i’ve been doing a little internet shopping for a stunt double for the bird’s “goggy.” the problem is, i’m having trouble accurately comparing our goggy, who has aged rather prematurely, with the shiny new versions sold in stores. what do you think…am i on the right track?

what’s that, you ask? what precipitated this urgent need to have an extra goggy on hand?

my husband went running today with the bird in the jog stroller. at mile three, he realized that goggy had jumped ship. in half the time it took to cover the three miles the first time, their little entourage backtracked and found goggy a mile from home, on the side of the road, and face down in some grass. from the look of crazed panic on my husband’s face after the run, i knew that it was time to line up an understudy.

one afternoon last week, during an unusually silent kids’ nap time, i found myself wondering why i could not hear the monkey’s usual sounds of upturned rocking chair leaps onto the big-boy-bed or his customary transfer of water by cup from sink to tub in his adjoining bathroom. for the life of me, i could not fathom what he could possibly be up to. (notice that it did not once occur to me that he could actually be SLEEPING during his nap time.)

i went on about my business, and an hour later, i opened my door to this:

a small portion of the gigantic play-doh mess AFTER my husband worked on it for an hour.

“lily pads” of blue play-doh, expertly caked on to the unforgiving white carpet. excellent.

after googling “removal of play-doh from carpet,” (which, incidentally, pops right up in that google toolbar as soon as you type “removal of pl…”) and visiting the manufacturer’s website, i have discerned that what i need is a wire brush. i have also discovered that there are entire websites dedicated to the removal of play-doh from carpet, each one providing step-by-step instructions comparable in detail to those that NASA uses to launch spacecrafts. see:

http://www.ehow.com/how_4854864_clean-playdoh-out-carpet.html

http://ask.yahoo.com/20070111.html

should i be worried that the last step in these instructions is often “call a professional carpet cleaner?”

i’ll keep you posted. any tips you have would be much appreciated.

You belong among the wildflowers
You belong in a boat out at sea
Sail away, kill off the hours
You belong somewhere you feel free

Run away, find you a lover
Go away somewhere bright and new
I have seen no other
Who compares with you

You belong among the wildflowers
You belong in a boat out at sea
You belong with your love on your arm
You belong somewhere you feel free

Run away, go find a lover
Run away, let your heart be your guide
You deserve the deepest of cover
You belong in that home by and by

You belong among the wildflowers
You belong somewhere close to me
Far away from your trouble and worry
You belong somewhere you feel free
You belong somewhere you feel free

words by tom petty; gardening exuberance by the monkey and the bird.

mothers are self-sacrificing creatures. we are on call 24 hours a day and seven days a week. we often neglect our own hygiene in order to be more present to our children. i once went a whole day without noticing blue play-dough matted in my hair, for example. we find ourselves being dragged into the least appealing places, like the port-o-potties at crafts festivals and those giant warehouses filled with moon bounces and other inflatables. and let’s face it: this kind of living takes its toll on the way we feel and the way we look.

but this post really isn’t about the mothers everywhere who are barely holding it together. this post is about the other unsung heroes who are risking life and limb (literally) for our children — others, who are also always on the job, covered in grime, and schlepped all over the place. this post is about our children’s other self-objects, namely their soft and threadbare must-have stuffed animals.

meet doggy (pronounced “goggy”):

“goggy” is the love of my younger child’s life. in the past week alone, “goggy” has been run over in a restaurant parking lot and covered from head-to-toe in poop (along with the crib, bumper, sheets, mattress, et cetera) during what i naively thought was my little bird’s nap time. consequently, “goggy” took a spin (albeit gentle) in the washer. “goggy” was missing for the majority of one day last week. my older child, the monkey, thought it would be funny to hide his brother’s smelly, furry, matted joy in a cabinet for the day. the bird was so beside himself that he could not nap. the monkey was so consumed with maniacal glee that he could not nap either. i spent the day turning the whole house upside down, because, as i quickly learned, a life without “goggy” (and sleep) is no life at all.

“goggy” just stretched out in the cool dark and made no effort to be found. i can’t say that i blame him. there really is nothing better than a spontaneous and much-needed vacation.

in light of yesterday’s post about the state of my kitchen,

i thought i’d string a few words together about housekeeping.

my parents, sibling, college roommate, husband, children, and friends know that i was simply born without the part of the brain that exhibits concern over the disorder of physical space and provides impetus to clean with tornadic vigor. this is unfortunate for reasons depicted above. i would argue, though, that this weakness is turning out to be a gift now that i am a parent, who is regularly called to tolerate not only my own personal chaos but that of the three other males (and four, if you count the dog), who live in my house.

but some messes, like the one in my kitchen yesterday, are magnaimous enough to defeat even my inner slob. and on those rare occasions, i have no choice but to put on some loud music, go against my very nature, and CLEAN. thanks to these words in barbara brown taylor’s an altar in the world, i am beginning to see that there is a special sort of dignity to be found in scraping smushed strawberries off the floor with my fingernail:

“i no longer call such tasks housework. i call them the domestic arts, paying attention to all the ways they return me to my senses. when the refrigerator has nothing in it but green onions that have turned to slime and plastic containers full of historic leftovers, i know my art is languishing. when i cannot tell whether that is a sleeping cat or an engorged dust ball under my bed, i know that i have been spending too much time thinking. it is time to get down on my knees. after i have spent a whole morning ironing shirts, folding linens, rubbing orange-scented wax into wood, and cleaning dead bugs out of the light fixtures, i can hear the whole house purring for the rest of the afternoon. i can often hear myself singing as well, satisfied with such simple, domestic purpose.

…this is my practice, not yours, so please feel free to continue calling such work utter drudgery. the point is to find something that feeds your sense of purpose, and to be willing to look low for that purpose as well as high. it may be chopping wood and it may be running a corporation. whatever it is, perhaps you will hold open the possibility that doing it is one way to learn what it means to become more fully human, as you press beyond being good to being good for something, in a world with the perfect job for someone like you” (120).

now let’s be honest. i’m not much into ironing, and the bugs in my light fixtures are there to stay. but after yesterday’s (eventual) kitchen cleanup, i could almost hear our house purring. i’ve been trained to look for meaning in sacred texts, good conversation, masters degree programs, and travels to far lands. but there is a lot of truth to be found when i’m on my knees, bringing order out of chaos within the four walls of our fabulously messy house.

[the source for this post can be found on the bibliography page located on the sidebar to your right.]

this morning, i had a grand time making this oreo chocolate mousse cheesecake for easter:

i don’t need any help transforming my kitchen (or any other room, for that matter) into a disaster area.  but the bird was generous enough to pitch in anyway.

i think i’ll go for a run.

sunny flordia is indeed sunny. the problem is, it is also windy and cold. it is supposed to warm up tomorrow. in the meantime, the monkey would prefer to do this:

and this:

we would prefer that he not.

so, we’ve had two morning excursions to local strolling, playgrounding, and lunching spots. all have provided our fair share of respite from the wizard-of-oz-like beachside wind.

i, myself, like to find a warm, sunny corner and observe.

but these excursions are not our only makeshift moves this week. i am frequently fretting that my little bird is, well, little. he’s not even on the charts, though the doc says he’s perfectly healthy. if you are wondering just how small he is, he’s about the size of this hole on our third-story condo balcony:

within minutes of our arrival at the beach, my genius husband, creator of this makeshift-yet-fully-functional baby gate, came through again with this solution involving a nearby landscaping brick:

is it bad that our makeshifting often involves trespassing and/or stealing? 

one of the benefits of the blogging life is that i’m starting to really notice things around my house for their creativity and absurdity. it all started when anne  found our ridiculously wonderful baby gate to be a source of humor and encouraged me to write a post about it. now i’m beginning to see everything for its potential to make me laugh. as it turns out, makeshift stuff is really funny! here are a few examples:

the whoopee cushion is more than a brilliant simulator of flatulence. it makes the perfect resting place for a half-eaten sucker.

and, as it would happen, an empty tangueray container is second only to the quaker oats can when it comes to the storage of hot wheels.

i wish i could take credit for these genius innovations but both are the brain children of my three-year-old monkey.

what are the hidden sources of makeshift humor in your house?

our little bird is into everything now, and he truly seems happiest when he is stair-climbing (if only this were true for the rest of us). the problem is that when the monkey went through this stage, i accidentally put a large hole in the wall when i was trying to install a baby gate.

we live in a different house now, but the situation is still the same: climbing baby, sheet rock on one side, iron rail on the other. we had a very fancy retractable contraption professionally installed at the top of the stairs when we moved into our house but repeating this elaborate scheme seems so silly when this works just as well:

yes, that is one of the monkey’s outgrown shoes that is ever-so-strategically used to keep the ladder from rattling around. 

our whole family, including the 3-year-old, has grown quite accustomed to climbing over this ladder no less than 30 times a day when we want to go up or down the stairs.

since this was the brainchild of my husband, i’m going to put it to you this way. the makeshift baby gate is

a) tragic

b) genius

c) all of the above

i pick c.

what are the makeshift fixtures in your life?