dirt don't hurt

Pre-pupate It’s a typical scene around this place. I’ve got a to-do list a mile long.   I’m sure one of my kids is going to be low on underwear for lack of clean laundry, and twice this week we’ve eaten hotdogs and frozen vegetables.   I don’t even need to mention that there is homework to check and columns to write. But they all have been pushed aside for the good, because this week my life has been centered around one thing: a caterpillar.   And I don’t even mind it’s poo that stained a piece of furniture. A few days ago while practicing the fine art of being children, my kids were playing in the yard.   Footballs were thrown, someone made a craft from some tall grasses, and I was busy cleaning the kitchen and missing it all.   (Motherhood: if ever there was a time for maid or a clone…)   Suddenly my son came in, yelling.   “Mom!   We found an awesome caterpillar!”   Being a self-proclaimed nature nut, I dropp...

If you’re ever in the vicinity of a flight of stairs and you hear a woman yelling at her kids and cursing the elevator, that’s just me.   Make sure you say hello. It all started when I attended the College of Wooster.   My study room was on the third floor of the geology building and one year for my New Year’s resolution, I vowed I would never that elevator again.   Surely I could walk up three flights of stairs.   It would be good for me, especially based on the amount of late night pizza I liked to consume. That resolution quickly became the best resolution of my life.   I stuck with it not just that year, but ever since that year.   (I do have a limit, though.   Hotels and other skyscrapers I most definitely take the fancy box with the bright buttons.)   To this day, I am quite happy about the decision I made. My children, however, tend to disagree.   They haven’t quite grasped the concept of enjoying walking up st...

Once upon a time there was a little red mom who lived in a house. She had three children who often resembled a lazy brown dog, a sleepy red cat, and a noisy yellow duck. (There was also a little red dad who seemed to be off at his job when all the fun stuff happened, which the little red hen often wondered if he did on purpose so that he wouldn’t want to pull his little red hair out.) One day the little red mom found some dirty socks on the floor, crumbled up and so filthy that they were completely stiff and were omitting a fierce odor. The socks were nowhere near where they belonged, which would be in the hamper so the good laundry fairy could whisk them away. “Who will help me wash these socks?” asked the little red mom. “Not I,” said the lazy dog. “Not I,” said the sleepy cat. “Not I,” quacked the noisy duck as she went off singing some song about being a Musketeer. “Then I shall wash them myself,” said the little red mom, along with some other ...

I just want to shout it from the rooftops: I’M GETTING A HAIRCUT! To the average reader, this is nothing to be shouting, yelling, or even thinking in all capital letters. But let me tell you, I have not had a stress free hair appointment in over ten years. And while my hair may be longer than it appears in that picture up there by the title of this column, it isn’t dragging on the floor, so you know I’ve endured my fair share of chaotic coiffures. For the past ten years solid, I have never had a spare chunk of time when all of my children were safely and happily with someone else without me planning it. Being a stay at home mom is not something I would ever trade, but thinking back on some instances when I’m trying to relax so that I don’t jerk my head around to yell at a kid or stick a sucker in another one’s mouth causing the stylist to provide bangs where there was no intention of being bangs, the dream of being free crossed my mind a few dozen times. But c...

Generally speaking, I’m a pretty big fan of the Betta fish. They last forever, you can only have one, and they practically ask to live in slightly dirty water. A mother’s best friend in the animal world, I will tell any parent with a child who begs for a pet (“pleeeeease mom, I promise to walk it and bathe it and feed it and brush it and love it everyday and everything!”) that the Betta fish is a very nice option. We personally have had a few of these colorful fish, all which my children promised to be responsible for and ended up falling completely under my care. Really I didn’t mind, though, because I have fallen in love with our fish of the past, including Curly (the fish who would not die) and Geno (who death caused my son to sob uncontrollably for two days.) These fish lived happily alone on my kitchen counter, where I would change their water out ever few weeks and feed it every now and then, until that fateful day when we find them peacefully sleeping...