Personally, I am not into hothousing children. I am not into private tutors and extra lessons and the like, unless they are already in high school and need some individual attention or a kick on the rear end to get them into the best college or something (I imagine. Because, after all, if and when we get to that point it will be my money at stake. And already I am crossing my fingers and toes for a scholarship or a lottery win or for them to all be running profitable businesses by sixteen. Or a miracle).

And I am not into those awful workbooks you buy at the supermarket with Fun Math! and I Can Read! optimistically emblazoned across the covers. 

Sooooooooooo. At the beginning of this long, hot summer I talked about home schooling, but by that I meant fun projects and sticker books and weekly themes and the like. You know - read about dinosaurs, talk about dinosaurs, visit dinosaur bones at the museum. As it happened we managed to fill most of the last two months with random activities which did not need a theme. 

For example, Farmyard dioramas where animals graze amongst freaky enormous flowers…

…and dinosaur dioramas, notice that T-Rex has become a vegetarian?

And then, I woke up one morning last week and it hit me that there are only three weeks until school starts. And the T-Bot has forgotten how to write his numbers. 

So this week we are following a fun theme called “School at Home!”, where we sit around a table and I fabricate things for The Wictor to do while Baby Sister cuts and glues Things that Begin with A and B and C and the T-Bot works his way through a book called Fun with Math!

Seriously. I cannot think of a worst instrument of torture. I should have checked the book more thoroughly in the supermarket, but I had three children crammed into the cart and I was seduced by the fact that it had stickers. The worst thing is that the T-Bot loves math. He hates this workbook - and rightly so - because every single page involves counting up pictures and then writing the number in a box. But I am not a teacher. And so, for want of a viable alternative I make him do it, four pages a day, followed by a sentence of handwriting, and I will continue to do so until the boy can write the number 5 the right way around without searching for an example to copy. 

I make him do it. And every day I die a little inside. 

But it’s not all bad! His reward? Science. Yesterday we did science with a volcano. It was pretty cool, even if I was mean with the food coloring resulting in lava which flowed out pink. Today we launched lego men off the balcony with different types of parachutes. Kitchen towel? Not so good. Plastic bags - better. 

And Baby Sister? She is bright, quick witted, very sharp. But as far as reading goes she is definitely waiting for her time. Things that begin with B: Cat. Toothbrush. Flowers. 

After the general boredom which was last week, today we celebrated Day Three of Operation Park. In which we visit at least one park a day, in an effort to promote fresh air! exercise! and meet other kids! (or as the T-Bot so hopefully puts it, “make new friends!”).

Notes to Self for Future Forays to Park in 100 Degree Heat:

Do not wear those silky pants. They will not make you feel even one degree cooler. And if you do, accidentally, find yourself wearing them? Do not cross your legs in a vain effort to look more like Gisele Bundchen and less like a dumpling on an oven dish. Sweat marks around the knees and groin are probably, in most cultures, considered unattractive and even a bit ewwwwww. 

Also, children. Running around in this climate. They turn crimson. One bottle of water each will not be enough. The awesome plan of arriving early to beat the heat is also a no-go because before 9.30 we are 99.9% guaranteed to meet No New Friends and the children will do nothing but wander about aimlessly, scanning the horizon for approaching vehicles.

Incredibly, at 10am, as we are oozing our way back to the car like a family of exotic purple slugs (having engaged in some hurried sweaty play with whichever New Friends managed to arrive before we reached our limits of tolerance), there will be parents arriving, excited children in tow. And one or more of my dripping, dehydrated spawn will fall to their knees and bang their heads on the sidewalk in confusion and frustration because: New Friends!! Going in the Other Direction from Us!!

And then you, Dear Self, will have to drive them home and sling them Popsicles for a long, long time, until they cease complaining. 

Note to Husband:

Please consider the following gift ideas. Preferably for sooner rather than later:

1. Under Armour Bra

2. Under Armour Panties

3. Under Armour Capris

4. Under Armour Tee

If Operation Park is to continue, I need gear for the heat and I no longer care if I look like I got lost on the way to the gym.  Anything to wick that perspiration away.The keyword here is wick. Some serious wicking needs to be going on.

And while you are at it, you may as well find me an Olivia Newton John sweatband.

Because Shame? I no longer have it. 

It was T-Bot who noticed it. Quite frankly, I had not paid much attention to the product, let alone the packaging.

This is Freddy Flamingo, as featured on the front of a packet of Huggies Flushable Moist Wipes.

” Hey Mommy,” remarked the T-Bot, “they want us to go potty in a flamingo!”.

Then, obviously finding the idea more funny than gross, he jumped around for a while, giggling and mumbling in that six-year-old-boy fashion,

“potty in a flamingo! potty in a flamingo! ha-herrr! ha-herr! (snort)”

I know you can buy potty chairs and such with cat decals and giraffe spots and hippo faces but they are, you know, just decoration. Am I alone in finding Potty Flamingo a little disturbing?

I am so, so sorry.

I just can’t help it.

I just keep thinking of Freddy Flamingo, doing what flamingos do. Standing on one leg. Stalking through the reeds. Dipping his beak in the water. Preening his back. And … sloshing.

Last night I got four hours sleep. 

The Daddy and I had the brilliant idea of letting T-Bot and Baby Sister camp out in the tent in the yard. It was all going to be so cool. The Daddy would get an early night in the tent with the kids and wake up refreshed, while I would have peace and quiet holding fort in the house while The Wictor slept. 

So at around 8.30pm The Wictor and I tucked the three of them in, each with a green glow stick, a sippy cup and a look of pure glee on their face. Then I took the Wictor to bed. So far so good. As expected, there was some commotion as the dark set in. They activated their glow sticks and ran crazily around the yard. Yes, even The Daddy. There was some confusion as to whether the tent was broken, but we ascertained that the zip was just stuck. And then they all fell asleep at around 9.30. 

I worked solidly until 12.10, and as I was turning in, The Daddy came in to use the bathroom. Apparently Baby Sister was awake and had woken everybody up. I was dispatched to offer harsh words and threats of discipline, and all was calm. Or so I thought. An hour later The Daddy came to get me. Baby Sister had been spending the intervening time bouncing uncontrollably around the tent. The Boys could not fit a wink of sleep into the schedule and they were getting understandably frustrated. So I dished out a Last Ultimatum, listened to The Daddy whine about how he had already given the last ultimatum and I was supposed to just take her inside couldn’t I because he had had enough, and went back to bed.

Of course, once back in bed I decided that it was only a matter of time before I was summoned again, and it was therefore probably not worth sleeping. For the next hour I didn’t. At some point afterwards I did, only to be woken up just after 4 by The Wictor.

And then at 6 o’clock, as day broke, the Happy Campers came stomping indoors, the two younger ones enthusing about the Great Camping Experience while the elder one just collapsed silently onto the couch. 

And that, I think, is the end of our camping experiments for at least the next decade. 

Once, a long time ago, I read a piece in a magazine about a commune. It must have been an interesting article, but for some reason the only information I retained concerned the way the commune managed their laundry. No, not “dirty laundry”, although it turned out there was plenty of that, I am talking clean here, fresh out of what I assume were industrial machines. 

Their method? Wash the clothes and then dump them in a big pile on the floor of a special room. As the commune members got up in the morning they would go and choose themselves clothes from the community pile. So if you were a late riser you probably got the nasty old or uncool clothes, I don’t know. Anyhow, very clever method of dealing with laundry.

In our house I am experimenting with a similar system, except our clothes are semi-sorted into plastic baskets. T-shirts in one, underwear in another, misc in a third. The Daddy complains that it takes him 10 minutes to find matching socks in the morning so I sometimes humor him and make him his own mini-pile of paired socks on the bathroom counter. 

I apologize if this destroys your vision of me as somebody with  California Closets, but quite frankly, it’s a harsh world, and sometimes illusions are made to be shattered. 

The baskets are, of course, a prelude to tidying it all away, except that lately I just haven’t made it to the tidying part before we have needed to wear the items in question. Which does cause me to wonder, why bother at all? 

(Except - let’s not go any further down that path. It conflicts with my absolute denial of The Daddy’s argument that I should allow him to leave his stuff randomly all over the house, for easier retrieval at some undefined future date).

Whatever. Today I thought I would make an effort with the filing, so I started with the t-shirts. I was putting them on hangers when I realised The Daddy has a lot of t-shirts. While I have… 4 or 5. I am talking normal everyday wear, not the half of the closet which is full of pre-childbirth shirts which almost fit but cling in all the wrong places. Or the other half of the closet full of “yard wear” which once was good but has since been stained, torn or daubed with paint.

That’s the T-shirt tally. So what about pants? He has a few pairs and I have .. well, actually, more. Of course most of my pants are in the last basket which I haven’t yet mentioned. That’s the enormous basket sitting at the bottom of my closet.

That’s the “Ironing Basket”. More commonly known around here as the “Irony Basket”. Because not much ever escapes from there and even gets a whiff of an iron. 

Let’s face it, some people are ironers and some people are just… not. I fall into the “not” category and really by now should have learned my lesson and have committed to owning nothing but polyester crease-free no-iron garments.

My mother, on the other hand, is a virtuoso ironer, who goes so far as to iron sheets, tea towels and even on occasion (though she will vehemently deny it) y-fronts. Do not deny it, mother, I saw you giving those tighty whiteys some iron love. You just could not resist, could you?  My father is also a pretty dab hand with an iron, having been instructed in the fine art of pressing shirts by his Aunt Lib sometime in the 30s 50s. 

So it should run in the genes, but that particular trait obviously skipped a generation. Or maybe I am adopted? 

Moving on, I would like to address the obvious question:

“Ironing? Why so much ironing, don’t your clothes come out of the dryer all slinky and smooth?” 

To which I say, Pah! What is this dryer of which you speak? Yes friends, it is true, I do not own a dryer. I hang my clothes on drying racks like this, or in the case of shirts, on hangers. And I leave them under a heater vent in winter. In summer I put them in the sun, out in the yard, and cross my fingers that I will not be reported by some nosy neighbor . When I bought my super-dooper new washing machine (at haste because the old one was broken and smelly and I had no clean underwear left) the salesman tried to reel me in with talk of “see you again when you return to purchase the matching dryer!”. But my head was not turned. 

I can’t pretend that I would not enjoy a dryer. But you should not feel sorry for me.  Because I do not own a dryer by choice.

Pausing here for the incredulous gasps to die down. 

Did you know that on average 7% of household energy expenditure in the US goes into drying clothes? That figure astounded me too, which is why I have an empty space in my laundry where my dryer should sit. I do not spend half my day running around switching off lights after the children, only to see the resulting savings in energy disappear - poof! out the dryer vent. In short, not having a dryer saves lots of money the environment. And I am all about that. 

And so the vicious cycle continues. The clothes get washed and hung to dry,  and then they disappear into the bowels of the Basket System, sometimes never to be seen again. Occasionally something gets briefly and unenthusiastically ironed, while I dream - nay, fantasize - about employing a full-time washerwoman. (Although I may have trouble finding one, as I think that particular profession died out around the time they stopped banging clothes against rocks).

My grandmother, it was rumored, refused to marry my grandfather unless he paid for a washerwoman. And although a man of relatively modest means, he agreed (…that it was an obnoxious, horrible, soul destroying task and no woman of his should have to do it… ). Admittedly, he was saving her from having to slap clothes on rocks, but he is still totally my hero. 

So good news, maybe I am not adopted after all.

Whoop-de-doo though, because those piles of laundry still keep on building up. 

Last night, like most nights, The Daddy prepared his lunch for the next day before going to bed. Sometimes this is a relatively civilised affair involving bread and cold cuts. 

Other times I hear the dreaded sizzling of the pan, and I know we are in for a smelly night. 

No! Not what you think! I am talking about the aroma of fried bacon permeating the house. Yum, yum. Except when it is in your hair, in your clothes, and slowly going stale in all the upstairs closets.

We should really invest in a good extractor fan, because ours does a frankly not very good job. In any case it makes such a noise that The Daddy refuses to use it. Replacing an extractor fan should be a relatively simple and cheap affair, but in our case it is built into our stovetop. As there are no hookups for an overhead extractor, that probably means finding another stovetop. 

So, until we manage an expensive kitchen remodel, smelly we shall stay for a while.

It’s unfortunate that last night The Daddy decided to make kedgeree. It’s a smelly mass of rice and fish. Then he came to see me all excited and made me look up 100 different recipes for kedgeree online so he could check he did it right. 

Of course today was a stinking hot and humid day, meaning no opening of doors and windows to air or whoossshhh! the outdoors would come sliming into the house and suffocate us as we stood. I was all busy with the Oust and the Febreze and all the scented candles I could get my hands on but of course those things only cover up the smell.  

Two things: 

1. Beware of kedgeree! Highly smelly! 

2. My Mothers Day wish: an expensive kitchen remodel. Preferably silently, by fairies, in the middle of the night. 

My SUV currently believes that an “Oil Change Required” warning is somehow more important than a “Door Ajar” message.

Something is seriously amiss.

So what happens if you are on your way to get your oil change and don’t see that your door is ajar? There you are, feeling all holier than thou because you are actually going to maintain your vehicle, when boom! a door opens and a child flies out onto the pavement! Or, if your offspring is strapped in like oh, 30% of the children around these parts, maybe it’s your groceries or your handbag that goes. But still, I would sue. 

Who designs these things? Somebody with no imagination? Yes, I know, you can press reset. But who wants to go pushing buttons all over the place? Or sequences of buttons because hello, they couldn’t just make it easy for harassed Moms with already tired fingers? 

But by far the best news is that an Oil Change Required warning takes precedence over the Door Ajar and the Fuel Low warning. So great, on the way to get my oil change I also run out of gas. Could be a blessing if it happens before my passenger door swings open. Or not. 

OK, I admit it, I am just bitter because my extremely incompetent now ex-mechanic forgot to reset my oil change message, and not for the first time. So, being lazy of finger, I am driving about with that warning etched on my eyeballs. Yet the oil is good! It is sufficiently smooth! Or sufficiently gluggy or whatever cars thrive on. But anyway, changed already. 

In short, not only is my car badly designed, it is also lying to me on a daily basis. 

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Wait a minute - did I say my car? I meant to say “trashcan”. My SUV is currently an enormous mobile trash receptacle. Actually no - it is a dumpster, retrofitted with 4 wheels and some childseats. Ford Dumpster - it actually has a nice ring to it. 

Things are out of control, though I do what I can. A few months back I even bought one of those in-car trash bags, a really cool one with laminated insides and a velcro strap to hang around the seat. But then it filled up on the first day and nobody could be bothered emptying it. We just continued throwing our junk into the passenger footwell like before. And then when I did think about it, several weeks later, I realised there was a rotten apple core welded to the bottom. I washed the bag (at arms length) and it has been “drying” inside out in the laundry ever since. 

So! Ideas please, people! I need my car to at least maintain the illusion of respectability. And that is a little difficult when I open a door and two grahams and an empty juice bottle fall out (although not as embarrassing as the time a McDonalds wrapper blew out and across the road).

But purlease. Do not even dare to suggest banning eating in the car. That would lead to low blood sugar and low blood sugar is bad. It leads to ultra-violence and rants like this.