I did a silly thing.
With child number three, we finally outgrew our small kitchen table. I ordered this great table with the green chairs from West Elm. The table arrived and I LOVE it! It looks fabulous in my green kitchen area and is nice and big for meals, homework, projects (clutter), etc.
But…I ordered the cushions too. The chair cushions are a lovely, minimalist white. WHAT WAS I THINKING??? They have washable covers, but do I really want to be removing cushion covers and washing them every day? I have enough daily laundry to do without adding more to it. Plus, what about spaghetti sauce? Will that come out or will I need to dye the covers red to match the stains? Maybe we should just eat white food from now on. Potatoes, pasta, milk, ice cream (vanilla)…
This reminds me of one of my pet peeves. Decorating magazines that feature “families” with cute little blonde curly-haired angels running around the immaculate garden in adorable white outfits. These families always have elegant minimalist living rooms in varying shades of white with sisal rugs. The room is completely decorated with “flea market finds” and boasts (and this is the kicker) a WHITE SLIPCOVERED SOFA on which the family greyhound is reclining comfortably.
The glamorous, yet natural-looking mother always offers up some savvy decorating wisdom, such as: “Seek out flea market pieces that have good bones.” Or, “I like to decorate with white slipcovers because you can just pull them off and throw them in the wash!” With a house full of toddlers and sofa-sleeping greyhounds, this mother (or her maid) must be washing her slipcovers five times a day.
My slipcovers would be living in my laundry room. My sisal rug would have cat barf on it (How does one clean cat vomit out of the fibers of a sisal rug anyhow? With a toothbrush?). Do Lazy-Boy recliners have “good bones?” Where do I find a flea market near me? We have garage sales, thrift stores and a “swap meet,” but unless your decorating style is “Early Salvation Army” or involves antlers, you might be a bit disappointed with the availability of elegant antique bargains where I live.
So, this brings me back to my dilemma. What do I do with white kitchen chair cushions? I am simply not as brave as those “magazine moms.” Mine are in a box in the attic to be brought out when my children are in college.
PS. I thought about cleaning off the table for the photo, but decided that it was more interesting to simply capture a moment in time from a “real mom’s” house. I hope you appreciate my honesty.
My sister has a cockatiel who rings like a telephone and then, putting his foot up to his ear (I am not making this up), says “Hello?”
Last night I was cooking dinner when I overheard my 6 year-old daughter, who was on the sofa with a book, saying “Now [4 year-old brother], I really need some alone time. You never let me have time for myself!” (I am not making this up either).
Gee, I wonder where she heard that? Do I say that kind of thing a lot? Probably. I like “alone time” and I don’t get much of it anymore. Does my sister talk on the phone a lot? Well, certainly enough for her cockatiel to have noticed!
The point is that children, like parrots, imitate what they hear. That is a scary realization. If I am being “less than mature” and pouty because I want “my alone time,” how can I be surprised when my children are “less than mature” and pouty because they want another story and it is 8PM on a school night.
My baby girl says “yeah” instead of yes. I guess I say “yeah” a lot instead of yes too. Among the first words of my two oldest was “actually,” used grammatically correctly. Actually, never until then, did I actually realize that I say “actually” a lot.
It is hard being a parent and having to set a perfect example 24 hours a day. Sometimes, I just want to pick my nose. There. I said it. Online, for the world to read. It is up to you to decide if I want to “literally” pick my nose (don’t worry, I won’t post photos), or figuratively pick my nose.
So…parents beware. Pick your nose in private only. And make sure that your most daring cuss word is “actually,” otherwise your child’s preschool teacher will have a good laugh!
Parrot photo thanks to morguefile.com and photographer lightfoot. Nose-picker photo thanks to morguefile.com and photographer David Kitchenham (www.photomime.co.uk).
Today we have decided to get TV. The satelite kind with 500 channels. APRIL FOOLS!!!
April 1st is here already which means that warmer weather is on the way…gardening will soon begin…and Spring Break is almost over! Yipee! How do you homeschooling Moms do it?
Our week started off fairly stressfully. The kids were getting used to being home all day, and I was dealing with a sick, whiny baby and habituating myself to constant noise, chaos, and “Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom….” I meant to get out my “Mom-Clicker ” (see my post - The M-word) for a Spring Break Mom-Tabulation, but never quite got around to it.
As the days wore on however, we all settled down. The weather was mostly too cold for outside play, and the baby was sick so no friends could come over to play for risk of infection. The kids built kitchen chair playgrounds and sofa forts, set up a “Bead-Shop” and “sold” me beads (see today’s photo). Click here to see what they did yesterday morning.
We tidied the terrible Clutter Pits that they call their rooms. Usually I find that it is best to do this when they are absent so certain items can “disappear” gracefully, if you know what I mean. But this time I couldn’t stand it anymore and waiting until next week was not an option for my mental health. My 6 year-old daughter surprisingly must have been in a tidy-up mood (for the first time ever) and agreed to part with two giant boxes full of stuff to donate!
Tomorrow we will be back to normal. Breakfast, getting dressed, making lunches, driving to school, then…silence, wonderful silence!
This is the way we spend our time without TV. Sometimes, after 99 “moms” or so, I would just like to be able to send them away to watch something and leave me alone, but I am glad that we choose not to do that. Life seems much more “right” this way, with the Bead Shops and sofa torture!
When I die, I DO NOT want to be reincarnated as our sofa!
Our sofa is a practical sort of sofa. I found it years ago for a great price at a consignment store. It is a good solid sofa, with nice high sides, plump pillows and cute little bolsters. It has some style, in a slightly retro kind of way. It is wonderful for reading with a cup of tea, lounging with the laptop, or even sleeping on all night. Oh, and did I mention the color? It is upholstered in a sensible, kind of baroque-like pattern of goldy-browns and dark browns.
But, look closely at our sofa and you will see chocolate milk stains (well hidden by the pattern and brown color), cat claw snags, sags in the back cushions from too many cats and kids sitting on them, and a small split on one arm that has been sewn back together (easily covered by a throw). TV-free kids can be a little hard on a sofa.
This is what happens on our sofa:
The moral of this story is that if you are not going to sit your kids down neatly in front of TV, you’d better have a sturdy, brown consignment-store sofa!
I recently had a birthday. Yes, another one, but as my mother used to say: “At least it’s better than the alternative!” For my birthday my two oldest made me cards. Well, they didn’t exactly “make” the cards themselves, they used some blank cards someone had given them and wrote sweet messages inside. I tried not to take it personally that the pictures on the front of the cards were of dinosaurs!
The dinosaur thing got me thinking. I know my kids can’t understand time yet. I don’t think they believe me when I tell them that even though Mommy is old, she is not old enough to have gone bronco-riding on the back of a T-Rex.
When I tell them that there were no computers or cell phones when I was a child, they look at me like I have twelve heads. We didn’t even have cordless phones! “How did you talk?” “Well, we talked fine, but we just had to stand there tied to the phone by a long curly cord.” STAND THERE? I can see the wheels turning in their brains. You mean you had to just talk? You didn’t do the dishes, make beds, and change a diaper all while talking on the phone? Wow! What an odd concept!
Technology gives us the gift (?) of multitasking. We no longer do just one thing at a time. The Buddhists believe that you must “live in the moment,” savor every experience, enjoy the feeling of the water on your hands as you do the dishes, the texture of the sheets as you tuck them in, the smell of your baby as you change a diaper (well, maybe not then, not even for Buddhists). I believe that there is a lot to the theory that real happiness is indeed, living in the moment. Can we truly appreciate life as we race headlong through it, crazily attempting to accomplish five things at once?
How on earth did I get from dinosaurs to the meaning of life? This post has certainly taken on a direction all its own! There is another dinosaur-inspired post brewing in my head. More on that later. But for now, have a peaceful Saturday with your family and remember to put down that phone and enjoy life!
Thanks to morguefile.com and photographer Melodi2 for this unusual photo!
Everything Else!, hightech vs. lowtech, silly ramblings, simpler times
| 
family life, hightech vs. lowtech, humor, humour, kid quotes, multi-tasking, multitasking, simplifying, technology simplicity, the old days
Comments (7) 
Themocracy