Snacks, and Shoes, and Legos! Oh my.

Sometimes it's the little things that just make my week. This week the little things are snacks, shoes and Legos. This weekend, after my dramatic realization that the Legos are overtaking my home and life, I told imac and Butter that we would make Lego display cases for their rooms. After they cleaned and vacuumed their rooms I took them to Home Depot and they put together these primitive cinder block bookcases for about 20 bucks each, or half the cost of a Lego kit. It was key that they do their own vacuuming, ensuring that when they heard the tell tale clickity clack of a lego piece getting sucked up into the vacuum, it would be a tragedy of their own creation. They were extra careful to prep the area on hands and knees ahead of vacuuming. "Oh well, too bad," I could say, but alas no clickity clack. They carried all the cinder blocks and boards into the house and assembled their shelves. I wished I had more manual labor for them to do. I repaired a lot of split rail fences, cleaned a lot of stalls and hooves as a kid and sometimes I wish I had more of that for them to do around here in sunny suburban Florida. Which reminds me, how did I end up here again?

My work shoes have been getting me down lately, so I replaced them and I much happier every time I look at my feet.

Finally snacks, the dreaded snack problem. Melanoma Man complains to me for the umpteenth time tonight that Butter does NOT like the after school snack Melanoma Man brings in the car each day.It is a different snack each day. I explain to Melanoma Man for the billionth time that it is NOT about the snack. It's about autonomy, the choosing, the  independence, being included. I offer my usual suggestion: "Why don't you have the boys pack their own snacks in the morning before they leave for school?" I am met with stone cold silence, the putting on of reading glasses and raising of book, as if to say "You are not here Laundry Thief. I cannot see you and I cannot hear you. The End." It's a simple solution and it will work, unless your goal is to compete with your 10 year old for your wife's attention. I'm not sure what the goal is, so I filled a basket with snacks, put it by the front door and asked the boys to pick one in the morning and put it in the car. Ta Da!

These small, tiny, minute and irrelevant things made my week

Legos have taken over, I want a place of my own

I suspect there are other working moms like me who come home to backpacks and jackets lying in the hallway, living room overtaken by legos, kitchen island covered in books, apples, legos, mail, a pair of boy scout pants that has needed hemming since the beginning of time. I say "working moms" because in my imagination the stay at home moms have got it all under control and would never let this happen in their house. Some days it feels like it's the final straw. Yes I think, it must be time for me to move out and get a place of my own. Somewhere along the way I got lost in the creation of this family.

I surrendered the Mom job to Melanoma Man years ago. Honestly I think I'm better at it too. Although to give him his credit he's done beautifully in the Dad role. In the evenings and on the weekends I take the Mom job back, bit by bit, trying to instill a bit of my way of doing things into the people in this house. I am usually only temporarily successful, with things returning to the usual state of affairs by the time I walk back in the door the following day.

I remember my Mom alerting us when my Dad left the office. It was a 25 mile commute for him, so that gave us time to pull things together. No toys, books, coats, debris in the living room, dining room, or kitchen. Everything put away or in your room by the time Dad got home. Now I really get it, as I trip over oodles of other people's belongings on my way into this house.

I think somehow that books will help me accomplish my goals, so I'm working my way through these two books:

1  Cleaning House: A Mom's Twelve Month Experiment to Rid Her Home of Youth Entitlement  and
2  The Crumpled Paper Was Due Last Week .

I'll report back on my progress. I'm still recovering from spring break when I worked while Melanoma Man, imac, and Butter stayed home and trashed the house. Now that Melanoma Man is in a relatively stable period and I'm no longer in crisis management mode, all the things I always wanted in this marriage and this family have bubbled up to the top. It is clear that it ain't gonna happen and I was a fool to think it ever would. Each truth is revealed in it's own time. This truth revealed either too early or too late.