suburban kamikaze

No, seriously. It's beautiful.

Another Mother's Day is almost here. Go ahead, pretend to care. We see right through your shabby little arts and crafts efforts. Who do you think is going to have to vacuum all that glitter spilling out from your sticky tribute?  Who is in charge at that preschool anyway? Just kidding. You're adorable.

Whatever, middle schoolers. You can't buy us off with some cheap chocolate your dad bought for you at the last minute just because you can't drive and you don't have any money. You think we don't know what you tweet about us? Well, we don't actually. We are too busy trying to get that smell out of your bedroom.   

Just kidding. We know you care.

OMG high schoolers! You are going to clean the house for us? That is so sweet, even if you are the ones who made it such a mess in the first place. There is nothing as satisfying as the smell of cleaning products and burnt toast on a Sunday morning. Unless it is the smell of cleaning products and burnt toast accompanied by the sounds of a protracted argument over who has to do the vacuuming. Why should you have to do it anyway? It's not like you are going to do a good job. You can't even make toast. Who is going to eat that?

Seriously though, keep it simple. Last year's 11-course champagne brunch was lovely, but a little over the top.

I am only joking. It really is the thought that counts. I am not sure whose mom said it first, but it is just as true today as it was then, or whenever. 

Whatever,

Mom

Scotch tape may be the answer but now I have forgotten the question.

I know. I recently led you to believe that thumbtacks were the way to go. And I'm not saying they don't have a point. 

It's just that my current system (binders, thumbtacks, Paris-themed sticky notes, profanity) does not seem up to the job lately. I don't know exactly how Sheryl Sandberg does it, but around here there is way too much leaning in. Don't you people have anywhere else you could be leaning? 

So when I find myself copying 35 pages of tax returns at 6 a.m. because of a scholarship application Boy Esq. needed to file five minutes ago, I begin to wonder - and not for the first time - what the fuck is wrong with my life system?

Also, what happened to the extra copies I assembled a month ago and filed in a blue folder marked "To be Lost Immediately"?

That is when I realize I should have taped the extra copies to the desk, along with my scissors, my favorite pens, my Notes-to-Self. That way, when I get up in the morning at zero-dark-thirty, everything will be exactly where I left it just before I went to bed two hours earlier.

Binders full of men and takeout menus

As an authority on organized living, I feel a responsibility to clear up some recent misconceptions regarding binders.

I love binders. That doesn't make me some kind of 1950s throwback who panders to people who believe Planned Parenthood, Big Bird and gay people are aligned in a plot to destroy America. Big Bird just doesn't strike me as having the kind of critical thinking skills to pull something like that off.    

The point is, binders play a key role in my attempt to keep the demands of career, household, parenting and delusional thinking organized and distinct. Because there's only so much a thumbtack can hold.

If there is a better way to juggle the requirements of making a living in the language-based arts while pursuing your dreams of getting the teenagers out of the house, I don't know what it is.

Paper clips, maybe?                 

What's black and white and left all over?

Pretty much everything. Along with stuff in every other color. 

It's on the counters, the floors, the staircase, the beds. It's stuffed into the bookshelves and under the couch cushions. It's piling up around the laundry baskets. It's spilling out of the trash bag.  

We are living under conditions often described as "Holy crap, who lives like this?"

Or "sloth" for short.

Some of us may have taken on too many projects at the same time. Others are expected to take a key supporting role in everybody else's projects as well.

And of course, by "some of us" I mean myself. By  "others," I am referring to myself again. By "supporting role," I mean, "Can't anybody around here do a single thing for themselves? Also: prep work, inspiration, execution, fact-checking, copyediting, scheduling, transportation and what we loosely refer to as "meal planning."  Very loosely.

And sure, thumbtacks are a big part of making it work. But a key drawback to the many organizational systems that I have devised over the years is that they contribute to the sense that any of this is actually possible.       

Related: Like you have a better system 

This week in delusional thinking, starring James Bond and Hannah Montana

I believe that if you have never been tempted to dance to “Pumping Up the Party” by Hannah Montana, you are already a little bit dead inside.

I believe if coffee were declared illegal, a cartel of PTA moms would be powerful enough to rival the Colombian drug lords within six months.

I believe teenage girls are secretly running the world. Otherwise, the success of Twitter makes no sense.

I believe bikini waxing gives me the right to think of myself as brave.

I have trouble accepting the idea that James Bond could actually drive like that without getting someone killed, but I do believe it is possible that Daniel Craig and I could run into each other somewhere, in an elevator maybe, or an airport, where we would bond over a shared passion for olives and wordplay and exchange phone numbers.

I believe my husband would be okay with this.

I believe Post-it Notes are invisible to children.

I believe my teenage son secretly does know which day the garbage goes out.

I believe that scrubbing toothpaste off the sink while blow-drying my hair gives me the right to think of myself as an effective multitasker, even if I end up with toothpaste in my hair.

I believe I am the kind of woman who sports a tattoo in some sexy location. I just don’t think I need a tattoo to prove it.

I believe everybody is sanctimonious about something and that recognizing this fact makes me a better human being than most people.

I believe that my failure to develop a working system of organized family life is the result of deliberate sabotage and not a flaw in my system of charts, thumbtacks, hooks, storage containers and Post-it Notes. 

Delusions of the Caribbean

I am having the kind of week for which nothing less than being kidnapped by a handsome pirate and spirited away for an old-fashioned tumble belowdecks could possibly rehabilitate.

Applicants must subscribe to 21st century notions of grooming, hygiene and foreplay and hold firm opinions on the appalling underrepresentation of women at the top of America's biggest corporations.    

Also, there should be clean sheets belowdecks.

I am one thumbtack away from having it all.

Do not try to discourage me with talk of how it has Never Been Done.

I know I am in "uncharted waters."  Please. I practically wrote the book on Organization Systems that Seem Promising, But Only Serve to Transfer Disorganization from One Place to Another.

Sadly, I forgot to copyright that one.

And yes, I recognize that my track record in matters of organization has been, let's say "spotty."

But this time is different, I swear! No more bins, no more hooks, no more sorting hats.

The answer is: thumbtacks.

Trust me. This time I'm really on to "something."

All I have to do to prove it works is: revise my novel, navigate an impenetrable collection of college and scholarship applications, launch a completely new website, establish myself as the new face of erotic literature and adult figure skating and find a full-time job that will allow my family to continue living indoors.  

It sounds overwhelming until you begin adhering stick-on corkboard to every surface of your work area. From there, it's just a matter of acquiring a collection of thumbtacks, which are available in a wide array of colors and styles.

And voila!   You are speaking French for no reason! surrounded by the exact same to-do list as before except now it has been impaled on tiny plastic-coated spikes.

Which I believe will make all the difference.

Photo: Forget what I said about Paris-themed sticky notes.

The Dozen Habits of Highly Effective Kindergartners

Half an hour at the spa seems a little rushed and there is no way I am vacuuming at 8:15 in the morning, but otherwise, I feel like this could be a significant improvement over the schedule we are currently using in the Kamikaze household.

Our system would look just like this if you took all the strips of paper out, scattered half of them around the room and lined up the rest horizontally so they were all scheduled at exactly the same time, but with each activity taking twice as long as planned.   

Photo courtesy of our Palm Beach area correspondent

Paris-themed sticky notes to usher in new era of organization and uninterrupted productivity

Photo: Les "sticky notes" (bottom right) have the power to transform a work space into an oasis of organization, style and deadline management. Possibly that is just the Cotes dû Rhone talking.

Cookware Chronicles, Part II: In which a raclette maker also calls to us and we are sauteed by indecision

The Backstory: The author, who suffers from aspirations, is taken in by a New York family's description of how a piece of Williams-Sonoma cookware changed their lives. 

***

Was it fear of commitment that kept me afraid of committing to the oddly-shaped Nordic pancakes known as ebelskivers? Or something stickier?

If I was going to be completely honest with myself, I had to acknowledge that there was something about the oozy fruit filling and the dusting of powdered sugar that suggested the teenagers would take to them like teenage ants on a pile of powdered sugar and oozy fruit filling.

And where was the satisfaction in that?

I was looking for something to build a tradition around, in which we would be a completely different family than the one currently occupying our house. 

We'd be a family for whom a meal was an unpronounceable mix of new cultural experiences built around cheese and good wine. The children would use forks.

But I was beginning to doubt that ebelskivers were the answer.

As much as I liked the sound of ebelskiver, there was also their resemblance to doughnuts, which are very hard to pair with wine and taste like something a 16-year-old boy would make for dinner, if somebody else were there to make it for him.  

It was then that I turned my attention to raclette, a cuisine, that according to its Wikipedia entry:         

"... was mentioned in medieval writings as a particularly nutritious meal consumed by peasants in mountainous Switzerland and France (Savoy region). It was then known in the German-speaking part of Switzerland as Bratchäs, or "roasted cheese." Traditionally, the Swiss cow herders ... "  

The factual accuracy of which is "in dispute" and which only raises more questions than it answers. How, for example, had medieval peasants gotten their hands on the Williams-Sonoma electric raclette maker, with its 8 individual broiling trays and spatulas, granite grill top and adjustable thermostat?

I was beginning to see the makings of a new weekend tradition - one that had both cheese and controversy going for it. Williams-Sonoma, it seemed, had a dark side after all...

 

Next: In which it is all revealed to have been a dream. Except the teenagers are real and I am still leaning toward the raclette maker.

Cookware Chronicles, Part 1: Ebelskiver Dreams

All our previous attempts at weekend traditions built around Nordic cookware had ended in disappointment

But something told me this would be different.

How could ebelskivers be wrong? Were we so different from any other family in Newburgh, N.Y.? 

"Ebelskivers are now a weekend tradition in our home." - Newburgh, NY. (Excerpted from "Nordic Ware," by Williams-Sonoma)

What did the overpriced cookware catalog family have that we didn't? Other than a $39.95 nonstick pan designed with seven deep wells to ease the batter into the traditional ebelskiver shape? And possibly the accompanying set of ebelskiver turning tools? ($12.95) 

There was only one way to know for sure. But first I had to overcome the deep skepticism of a family easily spooked by exotic cookware.   

Could they even be persuaded? What sort of literary tie-in could be folded into the experience?  What exactly is an ebelskiver?  I had to know...

Coming Next Week Or Possibly the Week After That:  The shocking and somehow completely predictable conclusion of "We Are Thinking of Buying an Ebelskiver Pan." 

1. Get something done. Done.

It is a mystery to me why I have not yet been tapped to run the space program. It probably has something to do with budget cuts, or possibly my algebra grades. But if someone did ask me to run the space program, I would probably say yes and then I would just write it down on my to-do list under "finish screenplay" or "finish a single cup of coffee without interruption." 

Which brings me to the point of today's topic: How I Manage to Get So Much Done Despite Near-Constant Sabotage By My Family Members. Also the neighbors.

I'm sorry... what was I saying? I was interrupted by a neighbor calling to complain about a Margarita hangover she believes is my fault. Which is another story that I am not going to get into here except to say that I told her the Margaritas were too strong and she just laughed at me and called me by an anatomically-derived vulgarity.  But who's laughing now?

My point is that despite having been diverted from an important errand to a Mexican restaurant last night, I am still ahead on my to-do list.  When Mary showed up in her minivan and insisted I get in, I was on my way to replace the ink cartridges that my children used up printing out important school assignments that they later abandoned all over my office and which I will be asked to locate at some point a little closer to my next deadline. But rather then let myself get behind, I simply write "Margaritas with Mary" on my list and then cross it off.    

This morning I have to buy the ink before I can get started on the rest of the list, which, allowing for interruptions, I will complete sometime before Christmas. But rather than focus on the fact that I must have been insane to volunteer to help build sets for the middle school production of  "Weekends Spent Painting," I simply go to the part of my list that says "buy ink cartridges" and change it so that it now reads like this:

134: ink cartridges (black)

135:  ink cartridges (magenta)

136: ink cartridges (yellow)

137: ink cartridges (cyan) 

Then, when I return with the ink cartridges,  I cross four items off my list, which if you do the math, results in three more things accomplished than if I had not had Margaritas with Mary last night. Then I add "do the math" to my list and cross it off too.

Perhaps you are thinking that this is more an exercise in delusion than accomplishment.  But that would be completely missing the point. And the point is this: Delusion is the underpinning of organized family life.  At least on paper. 

You're welcome. 

- SK

If electric pie is so wrong, I don't want to be right

I am not one of those people who makes a big secret of my birthday. I have never understood the thinking of women who repel all attempts to celebrate this day as they get older.

Last time I checked, goading your friends and family members into taking you to the spa, buying you a Coach handbag or picking up your Margarita tab was not a cause of the actual aging process.

If it was, trust me, I'd be 150 by now.  

My point is, my birthday is almost here again but I've been so busy I almost forgot to start compiling my Annual List of Suggested Birthday Tributes.

I know some of you will be thinking, My god SK, we haven't even finished making the payments on last year's list of Suggested Birthday Tributes, but last time I checked, I wasn't chairing the financial planning committee.

And here's the thing. When I opened my e-mail today, something jumped out at me that I felt instantly compelled to solicit as a birthday gift.

It's odd how many of those ridiculously ambitious Williams-Sonoma suggestions you can laugh off and then suddenly out of the blue, just because you have 15 deadlines and a back-to-school to-do list that looks like you are scheduling a shuttle launch, you are struck by a burning desire to make pie.

The next thing you know you are forwarding the ad for the Best-Selling Breville Electric Pie Maker to your husband.

"What is wrong with me that I totally want this?" I ask him.

"Borderline personality disorder," comes the reply. 

I should point out that my husband has absolutely no credentials whatsoever in the field of mental health.  Also one of my best friends happens to be a fully credentialed mental health expert and I'm pretty sure she would tell you that what certain people might refer to as "borderline personality disorder," other people recognize as simply "personality."

Or possibly just "disorder."

Either way, it's not going to stop me from living out my dream of creating delicious snacks and desserts in three easy steps.

Now I know some of you will argue, "But Suburban, you have never made a pie in your entire life."  To which I can only say: Exactly. If the people at William-Sonoma - retailers of such culinary must-haves as the 5-star electric raclette maker - think I am capable, who am I to put it off any longer? Also, what exactly is a raclette? I might want you to make me one for my birthday.

 

Photo: Irresistible little pies: the Best-Selling Breville Electric Pie Maker. $79.95

from the gift registry/archives: Go ahead. Make her day.

Backcountry Paris: What doesn't kill you makes you hungry

The story is a crock - as anyone who has ever seen me kill a moose, clean a fish or build a storm-worthy shelter out of nothing but twigs and leaves could tell you.

But Mr. Kamikaze never gets tired of telling people how I sat down in the middle of a hiking trail and cried because I thought we were lost. I had seen Deliverance. And read the book.

It was a a pre-kids, pre-suburbs, backcountry, backpacking experience that transported us deep into all of our future grievances. 

But his version - and he's been seeding it into the public record for 20 years - is a little short on key facts:  there was no "middle of the trail" because he had steered us off the trail and refused to admit it.

Still, people tend to believe him. I have mostly given up trying to defend myself.  

But enough is enough. This year, I'm heading off for a backpacking adventure in which I can prove once and for all that I have the stuff for the kind of rugged, no-frills, adventure travel that --

"Wait," interrupts Mr. Kamikaze. "Rugged? No-frills?"

"Backpacking," I say.  "Only no backpack. They're too touristy I think. The spirit of backpacking, but carrying something more like the Coach bookbag. In black leather."  

"That I would like to see," he says. He is not talking about the bag. He's talking about me sleeping on the ground, eating out of a can or living for two weeks out of a carry-on bag with less than 3 ounces of hair care product.   

Well paperboy, I can't wait to see your face when the pictures come back. I already have my hair products picked out. 

In one week, I will begin a grueling 14-day (spirit of) backpacking adventure across Europe, or at least the French parts accessible by train, accompanied by only a single member of my posse, our teenage daughters and a professional photographer who has agreed to document every hardship, but who will not step in to rescue us, no matter how much we eat, drink or mangle our attempts to flirt with French booksellers.

I'm not saying we'll end up in an IMAX film, but as far as I know, Jon Krakauer hasn't yet attempted the transatlantic crossing with middle schoolers.

I will send back postcards from whatever grimy little accomodations we come across as we make our way across the roughest parts of Paris, where the cobblestones lie in wait to destroy our shoes and there is every danger that we will be wearing all the wrong clothes.

Photo: How long does it take to make a mimosa?  --No one who has ever vacationed with me - or seen my hair first thing in the morning - has any doubts about my ability to rough it.

- SK

This week in delusional thinking: Kitchen Design

 

"A climate of abundance and an emphasis on consumer choice embraced during the Cold War as hallmarks of capitalism and democracy put a new spin on the now well-established rhetoric of efficiency and anti-drudgery in design for the kitchen."  -- from  "Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

 

"I am pretty sure capitalism and democracy are the reason there are five open jars of pizza sauce in my refrigerator." -- from "Recipe for Disaster: A Family Dinner Memoir" by S. Kamikaze 

 

from the family kitchen archives:  More questions than answers in my refrigerator, Family Values, Like "Julie and Julia" only with bigger pots

Post-It threats go unheeded in housekeeping standoff

 
From the delusions of order archives:  Multicolored Ikea scrubbers to launch new era of  cleanliness, order and household cooperation 

This week in delusional thinking

Don't think I will be driving you to school every day.

 
No more drinking from the juice jar. Carafes are definitely the answer.

 

The children are probably wondering what to get me for my birthday.

 

Multicolored Ikea scrubbers to launch new age of cleanliness, order and household cooperation

Further reading from the Household Mismanagement Archives: Bin There, Done That

Bin there, done that

Bins are the answer.

Disregard anything I may have said about organizational charts and family cooperation. 

I may as well have been smoking crack cocaine when I said that.  Organizational charts are useless without a minimum level of family cooperation and family cooperation cannot be achieved with an organizational chart, no matter how much you spend on art supplies.

But that is water under a badly-engineered bridge.

The solution is bins.

I admit that in the past, I may have suggested that hooks and shelves were the answer.  I was wrong. I know that now.  Hooks and shelves only spread the problem to the walls.  You cannot solve a problem by allowing it to expand into another dimension.

Please, just forget what I said about hooks and shelves.

Once or twice, I may have given the impression that wicker baskets in assorted shapes and sizes were the key, combining convenient storage with home decor.  I wish to apologize for this.

In hindsight it is easy to see that the convenience of being able to toss loose toys or stuffed animals into an attractive wicker storage basket would be nothing compared to the convenience of being able to throw in assorted bits of trash, dirty laundry and puzzle pieces while claiming to have cleaned your room.

I can now say unequivocally that wicker baskets are not the key.

I should also mention that I am hereby revoking any endorsement I may have implied regarding storage bags and permanent markers in assorted colors.  Permanent markers, I now realize, have too many drawbacks to be a useful part of any family organizational system.

I know what you are thinking.  You are thinking, "Suburban, how can we trust you on the issue of bins, when you were so completely wrong about organizational charts, family cooperation, hooks, shelves, wicker baskets, storage bags AND permanent markers?"

I know. I know.  I have not exactly earned your trust in this area.  But when you think about it, who is more likely to have stumbled upon the actual Secret to Organized Family Life than someone who has spent the last dozen years failing to achieve it? 

It's bins, trust me.  Can 27 quarts of stackable storage capacity be wrong? 

Of course not. There is a degree of intent required in the use of a plastic storage bin. No one is going to go to the trouble of pulling out a bin from its place in a tidy stack, removing the snap-on top and placing one-half of a pair of shoes inside, creating the conditions for a 7 a.m. missing footwear crisis. Hooks and shelves, on the other hand, practically guarantee this.

With a plastic storage bin system, such uncontained chaos will no longer make sense.  It would be like leaving a lunchbox in the recycling bin or finding unwrapped cheese in your purse.

And that is no way to live.  Trust me.

Reprised for your spring cleaning pleasure. You're welcome.

from the Home Storage archives:  Uncontainable

Family Values

I return home to the Kingdom of Daddy to greet my newly reformed family. "Things will be different around here," he promised as I left for South Florida, where the sun is always shining and the air smells like Key limes and coconut ...

"That is your hand lotion," hisses the Executive Suburbanite, rolling her eyes.  But here I am back in Chicago, wearing the same scent, and the air does not smell like Key limes and coconut.

It smells like an enforced cleaning binge, with notes of Pine-Sol and resentment.

But I am not complaining.

The house is tidy, the children have survived two weeks of limited supervision and very little has been broken or covered in unexplained blue stains. 

Prominently displayed on the refrigerator door: a weekly schedule of kitchen duty meant to convey the system of order and cooperation only possible when Daddy Is In Charge.

I smell Windex and a sham. I cover up "Tuesday" with my hand. "Whose day is Tuesday?" I ask.

Nobody knows. Hah.  I did not just meet these children yesterday.

It is not Daddy's fault that he believes it is just a matter of responsibility and consequences. I used to believe that too. I have just had more time to see my illusions crushed underfoot like goldfish crackers in the carpeting.

So when he tells me the fifth-grader is perfectly capable of making her own lunch and he hasn't made lunch even once in two weeks,  I do not doubt it.  In the Daddy School of Self Sufficiency, this is known as the Make Your Own Lunch or Go Hungry Axiom.

But its corollary, Mommy's Principle of Unintended Yet Completely Predictable Outcomes,  says Hello? Have you ever seen that girl work a room full of food?  This is the child who has been talking waiters into extra dessert portions since she was four. Who made eyes at the chef in the Indian restaurant until he invited her back to tour the kitchen and then sent extra baskets of bread to our table. Someone in the lunchroom will go hungry. But it won't be our daughter.

"What did you eat for lunch this week?"  I ask her. She gives me a sly smile. "I scavenged," she says. 

At home, there is chocolate cereal in the pantry and there are Pop Tart boxes in the trash, but really, what does this prove? These are small things.

The 64-ounce bottle of ketchup in the refrigerator is enormous. I should let it go. I will bring it up.

"What were you thinking?" I say.

I already know what he was thinking. He was thinking, "Here is a way to provide an almost unlimited supply of ketchup for my family at the best price."  Who could fault him for that?

"The top of that bottle will resemble an open, running sore before we have used even a third of it," I say. "The sides will be crusted over with ketchup residue and the shape of the bottle will be imprinted in ketchup on the refrigerator shelf.  And it will still be nearly full when we finally throw it away."

But really it is no big deal.

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful

I don't always look this bad when I first get up in the morning.

Sometimes it's worse.

This morning, however, I scare myself a little when I see the heights to which my hair has arranged itself overnight and the blue-ish, almost ocean-like circles under my eyes.

But I have lunches to make, breakfast to serve and kids to ferry. There is no time for primping.

I sit down next to Mr. Kamikaze and hand him the camera with a straight face.

"Would you mind?" I ask.  "I have to send a headshot for the book review I'm writing. Make me look good, like one of those author photographs on the back of a book."

He looks up from his newspaper. "I don't have time," he says. "We'll do it later."

He thinks I am serious.

The moral of this story is:

A. Love is blind.

B. 16 years of marriage have left me invisible.

C. I have vastly overestimated my skill with a hairbrush and makeup.

A Perfect Li(f)e

Can you see them? Over there –

Smiling Under Perfect Hair

Just like a family in a Christmas letter

Just like yours, only much, much better...

(FOR CHRISSAKE, CAN YOU COOPERATE LONG ENOUGH TO TAKE ONE STUPID CHRISTMAS PICTURE? WOULD IT KILL YOU TO COMB YOUR HAIR?)

How did we get to be this way?

Some luck I guess, it’s hard to say

I will take the credit where credit is due

But please, don’t feel it reflects badly on you...

(I SWEAR TO GOD IF YOU DON’T CLEAN THIS ROOM TODAY I WILL BE UP HERE WITH A TRASH BAG AND YOU CAN KISS YOUR PRECIOUS LEGOS GOODBYE!)

Things just seem to go my way

Every day is Mother’s Day

Their constant show of gratitude

Keeps me in this bubbly mood...

(IS THERE SOME REASON YOU ALWAYS NEED TO SPEAK TO ME WHEN I AM IN THE SHOWER? DOES ANYONE ELSE IN THIS FAMILY HAVE TO SOLVE THE ENTIRE FAMILY’S IMMEDIATE PROBLEMS WHILE THEY ARE WASHING THEIR HAIR?)

Each morning I rise from perfect rest

To find my family at its best

They greet the day in perfect cheer

Chaos? You won’t find it here...

(I KNOW WHERE MY SHOES ARE. MY SHOES ARE IN MY CLOSET. WHERE THEY BELONG. HERE’S A CRAZY IDEA: WHEN YOU TAKE YOUR SHOES OFF, YOU COULD PUT THEM IN YOUR CLOSET.)

Shoes and backpacks are quickly found

The coffee’s brewing, freshly ground

The pancakes are heart-shaped and made with whole wheat

The children politely converse as they eat...

(I KNOW IT’S HOT. IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE HOT. THAT’S WHY THEY CALL IT HOT CHOCOLATE. TOMORROW YOU CAN MAKE IT YOURSELF.)

That gravity-sucking big black hole

Where all the household objects go?

The scissors, the homework, the list for the store?

We got ours at IKEA, to match the decor...

(DID YOU LOOK UNDER THE COUCH? BECAUSE THAT IS WHERE YOU SEEM TO BE KEEPING YOUR DIRTY SOCKS.)

Our routine is as smooth as an assembly line

Often we find we have some extra time

Nobody ever arrives late to school

No fussing, no rushing, that is our rule...

(YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING. YOU HAVE TO DRESS AS YOUR FAVORITE STORYBOOK CHARACTER TODAY? WHEN DID YOU THINK WOULD BE A GOOD TIME TO TELL ME?)

Little ones off without a fuss

And then it’s just the two of us

We share the papers, read the news

He really wants to hear my views...

(I’M SORRY. DID YOU SAY SOMETHING?)

Housework’s finished in a snap

There’s time for bon bons and a nap

Where sweetest dreams cannot compete

With real life when life is this sweet...

(I AM GOING TO KILL SOMEBODY. WHICH ONE OF YOU PUT THE CLEAN CLOTHES BACK INTO THE LAUNDRY PILE? CONFESS OR DIE.)

My kitchen is gleaming like Williams-Sonoma

Homemade soup on the stove gives it that aroma

Nothing is sticky, no food out of date

The children have cleared every last breakfast plate...

(HOW HARD IS IT TO HIT THE OPENING OF THE GARBAGE BAG?)

My career hasn’t suffered from part-time neglect

My parenting life brings me added respect

Editors, agents and publishers clamor

I keep myself grounded in spite of the glamour...

(THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR SUBMISSION. WE LOVE IT! WE WOULD LIKE TO RUN IT IN OUR NEXT ISSUE. UNFORTUNATELY WE ARE NOT ABLE TO PAY ANYTHING. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!)

Photo: Fish Kiss, by Rick McCawley

© 2007 P.M. Dunnigan/Suburban Kamikaze