Category Archives: We Put the Fun in Dysfunction

May 29, 2011 · 8:31 pm

Clutter is the Bane of My Existence

Recently, I experienced one of those deliciously thrilling EUREKA moments in which I discovered the root of my debilitating problem with clutter. Archimedes would be proud. Needless to say, I was duly impressed with myself as well and have since celebrated by arranging to meet with the legendary Fly Lady herself, author of Sink Reflections www.flylady.net. Not really, but I’d like to think that that domestic goddess would be mildly astounded by my important findings and most certainly abuzz about the implications for all of mankind. Naturally, such a noteworthy accomplishment required that I take a long, hard look at myself, at my shamefully counterproductive housekeeping habits and at the dysfunction with which I am surrounded.

Firstly, I am married to someone who is physically incapable of throwing anything away—hence, the scourge of clutter currently sucking the life out of me. Always and forever, it seems, the Keeper of All Things Unnecessary defends his position: “But what if we NEED (insert virtually any tool-ish device of which we own three, documents that date back to the Paleozoic Era or a less-than-functional yet slightly adored heirloom harvested from the bowels of someone’s attic) in the next century?!” Making matters worse (read: FAR WORSE), our brood manifests many of the very same neurotic hang-ups irksome tendencies with respect to the concept of purging beloved treasures like ratty toothbrushes, chintzy toys and rubbish gleefully retrieved from beneath bleachers and whatnot. Woe is me.

Secondly, I keep buying stuff (i.e. obscenely frivolous crap that beckons to me from afar). That said, I am weak, I have voluminous quantities of time to fritter away in stores and I have plastic. WAY more plastic than someone with my far-from-frugal penchant ought to have. Mind you, such fiscally juvenile behavior continues to take place despite being painfully aware of the dearth of available storage space in my home and of the disturbing nature of my problem.

Thirdly, I cannot (for whatever reason) will my pathetic self to put anything away (for Crissakes) at the precise moment in time that it SHOULD be put away. Nor can I deal with whatever begs to be dealt with in a timely manner—namely, bank statements, muddied soccer cleats, folded laundry and anything even remotely related to the WRETCHED MAIL. As a result, hideous-looking piles of this and that lie about like carnage. And yet, I lamely argue the point that said stuff is simply en route to its rightful place in the Universe.

It’s in limbo, as it were; a twisted sort of purgatory for household goods. It’s a sinful reality here in these parts—a reality that is entirely imprudent and completely preventable. “But,” I insist to anyone fool enough to listen, “I have, shall we say, some slight ‘issues’ with follow though. Besides, it’s perfectly normal to paw through one’s laundry basket for clean socks, to trip over heaps of that-which-is-destined-for-the-recycling-bin and to race to the bus stop while yanking the tags off new clothes that have yet to see the inside of anyone’s closet. Perfectly normal.”

June Cleaver would be horrified.

But it’s not as if I’m a complete failure. Even June would have to admit that a modicum of what I do smacks of success. More specifically, it’s the baby steps I take on that eternal quest for order that truly matter. The successive approximations (a la B.F. Skinner) that I realize over time. Little by little, I shift and shuttle things to where they belong, knowing that EVENTUALLY clutter will leave me.

So there’s that, at least—the promise of order. Here’s hoping I’m not senile by the time said order arrives.

Planet Mom: It’s where I live (forever ferrying stuff hither and yon, to its rightful place in the Universe). Visit me there at www.facebook.com/NotesfromPlanetMom.

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Filed under We Put the Fun in Dysfunction

Tagged as children, clutter, disorder, family, hoarding, humor, husbands, kids, parenting

January 31, 2011 · 7:23 pm

Great Expectations

In the dark of predawn I lay in bed, tucked snugly beneath my downy comforter, sleet pinging against the windowpanes in soft yet fitful waves. Against all odds associated with parenthood, no one under the age of eight burst into the room to announce that the sky was falling. Translation: my husband and I had had the presence of mind to skip setting the kids’ alarm the night before, in anticipation of inclement weather almost certain to arrive by daybreak. So for a time, all was silent in this good house—except for the ticking of clocks and the tiny taps at the window.

As the not-so-surprising news of yet another school cancellation reached my ears in the wee hours that day, I was filled impossibly with hope. Hope that I would enjoy a morning devoid of the madness I had known all too well since September. Hope for a day abundant with hot cocoa, kindness and good cheer. Hope that I might finally summon the strength and ambition to take down the blasted Christmas tree. The one that has been standing very nearly straight in my living room for the past 63 days, mocking me as I addressed my cache of shamefully belated holiday cards.

The tree had to come down. It would come down. It was January 28^th for Pete’s sake. Besides, I was tired of its condescending glare, as if it were looking down its boughs at me, judging my every deficiency. Shaming my inadequate core.

Moreover, with my army of helpers that would likely be at my disposal ALL DAY (since no one wanted to frolic in the freezing rain), I banked on being able to pack up and stow away each and every jingle bell, snowman, Santa likeness and string of garland-y foolishness in the entire house. To reclaim my space. At least until Easter.

Needless to say, lots of people here agreed that it was high time. “Mom, you know we’re going to get arrested, don’t you?”

“Arrested? For what?!”

“Because January’s almost over and we don’t even have our Christmas tree down yet! We’ll all be thrown in jail!”

“Whaaaaat?! Who’s going to throw us in jail?”

“The Holiday Police.”

“The Holiday Who?!”

“The Holiday Police. They arrest people who don’t do stuff right—like taking Christmas trees down BEFORE Groundhog Day. Helloooooooooo.”

She had a point.

All I had to do was glance at the calendar and then at the muddled mess surrounding me. Remnants of the holiday season were everywhere. The Christmas lights were (and still are!) completely shrouded with ice and fused impossibly to the trees and shrubs outside. The stockings were still hung—and shockingly, still laden with beloved items that had been tragically forgotten since Santa’s celebrated arrival. Gifts of every size, shape and hideous stage of disarray lay like carnage throughout the house and under the aforementioned evergreen, gloriously bedecked with enough ornament-age for a forest. Legions upon legions of festive-looking dishes, alarmingly bare except for the smarmy trail of cashews and the red and green fleckage of holiday M&Ms, still rested upon my tabletops, whispering without end, “Cleeeean meeeee.” Santa’s cookie plate begged to be returned to the cupboard, the crèche longed to be back in the attic and quite frankly, the mistletoe was tired of hanging around.

What’s more, I noted that the kids had been swiping stuff from the tree for weeks—like the reindeer, now chummy with Barbie’s horses and sharing a corral, and the snowmen, warmly adopted by a family of Lego people. I even discovered a few sparkly ornaments dangling precariously from the rooftops of doll houses. Icicles maybe?

That said, it was way past time to begin the arduous process of un-decorating. Clearly, the snow day that had been bestowed upon us was a window of opportunity and perhaps the spark that would ignite my drive and determination to succeed in spite of myself. At least that was the plan.

But it was not to be. My great expectations for the day were shot by 10 am and my hopes for a tidier living room were all but dashed. For all intents and purposes, the thorny pine had become rooted there, a glaring reminder of my ineptitude as a putter-away-of-holiday-wares. Instead we frittered away the time, putting six puzzles together, littering the house with Barbie dolls and dresses, devouring books, stuffing ourselves with chocolate-chip pancakes and lounging in our pajamas till it was almost evening—at which time I sent my brood outdoors to play in the snow that had FINALLY begun to fall in big, feathery flakes. A consolation prize for my efforts.

Then again, maybe my reward was the delicious chunk of time I spent fishing for puzzle pieces with my kids, eavesdropping on their Barbie powwows, listening to the ice hit the windows—safe and sound in this good house.

Planet Mom: It’s where I live (and where the Holiday Police are destined to arrive).

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Filed under We Put the Fun in Dysfunction

Tagged as children, disorder, family, humor, kids, love, parenting, snow days

December 30, 2010 · 8:00 am

A Decade of Enlightenment: Ten Things Parenthood Has Taught Me

I’ve been a parent for some 8,286 days. A stunningly imperfect parent, I hasten to add. During that period of time I learned more about sleep deprivation, sibling rivalry and teen angst than I previously considered humanly possible. However, the past decade has proven to be particularly edifying. Indeed, Thing One and Thing Two have provided me with a veritable feast of enlightenment. So, in the spirit of welcoming the new decade and the vat of enlightenment sure to come, I thought it might be fitting to recap what the last 10 years have taught me—at least from the perspective of a stunningly imperfect parent.

1) Beauty is likely in the kitchen. Translation: Most of the masterpieces I’ve collected thus far in my parenting journey are proudly displayed upon my refrigerator, where I suspect they will remain for a very long time to come. That is not to say the face of the fridge is the only canvas upon which said prized artwork hangs in all its faded glory. My home is quite literally inundated with the fledgling, Picasso-esque efforts of my brood, serving as a constant reminder of their boundless generosity and artsy flair. As it should be, I suppose.

2) The word “sleepover” is a misnomer. No one actually sleeps at a sleepover—including the pitiable adults charged with the impossible duty of entertaining the gaggle of impressionable youths in attendance. Furthermore, the later slumber party-goers appear to crash, the earlier they will rise, demanding bacon and eggs. Moreover, it is inevitable that someone’s personal effects (i.e. an unclaimed pair of underpants, a lone sweat sock, an irreplaceable stuffed animal) will be tragically lost—only to show up months later in the oddest of places.

3) When taken out of context, that-which-parents-say-and-do is often appalling. Case in point: “Stop licking the dog.” “If you’re going to ride your scooter in the house, wear a damn helmet.” “Fight nice.” In a similar vein, I’ve fed my charges dinner and dessert in a bathtub more times than I’d care to admit, I’ve used a shameful quantity of saliva to clean smudges off faces, I’ve suggested a broad range of inappropriate responses to being bullied and I consider the unabashed bribe to be one of my most effective parenting tools.

4) A captive audience is the very best sort of audience. That said, some of the most enlightening conversations between parent and child occur when the likelihood of escape is at a minimum (i.e. at the dinner table, in a church pew, en route to the umpteenth sporting event/practice session/music lesson, within the confines of the ever-popular ER).

5) On average, we parents spend an ungodly amount of time reading aloud books that we find unbearably tedious. We say unforgivably vile things about the so-called “new math” and, as a matter of course, we become unhinged by science projects and

whatnot—especially those that require mad dashes to the basement and/or the craft store at all hours of the day and night in search of more paint, more modeling clay and perhaps a small team of marriage counselors.

6) Forget wedding day jitters, the parent/teacher conference is among the most stressful experiences in life—not to be confused with the anxiety-infused telephone call from the school nurse and that interminable lapse of time wedged between not knowing what’s wrong with one’s child and finding out.

7) Of all the creatures in the animal kingdom, the child-with-a-camera is undoubtedly the most fearsome—although the child-with-webcam-knowledge is equally clever and decidedly terrifying as well. More specifically, the aforementioned entities possess an uncanny knack for digitally preserving our less-than-flattering moments. Joy. What’s more, they have a certain weakness for documenting freakishly large or (gasp!) green-hued poo, which I’m told is bizarrely linked to the consumption of blue Slushies. Color me enlightened, yet again.

8) Kids are hard-wired to harvest every syllable of that-which-their-parents-shouldn’t-have-said so that they might liberally share those choice phrases in the most humiliating venue and manner imaginable (i.e. during show-and-tell, at Sunday school, in a crowded elevator, while sitting upon Santa’s lap, at the precise moment the guests arrive).

9) The discovery of a teensy-tiny wad of paper—one that has been painstakingly folded and carefully tucked within a pocket, wedged beneath a pillow or hidden inside a dresser drawer—is akin to being granted psychic powers. Everything a parent needs to know about their child will likely be scrawled upon said scrap of paper.

10) Unanswerable questions never die—they simply migrate to more fertile regions of our homes where they mutate into hideous manifestations of their original forms, leaving us wringing our hands and damning our inadequate selves.

Planet Mom: It’s where I live (getting schooled as we speak).

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Filed under The Natives are Decidedly Restless, We Put the Fun in Dysfunction

Tagged as 2011, children, family, humor, kids, life, New Year, parenting

December 21, 2010 · 10:16 am

The Week before Christmas

An oldie, but a goodie…

‘Twas the week before Christmas, when all through the land

Not a shopper was idle, the stores were all jammed.

The carts were all taken, the traffic—a bear,

We hoped that a parking place still would be there.

The children were whining from dawn until dusk,

“You must spoil us rotten!” they grumbled and fussed.

With MasterCard, Visa, Discover and Saks,

The plastic was certain to work to its max.

When out in the shrubs there arose such a clatter,

I tossed up the bills to see what was the matter.

Away to the bushes I ran like a deer,

“The ladder’s so tipsy; he’s fallen, I fear!”

The cursing and shouting that came from his lips,

Ranked higher than ALL of his Freudian slips.

When, what to my wondering eyes should be found,

But a tangle of lights and my spouse on the ground!

He had twisted and twirled our new lights ‘round his head,

His ankles, an arm—so mad he was red.

More wrath than the Grinch and the Scrooge put together,

He stomped and he thrashed in the cold, snowy weather.

“Now tangles! Now snarls! Be gone in a jiffy!”

“Stop blinking! Stop flashing! Light right now! Look spiffy!”

“To the top of the hedge, to the top of the pine,

Now, light away! Light away! Give us a sign!”

As I helped him untangle himself from the mess,

We spoke of the folks who would soon be our guests.

My brother! His sister! Oh how the list grew!

My parents! His mother! Just WHAT would we do?!

I had not one inkling, how we would endure—

A day so immersed with our kinfolk, for sure.

“There are carrots to peel, and beds to be made!

This floor must be scrubbed! I’m beginning to FADE!”

“The gifts should be wrapped, the tree trimmed just right,

I wonder why I thought my plan was so bright!”

“It’s a bungled up mess!” my husband exclaimed.

“And I know exactly, WHO should be blamed.”

His brow—how it wrinkled! His manner—how wary!

Like the day that America failed to pick Kerry.

The smile he once wore there, oh where did it go?

I searched high and low, there. I just didn’t know.

“So why all the fussing? What IS your big beef?”

“You’d think that Osama was coming! GOOD GRIEF!”

“Your mother—she’ll cook, and my brother—he’ll scrub.”

“When things get too stressful, we’ll all hit the pub.”

“Your sister will wrap all the gifts up with glee!”

“And all will contribute to trimming the tree!”

Then a wink of his eye and something he said,

Soon made me recall, just why we were wed.

“There’s no doubt that our mottled clans have their own quirks.

But stranger than fiction, it actually works.

Like everyone’s crew, we all share some woes.

Each life has some oddness; that’s just how it goes.”

So I hugged him and thanked him for telling me so,

How fitting it was, to be near mistletoe.

Planet Mom: It’s where I live.

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Filed under A Tree is Nice, Captain Quirk, Holiday Hokum, Home is Where the Weirdness Lives, The Natives are Decidedly Restless, We Put the Fun in Dysfunction

Tagged as chaos, Christmas, family, frustration, humor, kids, love, parenting, shopping, The Night before Christmas

December 14, 2010 · 6:45 pm

In the Eye of the Beholder

Contrary to what I’ve alluded to in the past, my kids are not monsters. And although I might have actually used that term on occasion to describe them, they’re not the unruly beasts I’ve made them out to be. They don’t howl at the moon, froth at the mouth or frantically paw the refrigerator when I forget to feed them.

Nor do they growl, unless provoked.

But apparently I know not of which I speak. Evidently some high and mighty prude who has seen my act begs to differ regarding the matter of my having or not having fiendish little children. Further, she’d likely argue the point if given the opportunity. Vehemently, I might add. All I’d have to do is invite Her Haughtiness to return to that happy place where she witnessed (i.e. heard, but could only imagine the scene that unfolded behind the flimsy partition that separated us) the mayhem with which I had to deal just four days before Christmas, crammed and jammed impossibly inside a restroom stall which was clearly ill-equipped to accommodate a mom and two cranky six-year-olds itching for Happy Meals.

I have no doubt the woman in question would be more than willing to sprinkle me with her wealth of sagacity, to dazzle me with her bells and whistles regarding behavior management and child rearing, to enlighten me with a report of everything I’ve done wrong as a parent thus far in my thankless journey—to spell it out for me on the terracotta tiles with French fries: YOUR PARENTING SKILLS SUCK AND YOU’D BE BETTER OFF RAISING CHICKENS, YOU DUMB CLUCK!

She might have a legitimate point. But probably not enough fries to say so.

Everyone knows that McDonald’s isn’t the ideal place to change clothes. Nor is it wise to instruct ungainly children to do so there—demanding from them a degree of perfection that is at best, unachievable. But there I was—parading my little waifs through the joint like some transient-sorry-excuse-for-a-mother, en route to the bathroom to supervise (oh-so-incompetently) the changing-out-of-pajamas-and-into-real-clothes gig. Make that abundantly muddied PJs. “I fell down on the playground today, but I didn’t get hurt, Mom—the mud was FUN!”

“Lovely. Just lovely,” I thought. “We now appear even MORE pathetic than I previously considered conceivable.”

Granted, it had been Pajama Day at school and it made perfect sense for my kids to be dressed as such (as well as still jacked from all the sugar they had consumed during the pre-holiday festivities). But no one else knew that. Most of the patrons I passed probably pegged me as someone who lives in squalor and who makes a habit of hauling her brood there to wash up and whatnot. In reality, however, we were simply using the loo as a staging area for a meltdown, which qualified as a performance of a lifetime as I recall. Prude Lady could testify to that at least.

Incessantly, it seemed, we bickered about who would get to stand where, who would go first, who would hold coats and bags and sneakers, who would get to flush (and when said flushing would take place), what did or didn’t happen during the Polar Express movie and whether or not a certain someone blew a kiss to a boy earlier in the day (“…because that’s not allowed, Mom; only hugs are okay!”).

Ostensibly, this meddlesome witch witnessed the entire routine, likely pressing her ear to the wall so as not to miss a single syllable. As expected, the debate continued within that tiny theater and escalated until it became a pushing and shoving match, spiraling out of control with each combatant furiously shrieking “YOU!!” while shoving a finger in the other’s face.

“She LICKED my finger, Mom!”

“She called me ‘YOU’ first!”

And so the battle raged. Throughout the ordeal, I was painfully aware of a disapproving audience hovering just inches away, and I felt the familiar sting of humiliation and frustration. All the while I snapped and snarled through clenched teeth, “Get your sleeve off the stinking floor!” “Don’t drop that into the toilet!” “Stop hitting your sister!” “Hurry up already with those pajamas and keep your socks ON YOUR FEET!” “Your father’s waiting, you know!”

How could I possibly explain myself, justify my children’s behavior or even show my face once I stepped outside the stall that had become my personal shield from the world? Miss Holier-Than-Thou would be waiting there for me, wagging her finger. Demanding answers. Chiding. Judging.

“Little monsters,” she’d also likely spit.

Oddly enough though, she had few (albeit barbed) words for me when I finally braved it. “GOOD LUCK!” she huffed condescendingly, as I hoisted my heathens to the sink to wash—their anger all but diffused and differences long since forgotten.

I couldn’t help but think she doesn’t get it. She only saw a tiny slice of my day and a mere shadow of the relationship I share with my children. She thinks my kids hate each other and that I must completely loathe my lot in life as their mom. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder, but it’s important to take time to view the picture in its entirety. Snapshots don’t always tell the whole story.

Planet Mom: It’s where I live.