Hello, friends. How have your holidays been so far?

It’s after midnight, and I have not even started watching the forensics show I’ve been watching before sleep these days.

This is what happens. Left to my own devices – with no obligations, like work – my circadian rhythm goes all haywire, and I stay up later and later until I’m regularly staying up through the following morning. I went to sleep at 1 a.m. last night. Thought I was on the mend, but no.

This is no bother, except that (a) Brad usually ends up dealing with the children solo in mornings, and (b) it is a terrible, awful thing to have to slam yourself back into a routine (we go back to work and school next week).

So. Christmas. As usual, my kids got way too much stuff. The three bigs went home with my mom Monday and stayed through yesterday, which gave me an opportunity to clean out their ridiculous toybox. I am a regular purger – of the material goods, not bile, variety – so it never gets TERRIBLE, but Christmas is just about my limit. Candy, chocolate, toys, new clothes, art projects and materials, Christmas ornaments and tree bits, food, strings of lights, special dishes and towels, new things you have absolutely no idea where to store, … It is almost too much.

This year was a little better, as we’ve stopped the comprehensive gifting process with my extended family, and we did my family’s stockings and Brad’s family’s gifts a week before Christmas. This gave me some time to get all that stuff – toiletries, toys, candies – put away before comprehensively gifting the least extended part of my extended family last weekend.

Comprehensive gifting was good, but again: Too Much. I love Christmas, and I love the tree and the lights and the warmth of it all, but I also love so much when it’s over.

Today, Brad put away all the Christmas stuff while I took a nap on the couch (see above: screwy circadian rhythm). Pretty sweet… I fell asleep in a Christmas house and woke up to NO CHRISTMAS TREE. I am amazed every year at how much brighter and cleaner the house looks when we take the tree down.

And now I’m thinking about New Year’s.

I only really started to appreciate New Year’s recently. Before a couple years ago, I didn’t understand why people made resolutions or what the big deal was about a new… Year, I guess.

I don’t know why I get it now, or what’s changed. It’s exciting to me, though, January 1st. It’s a new (arbitrary) beginning, like you can make whatever changes you want to make… and you don’t know what big events will forever be labeled as having occurred in 2012. I think back to past New Year’s Eves, what’s changed and what’s stayed the same. It’s a good marker for thinking about big things, life direction/priority type things.

(Whoa. I just looked back to what I (thought I) blogged at last year’s end, and it was 200NINE, not 2010, when I did that. I completely failed to address the new year last year. (Cool. This is why I win at blogging.))

So, how have you been? And what changes – IF you want to make any – are you planning for 2012?

I am in need of counsel. Let me try to start at the beginning, as if that is even possible.

Brad is an only child. His mom and dad divorced when he was 9ish. He saw his dad on weekends but didn’t have a great relationship with him because he was an alcoholic (his dad, obviously). He still saw him on major holidays, and they sent birthday cards and stuff, but they weren’t close.

When we got married, Brad’s dad took me aside and teared up and said, “Take care of him for me.” It was kindof a strange thing to say – strange enough that I remember it verbatim – but I always saw it as his way of almost trying to make amends or something.

When our kids were born, we started to have a little closer relationship with him. He lived in a pawn shop (I’m not being figurative), and Brad would take Kieran and Anneke over there to see him. He came to the kids’ birthday parties and Christmas at our house once, I think.

When Kieran was a year or so old, Bob was in a bad car accident (those circumstances are interesting in their own right, but not related to this story). His neck was broken, and it seemed like he had a little brain damage. (This was probably partly related to years and years of drinking too.)

We visited him in the hospital. He was lucky to be alive. He had screws installed in his skull and a halo (you know what I mean, right? the appliance-like thing they put on people with spinal (I guess?) damage). That was when he started repeating things, kinda like he had Alzheimer’s.

A little after that, Bob’s half-brother (who he’d thought was his uncle until shortly before) died. (The circumstances of that are interesting in their own right too – hoarding, alcoholism, reclusion, literal wads of cash – but also aren’t particularly related to the story at hand.)

(I never met the half-brother, Brad’s uncle. We tried to catch up with him one summer when we were on vacation near his house, but he didn’t called us back. We didn’t know it at the time, but he’d lost his job and become an alcoholic, reclusive hoarder. We realized after he died a few months later that this was why. Given what I’ve heard about him before all this – great guy, life of the party, intensely loyal to family – he was probably ashamed.)

Bob’s half-brother was very wealthy and had no family. He left everything to Bob (you know, the alcoholic who lived in the pawn shop).

** I am now realizing there’s no way I can explain all this – because this story’s about to go down a rabbit hole – in one post. This will have to be a series. I want to document everything, because it’s important, even though it makes my blood pressure rise to the point that my head feels fuzzy and I feel sick to my stomach. **

Tasks this weekend (not a comprehensive list, just things at the top of my brain):

• Clean the house (and by clean, I mean pick up) (perpetual task of the strangulation variety)
• Bank register, bills, budget (Saturday task of the suffocational variety)
• Figure out how to return the shoes I got with the Groupon that are too small (on the up side, the OTHER shoes I bought with that Groupon are now my FAVORITE SHOES EVER)
• Gather items to contribute to the kids’ school’s garage sale (this happens in perpetuity, and we have been taking stuff almost every day for awhile, but it would be AWESOME if we actually went into our garage and assembled all of this instead of just randomly coming across things and strapping them to the top of the van to take to school the next day)
• Hang out with my mom and aunt, who will be here for a short time tonight and tomorrow morning
• Catch up on stuff for my second job, which generally involves responding to email and reading/editing documents (line from an email received yesterday: “I don’t mean to bug you, but did you get my last email?”)
• Groceries (regular task of the never finished, never enough, never satisfied, expensive-to-feed-seven-people-especially-when-my-kids-take-one-bite-of-everything-they-begged-to-eat-and-throw-it-in-the-trash variety)
• Move furniture (we just got a new couch with the end of the money we set aside when we sold our house, and it is BIG ENOUGH, which is new, but it is also TOO BIG, so we have some problem solving to do)
• Somehow dispose of way too much trash and recycling, so it’s not sitting on our kitchen floor like it is right now
• Dishes (CUPS)
• Laundry (if I did a load a day, my life would be so much easier, but that doesn’t happen)
• Kieran has OT across town at 11am this morning
• I REALLY need to do work-work for my first job, but that’s probably not happening
• Brad needs to do two homework assignments (he started a master’s program part-time this fall)

This last item is the wild card. I expect that these assignments will take about half of Brad’s waking hours each day, so yeah. How to do the rest of these things with four children?

Right now, Archer is screaming and pushing and scratching Anneke, trying to get her out of his new favorite chair.

It is probably time to take away his pacifier except for sleeping, as he’s really started talking a lot recently, but everything sounds like, “Neh neh nehneh neh neh nehneh NOW.”

Omi: “How many more camps do you have this summer?”
Kieran: “None. I’ll just be at home.”
Omi: “I wish I were off work. You could just come stay with us some of the summer.”
Kieran: “Me too. You have more channels than we do.”

So, I promised you a video yesterday. Even if you think you hate this (how?), at least listen until about a minute in, when he gets to the, “You never even tried to love me…”

Note: I found this song via Matt Logelin’s playlist this week. My music interests tend to be pretty compatible with his (even if I cannot abide Glen Campbell or John Coltrane… I know), but I had somehow missed this gem. Until now. And now I can’t stop listening to it. Seriously. I just listened to it again sitting here writing this. And now again.

And secondly. In response to Whimsy’s beautiful essay and request for others, I submit my own. The format is strangely not at all mystical, and I so wish you all would play along.

Where I’m From
July 2011

I am from little round jumpolines, from Jellies and braunschweiger.
I am from the little suburban ranch with the roof that sounds like tin when it rains.
I am from the flatland with dead grass and no evergreens and hot, dry sun.
I am from binary birthday cakes, a fierce Scotch-Irish Protestant work ethic, from Thena and Terry and Schumacher and Zinn.
I am from the big arms and crazy.
From the Big Mouth Frog and you-can-do-no-wrong.
I am from the best Illinois Presbyterian farmer Marine who didn’t talk for a year before walking 30 miles (or whatever it was) to leave the farm for good.
I’m from Olney, Texas, home of the One Arm Dove Hunt and place of no blood for me, from best baked beans and casseroles.
From Bernice, who raised five girls alone and wore the same dress to work at Taylor Publishing every day, from the family whose migrations I still don’t understand and the little boy who didn’t talk for years and still doesn’t.
I am from laminated wood grain photo albums on the bottom shelf of a particleboard bookcase.
I don’t think I can live up to this good.

This conversation was relayed by my mother, henceforth known as “Omi.” The three oldest kids went to her house for part of the first week of their Spring Break.

Sitting at a stop light. The kids notice a McDonald’s ahead with a flag pole holding both U.S. and McDonald’s flags.

Anneke: “What the…? That McDonald’s is flying a McDonald’s flag. We HATE McDonald’s.”

Kieran: “Yeah, we HATE McDonald’s.”

Anneke: “Do you know that they KILL cows? I’ll let Kieran tell you the other bad thing they do.”

Kieran starts rambling about a Supreme Court case and McDonald’s.

Anneke, whispering to Kieran: “No, not that. It starts with a ‘T.’”

Kieran keeps rambling about the Supreme Court.

Omi: “What starts with a ‘T’?”

Anneke: “Trees. They CUT DOWN trees. We HATE McDonald’s.”

Kieran: “Yeah, they’re almost as bad as Fox News.”

Postscript: My children all use the phrase, “What the…?” thanks to Kieran’s second grade teacher. They also all OVERUSE the word “hate.” We’ve had conversations. Postscript the second: My children are not vegetarian, and yes, they know what their hamburgers, etc. are made of. Postscript the final: I have no doubt that they heard the tree thing at (their hippie) school. I don’t know specifics, but we probably should ALL hate McDonald’s for their tree practices. You heard it here.

Good morning

Kieran in his new magician’s hat

Doing a trick for Gigi and Poppy

One of the biggest gift hits of the day

Just before he broke the tambourine with the maraca

The first rule of Triangle Club is don’t talk about Triangle Club

Yummy

All children are awake.

Santa presents were bigger hits with Anneke and Kieran. (Anneke got a Hello Kitty water dispenser for her room. Kieran got a Dungeons & Dragons starter set.)

We are now waiting for grandparents and great-grandparents and Uncle Drew to arrive. Kieran is playing Guitar Hero (I made him stop singing and start playing guitar because OMGOMGOMGZOMG KILL ME). Griffon is singing along into a miniature train car. He just sang his own line: “Big boys and not grils!” Anneke is making a princess picture with stickers. Archer is alternately napping/screaming. Brad is doing whatever. I am giving feedback on a dissertation proposal for my “other” job.

THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT IS UNBEARABLE.

Things For Which I Am Thankful

• My house
• My children
• My best friend, Bradley Gene
• The Deerhunter song I can’t get out of my head
• Brad’s mad downloading skills
• Chocolate
• Good friends
• Close extended family
• Not traveling to Dallas this year for Thanksgiving
• Celebrating holidays in my own house
• End of work travel for the semester
• Changes at work
• Job interviews
• Footie pajamas
• Heat, air conditioning
• The cold front that came in Thursday
• My kids’ great school
• My neighborhood
• Austin
• My van
• Routines
• Cub Scouts and The Art School
• Catching up on laundry
• The big three putting the Christmas tree up themselves tonight
• Psychoactive medications
• Watching TV series on the laptop every night
• Parking in the garage
• My bed
• Food
• Music
• Babysitters, especially when they’re related to me
• Alamo Drafthouse
• Mah phone
• iPhone games (Zombie Farm, Words with Friends, Moxie, etc.)
• Reddit
• Reading my favorite blogs – The Creamery, Diagnosis: Urine, Hyperbole and a Half, Matt Logelin, Sam’s Stories, Swistle, Tater Twins, to name a few

Now. You want to see something cute?

This was Archie last year.

Look at that little cue ball!

And this is my cousin’s baby, Chandler, wearing Archie’s hand-me-down.

If I had the requisite graphic design skills, I would *so* do one of those People Magazine spreads, “Who wore it better?”

I’ve had a really hard time picking my favorite comments this week. I’ve wanted to pick more than one almost every day. If I ever host a contest like this again, I’m gonna do it a different way, picking winners either randomly or asking an objective third party to decide. Remind me when the time comes, Internets. Please and thank you.

This difficulty was never more evident than with your embarrassing stories yesterday. Oh maaaannnn. Those were good.

In fact, I’ve decided to give out a variety of awards, as you all deserve them…

(drrumrollllll…)

The award for Most Oblivious Dresser goes to Whimsy!

Rainyday and Monsterplasty receive co-awards for their Most Horrifyingly Embarrassing Menstruation submissions!

The award of Sexiest Parishioner goes to Ailene Hert (and her boobs)!

An award for Most Disgusting Parishioner goes to Chelsea!

And finally… Jayme is hereby awarded Badassiest Pregnant Woman! She expanded on her comment with her own blog post, and let me be frank: You need to read it. Because it cracks me up. And if you’re not sure, just go scroll down to the picture at the bottom of the post.

***

So… Current rankings for the actual giveaway are as follows. Numbers in parentheses indicate number of entries in the upcoming random drawing for the Golden Minion Box of Awesomeness (GMBOA).

Ailene Hert (2)
Chelsea (3)
Jayme (1)
Monsterplasty (1)
Rainyday (3)
Robyn (1)
Shanna (1)
Whimsy (2)

Entries are ONLY valid for those who are, indeed, minions of The Creamery at the time of the drawing (Monday or Tuesday, October 18th or 19th). Some of you are not (hint hint). A tutorial on becoming a minion by following The Creamery can be found here.

***

For today, the final post in my weeklong GMBOA series, I want to pick your brains (again) about children and families.

I think of my children and family as the most important things in my life, but at the same time, I don’t feel particularly good at them. I mean, from the outside, I think we look okay. People compliment us on how well behaved our kids are, how kind they are to each other, yadda yadda… But these things are not necessarily sustained at home.

Most of the time, I feel like I’m drowning in children and things that need to happen and stuff and needs. To the point of paralysis.

I’m pretty certain a lot of people do a better job at this. I always feel like everything would be better/easier/non-paralyzing/whatever if I just had more processes or rules or routines to make a lot of the day-to-day stuff more automatic.

I try to be compassionate with myself (thanks, therapy!) and remember that these people probably have their own obstacles, but ones that are different than the ones I see for myself (two parents working more than full-time, four kids, two schools, two in daycare, one car, six people in a two-bedroom house, …). Actually, when I write it out like that, I realize I’m probably doing pretty well. :)

This is where you come in, friends. Please tell me: What rules or routines or processes do you have in place — for your kids, your house, yourself, whatever — that are non-negotiable? What makes your life easier?

***

This post is part of my giveaway of Whimsy’s GMBOA. For more information, you might start here or here.