the mogul

when i picked up liam from a playdate at his friend henry's house last week, i found them sprawled on the floor, immersed in a rousing game of monopoly.  liam had never played it before, but i could tell by the look on his face that he was hooked.  as is the case whenever a six-year old teaches another six-year old a new game, the rules were a little nebulous; they were having fun putting houses wherever they wished and doling out cash whenever they needed more.  but the gleam in liam's eye told me that this was something he could really get into.

we're now living with my parents until our renovation is complete, and i felt sure that they'd kept our most beloved games in their game closet downstairs.  sure enough, as soon as i opened the door, i saw our tried-and-true monopoly set from my childhood staring back at me.  the properties were miraculously all there, the pieces were all intact, and the board was just itching to be opened for likely the first time in over a decade.

chris patiently explained the nuances of the game -- how to buy railroads, how to collect $200 as your salary, how to build hotels.  soon the inevitable questions followed:   "what is a luxury tax?", "what is a mort-gage?" and "what is a monopoly, anyway?"  as a lover of math, liam has particularly enjoyed all the number crunching involved.  he can quickly calculate the change he's due from the bank and has even mastered the art of how to determine 10% of his assets when he lands on the dreaded income tax spot.

but the one thing he hasn't mastered -- which plagues him in all other games, sports, and competitive endeavors -- is the fine art of losing.  above is a picture when all was right and good in monopoly world, as we embarked on a fun game while a summer thunderstorm forced us indoors.  and below is what ensued as his cash pile dwindled and a loss to chris loomed.

i'm brainstorming here ... i think our monopoly set will soon have one additional card thrown into the "chance" and "community chest" mix.   "OBNOXIOUS CHILD PITCHES FIT.  GO STRAIGHT TO JAIL.  DO NOT PASS GO.  AND DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT COLLECTING $200."

out with the old, in with the new

chris texted me the following picture, with the phrase "i miss it already" attached:

yep, our old pepto bismol pink toilet and pepto bismol pink pedestal sink are currently hanging out in the woods next to our driveway.  i guess when you have a porta-potty in your front yard, there's really nowhere to go but up.  (our neighbors must love us.)

but on a positive note, we are officially underway with the renovation.  i keep likening the demolition phase, which is what took place this week, to christmas.  every year on christmas morning, i'm struck with how quickly everything gets undone.  i mean, that pile of presents underneath the tree takes months and months of planning, researching, comparing prices, shopping, paying, wrapping ... and literally, in five minutes, it's all over.  (of course, your hope is that whatever was in the boxes provides thousands of hours of entertainment and joy to the recipients, so it's not really all over ... but you know what i'm saying.)  and that's what i've been thinking about as i've witnessed the tear-down of our kitchen, playroom, laundry area, and powder room.  it took months to build back in 1971, and it's taken us many hours to make it liveable for the past three years, with installing hardwoods and painting and rearranging.  and then, in a mere two days, it's all gone.  BAM.  there go the walls.  BAM.  there go the sinks.  BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM.  there goes one pink ceramic tile out of 512.  BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM.  there goes the second pink ceramic tile out of 512.  (who knew ceramic tile was such a pain to remove?  perhaps the fact that it was installed over olive green linoleum slowed down the process a bit?)

as an extremely visual person, i'm loving this phase.  i can finally see exactly what the space is going to be.  i can envision what's going where, what the flow will be like, and how truly different it's going to look.  i let the kids walk around the area with me so they could see exactly what was being done.  i don't think they really quite understand the transformation yet, but they still thought the process is pretty interesting.

in the meantime, we've been trying to fill our days with activities that don't involve being at home.  we've been bowling with friends ...

enjoying treasure box treats after a great visit with the dentist ...

and playing with my new white iPhone4, which is a very overdue replacement to my two-year old, shattered-screen, slow-as-molasses ancient black iPhoneNegative3.  here's a self-picture susanna took with it:

you know what they say -- "out with the old [pepto bismol pink toilet], and in with the new [smartphone extraordinaire]."  a pretty fun tradeoff, i do say.

the dichotomy

the end of the school year has always been bittersweet for me.  from the time i was in preschool, i wrestled with my emotions on the last day -- excited for the upcoming summer with beach vacations and pool trips and camps, but sad to hug my teachers goodbye.  the dichotomy persisted during my teaching career; i couldn't wait for the opportunity to sleep past 5:30 a.m. and read novels instead of educational periodicals, but at the same time i dreaded saying goodbye to my eighth graders as they left our middle school for the last time.  and now, as a parent, it hits me again. 

today i felt the inevitable twinge of nostalgia wash over me, as i always do when the kids reach milestones, whether it's their first lost tooth or their first haircut or their last diaper or preschool graduation.  it hits me how their lives are moving at warp speed ... i swear just five minutes ago, liam was gripping my hand tightly as we navigated the wide halls of his new elementary school, wide-eyed as he looked up to the fifth graders passing by him.  and now, nine months later, he's bounding off the bus as a confident, savvy, far-more-independent rising first grader.

among the 1,500 work samples and book reports and pieces of art that came home crammed into his backpack was a project of what he'd like to be when he grows up.  and in the words that he wrote is yet another dichotomy: a stellar athlete who, at the same time, loves all things academic.  a boy who heads outside the first chance he gets to kick the soccer ball and shoot hoops and play tennis in the cul-de-sac, who will also sit in the back seat of the car and multiply fractions and divide decimals and add negative integers in his head for fun.  

i look forward to seeing just who he becomes, whether it's a baseball player or an accountant or something in between.  and yet, at the same time, i want to keep him just like this forever.  i guess the push and pull, the joy and the sorrow, the triumphs and the challenges -- that dichotomy is what makes parenting the wild ride that it is. 

Liam Mann, Future Baseball Player and Accountant

My future's so bright, I've gotta wear shades!

First I want to play baseball for the Los Angeles Dodgers.  I want to play CF (Center Field).  I want my jersey number to be 34.  After that, I want to be a number accountant.  I want to make a Roman numeral for zero!  The End!

not quite picture perfect

the transformation from guest room to playroom is now complete.  the walls are painted a sunny yellow, the valance has been shortened and installed, the beds and dresser are out, and the basketball goal and pretend kitchen and air hockey table and dollhouse are in.  (we work hard to ensure that our house is fully bi-partisan in terms of boy and girl toys.)  we didn't gain any square footage in the transition, but we did gain extra wall space, which has proved a bit of a challenge.  each child has their own big corkboard, filled with party invitations and sketches and nametags and stickers, on their own wall of this new playroom, and the third wall has some framed professional art.  but the fourth wall -- the one that faces you as you enter the room -- is bare.

and then i had a brilliant idea.  in the move, i came across two adorable self-portraits the kids made while in their four-year old classes in preschool.  they were roughly the same size with complementary colors, and were just so quintessentially them -- in other words, they were perfect for the blank wall.  i bought a couple of big frames at a local art supply store and came home on sunday afternoon so excited to get started.  "look at what i'm going to do with your beautiful artwork!" i shared with the kids, ushering them into the kitchen where i had set up shop.  "i'm going to frame the portraits you painted of yourselves and hang them side-by-side in the playroom!  isn't that awesome?"

silence.  they just stared at me, with confused looks on their faces, as if i were speaking some foreign language. 

so i explained further.  "see, i'm going to take this painting of susanna, and put this pretty mat behind it, and put it in this white frame.  and then i'll do the same thing with liam's.  and everyone who walks into the playroom will see them and will be amazed at what great artists you are!"

but no clapping or praise or even thumbs up followed.  instead, they informed me, at the same time, that the self-portraits i held in my hand were actually not self-portraits at all.  "those are paintings of YOU, mommy," they said.  "we made them for mother's day.  remember?"

oh.  right.

a good mother would have apologized for her mistake, thanked them again profusely for their wonderful gifts, and moved on.  but i just couldn't let it go.  i mean, my idea was so perfect!  and those paintings really could be of the kids themselves -- susanna looks just like me, and liam's was abstract enough that it could easily be a painting of him.  (isn't that what you thought when you saw the picture at the beginning of the post?)  so i told him as much.

"oh don't be silly, mommy," he replied, hardly even giving such a preposterous idea a second thought.  "those are bracelets on your arm -- see?  i don't wear bracelets.  so it's definitely not me."

shot down, by my two budding artists.  but i just refuse to give it up.  so i'm thinking ... maybe if i just frame and hang them anyway, people can arrive at their own conclusions, and maybe will just assume that they are adorable self-renderings by two four-year old blond-haired, blue-eyed children.  the fact that their mother also has blond hair and blue eyes is just a mere coincidence, right?

right?

shedding no tears

our big kitchen renovation officially begins tomorrow, when the demolition crew shows up at 8:30 a.m. and starts knocking out walls and throwing all the waste into a dumpster in our driveway.  but really, the actual process began months ago, when chris and i came to the conclusion that this wasn't simply a kitchen renovation.  yes, the main focus is the kitchen; we will finally be rid of our nasty white-on-the-outside-lime-green-on-the-inside cabinets, which never close properly and recently have begun falling off their hinges.  we will be saying goodbye to the peachy-colored tile floor in the breakfast area, and the smaller, slightly more peachy-colored tile floor in the laundry area that someone, at some point, decided looked good right next to each other.   we will be tossing out an old chandelier that isn't wired correctly, a microwave that makes a weird humming noise every time you use it, and a set of mismatched appliances (white fridge, beige oven, black dishwasher) that have all seen better days.  i will finally have COUNTER SPACE ... a foreign concept, after surviving almost three years with such little work area that i often find myself placing a cutting board on top of the range to chop up veggies, simply because there's nowhere else to put it.  the finished product, after a very intense summer that will require us to move out for a month or so, will be a kitchen that is much larger than our current one with a great big island, a wine fridge, a double oven, and lots and lots of much-needed storage. 

but, as they say in infomercials, that's not all!  because along with our revamped kitchen will come a new powder room in a different location, meaning that we will finally bid a fond farewell to pepto bismol pink.  (our current powder room has a pepto bismol pink toilet, pepto bismol pink pedestal sink, pepto bismol pink tile wall, and pepto bismol pink tile floor.  just what was happening on the home decor front in the 1970s, anyway?)

and lastly, we will get a new mud room, complete with a high-efficiency washer and dryer, a desk/work station, and cubbies and baskets to house our gazillion pairs of shoes and boots and raincoats and jackets and umbrellas and backpacks and lunchbags and briefcases.  i actually think i'm more excited about my our new mud room than i am about my our new kitchen.   
 
but what chris and i realized, about a month ago, is what an enormous domino effect this project is turning out to be.  there is hardly a room in our house that will not be affected by this renovation.  our future kitchen will take over our entire exisiting playroom and existing storage room.  obviously, we still need a playroom and a storage room, so we had no choice but to move the playroom up to our existing guest room.  the contents of our existing guest room were divvied up among goodwill, a garage sale, and my parents' basement.  and to fill the void of our soon-to-be-history storage room, this past weekend we had a shed built on the back corner of our property.

which brings me to the subject matter of this post.  last night, i'd returned home late from tutoring and was cleaning the kitchen while chris toiled away in the backyard with a flashlight, making countless trips from one side of the yard to the other, his arms laden with tools, bikes, outside toys, gardening supplies, and all the other miscellaneous crap we throw in the storage room because we don't know where else to put it.  as i was loading the last of the cups into my dented black dishwasher with the unreliable detergent dispenser, my phone rang, with chris's name coming up on the caller ID.

"hey!"  i said.  "did you not want to walk the few extra steps into the house to talk to me?"

no laughter.  instead, a sigh.  and then, "i'm in the shed.  i can't get out."

i began to process what he was saying.  there he was, at 10:00 at night, surrounded by darkness in the sweltering north carolina summer heat ... locked inside our new shed.  naturally, i began to laugh.

and naturally, he found nothing amusing about his predicament.  "sara.  sara.  SARA!  stop laughing!  will you just please come out here and open the door?"

for the umpteenth time, i thanked God for the invention of cell phones.  and i thanked God for men's athletic shorts, which, unlike my athletic shorts, have pockets, in which chris happened to place his cell phone.  for had he not had it on him, i honestly don't know how long it might have taken me to realize he was stuck inside our unlit, poorly-ventilated shed in 95-degree heat.  a half-hour?  an hour?  might i have just gone to bed, assuming he'd come inside when he was ready?  fortunately, i'll never know.

and this, my friends, is how a truly rambling post is written.  start off with a description of your kitchen remodel, and wind up with an image of your spouse trapped in a ten-by-twelve foot building outside in the pitch dark.  how, might you ask, do you wrap up such a rambling post?  i think a pun is the perfect solution.

so let's just say that i hope this post happens to shed some light on what's been going on around here lately.

(groan)