Who has two thumbs and a clean room? Me!

So every week on Saturday the kids must get their bedrooms totally clean. (We've been letting Emma slide on this because her grades are fantastic, but actually I'm cracking down this week. Clean your room, eldest!) The rooms have to be spic and span, vacuumed, dusted, tidied, miscellaneous out from under beds, by Saturday bedtime. But:

• If they're done by lunchtime, they get a fun-size candy bar.
• If they're done first, or if their room is cleaned best, they get a full-size candy bar.

So who gets best this week? That's right, me. I used to wonder, back when I was a kid living in my parents' home, how it was that my elder, married siblings made their kids clean their rooms, but the parents' rooms weren't as tidy. Usually my mom and dad's bedroom was very clean, dusted, etc, though inside the closet there lived a horrific untidy clutter of doom. Why didn't parents have to do the same things kids did?

Then I grew up, and I realized that during the morning when I give my kids time to clean their rooms, I'm making breakfast and tidying the kitchen. When I give them time to put their laundry away, I'm putting in the next load and folding the towels and my laundry just is heaped on the foot of the bed. When I have a box of something I don't know what to do with, it's easier to hide it at the foot of my bed and have a tidy living room than to leave it out until I puzzle where it should go. And kids will fill up my room (and particularly the top of my dresser) with everything that they don't know how to put away.

So the current cleanliness has been the work of many weeks, beginning with husband's layoff and the fact that we had to shift things around to make a working space for him here. I cleaned out [my used-to-be sewing room that was a dump for everything and sometimes we couldn't even walk in it because there were too-small clothes and shoes up to knee level, which former sewing room was being transitioned into a dedicated mud room where we'd keep coats, snow clothes, boots, and the like] to carve out a tiny place for a desk for him. In the process of dramatically changing the purpose of that space, I had to

• sort out years of kids' clothing, keeping just a few and donating most, so I only have a few boxes of things for the youngest four to grow into;
• toss bags and boxes and all kinds of things;
• rearrange my school room, to make the paper/crafts/supplies closet into a coat/snowclothes/boots closet;
• move a bookcase from my bedroom (where I didn't want it anyway) into the schoolroom for paper/crafts/supplies;
• move a filing cabinet from the school room to the living room;
• move everything else that I had no idea about to the foot of my bed.

Also, at the foot of my bed, I had two boxes of things from the bathroom that never got moved back in when the remodel was complete. Ah, chaos.

For weeks I've been chipping away at it. And as of today, every box is emptied, every thing put where it should be, closet very tidy and organized. (That was a big deal, we repurposed shelves torn out of the school room supplies closet into a shoes thing for Blaine, and then the entire closet needed to be shifted and reorganized.) I even cleaned off my dresser top. It may, possibly, have never been clean since we moved here.

Icing on the cake, I purchased a new cute lamp for my dresser, and a cute frame for the print of her artwork that a good friend sent me at Christmas. I have yet to tackle the actual decorating of that room, but until I paint and get new bedding this will do nicely.

Ahhhhh. Such a relief. And I have so much space at the foot of my bed to walk around!

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Now playing: Silversun Pickups - Panic Switch

So let's skip right to the positive stuff.

Briefly: Blaine got laid off from his job last Friday at end of day. No warning, no severance pay, no two-week notice.

So we had an interesting weekend, with emotions pretty much all over the map. That's to be expected, right? But here's how the landscape looks now, five days later.

For the last few months while B worked at the printing company, they had one client in particular, a Mexican restaurant chain plus corporation, who was sort of courting him to work full time for them. He already designs all their promotional materials, menus, etc. He never got an actual offer, but there was a lot of talk.

Now negotiations are less tentative. They can't offer the wage he was making, which—though a decent wage—was just barely adequate for our needs (family of nine and all that). And they don't really have enough graphics requirements for a full 8 hour-per-day job, but they'll find other things for him to do besides graphics to fill the workday hours.

But there's this other old client who also loves his guts, and who wants him to work for her, pretty much full time, freelance at home.

And another client of printing company's who considers B an essential part of his company.

So anyway, it looks like, after six years of blissfully regular paychecks, we may be plunging into freelance work again. He has three bread-and-butter clients to get started, all of whom have accepted his hourly rate and who have long-term, recurring projects for him. They love him. If these potentials become certain, they "job security" would be good: all three companies are growing, with increasing earnings and success, despite the recession.

So our prospects are good. I'll keep you updated. Here's to making our next house payment!

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Now playing: Radiohead - There, There

The fiery depths of hell

Just finished morning scripture reading with the kids. Libby was hesitant to speak the word "hell" when she came across it. She sort of stuttered and almost said "heck" instead, which spawned a whole conversation about how those words are actually words, they're not solely for swearing, and it's okay to say them in certain circumstances. They don't need to be afraid of the word.

And Emma said to Libby, hilariously, "Are you afraid of getting vernacular disease?"

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Now playing: Greg Laswell - Your Ghost
via FoxyTunes

Always the same question, asked seven times.

So I'm in the kitchen filling a pot with water. Kyrie comes in and asks, "What are we having for dinner?"

Pasta with vegetable sauce and chik nuggets.



A few minutes later, Macklin comes in while I'm chopping vegetables. "What are we having for dinner?"

Pasta with vegetable sauce and chik nuggets.

Macklin's still in the kitchen working with me a few minutes later when Jackson comes up after taking a shower. "What are we having for dinner?"

Haven't even had a chance to answer Jackson yet when Ethan wanders in from another room. "What are we having for dinner?"

So Macklin, knowing the answer, replies while Ethan stares fixedly at me, rubbing his nose. "Pasta with vegetable sauce and chik nuggets."

Ethan continues to look at me blankly. I point at Macklin. Ethan blinks, looks at Mack, and says, "I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. I was wiping my nose, and that's pretty loud. What are we having?"

Macklin repeats pasta with vegetable sauce and chik nuggets while I collapse on the floor laughing.

Driving, dates, and dreams

Sixteen years ago on 5 January 1994, just after midnight, my Emma was born, and forever changed my life for the better. I thought sending her away to the academy was a shock to the system, but this is shockier. Soon she'll be driving and dating and in general too grown up for me to even comprehend. Thanks for being a wonderful daughter, Emma—for being a great big sister to a large family, for always being willing to play, for listening to your parents, for making good choices, and for working hard. You're amazing, and you get more and more amazing every single year.