Domestic Psychology

I am not a threat to inventors

// October 23rd, 2009 // No Comments » // home, life

Remember when I said I need metallic dental floss and a bathroom trash can made of metal so that the used floss makes it in the can instead of everywhere else? Add band-aid wrappers to the list of things that should be metallic. I find those tiny, static-prone papers everywhere except the trash can.

Other fantasy items that would be useful:
household rotating front door with a vacuum vent underneath
single use toothpaste dispensers
stacked instead of rolled toilet tissue
metallic legos
playground surface floors for homes
cars for teen drivers made by Little Tikes

household math

// August 23rd, 2009 // 2 Comments » // clothing, home

SAT prep math problems of the day:

If a bedroom closet is 5′ x 8′ and your clothing occupies 18 square inches of that space, what are the odds that a minor flood will get your clothing wet?

Estimate the length of time that will elapse between a declaration that the laundry is done and a household disaster or illness based biohazard which instantly creates a week’s worth of dirty laundry.

vultures

// July 25th, 2009 // 14 Comments » // blogging, home, life, people

One of the side effects of being poor is that you don’t blog about the bargains from your non-existent shopping excursions or the cool new gadgets that you don’t have. I experience the thrill of finding the perfect purse vicariously on others’ blogs. What I don’t enjoy, are the blogs that post “foreclosure” finds. They link to the latest properties about to be foreclosed and auctioned. They encourage people looking for homes and investments to grab these great deals. They brag about the 100K homes being purchased for 5K. Even people who aren’t house hunting, read these blogs and fantasize about being able to flip property at a great profit. There is a huge difference between finding a pair of jeans on a clearance rack and buying a home at 20% of its’ value.

What nobody talks about are the families who are struggling to scrape together the money to save their homes from foreclosure. The debt that increases exponentially every single day with legal fees and penalties. The stress and anxiety at not knowing what horror the next day will bring. It is implicitly encouraged on the “property watch” blogs that you should check out these properties and bid on them. Checking them out means parking in front of the house and staring, pointing and taking pictures. It means getting out of your car and wandering around on property that still belongs to the family living there. It means strangers walking up to children playing in their yard and asking them questions about their home. It seems to make people think that it is okay to knock on someone’s door and ask if you can come inside and look around. These families are still trying to save their homes. They are financially wounded and struggling to survive. Foreclosure bloggers and their supporters are vultures. They are parasites who prey upon the defenseless. Grave robbers.

We watched in helpless horror as a happy family in our neighborhood lost their home. When they ran out of options and the will to fight, they moved into assisted housing. We tried to keep in touch with them, but as they began to change and adapt to their new lifestyle, the play dates for our children quickly stopped happening. Losing their home changed everything about that family. Their marriage ended. Their personalities changed and they are lost forever to the system. The house at the corner of our cove was the home for a multi-generational family. The bank foreclosed and the family left TN to start over again. That house has sat vacant for YEARS. Now it a place for squatters and suspicious activity. Losing the family that belonged there has changed the landscape of our quiet, uneventful cove.

Sometimes, we still dream of a different life. When I do, one thing about my plans never changes. I want to pay off this house and move somewhere else. I want to give this house to someone else who is struggling. It is our lifeboat in the stormy seas and if we survive this storm, I know it can be the refuge for another family.

one of THOSE days

// May 29th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // aspergers, home, humor, kid quotes, medical, parenting, preschoolers, teenagers

Me: “Tommy, do you want to spend the rest of your life just playing WoW in our basement?”
Tommy: “I don’t think you want to know my answer.”

Sarah: “I have NOTHING to wear. I HAVE to have new clothes.”

Noah: “Umm, yeah, I didn’t tell you, but, I, umm, lost a part of my snare drum that you rented.”

Amy: “Where’s the gum I was saving?”
Me: “Where did you leave it?”
Amy: “It was right there. Where Molly is napping.”

Evan: CRASH! “Ow. Ow. Ow.”
Me: pulling the shelf off of him “Where does it hurt?”
Evan: “Everywhere.”
Two hours and one trip to Children’s ER later, we have been reassured that he will be fine. They decided against stitches on his cheek.

I can hardly wait for tomorrow.

bye-bye dead tree

// May 15th, 2009 // No Comments » // flickr, home

a day in the life

// May 13th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Doug, holidays, home, life, marriage, me, parenting, school, technology, teenagers

5/11 3:00 p.m. – Amy brings home a pile of disks filled with pictures that I agreed to compile into a montage for the First Graders’ end of the year celebration. Two of the teachers sent over 500 pictures each while one only sent about two dozen blurry pictures. My goal was a 10-15 minute loop that had a balance of all the children.

5/12 1:00 a.m. – Evan attempts his nightly trek to our bed, but upon finding me sitting at my computer, the half asleep child demands breakfast. He then proceeds to dump buckets of toys.
4:30 a.m. – Finish First Grade “Year in pictures” presentation, scoop up a cranky Evan and go to bed.
7:30 a.m. – Evan wakes and demands breakfast. Again.
9:00 a.m. – Doug informs me that my photo montage isn’t communicating with the school’s Smart Board.
9:01 a.m. – Begin uploading multiple versions of photo montage to web.
9:15 a.m. – Start washer and dryer.
9:30 a.m. – Evan needs food. Again.
10:00 a.m. – School Matters’ maintenance work, read and reply to e-mails & scan feed activity.
10:45 a.m. – I learn that one of the teachers figured out how to make the photo montage work.
11:00 a.m. – Evan pees on me because he is sitting instead of standing.
11:01 a.m. – Take bath & get dressed.
11:45 a.m. – Start washer and dryer. Again.
12:00 p.m. – Sit down to eat a sandwich which Evan takes from me after I have two bites.
12:30 p.m. – Make a School Matters’ post, read and reply to e-mails, & update Facebook and Twitter.
1:00 p.m. – My father shows up to give me a cake. He doesn’t know why.
1:01 p.m. – My father talks about my brother.
1:20 p.m. – My father leaves and takes Tommy home with him to help with yard work.
1:30 p.m. – Doug looks visibly relieved by the surprise cake delivery.
1:31 p.m. – Wash 2 sink loads of dishes and fold several loads of laundry.
3:00 p.m. – Get snack for Amy & Evan.
3:30 p.m. – Scan feed activity, read and reply to e-mails, & update Facebook and Twitter.
4:15 p.m. – Intervene in Amy & Evan screaming match.
4:45 p.m. – Run to pick up pizza.
5:15 p.m. – Feed children, wash faces and brush hair while scarfing down 2 pieces of pizza.
5:40 p.m. – Leave house and drive to high school.
6:00 p.m. – Attend Color Guard parent meeting that is 90% having our handout read aloud.
6:30 p.m. – No car, so walk *run across Kingston Pike to wait at Books-a-Million.
7:30 p.m. – Doug picks us up and we drive home.
8:00 p.m. – Give children quick baths and put them in jammies.
8:10 p.m. – Clean up the 2 inches of water that Evan dumped on the bathroom floor.
8:15 p.m. – Amy has screaming tantrum because Evan took the towel that she wanted.
8:20 p.m. – Clean children’s rooms so they can go to bed.
8:30 p.m. – Summoned to kitchen where family sings “Happy Birthday” to me.
8:32 p.m. – Gifted new knee socks.
8:35 p.m. – My father and Tommy call to say happy birthday after my mother tells them to do so.
8:40 p.m. – Tuck three youngest in bed. They all acknowledge they had no idea it was my birthday.
8:50 p.m. – Eat piece of strawberry cake.
9:00 p.m. – Wash dishes.
9:30 p.m. – Go downstairs to watch tv in bed. Doug already there watching Earth Girls are Easy.

*Insert teenage daughter snarking about my “big, ugly shoes” and pleading for me to take them off and walk barefoot on Kingston Pike, followed by her mocking the way I crossed Kingston Pike “like a chicken in heels.”

Evan says:

// May 10th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // flickr, holidays, home, parenting, pets

Our daily wake-up and feed me alarm had something extra to say in addition to the usual, “I hungry. My tummy growling.” The cryptic, “Something’s on the kitchen floor” caused both Doug and I to imagine a dog accident that needed immediate hazmat attention. “I’ll clean up the dog mess in a minute.” The clarification, “There’s letters all over the floor” removed urgency from the situation and Doug mumbled that he would clean the letters up later. When Doug eventually went upstairs, Amy was staring at the previously mentioned floor. Evan made sure Amy was safe from the dangerous letters. “Don’t touch it Amy. Daddy say it’s dog poo letters.”

Wanna take a baaaaath?

// May 4th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Doug, home, life, marriage, me, parenting

Friday night, Evan snuck a paperback book into the bathtub. The result was the reverse of a paper mache experiment. Saturday morning I cleaned out the mountain of paper scraps so that Sarah could take a 2-hour bath to get ready for prom. I had time for a 10 minute bath before taking Sarah on prom errands. Saturday night, Doug went to a sweat. Doug came home after midnight and took a bath. Sunday morning, I hopped in the bath for a casual weekend soak and learned too late that the entire bottom of the tub was a layer of sand from the ground at Doug’s sweat. Blech. I rinsed off, scrubbed the tub and decided to try a bath Sunday night after the children were asleep. Sunday, Noah came home from a weekend camping trip. He went in to take a bath before he went to bed. Later Sunday night, I went in the bathroom to make a second attempt at a bath only to be greeted by an inchworm who didn’t survive Noah’s bath. Yuck. I skipped the bath. Sarah had prom on Saturday night and slept most of Sunday. Monday morning, she bathed before school. I went in to bathe after all of the children were at school for the day. The bathtub sparkled and twinkled. Not because it was clean, but because it had glitter all over it. Ew. If it wasn’t thundering and lightning outside, I would take soap outside and bathe in the rain. It’s cleaner outside.

it started with a drip

// January 14th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Doug, home, marriage, me

The sink in the downstairs bath has dripped forever. A few weeks ago, Doug decided to fix the drip. His “fix” was to replace the faucet. This was not a Doug plan that required any input from me. This was barely blue-green on the Doug’s “plan” scale. When he decided that the pipes underneath the sink should be replaced “as long as he was working on it anyway,” I gave him the one raised eyebrow face. We were in Doug’s “plan” blue. After leaving the sink with no pipes connected for a week so that I had to empty a bucket of water twice during every wash load and a basement flood that soaked every towel we own, Doug disconnected the washing machine and turned off the water in both bathroom sinks. When the washing machine blocked the path to our bedroom and the children were brushing their teeth kneeling at the bathtub, we reached yellow on the Doug’s “plan” scale. Both eyebrows went down and I looked at Doug through those eyebrows when I talked to him. As the laundry piles grew bigger with each passing day and the bucket filled with wet towels developed an odor, Doug started cutting holes in the walls to work on the pipes IN THE WALLS since, he “might as well replace those too.” Code orange! Now, I had to give him “the look” AND mumble every time I walked past the holes in the walls, the washing machine in the hallway, the piles of laundry, the mildewing towels or the waterless sinks. Even the children started grumbling about the leaky sink repair. We all started avoiding the downstairs and whimpered a little at the strange noises and smells that wafted up the stairs. As I was deciding between sending the children to school in shorts or outgrown clothes from the pile awaiting a trip to the Goodwill dropoff, Doug wandered past me and casually mentioned that he was finished fixing the drip and the washing machine was reconnected. I had to interrogate Doug. I thought he was joking. Surprisingly, he was serious. The sinks once again have running water. The washing machine was empty and happy to accept the load of jeans that the children and I will wear tomorrow. I am so happy that I don’t think I’ll even ask when the half a dozen holes in the wall will be fixed. At least not until after I get caught up on the laundry.

flood update – the rest of the story

// January 7th, 2009 // No Comments » // Doug, home, me, weather

Doug strayed from his usual tech chat and tin-foil hattery long enough to describe Tuesday night’s basement flood. He left out a few details. Tuesday was a school night, so I was in the middle of getting all the children bathed and tucked in their beds as Doug went outside to play in a ditch of quicksand that could have collapsed on him. The first problem was that every towel we own was on the basement floor soaking up flood waters. Bathrobes became makeshift towels. The second problem was that while I was downstairs searching for any towels that might have escaped being sacrificed to Poseidon, I found the basement floor was starting to resemble a lake again. I tried twisting the shop vac left and right and pushing while turning, but the lid wouldn’t budge. I ran out to the monsoon and asked Doug how to remove the lid. As I stood in the pouring rain getting the information, the clean 3-y-o ran outside. Naked. The nudist was handed to an older sibling, the 6-y-o was told to go back to bed and I returned to the indoor pool. The completely full shop vac was emptied while my back screamed at me for wrongly assuming it had any kind of muscle. The soaking wet towels were stuck in the washing machine to spin out some of the water. The floor was vacuumed again and the vacuum was left on in the corner of the room that wouldn’t stay dry. I went back upstairs to find the 6-y-o running from room to room to stay awake. “I can’t sleep Mommy. I need you to dress up like a sheep and jump around the room so I can count your jumps.”

The 6-year-old was returned to her bed and I whispered to her until she fell asleep. The next problem was getting the 3-year-old to sleep when he couldn’t go downstairs where his bed is until we finish the great bedroom shift of 2009. While I vacuumed the basement, the 12-year-old tried to convince his little brother to sleep in a different bed, but the 12-year-old fell asleep and the 3-year-old resumed his usual Tazmanian Devil behaviors. I held the small monster until he finally fell asleep and put him in the 15-year-old’s bed. She was less than thrilled. Her displeasure was nothing compared to my reaction when I found that the dog who had refused to go potty all day because of the rain, had finally gone. All over the floor.

I finally began my evening “put out everything we’ll need for morning” routine at 10:30 p.m. Doug came in the house looking like an Aborigine and we took turns whining about physical aches and psychological pains. The two 100+ pound dogs decided we should spend the night sleeping balled up in fetal positions so that the dogs could have the entire bottom half of the bed. Evan woke up and demanded the spot in the bed between Doug and I. At some point after Doug fell asleep, but before I dozed off, the cat danced around our heads while chirping like a bird. I was too tired, sore and uncomfortable to get up and play the “what does the cat want” game.

Wednesday, the sun came out of its’ hiding place and everyone, human and animal, sat in the sunbeam and cried tears of joy.