The apples in the garden of Eden

The apple trees are starting to blossom, and they're gorgeous!

I have so, so many stories to tell about the new house. I have a new kitchen, and the start of a garden, and some chickens, and just so much wonderful that's it's hard to remember where to begin.

So, I will start with a story.

This house was built in 1952. That's all I knew, going into it -- that it was built in 1952, that it used to be a dairy farm, and that there's a silo.

This is a wonderful house. It has four bedrooms, a great, funky basement, and a kitchen that has not been updated since 1952.

This is the "before" picture of the kitchen!

Much of it was renovated about 20 years ago, and it has a new roof, new carpet and paint, an unfinished basement that's huge and that has sliding glass doors that go outside.

The basement has cool stuff like a huge pantry/fruit room, which is a cold storage room with a freezer -- perfect for my paranoia about how having a huge supply of dried beans will prevent the end of the world as we know it,  and the entire room is lined with huge shelving units, which will make my goal of have a five-year supply of peanut butter from Costco much easier. 

And the room is about 20 feet by 15 feet, so bigger than most bedrooms. Perfect for storing anything from five years worth of food to Christmas stuff to whatever.

So, the house is gorgeous, there's nothing wrong with it, and we got extra money in our loan to renovate whatever we want in the house.

We decided to update the kitchen. There's nothing really structurally wrong with the kitchen -- except that the fridge was in one corner, the sink was in one corner, the stove was in a third corner, and there was a kitchen table right in the middle, and you had to walk around the table to get to any of them. Plus, the stove was in a very weird place, right by the hallway to the kid's rooms. So if you're at the stove cooking, you've got kids and dogs and everyone going right behind you all the time.

So we're ripping out the floor and the florescent lights, putting in can lights and a pretty new floor, taking out all of the upper cabinets and putting in open shelves (my family is all having a heart attack at how messy it will be, while I can't wait to have everything I need right in front of me with no stupid doors in my way,) and we're putting an island in the middle with the stovetop on it. Oh, and new butcherblock countertops, too.

So, here's the other part: The rest of the property.

The barn, and the silo, and the kids and the dog.

It used to be a dairy farm, and there are still nine acres attached to it. There's a carriage house behind the house that has a small room downstairs, an attached garage, and then two bedrooms upstairs. There's a huge barn, with a silo, and then there's woodworking shop in another barn-like building, and a small shed where they kept the milk, and then down the hill, there's HUGE chicken coop -- we're talking 125 feet long by 20 feet wide.

So, the owners put a new tin roof on the barn and the woodworking shop, and haven't done anything with the rest of the property. For whatever reason, they just let ivy and blackberries grow all over it. The guest house, which is a very cute, solid building, two stories with glass windows -- not a shed or anything -- had four feet of ivy over the roof and sides of the building.

That's Mark, on the guest house roof, struggling to take the ivy off.

And behind it, the blackberries were 20 feet tall in places, and there was no way to get down to the chicken coop at all, except to go through the blackberries.

So, here's the story:

The first day we got the property, two weeks ago, I hired a guy with a tractor to come out and take out the blackberries. He spent eight hours getting rid of them and hauled them into a huge burn pile, and right in the middle of the blackberries was another building! We didn't even know it was there! Seriously, the building is ten feet tall, ten feet long and has a door and glass windows, and it was so covered by the blackberries that we hadn't been able to see it!

The first peek into the egg house.

That night, the lady next door started walking up and down her driveway, craning her neck to see everything and checking out where the blackberries had been. So I hollered hello and went out to see her, and started talking. She was older, gray haired and thin and tall, and obviously interested in what we were doing, so I introduced myself.

She said, "Well, I'm Rachel, and I'm sure you've heard, I was born in your house. Well, when it was still a log cabin, of course." 

What? Seriously?

Turns out, she was one of the daughters of the original farmers who built the house. There were five children, and she was the youngest, and she was born in the log cabin there. When she was a teenager, in 1945, her brothers decided that her mother needed a bigger house, so they tore down the log cabin and built the carriage house as a place to live while they built the main house.

She pointed out everything  -- where the outhouse was, that the WPA had built in the 1930s, complete with two seats and wooden walls, and showed us how the chicken coop had worked, and that that the little building we'd uncovered was an egg house.

A peek into the outhouse. The door has to be dug out from under 40 years of dirt.

They'd had 2,000 chickens in the chicken coop, and the front of the building was to wash eggs, the back was a pump house, and the top was to keep bees for honey!

I was, of course, entranced by all of this. She'd had the master bedroom when she was a teenager, because that was before it was remodeled, and it was just a tiny attic bedroom, just for kids.

She was SO pleased that we'd torn up all the blackberry bushes, and she showed me where her mother had an old iron cookstove outside (it's still there, covered in ivy,) so she could can and jar things in the summer without it getting too hot. She was also excited that we were redoing the kitchen -- "Oh, I'm so glad -- you know, my mother designed that kitchen, but back in 1950, it was OK to have the refrigerator so far away from the sink -- it needs to be updated!"

She told us a little bit about the apple trees -- there are four of them, and apparently one's early, one's late, and two are in the middle, and one's good for applesauce, and one's good for keeping, and I'm supposed to keep this straight somehow.

The next morning she left a gift on the front porch -- a photograph of the house she took in the early '50s in black and white. I'm to hang it in my new living room, I think, when I'm finally finished painting.

I love this picture. The barn looks almost the same!

Then I met the neighbors on the other side. A very nice woman, who said she'd been friends with the people who had lived here before us.

This woman, Diane, started to tell us about the apple trees on the property. And then she said, "But watch out for Rachel! She thinks the trees are still hers! And last year, she asked if she could have a couple of apples, and she came and carted off bushels of them!"

Wow. That's a lot of drama for my first day here.

Then Diane said, "Oh, and the lady across the street -- that's my ex-sister-in-law. We don't speak."

So the following day, the lady across the street came over, and it turns out that she has the nicest kid ever and he's perfectly suited to play with Sander every day.

Except that Neighbor-across-the-street doesn't speak to Diane, and now Diane is miffed that neighbor-across-the-street comes over to fetch her son and say hello.

Can you say "The Real Farmwives of Washington State?"

And Neighbor-across-the-street said to me last night, "Oh, and watch out for Rachel -- she'll take all of your apples if you don't set some boundaries!"

So then Rachel came over to bring Sander some tadpoles from her pond, which I thought was awfully nice of her.

And she said, "Boy, those apple trees look great this year! I bet you'll have a great harvest -- I love those golden transparents in applesauce!"

I don't know which variety this one is...

So now I'm getting completely paranoid about people stealing apples in the future from trees that currently just have a blossom on them.

We're a month into living here, and our kitchen is almost finished. I have before-and-after pictures to do, and pictures of the chickens, and of the coop, and of the apple trees, and of the view from my bedroom window.

But for now, I'm happy that the drama in my life centers around apples, farm houses, and silliness.

The apple trees are Sander's favorite perch.
 

Disclaimer: 
I have changed the names of all of my neighbors. Because they're already mad at each other, and this is a two-degrees-of-separation kind of place, and I don't want enemies this soon.

Bellingham

Well, we made it!

After a journey that involved escaped rats, a bout with pneumonia and lots of family drama, we made it to Bellingham the day before Thanksgiving.

We started out two days late, with two dogs, two cats, two rats, three kids and Mark and me riding up front. 

Mark drove with me and the kids as far as Los Angeles, stopping at the Grand Canyon, and then we traded out: My Aunt Nora, who thankfully had a lobotomy recently and had offered to help, got in, and Mark got out.

Then I dropped off a dog, lost a rat, had a fight with one of my sisters, developed pneumonia, got stuck in hellacious traffic in Portland, ask Aunt Nora to open the glove compartment, thereby found the rat, and rode the rest of the way with Aunt Nora in the car-top carrier.

You know the motto of the true alcoholic -- "I'll never drink again," they say, as they sit by the toilet, ashen-faced and shaky? I can't even say "I'll never move again," because we're in rented house. We have to do all of this all over again in June.

But you know what? That's a good thing. 
Because I like it here.

Bellingham is gorgeous. Until I came here, my two favorite places in terms of scenery and everyday beauty were Indian Lake, New York, and Tuscany, Italy.

Indian Lake would have been perfect, if it weren't so far away from oceans, Target, Costco and any place to have an actual job. Well, that and the fact that the weather gets to 20 degrees BELOW zero on a regular basis and everyone has a snowmobile as their second vehicle. 

Tuscany would be perfect, if it weren't so freaking Italian. I mean, really. There's no a Sonic drive-in for miles -- where's a girl going to go to get a 44-ounce Coke with crushed ice in a styrofoam cup? (OK, Tuscany is pretty near perfect. But I'm looking for a place in the US, at least for now.)

But you know what?

This place gives them a run for it.

Bellingham is nestled between the mountains on the east and the ocean on the west. It's about a 40-mile stretch of hilly land, surrounded by pine trees and forest.

There are mountains everywhere you look, unless you turn around, and then you've got an ocean view. You want snow and cold weather? Drive up to Mt. Baker. It's an hour away, with three feet of snow on any given winter day.

Want a big city? Vancouver's less than an hour away. Or how about Seattle? I went Christmas shopping there yesterday -- 80 miles away, all freeway, and you're in and out.

But the best thing about Bellingham, so far, is Bellingham itself. It's small enough that there is no traffic and the town is less than five miles from end to end. It's got 80,000 people, and it's a university town, which means there's good Thai food and sushi and beer and live bands.

And it's big enough that there's a Costco and a Target and a mall and a library system and a farmer's market.

Want good, local food? There's a store called the Food Co-op with great organic stuff and a gluten-free bakery. Oh, and there's a store called Public Market with great organic stuff and a gluten-free baked good section.

Oh, and there's a place called Fred Meyers which has a huge organic section.

Oh, and there's a Trader Joe's, too.

Oh, and a Farmer's Market every Wednesday and Saturday where everything's local and funky and in-season and everyone's welcoming.

And that doesn't count the actual gluten-free bakery in town, or the stores which all offer gluten-free bread for sandwiches, or the restaurants which all have a gluten-free menu.

Or the ice cream store which has five types of vegan ice cream, all served in "real" bowls, not disposable, because, why not? And of course, they only take cash.

Add in more good Mexican food than I would have thought possible this far north, a store that sells only socks, a bicycle parade where the kids lit up their bikes and wore superhero capes, and tomorrow, a glass-blowing class for my Cub Scout, and it's been a good couple of weeks so far.

The weather is dreary and cold, and it gets dark very early. But I don't really mind dreary and cold -- you can dress for it and go out in it, and it hasn't really rained very hard -- a little drizzle here and there.

I can live with that -- you can only take off so many layers in Texas before you're stripped to the skin. You can't get more naked than naked, and when you're in shorts and a T-shirt and flip-flops and you're still hot, you're screwed. Time to go inside. With the cold, you can dress for it. You can always add another layer and be ready for anything.

I might change my mind come February. Hell, I might change my mind next week. But another funny thing I've noticed is more redheads than I've ever seen. Perhaps it's not just vampires who live in the Pacific Northwest. Perhaps this is where red-headed people who combust at the sight of the sun are supposed to live. 

We haven't quite been enfolded into the homeschooling community yet, but we're working on it.

We've gone to three park days and a game day, and the boys are in Scouts and in Cub Scouts.

I've met people I recognize, and people who are friendly-ish. I don't have anyone's phone number yet. I don't have anyone to call if there's an emergency.

If I were sick in bed for three weeks, I have no one to bring me soup. I've gone as far as to contemplate joining a church just for the potlucks and friendship.

But I think as we go along, the friends will come. There are a lot of people here who are like we are, whatever that is.

So far, we're settling right in.

We're not in Kansas anymore. Or Texas, for that matter

I've lived in Austin almost seven years -- longer than I have ever lived anywhere else in my entire life.

I've lived in California and Texas three times times each, New York twice, Connecticut, Virginia and Oregon once each, and until now, never stayed in one place more than two years.

The short version of the story: When I was ten, my father left and my mother went crazy, taking my three younger sisters and me on a ten-year, five-state, manic quest to run away from unhappiness and toward "home."

We never found home. What we did, instead, was move. A lot.

We had rules: We never got rid of our animals. So we always had one dog, maybe two along for the ride, and some cats, and occasional smaller creatures.

My mother wanted us to be "normal." This meant no trailer parks, apartments, condos or anything "less" than a full-fledged house with a real yard.

We took everything with us, every time, or made a bizarre attempt at it. Whatever we could fit in the back of the U-Haul came along.

So, we left Los Angeles when I was ten, and went to a house in upstate New York. My mother decided that was too cold and miserable, and she needed cash, so she burned down the house for the insurance check, and we were off to Texas, where it was warmer.

One year in Houston and three houses later, she decided Houston wasn't quite right for us, either. Clothes in black plastic garbage bags. Empty the junk drawer into a box, seal it up, put it on the back of a U-Haul.

Off to Los Angeles again. House after house after house. Big houses on a hill. Smaller houses on a different hill. Flat houses with a pool. Garbage bags, boxes and U-Hauls.

When she won big on a game show, it was a really big house with a pool. When that money was gone, so was Los Angeles. 

Off to Oregon. Two houses. More moves. More boxes, more clothes in black plastic garbage bags. More stuff to be shipped/U-Hauled/packed/unpacked.

Six months later, back to Los Angeles. A different house, for nine months this time.

Back to the East Coast. Connecticut. Two houses in a year. Still not quite right. 

Maybe upstate New York again, this time without the house fire?

This is where I bowed out of the dance, and went to college on my own, and moved, later, on my own to Texas.

I moved to a dorm room in the University of Houston, and I lived in one dorm room for two years.

A record for me.

I know how to move. I know how to sort things into boxes, to make runs to Goodwill, to put clothes into bags, to sort things into your car that you hope you won't lose, to keep running lists in your head of everything you own.

I know how to start over. How to make new friends. How to break into tight-knit social groups. How to make snap decisions about sentimental stuff and move on.

What I don't know is how to stay put. I like Austin. I'm happy here, and have good friends, a great house, and my kids love it.

And yet, it doesn't feel like "home."

I don't know where "home" is. I still don't know what to say when people ask me where I'm from.

I can imagine the perfect house, though. An amalgam of all the best parts of the houses I loved that we lived in. A big front porch, no mosquitos, a kitchen with a window over the sink. Plenty of bookshelves. A great garden. A big fireplace. A brook, perhaps, or a stream. Maybe a basement.

But I know I'm fooling myself even as I write this. I'll never find "home." 

Because the big difference between my mother and me is that I know I don't need to keep searching for it.

I have my home, right here, with Mark and my kids. My family is all I need, and the rest is just noise. It's stuff that can be put in boxes, squished into black garbage bags. It's stuff that can be lost in fires, turned over in a U-Haul truck, ruined in a flood. It's all temporary and ephermal.

I won't say that I'm not a little nauseated and twitchy by the sight of garbage bags, boxes and Sharpies I have in my living room. Moving again is not easy for me.

But perhaps the best thing I learned from all of the moving, from all of the searching for home, is that perhaps Dorothy was right. You have what you need to go home all along. Your red slippers are always on your feet.

If only my mother could have learned that lesson earlier.

Off to go pack...

Team McStone

We try to have dinner together every night, at the table, together as a family.

It doesn't work out that way -- sometimes we end up eating oatmeal for dinner in front of the TV, sometimes it's scrounge night, and sometimes I give up altogether and we order gluten-free pizza with no cheese.

And yeah, I know the defintion of pizza is bread with cheese on it, so GF pizza with no cheese isn't pizza, but it's better than it sounds.

But we strive to eat dinner together, even if it's rushed, even if the kids don't like what I'm making, even if sometimes (often.... always....) they all forget to wait until eveyone has a drink and a napkin and a fork and by the time I sit down, two of them have finished eating.

I read an article a while back that quantified the results of eating together as a family and said how wonderful it was. Then, of course, other studies followed that said it wasn't all that important.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1200760-1,00.html

http://healthland.time.com/2012/06/07/do-family-dinners-really-reduce-teen-drug-use/

I don't care -- I thought it was important, and so we do it. I never really thought about why, but one night, over dinner, I told Sawyer, who around nine, that kids who eat dinner with their family every night are less likely to do drugs or to get into trouble.

Sawyer then said something that has stuck with me and has become our family's mantra.

"Of course, they're less likely to get into trouble," he said. "It's because they're part of a team. If you have to cook as a team, set the table as a team, and then eat as a team, you're not going to let your team down by messing around with drugs! If your mom just serves you dinner or you just get it yourself from the fridge, you're not part of a team at all, and who cares if you mess up? Kids who have a family that's a team are always going to do better."

Yep.

So, since then, we're all about the team. I am not a sports person. Neither is Sawyer. Mark could be. Sander could be. I know nothing about sports metaphors.

But we have come to function as a team, and we see ourselves as a team. Mark and I are the coaches. We know the rules, and we're teaching them to the kids. We try to set goals as a family and help each other through them. Sawyer wants to make Eagle Scout -- this will require teamwork of the highest order, from calendar planning to paperwork to buying camp gear to driving him to events. Sander wants to learn more about animals. We all work together to make it happen.

And this year, we tried something different this summer. Something new.

I'm not an outdoorsy person when I live in Texas. I'm a red-headed Irish girl, and I live in the wrong climate. I should be somewhere cool and green and damp and breezy, snake-free with an occasional leprechaun. I live somewhere that is blistering hot, dry and covered in taratulas and scorpions with an occasional rattlesnake.

However, in the interest of teamwork, we signed up for the Texas Nature Challenge.

http://naturechallenge.tamu.edu/central/

There were 15 challenges all over central Texas -- a day of birdwatching at a state park, a hike on a Saturday morning, a trip to a wildlife center and a botanical garden, a neat sculpture museum and a tour of a dinosaur park. All of the challenges were sort of close -- some were an hour or more away -- and all of them were worth visiting.

The best part? The kids really, really got into the whole teamwork thing. Sawyer helped map out and plan which days we'd go to what park. Some were only open certain days. Others you had to visit only on weekends. Some were tough to do with a toddler.

Sander was in charge of paperwork. There shouldn't be any paperwork involved in an outdoor challenge, but there was. And in order to complete the challenge, you had to make a scrapbook. That part almost killed us.

But you know what?

We were the only family out of more than 200 who registered who completed all 15 challenges, though it's entirely possible other families did and just couldn't stomach the thought of making a scrapbook about it.

So when we went to the closing ceremonies, there were six other families who had turned in a scrapbook, and we won prizes for completing the most challenges -- not grand, amazing things, but cool stuff, like a tent, a compass, and a water bottle. Sander was happy with the nature guides. Scout was happy with the stickers.

And Mark and I were very happy that the boys have a chance to see us as a team.

Will this keep them off drugs and get them into Harvard? I doubt it. I think it takes more than a summer of birdwatching and nature hikes to do that.

But will it remind them when they're pulled toward risky behavior when they get older that perhaps there's a whole team in place, ready to kick their ass should they screw it up, and who will cheer them on should they move forward instead?

I hope so.

Because otherwise I could have been serving up frozen dinners in front of the TV this whole time and saved myself a whole lot of trouble!

The Emu Egg story

 

Originally published April 9, 2009 

Sander was asking me about the emus today. He wanted to go see if there were any eggs left. I thought it was time to trot out the Emu Egg Story. Because some things never get old.

So. Put these words together into a story: Four-year-old boy. Two-year-old, fragile, rancid Emu egg. Hardwood floors.

You know where this is going. You can see it. You can prevent it in your mind.

So why, oh why, for the love of my nostrils and the love of being able to stand in my kitchen without throwing up, why couldn’t I see it coming???

When we moved here three years ago, my very, very, very old neighbor, named Eloi the Emu guy, had emus. He also had a very, very, ancient mother whom he carted around town in his ancient car and they went to What-a-burger for their weekly treat. He’s grumpy and mean and the only time we grunted at each other was when he rode his lawnmower past our fence. Occasionally we’d leave him some stale pecans to feed his emus (I have no idea if emus eat pecans, but something in his yard will eat them!)

He lives on six acres next door to us, with only a barbed-wire fence between us and the emus. He also has a goat and an animal that’s either a long-haired sheep or a very strange goat.

He also has, thankfully, a disgusting house, with so much trash and garbage and weird piles of stuff all over the front of his house that no one will ever complain about us not mowing the lawn.

Also, I figure if he has emus, a goat and a sheep-type creature in the city limits, we’re safe with chickens.

Unfortunately, his mother died recently, and the emus went away. So did the goat and the sheep, and someone came and cleaned up all the stuff.

It had been so bad on his porch that when my sister went by one day, after stepping though the piles of old bicycle baskets and coffee cans and weird piles of newspaper, she picked up a notepad on his porch to leave him a note and put her hand in a wasp’s nest (and you really want to leave him a note and not talk to him, because he answers the door in his underwear with no shirt on. Good look for Brad Pitt. Not-so-good look for Eloi.)

I’m really kind of bummed they picked it all up. It made my house look SO much nicer when it was a mess over there.

So, the emus. Scary. Mean. BIG. And there were three of them. One day a couple of years ago, Mark and the boys went for a walk and decided to cut through the neighbor’s yard.

Yah. Right through the emus. After the running and screaming and dodging the huge birds while Mark threw both boys like a javelin over the barbed wire fence to escape the HUGE claws of the giant raptors, Sander showed me their trophy: One pure white, giant, beautiful egg.

This was his treasure and his prize and the thing he loved the most in the world.

It was, of course, a time bomb waiting for the right moment.

Last week, Sander cleaned out his closet. Meaning that he dumped everything on to the floor so he could see all the “cool stuff” on the top shelf. Meaning stuff that I’d hidden because I didn’t want him getting into it.

Out comes the stinking time bomb of death.

“I LOVE my emu egg! It’s my favorite thing! I LOVE it so, so much!!”

And that was it. We tried to hide it again for three days. No good. He couldn’t sleep without it. Couldn’t live without it. 

So, yesterday, as someone is ON THEIR WAY to videotape my house and my boys for a documentary on how cool homeschooling is, Sander walks in the kitchen with the egg and a new plan: He’s going to keep it safe from bad guys. Something this valuable, this special, this amazing, will obviously be stolen. All he has to do is very carefully wrap it in this BANG

Silence. For a moment, a big breath to start tears. And then, forget about crying. Forget about anything else except getting the hell away from that kitchen.

Go outside and puke and hope to God you never, ever smell anything like that, ever again. It smelled like dead puppies left in the sun, wrapped in diapers of cholera victims. Rotten egg doesn’t even begin to describe it. And it wasn’t a smell -- it was a force field or a thick wall of nausea from which there was no escape.

This sucker didn’t break. It exploded with full force, leaving shrapnel from the pits of sulphuric hell embedded into my walls.

And we had guests on the way. And Sander was not having any comforting. He wanted me to fix the damned egg.

Everything in my house smells like rot and death and corpse. By the time the woman arrived an hour later, she said she couldn’t smell it. Probably because the chlorine gas from all the bleach I used while I was vomiting and cleaning destroyed her olfactory nerves in her brain. I can only hope to be so lucky.

Sander and his dad went to the now-abandoned emu yard last night on a hunt for another egg. They only found fragments of old ones.

God help Mark if he’d actually come home with another one...

Parenting rules

Sawyer, my oldest son, was born 12 years ago this week.

And when Sawyer was one, my nephew Matthew, who was 11, moved in and became our adopted kid until he left for the Navy at 17. So, though I only have 12 years of motherhood under my bra, I have raised kids from birth through 17. Nice trick, huh?

And a fact that I realized tonight that stopped me cold: In one year, Sawyer turns 13. And I will then have a teenager in the house until June 6, 2030. Clearly, this was not well-planned...

I have no more insight on parenthood than anyone else who's gone before me, and don't have any answers as to how to do it right.

However, there are certain things I wish I'd been warned about, and there are rules I've come up with to make sure I'm on the right path. I'm sure in ten years, when I have another twelve year old, this will seem quaint, and I'll have a new list of rules.

But for now, this is what I know and what I've learned, half-way through this parenting gig:

The bodily fluids. Oh, God, the sheer volume of it all! Who knew? I knew there were diapers. I knew there was potty training. But oh, the amount of things I was't ready for!

There will be poop. Yours, when you're pushing the kids out, just to get you used to the concept of public defecation. And then, of course, the baby starts in on it. But after the first baby, the poop won't even make you blink. Not most of the time, anyway. 

There will be pee, and this is the least of your problems. You don't even notice pee by baby number two. It's not nearly gross enough, compared to everything else.

There will be boogers. More than you ever thought about. And you'll clean them up with your hands when you're desperate. Even if you swear you never will. You will.

There will be vomit, and just when you've cleaned up and changed the sheets and you're sound asleep again, there will be more vomit.

There will be blood. Hopefully, not much, but more than, say, your husband or your best friend bleeds.

Remember the thing about pee not being a big deal? It becomes a big deal again. When they're ten, or twelve, and they pee on the front lawn. Or off the back porch. Or anywhere, really, all the time. In fact, it's possible that ten-year-old boys pee everywhere except into the toilet. They're very, very good about hitting around the toilet, behind the seat in the little cracks that are impossible to clean, and in the screws under the toilet that will fester and stink. But never, ever, actually in the toilet.

There will also, of course, be laundry, tears, spilled drinks and messes, but we're talking about parenthood here -- that's just part of the deal.

There will be pain. Parenthood will hurt more than you ever thought possible.

Remember the first time you fell in love and you thought you'd never get over the feeling that you were flying and how amazing it was? Someone wanted you and loved you! And then, the first time you were dumped and nothing has ever hurt that much? Yeah, parenthood's like that.

Only about ten million times more intense, and you can't dump them no matter how much of an ass they are. Even if they do the equivalent of cheat on you and humiliate you and insult you and tell you that "you're a bitch and they don't have to take that shit from you" in public.
And they will. 

And it gets worse: You have all of the pain of loving someone desperately and not having control over how they behave -- and that, of course, is incredibly painful -- but they will be in pain, and it will hurt you. They will cry when a friend says they're annoying, and you hurt worse than they do, because you can see that it was true, even as you swear to them that they're not annoying.

Someone will break their heart, and yours in the process. How fair is that? It used to be that you had a say in having your heart broken -- you could choose "not to play the game, to be cool."

Nope. That's all gone. You're in the game for good, now.

Nature vs. Nurture? That's gone, too. It's all nature. All nurture does is protect the good stuff and keep the bad from taking over. Your family's the garden. Your kids are seeds. You can help the plants thrive, and you can provide it with moisture and food and keep it from turning into one giant weed bed, but if you end up with turnips and you wanted tomatoes? Too bad. You're probably a turnip yourself, you know. Or your husband is. Why did you expect tomatoes in the first place, if you're from a family of turnips? And it's a sad day when a banana is grown up in a watermelon family, so to speak. Because that banana knows he's not what they expected. The sooner he goes off to find other bananas, the better.

Your funny little introvert who loves to read and play computer games and who hates sports? He's not going to play football for UT. He just isn't.  Move along, now. And my little kid who wants to be a veterinarian so badly he can taste it, and he always has, and he has his whole life planned out? He's probably never going to be into history and art. I'll make sure he learns the basics, but I'm fooling myself if I expect him to change what his passions are.

Stick to the rules. They're a clear path through the minefields. When you can't find your car keys, you're covered in maple syrup and you needed to leave the house 14 minutes ago and someone can't find their shoes, remember the rules -- they'll help keep you sane.

Rule number one: Never, ever, ever share a drink with your kids. I know I said boogers don't bother me and I can do poop and vomit with no issues. But drinking after a two-year-old is like French-kissing someone with a mouthful of peanut butter, half-chewed paper and cold cereal. Their backwash is legendary. Don't do it.

Rule number two: Don't do something once unless you want to do it at least a thousand times. This includes everything from singing "Old MacDonald" at bedtime,  letting your kids eat cereal in the playroom "just this once," riding without a car seat while you move the car "just this once", and letting them play Angry Birds on your iPhone when you're desperate for quiet and you're on the phone. The next thing you know, they're experts at Angry Birds, they have a right to ride unbuckled if you're in the driveway and they set the table in front of the TV for breakfast. And you're so sick of singing Old MacDonald that his farm now has robots, caterpillars, scorpions and dinosaurs.

Rule number three: Video games are junk food for the brain. You know it. They know it. Anyone who tries to tell you they improve coordination or that they're good for social skills is rationalizing. Video games are a cheap, easy way to get an endorphin rush without actually working for it. They're bad for kids in anything but tiny amounts. Sure, you can binge once in a while and play a lot. But a steady diet of video games and you'll end up with the brain's equivalent of eating Cheetos and Coke. Every hour spent playing video games is an hour not reading a book, playing a board game or learning how to be bored and working through it. Don't buy into it.

Rule number four: Kids are inherently good. They just don't know what you want. And they're desperate to know that they're needed and that what they do in the family is important. And they don't see the big picture, so no matter how many times you tell them the details, they don't get it. 

You can tell them to put forks on the table every night for three years. They still won't understand that this means that they're supposed to set the table every night, and every night they will be surprised that you're asking them to do it. They're still surprised when they're hungry because you they don't realize that they have to eat every night! But it's critical to them to know they have an important role in the family. Even if they forget every night, make them set the table anyway. Don't do it yourself, just because it's easier.

Rule number five: Choose your battles. Only fight the ones you're really, really willing to sacrifice in order to win. Everything else is just negotiation. I'm not going to fight over food, clothes or haircuts. If they don't eat, so what? If they like weird clothes, so what? I'm willing to go toe-to-toe over schoolwork, character traits and video-game time. Other families might want to fight to the death over bed time, curfews or homework. But don't fight over everything. Life's way too short.

Rule number six: This should be a no-brainer, but in too many families, it isn't. If you don't want someone to treat you that way, don't do it to your kids. If you're at a restaurant and you spill a glass of water, imagine your husband yelling, "That's IT! I told you the last time you spilled that you're not allowed to have a drink unless you're more careful! Waitress, she can't have any more drinks!"

Yeah. Or, when you know annoys him, but you do it anyway, imagine him trying to ground you and keep you home. Or punishing you. I don't think so.

If I wouldn't want Mark to do it to me, I don't do it to my kids. Really, there aren't many exceptions. I don't want someone to tell me to finish my dinner or I don't get dessert. That's just obnoxious. And I can't imagine anyone ever telling me that they really love me, but I broke the rules, so they're going to have to hit me now to show me what I've done wrong. This is a simple one: Don't hit your kids. Don't humiliate them. Don't yell at them, or make fun of them, or embarrass them. It's just mean. 

Rule number seven: Be kind. Always. The world is a hard place. There are people who are mean. There are bullies. There are doors that are too hard to open, math problems that are too hard, girls who don't like them back, machines that steal their money, scary dogs and scarier stories that friends tell them. Kids need a safe place where they know that no one will ever make fun of them.

They need to know that they can go home and tell someone how awful their day was. And honestly, if you don't have your kid's back, who does? If you don't put them first, in front of everything else, who ever will? If they say their teacher was mean, believe them.

Take their side, always. No matter how trivial. Be their biggest cheerleader. Stand up for them when they succeed, yell the loudest in the grandstand, and don't be ashamed of it. You only get one go-round of this. That's your kid, dammit! Yell loudly, cheer proudly, and let everyone know that if they mess with your kid, they're messing with you! Kids need backup. They need to know that there's a safety net.

And the last rule, which seems to contradict rule seven, but doesn't: Be hard on your kids. Expect a lot from them. To those whom much is given, much is expected -- let that be their motto. If you're reading this on a computer screen in a first-world country, your kids are in the category of "to those whom much is given." Don't let them forget that.

Heinlein said, "Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy." They're capable of amazing, wondrous things, if you ask it of them. 

 Don't accept anything less. My favorite saying, one I have on my desk, and the one I use to make decisions about my kids: "Don't prepare the path for the child -- prepare the child for the path."

Other truths: Don't label your kids too early. Easy kids turn into hard kids. Your hard kids become your easy ones. Problems that you thought were huge disappear. Others show up later. Things will change as soon as you've got it under control. Roll with it.

ADD is real. So are peanut allergies. Even if you don't believe it. Until you've lived it, don't judge it.

Sleep when the baby sleeps. It's the only sane thing to do.

Snuggle. Enjoy them. But don't feel like you have to enjoy every minute of it. Sometimes, the minute you're having really sucks. Who wants to enjoy being kicked in the guts by a screaming toddler simply because you were trying to keep her from getting run over? There's enough guilt about parenting.

Enjoy what you can. Do the best you can. And know that your kids will love you, no matter what. 

Building an education

It's funny, the second or third things that people ask about when they find out that I'm homeschooling my kids. They always ask how I do it -- how I teach so many subjects, and how I'll be able to teach chemistry, calculus, French -- anything that's hard.

It's just such a strange thing to ask that it always throws me -- why on earth would I teach chemistry? I can't even understand why they're asking, and it takes me a minute to realize what the question means, and I know right away that they know nothing about homeschooling and that we have to start the conversation on a very basic level.

Oh, and for the record, the first and second things people ask? How my kids are going to make any friends, and how I can do it, when they couldn't possibly. Those are entirely different questions, to be answered another day. What I'm addressing now is how, not why. And why it's a whole lot simpler, and more complex, than most people seem to think.

I have an extended analogy, if you'll forgive me for it, and follow along. I think it's a good one, and it's the way I frame homeschooling in my head.

I think of building an education like building a home. You start at the bottom, with a good foundation, and you build the walls, add a roof, and if you've done it right, you've got something that will last you a long time. You can always add on later, and of course, if there are parts you don't like, you can start over.

But here's the thing: I'm the contractor for my kids' education. I'm not the builder. I'm not the designer. I'm not even the architect. All I do is figure out what they need built, how much time we've got to build it, what materials and terrain we're working with, and who's the best person to complete each job.

And then I just get out of the way.

The public school system does the same thing, of course: They're the country's biggest provider of educations, or in this analogy, "houses." Public schools crank out cookie-cutter houses. I hate cookie-cutter houses, and I always have. Sure, they'll keep the rain off. But they all look alike, and they have that stupid two-car garage right in front, staring at you, letting you know that there was no thought or care put into the design, and the materials are cheap, the construction is shoddy, and there's nothing custom about them. You could have the same house in Arizona, Florida or New York, and you wouldn't know the difference.

I'm a funky, custom-made, do-it-cheap-but-well, add-all-the-finishing-touches-you-want sort of girl, myself.

If you want a yurt in Alaska, that's what you should have. But find a good yurt builder, someone with a passion for that type of design. Don't go to David Weekly homes and ask them to build you a yurt. You're going to get a two-car garage tacked onto that sucker, whether you want it or not. Plus a two-story entrance way with windows that no one can see out of, looking onto a view of your neighbor's garage.

Nope. For my kids, I help them figure out what they need, what style they're looking for, and then I find people to help them build it.

I'm thinking Sander's going with "log cabin in the woods."

He needs an education that involves the outdoors, hands-on, animals, working outside, and he doesn't care if he ever reads a classic. Unless maybe it's White Fang or Moby Dick. Chemistry? Maybe. If he needs it to get a job as a forest ranger or a veterinarian.

But all the actual "work" of his education? The walls and roof, so to speak? We'll put the studs and walls in here -- teach him to read, figure out what kind of floor plan he wants, a little math, lots and lots of books about animals and nature and science. And then for the fancy stuff? Animal physiology, vertebrates, mammalian study, botany?
I would no more teach those classes than I would lay in my own electrical work. Sure, I could do it with a step-by-step manual, and some people do that for education. They buy a set curricullum, and on day one it says, "Turn to chapter one, read it, and answer the questions. Read pages 1-17 in the textbook."

But why wouldn't I hire an expert for science, art or math? They're the metaphorical equivalent of tilework, electric, plumbing and painting -- and I'd rather have someone with a gift and a passion for those subjects do them, thanks.

Writing? I can teach writing. And if I built a house, I'd love to help design and lay out the garden, plan the kitchen, figure out what appliances to put in. But I'm sure as hell going to stay away from the electrical grid if I want the house to run right.

So, for Sawyer, I teach writing, and we both have a passion for history. His "building" is more Griffyndor common room than log cabin. His building, were it real, would be full of classics, literature, art, and a bit of modern technology. That's an easy building to create: There are lots of plans out there for kids who want that style. There's classical education, a little tradition, maybe some Waldorf for a touch of magic.

A lot of Charlotte Mason, with some good teachers for the sub-contractors. I don't teach math -- he uses Teaching Textbooks, Khan Academy or some other fabulous resource with brilliant instructors. I'd be doing him a disservice to use anything less. Same for science -- sure, we could use a textbook, read the chapter, check off the answers. But in that case, why not just go to public school and get the same standard education that everyone gets?

So we'll find a science teacher with a passion for teaching small groups and let her lead Sawyer into a whole new world. It's like finding a good tile guy -- once you've seen them at work, you wonder why you ever even attempted to rent the tile saw from Home Depot. You're just fooling yourself. Let the expert get in there and do it right.

And Scout? We're still figuring out what kind of foundation she'll need. We know it requires a love of learning, a joyful curiousity, and a passion to excel. Beyond that, does she need an urban loft, driven by technology and the need to fit into an electronic world? Or will she need an artist's loft in Paris, and need a love of language, art history, style and drive?

The jury's still out on her. Frankly, the boys are a work in progress as well -- Sawyer's only just turning 12, and only going into seventh grade.

But the foundations are in place, and have been for years. I can build walls, and I can teach Sawyer to build walls, so when the time comes to renovate, he'll have the tools and know-how to do it. And when it comes times to decorate and add his own style --  writer or an engineer, Harvard or University of Texas -- he'll have helped design, build and put up the structure. He'll have seen me hire the subcontractors to do some of the work, and he'll have worked with them on the details. And when he stands back after his college graduation, he'll have something to be proud of, something that he helped build.

And it will look very different than the houses that most people have. But that's the way it should be, right? Because if you're going to live with that house for the rest of your life, why wouldn't you build it to spec? I guess the people who ask if I'm going to teach chemistry have a valid point, if they think all homeschoolers are simply attempting to do the equivalent of building homes themselves with a how-to manual and a giftcard to Home Depot. I'd be pretty wary of that, too.

And maybe there are some homeschoolers who do just that. But for us, we spend our days immersed in the fascinating world of building now to create futures, and there's very little that someone else's blueprints can tell you.