipe and carts to fill at Wal-mart.

Will I lose my keys again? Will I almost forget which day is show n' tell at school? Will I be able to keep track of everyone's shoe size or the time between nail cuttings and ear cleanings? Probably not. Can I make small goals that are achievable on a daily and weekly basis? I hope so.

I may not conquer the world like Alexander the great, and I will never maintain my sodless home like the pioneering Alexandra Burgson, but I can keep my kids feeling secure and loved, and mostly I can try to get the pine needles swept away before next Christmas. Or at least attempt to get rid of our 2010 Christmas tree.

"Time and tide wait for no man, but time always stands still for a woman of thirty." ~Robert Frost

Mt. Laundry

Lint Trap.