Things I'm learning to let go of...

When I started my parenting and homemaking journey almost eight years ago, I did it with great gusto. I am not by nature an easy-going and laid-back person, and the way I parented and kept my house certainly showed that.

Things were neat, tidy, organized and as squeaky clean as they were ever going to get in a 150-year-old solid stone house. The baby was dressed and bathed meticulously and hovered over as is appropriately befitting an overbearing, uptight new mother. Not only did I wash clothes and hang them out on line to dry every single day, I hung them neatly up in categories - first all the jeans and pants, then all the long-sleeved shirts, then all the t-shirts, and so on. And I immediately folded them into piles for each person as I took them down and put them in the wash basket when they were dry. I ironed jeans and folded underwear. If we were having a gardening day and I realized we needed something at the store - I washed up and changed myself and the babe into nice, good clothes and then we would leave. I was so on top of it all, my attic was more neatly organized than most store shelves.

Get the picture yet?

Four kids, a fixer-upper house, homeschooling, and my own college classes later.... I am learning to let go of some things.

Now when I do wash, not only do I not bother to turn everything right side out before washing them - I usually don't even bother to turn it right side out when I'm folding it. That can be done on an as-needed basis and seems so much more efficient that way! I no longer agonize for hours over the sock basket, so carefully seeking out perfect matches for each socks, scrutinizing with a magnifying glass to verify thread-count matches on close calls... Now, white goes with white, black goes with black, and blue goes with blue. If they are the same size and the shades of each color match up - I consider that a pure bonus for the wearer!

I've also given up completely on fall cleaning. It makes no sense. Why on earth would I clean the house from top-to-bottom just *before* we spend the most time in it and creating the most dirt in it? Nope, pointless work. Instead, we focus now on spring cleaning and I can usually find a good enough reason that makes no sense to do either on most years.

Oh, the things I'm learning to let go of....

Rant on Urban Sprawl

I'm tired of the ceaseless development that turns historical areas into nothing more than cookie-cutter houses, strip malls, big box stores, and drive-thru Rite-aids. I am tired of the loss of agricultural land to $300,000 McMansions that fall apart just outside of the warranty period (like everything else these days).

In a town a few miles down the road, they tore down a 100-year old building that was full of rich character and old architectural details (and was in good shape and maintained well, not abandoned and condemned) for a drive-thru Rite-aid.

It was on the historic register, how did they get past that?

There is talk in another town of tearing down the old youth hostel (that's in the process of being fully restored, although it's in good shape already) that is the oldest *functioning* youth hostel in the entire country. Why do they want to tear it down? Because they could put *another* gas station there.

Both of these buildings were beautiful, solid stone (think 2' deep walls) structures that aren't built anymore. There was nothing structurally (or even aesthetically) wrong with either of them.

I look around this place anymore and just get disgusted.... It's just another way we continually and greedily gobble everything up in sight calling it "progress" and "development" and all hail the mighty economical dollar!

And then I get scared....where will it all stop? When will it?

I'm thinking it won't, ever. And that's rather depressing and overwhelming because at some point, our rampant consuming will consume even us.

Creativity in the Classroom

That's the name of the five page essay I just turned in about my personal beliefs on what creativity is and whether or not I believe it should be fostered in an elementary classroom.

That's right. An open-ended essay question that would accept "I don't believe creativity should be fostered in an elementary classroom" as a valid answer.

I think schools across America would be better served if we stopped asking teachers open-ended questions like this essay question and instead handed them a piece of paper that said "Should creativity be fostered in an elementary classroom? Check Yes or No."

And then every single person who checks "no" should be immediately dismissed from their teaching degree and then barred from ever teaching in any classroom in any capacity.

But....

Sigh...

I suppose my approach wouldn't be allowing for creativity at the collegiate level.

The Dark Hours

The dark hours are my time of peace and quiet - nothing moving except me and the mice.

This is my time to do as I please - without answering to anybody, entertaining anybody, stopping to change a diaper, or thinking about who's going to be hungry and when so I can time the trip to the grocery store for the least likely amount of clamoring and chaos...

My time to live a few hours of blissfully uncomplicated life.

Except tonight. Tonight I am laying beside the bed of our 5-year-old and typing as I keep him company while he struggles to go back to sleep. He sleeps worse than our 5-month-old does and I am reminded of all those nights after he was born that I spent walking and rocking him through his colic until the wee hours of the morning.

Since this is the second time he's been up since he's gone to bed, I'm beginning to wonder if this will be one of those nights that I am continually tag-teamed out of any sleep at all by the 5-year-old's fear of the dark, the 3-year-old's sleepwalking, and the 5-month-old's teething.

These things happen in three's right?

Sigh.

At least the 7-year-old and Papa are sleeping soundly and somebody in this house will get sleep tonight.

And so it begins...

This will be fun. Or it won't. Either way, it's going to kill more time than I really have available right now. More later as time becomes a non-issue in the dark hours...