for the past few days, the monkey has required the following object for all afternoon naps and night time sleeping:

yes, this is an embroidery hoop.

another friend told me last night that she and her husband have remade their three-year-old daughter’s bed with items that blind them with tackiness. the powerfully ugly bedding, blanket, and matching night light are comparable to the sight of heaven for their little girl, who just spent a long-awaited and much-celebrated night in her own room.

and finally, another friend swears that the best $9.99 that she’s ever spent was for the purchase of this umbrella:

bed time for this child now includes the careful arrangement of said umbrella so as to create a sort of sleeping canopy.

what is it with these kids and their sleeping accoutrements?

what bizarre objects are necessary for bed time at your house?

our neighbors recently acquired new patio furniture, and my boys recently acquired a new playhouse (complete with curtains, wall art, cave-like hieroglyphics, and a “welcome mat” that is really a pile of blankets).

i think this is what games theorists call “a win-win!”

over the last six months, my strangest mommy fear has increased with every casual stroll through the dining room.

each glance at the “sorting table,” with all of its bizarre collections and carefully-placed containers, sends me into a dim vision of the  future, wherein i accidentally tune in to one of those hoarding television shows only to behold my poor adult son, meandering through a narrow path in his  junk-filled house.

easter basket appropriated for sock storage

i recently confessed to my college roommate that i am raising a future hoarder, and thankfully, she sent me this illuminating article  that states that sorting is a normal sign of cognitive advancement in toddlers. upon further investigation, i stumbled upon this article  that actually instructs parents of preschoolers to encourage sorting behavior in their children. apparently, the key is that the monkey sorts with great joy and gusto, not out of a misplaced sense of obligation.

this is all excellent news! but now what am i to do when i want to have company over for dinner?

some of you might have felt a little sorry for me when you read “host a make-your-own-pizza night” on my fantasy to do list. “poor mary allison,” you must have thought. “while everybody else is fantasizing about world travel, lottery money, and fame, this poor, unimaginative girl is dreaming of pizza!”

well, last night, andy and i hosted a make-your-own-pizza night, and i am here to tell you that it was indeed worthy of fantasy, thanks to the recipe for home-made crust, perfected and given to me by my friend, mary.

mary’s recipe was simple and incredibly delicious, and the good news is that she’s given me permission to share it!

thanks to mary for putting in the hard work of perfecting the process so that morons like me can have first-time success. i’m off to eat the leftovers for lunch. yum!

following the daily email directives of the re[frame] productivity system for creative people  has helped me to organize and prioritize what was once a rain cloud of to-do’s that floated above me, casting down ominous threats.

now, the cloud is gone, and in place of it, i have this cute little box and this set of stacking shelves. no more hail storms of balls inadvertently dropped.

but this life of organization comes with a price. i used to be able to ignore the cloud for stretches of blissfully ignorant time. i am now acutely aware of what needs to be done. now that i’m committed to a daily study of the radar, i miss setting out for a picnic without the slightest notion of torrential downpour…

…but not enough to turn back.

the problem is, i’ve passed the halfway marker now, and my re[frame] emails have moved beyond the kind of concrete directives that have inspired me to organize corners of my house, clean out my email in boxes, and develop a bizarre obsession with note cards. i am now encouraged to brainstorm about what version of myself i would most like to be, what kinds of things act as barriers in this process, and what life changes i could make to facilitate a more centered way of being.

these second-tier questions are precisely the kinds of questions i LOVE! i ask them repeatedly in my work as a minister. it is not that i am negating their importance. it’s just that i’m still organizing corners of my house, cleaning out my email in boxes, and clinging tightly to my note cards. i cannot possibly think about organizing my vision of the future until i organize this and other proverbial visions of my present life:

but as you can see, i AM making progress.

so, i’m taking a week or so off from new challenges and questions so that i can keep up the foundational work. and because organizing my “to do’s” has taught me that i simply have too much to do, i think i need to pare down a bit before i can enter the next phase. i’ve got to dead head the rose bushes so other blooms can grow.

oh, that reminds me. i’ve got to literally dead head those rose bushes. excuse me while i jot that down on a note card…

remember when i showed you this?

and this?

and do you remember when i blathered on about getting organized? my husband was excited when i revealed my plans to try out the reframe productivity system for creative people. however, many of you expressed your disappointment at my efforts to get my life in order. it seems that you LIKE seeing my disheveled mess of a life memorialized in photos and posted on the internet. furthermore, some of you have even confessed that these photos help you to feel better about yourselves. to this i say: a) you’re welcome, and b) don’t worry. there will always be plenty of chaos to go around.

today is day 16 of the program, and i am actually having fun with the process. my new file trays (labeled “do,” “file,” “delegate,” and “ideas”) assure that no stray papers ever hit my desk. my filing system is up to date for the first time since we moved into our current home (one year and eight months ago), and i now organize everything i need to do in this cute little vintage note card box:

now, instead of doing tasks according to when they pop into my head, i jot these little jobs down on cards and file them under the day on which i aim to do them. see?

yesterday, i began tackling my email inbox. if you are reading this, and you are wondering why i have not responded to the email you sent me in 75 B.C.E., it’s because re[frame] had not yet been invented back then. duh!

so now my office looks like this. it’s not perfect, and it never will be, but it’s definitely better:

and for those of you with appetites for other people’s slovenliness that cannot be satiated with the tangle of cords above, i submit to you my vanity:

this is where i like to store the occasional wine goblet and the toiletry bag i forgot to unpack after a trip to atlanta last october.

see, i told you that there will always be plenty of chaos to go around.

i entertain no grandiose notions that my life would make an interesting movie. there are no juicy secrets or high-adventure feats of strength. we have our share of beauty and tragedy, but these things drive good dinner-table conversation, not ticket sales and screen lit wonder.

but still — i fantasize about being the subject of a movie’s intro. you know, that part before anything actually HAPPENS, where the scene is being set, and characters are making their definitive first impressions. there is music playing and the viewers see the star of the story for who she is in her daily routine, when she thinks nobody is watching.

today, for example, i would be played by mary louise parker.

and the music in the background is the theme song from “elmo’s world,” in all of its overly saccharine, raspy, grating, monster cuteness.

the main character, with tousled bed-hair and clothes appropriate for the 6 a.m. video torture yoga session she shared with her husband, trips on a big wheel (yes, inside the house) on the way to make breakfast for her two children.

“elmo can use the potty!” the exuberant tv voice exclaims.

“do you need to tee tee?” our heroine is reminded to ask her oldest son.

the babysitter arrives just as the husband leaves for work (when did he have time to shower?). elmo spreads more cheer as mary louise, clad now in the tangled arms of protesting children who are anticipating their mother’s brief sojourn, makes her way to the bedroom to dress for the day.

while brushing her teeth, she extrapolates the younger child’s hands from the toilet water (clean this time, thank goodness), before leaning over the older son’s blockade in order to spit into the sink. she grabs a pair of jeans off the floor and the first shirt she sees and puts them on just before tying her hair into a messy bun. no time for a shower today.

the older son brightens at the prospect of making cookies with the babysitter and specifies that they must be oatmeal cookies. a collective trip through the den and into the kitchen is accompanied by more melodious elmo musings as he is apparently wrapped in deep conversation with his fish, dorothy.

mary louise diligently lines up her son’s apron and the necessary cookie ingredients on the kitchen counter. this is a 15 minute process, which in her estimation, is costing her two dollars and fifty cents at her baby sitter’s ten-dollars-an-hour rate. she finally wriggles free of both children long enough to run to the car and head to a coffee shop, where she will plan the evening’s bible study that is part of her work as a minister.

in the last scene of the intro, mary louise sinks into a comfortable coffee shop couch and savors the first sip of caffeine. a fast alt-punk song is playing in the background. the waitress stops by to ask what our heroine wants for breakfast. mary louise orders an oatmeal, and as she’s handing the menu back to the server, the fast-talking girl asks, “are you pregnant?”

“thank you, but no,” mary louise quips. “i shouldn’t have tried to pass off this swimsuit cover up as a shirt,” she thinks to herself.

let the day (or the movie) begin…

[today is the last day to enter to win a custom-made superkid cape for a super kid in your life. check out this post for details.]

remember this picture?

yes, this is my office. she looks like this all the time, not just when she wakes up in the morning. i guess i could soften this image with explanations about how my little bird builds nests around himself on the floor of this space with the contents of my purse, or how this room is right by the back door and has become a popular place to shed clothes, packages, et cetera upon entering the house. but it’s too late. you have already seen my kitchen.

you know how i roll.

for the next sixty days, i am putting myself through the re[frame] program, a “productivity system that is built specifically for creative people.”  two of my friends have employed this system and are now downright evangelical about it, so i went to the website last thursday and paid the sign-up fee of $42. later that day, i purchased the required school supplies (note cards, labels, and among other things, a shredder!). now the creators of re[frame], heather jassy and jodi carter, send me daily emails that tell me to sort the stuff on my desk into piles labeled “DO, FILE, IDEAS, and DELEGATE,” for example.

so far, i’m having fun, and i no longer have the urge to don a hazmat suit upon entering my office. i’m also starting to see things differently. i enter my closet and think about how exciting it would be to receive an email telling me to box up all the maternity clothes. last night, as i was getting a fork from our toothpick-infested silverware drawer (the monkey is to thank for that one), i fantasized about a directive in my in-box reading, “and now it’s time to liberate your forks, knives, and spoons from toothpick explosion debris.”

in case heather and jodi don’t cover these types of things in re[frame], i went ahead and cleaned the drawer. already, i feel better.

look out, world. there is no telling what’s going to happen with all of this creativity once it isn’t crumpled under a pile of maternity clothes, toothpicks, and un-filed papers. maybe i’ll find the cure for the common cold! at this point, i’d settle for being able to find my keys.

dear readers,

i think that you and i are familiar enough with one another now that i can really show you the ropes. this makeshift parenting thing is serious business, and you can either hold your life together with a ladder, an old shoe, a cardboard chimney, an art frame, and some plastic bags, or you can bind up the chaos in a neat little package, held together by guilt and ridiculous expectations. choose wisely because it’s a matter of survival.

a year and a half ago, our family moved into our current home. in our previous home, all of the bedrooms were upstairs. in this home, the master bedroom is downstairs and the kids’ rooms are upstairs. this floor plan will be ideal in ten years, but for right now it presents some challenges.

one such challenge became an issue about a year ago, when the monkey learned how to hurl himself from his crib and onto the floor. we quickly moved him to a toddler bed, which was kind of like moving a child from a prison cell to a candy store. suddenly, the monkey was bouncing off the walls in his room during nap time, and it wasn’t long before he was spotted fondling pins and needles in my sewing nook and teetering dangerously down the stairs!

many parents would take these as signs that the two-and-a-half year old had grown out of his need for naps. but i wasn’t ready to face this notion.

then, one sunday morning, i preached a really crazy sermon on the good samaritan that involved costumes. after googling “samaritan” and discerning that a blue miss america-style banner was needed to clad this particular character, i fashioned such an accessory and schlepped it off to church with the other props. and then, as i was in the middle of proclaiming the text, i gazed over at the church member who was playing the part of the samaritan, and an idea came to me. it was a simple solution, really, and one that has drastically enhanced our quality of life.

before you dial the number to child protective services, you should know that the doorknob is tied to the railing with a slip knot. one pull of the end of the stole (if you will), results in instant freedom for the monkey — in case of a fire, for example.

judge me if you want to. i think this makeshifting idea was a sign from god.

do you have nature deficit disorder? i have looked up this dreadful illness in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, fourth edition (DSMIV), and here are the symptoms:

• the day’s time outside consists of the short walk from the house to the car
• your three-year-old considers opening the car windows to be a satisfactory allotment of “fwesh air.”
• you kiddos get winded just watching the claymation dancers on pbs’ “superwhy.”
• your city was uncharacteristically cold this winter for an ungodly amount of time, and all anyone in your family wanted to do was huddle together under blankets by the fire.
• the only sunscreen your house is circa 1986, and it’s spf 4.

here i go again, diagnosing myself and my family with DSMIV disorders, even those with symptoms that i made up myself. but in a recent new york times article called playtime is over, david elkind lamented that our children are more comfortable with technology than they are with nature, and more familiar with global security threats than they are with the ecosystems playing out in their own backyards. and as for the term nature deficit disorder, that’s the language of  dr. cheryl charles, president and ceo of the children and nature network, which has challenged parents to offer alternatives to nature-deficit disorder during the month of april. 

lisa, who blogs at 5 orange potatoes, has organized “the great outdoor challenge,” wherein 120 parents (so far) have committed to schlepping their kids outside every day for the month of april, rain or shine. yours truly has just become parent number 121, and the monkey and the bird are in for a real treat! along with the time outside, parents are encouraged to take and post pictures of all their outdoor glory. we’re in. lisa’s got some great info on her website about things to do with dandelions, fabric dying, and other outdoor activities.

now, apart from compulsively checking my blog for updates, a neurosis that i hope you will adopt, don’t you want to walk away from your computer and out into the great wide open?

[as you can see from this month’s pictures, though we’re late to the official outdoor challenge game, we’ve been unknowingly living up to its stipulations.]