bearing blog

Two recent posts about finding your tribe.

From Kara at Mama Sweat:

... have slowly been building my safety net of neighbors. You know what I mean: a neighbor you ask to go to the bus stop when you're stuck in traffic; a neighbor who will dog sit when you're out of town; a neighbor who will run with you when you don't feel like going it alone. I have found these blessedly nice people and even a bonus: the neighbor who can stitch up a wound in her own kitchen...

Short of having sister wives, a good safety net of neighbors can ease the stress of motherhood, especially when it comes to childcare. The ultimate in friendship is being able to take on a friend's brood when she needs a quick getaway or her scheduled sitter has left her high and dry. Or, if you're me, you need a workout. Bad.

So when my neighbor Cara (I know! Same name! I've never had a friend with my name before!) asked if I could watch her two boys for her I was honored that she would ask. When she offered to bring me lunch, I politely turned her down. I don't want lunch. I want the luxury of a workout in the middle of the day unencumbered by children.

'

Cara got what she needed. Kara got what she wanted. I think Cara and Kara have the beginning of something beautiful.

 

From ChristyP at It's a new day every day:

Two related items:
1) One day last week I got home from work early to grumpy kids. The verbal one requesting to play with a friend. I called one who graciously said "Come over!". Kids played. We drank wine, and I (barely) helped her assemble dinner. We had leftovers at home. Afterwards, there was a Facebook exchange about playdates during 'the witching hour' and why didn't we do that more often.

2) Yesterday a friend emailed to invite us over for the evening. I suggested cooperative dinner and delineated what I planned to make (sweet potato and corn chowder). Kids played. She and I cooked in parallel. We all ate together. No more effort for me (except the drive) than cooking for my own family, probably less in fact because the kids were entertained with an extra small person and her unfamiliar and therefore enticing toys.

The lessons here will not be new to at least some of you (bearingblog readers), but I still think that they are worth repeating.

1) Be open to possibility. 
2) Take a chance then evaluate what worked and didn't (last night kids were too busy playing to eat very well and required more bedtime snack than usual).
3) Reach out. I'm feeling inadequate on this point at the moment because in our current living situation we lack the room and chairs to entertain well (i.e. without guests sitting on the floor).
4) It doesn't have to be perfect. 
5) People you treat as family don't have to be related to you.
6) Make a plan and then execute it.

If it doesn't work with one person, try  someone else.  It's worth it.

I'm in love.

With my new schoolroom desks.  

Or maybe just with the guy who made them for me. 

Check 'em out:

Aren't they lovely?  The metal drawer-units on casters are from IKEA, but the desks themselves were designed by my husband and me.  The sides are mahogany-stained plywood, the trim is maple, and the top is a plywood with a white polymer veneer.  That white-veneered stuff is all over our house -- Mark used it to make the boys' beds, the (new) dining table, the shelves in the laundry room and the mudroom and a closet, and a bunk bed for our friends that maybe someday we'll get back.  

I've "done school" on an old dining room table from the beginning.  At first, it wasn't the old dining room table, it was... the dining room table.  Then we moved to a house with a dedicated schoolroom (made out of a dining room) and we got a new table for eating and put the old one in the schoolroom.  And there it stayed until yesterday.

So the desks (four of them) are for my children to have individual space to work.  Ah, but Erin, you're thinking, what about coschooling?  What will you do when you have ten children in your house?

Well... you roll the drawer units against the wall and push the desks together to make a table, of course!

 

(Shown with three of the four 18"x36" desks put together to make a 36"x 54" table.)

Does it work?  Check out today's nature lesson:

 

Even the "spare" desk got used:

 
 

And did I mention that the desks are the exact same height as my dining table (which is made of the same white-covered stuff), so I can use them as table extensions on the dining table too! 

Thanks to Mark for making almost all the tables in my life.  Not just the spreadsheet kind.

Logistics.

Melissa:  "I was thinking about signing L.  [her nearly-six-year-old] up for harp lessons in the fall.  The teacher's about a mile away from you.  Would you be open to watching my other kids for an hour once a week while I take her to lessons?"

Me:  "Hmmm.  We'll have to get together with Hannah and talk about how to make the schedule more efficient.  Whatever day it is, we could make that day the day when all three of us get together.  Or you could make it the day that Hannah's over at my house."

Melissa:  "Oh, those are good ideas.  If it's on Thursday we could make that our three-family day, and then it would be pretty easy for Hannah and I and the kids to leave from your house to St. Paul for the Irish dance lessons.  We'd all be on the same side of the city then."

Me:  "Yes, that would probably be the most efficient.  Might be too busy for you to relax much those days, though."

Melissa [makes face]

Me:  "Well, does the teacher give classes in the evenings?"

Melissa:  "I don't know.  Chris [her husband] really wants me to cut back on lessons and things in the evenings because our family time is already stretched enough."

Me: "OK, well you could have your whole family come over to our house one evening a week while you take L. to the lesson.  Chris and Mark could play chess or board games with the kids or something.  Then it'd feel more like family time."

Melissa:  "Ooh, that could work!"

Me:  "Although it'd probably have to be not on an evening when we have swim lessons.  Although I can move those around some, they can be on Tuesdays or Thursdays or Saturdays.  And on Wednesdays Oscar will have religious ed classes.  Maybe, I mean, we haven't decided for sure whether to do the classes next year or just teach him at home."

Melissa:  "Okay, well, how open are you to having the kids for one hour just, you know, on the days when you're just home with your own family?"

Me:  "Mm.  Well.  You know, Melissa, I work very hard to keep my days that we're with the other families down to two per week."

Melissa:  "I know."

Me:  "So if I agree to watch your kids for an hour on, like, a Wednesday, it has to be an hour."

Melissa:  "It would be.  Just an hour."

Me:  "You can't come in and have a cup of tea and a chat."

Melissa:  "I don't want that either! I have my own things to do at home and M. to teach and... why are you laughing?"

Me: ...

Melissa:  "What's so funny?"

Me: ...

Melissa: ...

Me:  "Because we're such good friends that we can have a conversation that goes, 'I don't want to invite you in for a cup of tea!' and 'Don't worry, I don't want to have tea with you either!'"

Off kilter.

My husband's parents are visiting, all so that FIL could help Mark paint our downstairs in exchange for a little bit of grandbaby time.   He painted our living room, entry hall, stairwells, and schoolroom in a warm, light beige, a milk-with-a-little-coffee color.

Before they could paint, of course, I had to move the big schoolroom cabinets away from the wall, and before I could do that, of course, I had to empty them. 

So for a couple of days, all my STUFF --- potholder looms, workbooks, bottles of tempera paint, paper of all kinds --- was piled on a table in the middle of the living room.

But then I had the opportunity to put it back, and I took my time.  Hurray!  Organized cabinets for the first time since we moved.

School really got shifted around, first because Grandma and Grandpa were here reading to the boys and playing endless board games, then because all the materials I needed were buried under a huge mound of materials that I hadn't used in months, finally because I spent a whole day putting everything back.  Oh, but it looks wonderful!  Next stop:  a nice celery-green color in the kitchen.  Someday.

Also, Oscar had a night of throwing up,  and then a couple days later Mary Jane ran a fever in the middle of the night.  Sleep was lost.  Finally MIL woke up feeling poorly this morning, so instead of starting for home this morning FIL is bringing her tea and crackers, and the boys are having to be reminded to play quietly so she can rest.

I managed to get Oscar going on catechism copywork and art narration, and got math lesson set up --- since it involves laying out cards on the floor to make a number line, we'll do that after Milo goes down for a nap.  Soon. 

(Here are the before pictures.  Will update later with cabinet interiors.)

Why you should care that I don't have a job.

The always-right-on-the-money "Jane" at Asymmetrical Information explains why the mommy wars make a lot of sense:

...if you think you've found the One Right Way to raise YOUR child, then it does indeed make sense to fight hard to persuade as many other women as possible to make the same choice. If you are at home, working mothers are your enemy, at least until they chuck the rat race, and vice versa.

Why do I say this? Simple: having the majority of people live the way you do has significant positive externalities.

In other words, we at-home moms benefit when there are a lot of other moms at home, and working moms benefit when there are a lot of other moms working.

She goes on to give examples from both sides, including this one:

...[S]taying at home with children is not nearly as rewarding as it was in the 1960's. All right, there are more daytime television options than there used to be, and gyms now have day-care centres. But there is something huge missing, and that is all the other women in your neighbourhood. The ones that your mother had coffee with, asked to watch the children for an hour, played afternoon bridge with, formed the pillar of the PTA with, and so on . . . they're all off trading bonds or editing books or waiting tables. That's why all the women I know who stay home are desperate for adult conversation by the time their husband walks through the door. Most neighbourhoods used to be communities full of women who zipped around between houses, filling each other's days. Now they are often lonely prisons.

This rings true to me because, despite being at home, I've mostly escaped that prison.

Crucial to my happiness, in all seriousness, is the fact that we've formed close friendships with three other families in similar situations (dad works, mom's at home, kids are homeschooled) and we spend huge amounts of time together during the weekdays.

Typically we trade off days: Mondays everyone's at Melissa's, Thursdays at mine, Fridays at Hannah's, etc. We take some work with us, supervise all the kids' schoolwork around the kitchen table, help each other make dinner or take care of housework, and also we're available to each other on a moment's notice for emergency childcare and the like.

For example, Melissa broke her ankle this week and the rest of us are taking turns spending the day over there just to help her out with her kids.

I can't imagine how my days might go if all my friends were working and I had no one but myself and my own children in my own house. I think it would be terribly isolating and depressing. I try to remember that when I talk to women who are struggling with the home/work decision --- I don't regret staying home, but my home-staying experience has made me wealthy in relationships, and not everyone feels comfortable reaching out to other women to deliberately form this kind of a relationship.

Nevertheless, I try to encourage people to do it --- it makes all the difference in the world.

And I specifically try to encourage women I know and like who live in my city, because --- who knows --- maybe we can help each other out. 

Homemaking for Engineers.

Incidentally, the last post marks the start of a new topic category, "Homemaking for Engineers."  I'm going to phase out the old one, "New Paradigms in Homemaking," on the grounds that "Homemaking for Engineers" is ever so much cleverer and will probably inspire me to post on the subject more often.  Besides, it really does describe my viewpoint on the subject pretty neatly.

There are times when I think I should have named the whole darn blog "Homemaking for Engineers."   

Laundry engineering.

About two months ago we moved into our new house, designed to fit our somewhat unique lifestyle.  Among the built-in features is a second-floor laundry room.  It's lighted and spacious, with front-loading machines and space on top of them for folding, a hanging rod and places for baskets, and also room for our diaper changing table.   

We assigned a workable, comfortable laundry room high priority.  (Consequently the bedrooms are smaller than is usual in new-construction houses.)  In the last six months or so before we moved, I developed the expectation that I would cheerfully wash, dry, and fold two baskets of laundry every day, as soon as we moved into the new house with the nice new laundry room.  Surely it would be easier than descending two flights of narrow, uneven stairs to the damp and cobwebby duplex basement and climbing up again with full baskets.

Of course, it isn't exactly easier than what I was really doing, which was letting Mark descend two flights of narrow, uneven stairs to the damp and cobwebby duplex basement, etc. Anyway, I'm still trying to figure out how to fit laundry into my day. 

I'm incrementally making improvements in the laundry algorithm.  The first step was to stop Mark's practice of going round the house with an empty basket and collecting tablecloths, dishcloths, bath towels wet diapers, his clothes, my clothes, kids' clothes, all together into one mixed-up load.  I have a generous amount of folding and sorting space in the new laundry room, but not enough to sort that.  I bought new laundry baskets and put one in each closet to collect the different kinds of laundry, and decreed a ban on future laundry-mixing.

(Mark: But... I don't have enough laundry in any of these individual baskets to make a full load!

Me:  Good.  Laundry's done for today. 

Mark: <blank look>

Me:  We just increased our surge tank capacity.  Consequently, we have the opportunity for a partial shutdown.

Mark:  Ah.)

(N.B.  Actually, it wasn't quite like that, but I'm playing the scene for comic effect here.)

That innovation set the stage for a second one a bit later.  I had been putting the kids' clothes on hangers upstairs in the laundry room, then carrying it down to hang it in their closet on the first floor.  But then, after some experimentation, I discovered that the laundry output increased incrementally if instead I carried their clothes down in baskets, fetched kid-size hangers from the closet, clothed the hangers while seated at the kitchen table, and then returned the clothes to the closet rod.  I think that this productivity increase is due to the elimination of the bottlenecking step of remembering to carry empty kid-size hangers upstairs.    (Fortunately, I have already incorporated clearing the kitchen table into my daily routine, or there would be another bottleneck along this particular process path.)

There's still plenty of room for improvement.  I told Mark this morning that what I really need is a pilot-scale laundry room, and pilot-scale laundry to accompany it.  He said I needed direct-something-or-other simulation instead.   I forget what, as it was a term I wasn't familiar with.  But as I'm likely to get neither,  I guess I'll have to stick with tinkering with my process on-line.  Good thing I don't have any technicians, or I'd have to buy them a lot of pizza.

Towels are the new mops.

I hate mopping the floor.   Hate, hate, hate it.  So every time I have to do it, I spend the whole time fuming, scrubbing furiously, and thinking about ways I might make the chore faster, easier, less frequent, less odious, or (ideally) obsolete.   So I never seem to do it the same way twice.   

Some of my experimental mopping methods, like the one described in this post, are more fun than others.  But after exhausting a dozen different ideas, ranging from schemes where I mop a tiny section of my floor every day to gadgets like the Swiffer WetJet, I think I've come to the following conclusion:

The best way to clean a floor is on hands and knees.

I know.  I know.  Yuck.  But bear with me. 

Here's the specific technique:

How to really mop a floor clean

1. Obtain supplies:  broom and dustpan, large bowl, detergent that is compatible with the flooring (dish soap is fine), rubber gloves (optional), edged tool such as putty knife or butter knife, and a supply of clean towels or rags. 
2. Sweep well the section of floor to be cleaned. 
3. Fill a large bowl with hot, soapy water.
4. Pick a section of the floor.  Put your bowl near it and grab three towels.  Fold one up and kneel on the towel within reach of the bowl.  Put on your gloves if you've got 'em.
5. Wet the second towel and wring lightly. 
6. Scrub a two-foot-square section of floor with the wet towel.  Rinse and wring out wet towel as necessary. Use knife to scrape up any stubborn debris.
7. Wipe dry and clean with the dry towel.
8. Move to the next two-foot-square section of floor and repeat.
9. When the water gets dirty, change it.   When the dry towel gets wet, demote it to "wet towel" and discard the old wet towel.
10. Stop when you finish your section or when you get tired.

I know it sounds regressive, but bear with me.  There are several very good reasons why this method is superior to the "standard" methods of mopping a floor, such as this one, or this one (pdf); or to methods advocated by gadget/detergent peddlers.

• It requires no special equipment.  Not only does this mean you don't have to buy a gadget; it means that every kid or adult in the house can help "mop" at the same time, even if you don't own enough mops for everyone.
• You can scrub harder with your arm and hand than with a mop.
• Because you're not swabbing from the end of a long stick, you can see when you've gotten all the dirt.  It's more like washing a countertop.  Also, you don't have to bend down repeatedly to scratch at stubborn bits; you're already down there.
• Because dirty water is immediately wiped away with a clean, dry towel, you won't push dirty water all over the floor, nor splash it on your walls and baseboards.
• You can interrupt your work or stop altogether, at any moment, and anyone can walk on the floor immediately.  If the baby wakes up when you're half done, you'll have half a floor clean and dry and another half that you easily get to later --- not a floor slick with soapy, dirty puddles that will slowly dry in place.
• It's simple and easy to clean a small section of floor.  You don't have to feel that you should do the whole house while you've got the mop and bucket out.
• When you're done, towels go straight into the washing machine.   Some kinds of mop heads do, but not all --- and most of those don't last too long.  Other kinds of mop heads are disposable, which means that you have to keep buying them.  And traditional string mops become pretty nasty after a while.

The major downside to this method is that it is hard on the knees.   You can solve that with a good cushion --- such as those sold in gardening supply catalogs --- or by squatting or sitting instead of kneeling.  Mopping, on the other hand, can be hard on the back; so perhaps it's a tradeoff.

Ever optimizing, today (since mopping the kitchen and dining area was on my to-do list) I divided the kitchen floor into several areas and timed myself from start to finish as I swept, scrubbed, and dried each one.  Here's what I found:

Behind peninsula      -          6 min

End of peninsula       -          6 min

Bar stool area           -           4 min

Around dining table -         11 min

          TOTAL                      -         27 min

Surprise!  Not only is the whole thing cleanable in less than half an hour, it sounds much less odious to clean the floor for six minutes here and four minutes there.  Maybe instead of doing the whole thing once a week, I should do one piece each day?  Now that I know it never takes more than 11 minutes to do any one piece, it sounds --- well, not so bad.

(I told Mark about this when he got home and he said I was far behind the times when it came to industrial-engineering fads like figuring out exactly how much time it should take to do every regularly scheduled task.   Well, what did he expect?  I wrote the code for my thesis in FORTRAN 77, for pete's sake.  I do "behind the times" pretty well.)

Lots of good stuff...

... over at Family Scholars Blog today.  Just keep scrolling... there's plenty on the latest from Caitlin Flanagan about the sexualization of youth culture, child support, a fatwa claiming that nudity during intercourse invalidates a marriage (?!?), and the compatibility of planning to be a SAHM with economic "back up plans" in case of divorce. 

As always, it's worth it to read the comments on the posts.

Oh, and how I got started with the Liturgy of the Hours.

I mentioned in my last post that I'd been praying the Liturgy of the Hours for a while.  Anyone else interested in starting?  Here's some background and how I did it.

The LOH is the daily prayer of the Church.  Lots of people, including almost all priests and religious, pray some or all of the hours every day.  Ever heard of "Matins," "Lauds," and "Vespers?"  These are some of the Hours, or "Offices."  (Think of Frere Jacques:  Sonnez les matines is a command to ring the bells for the Matins prayer.)  There's a table here explaining which is which and giving a little background.

Morning Prayer takes me maybe fifteen minutes, including the Invitatory (which is always prayed before the first office of the day).  Here's the basic outline.  All is to be read or sung aloud:

• Introductory prayer.
• The invitatory psalm, always Psalm 95. 
• Sing a hymn (a suggestion is provided).
• Psalmody in three parts:  usually a psalm, a canticle (that is, a Scripture reading that is song-like), and another psalm.
• A three-line "responsory" taken from Scripture.
• Another reading, this one more prosaic, from Scripture, often from an epistle, followed by a short period of silent reflection.
• The "Canticle of Zechariah" is always read (Lk 1:68-79)
• A series of petitionary prayers, ending with the Our Father.
• A concluding prayer.

The whole thing is entirely prescribed in the breviary, although you are free to add your own petitions.  This is especially nice in times of spiritual dryness, because the universal prayers of the Church spilling forth from our parched lips still are spoken, are given power by our assent, are still heard and still unite us to the divine will.

Back in engineering school, we were allowed to use our textbooks during examinations.  The sweaty silence of midterms was set to a backdrop of constant, nearly-frantic rustling of pages:  page by page back to find the appropriate equation, turn a sheaf of  pages forward to the appendix of steam tables to search for enthalpy of water at such-and-such a temperature, then back to the inside front cover where we'd penciled in a list of useful constants...  By the final exam our textbooks were hairy with Post-It tape flags and handmade index tabs to put the information we needed at our fingertips.

A peculiar nostalgia for those years sometimes returns to me when I pick up my breviary.  On feast days and solemnities, and outside Ordinary Time, certain of the prayers and readings are replaced with special ones from particular sections of the breviary.   One finds oneself looking up today's date to see if it's a feast day, finding that day's saint in the back of the breviary, paging back to the psalms of Sunday, Week I but keeping a thumb in the Proper of Seasons in order to read the proper antiphons, going to the section called "Ordinary" to read first Psalm 95 and then later the Canticle.  Fortunately, the thing comes with attached ribbon bookmarks.  (Also, my breviary is stuck all over with Post-It repositionable index tabs, and I've penciled a few reminders in the inside front cover.)

OK, so how to get started?  First, buy a breviary.  You have three basic choices:  Big (four volumes), Medium (one volume), and Short (travel-size, abridged).  I recommend the one-volume (medium) breviary for beginners.  The one I use is this one (I think --- mine looks a little different, but it's the same publisher.) 

You might be able to figure it all out with the breviary alone, in combination with Internet resources or maybe with help from someone else who also prays the Hours.  But there is another resource, one that really helped me despite my initial misgivings. 

Let me say this clearly:  The Divine Office for Dodos is in bad need of a good editor.  But let me say it gently, too, because I am in great debt to Madeline Pecora Nugent, its author.  It is the only guide to the Divine Office that I have found.  She gives you everything you need, in very tiny little baby steps, to understand how the whole thing works and get into the rhythm of the Hours.   I really wish that someone at, say, Ignatius Press or TAN Books (or the ...For Dummies people) would pick up this book, mark it all up, repackage it and reissue it, because it could be a very, very good guide if it were properly edited. 

My point:  Don't let Nugent's writing style keep you from extracting the useful information and tips out of her book.  Take a look at the Amazon reviews: everyone criticized her style and humor but she still got five stars.  (Oh, and don't bother sending the clip-out coupon away for the Bouncing Bookmarks and Restful Ribbons.  Instead, invest in some of these.) 

Even though Morning and Evening Prayer are supposedly the crucial Offices for someone who can only pray a couple of them, the next one I'd like to try to add to my life is the Office of Readings.  This one includes, along with the psalms, two lengthy readings, one from Scripture, one taken from the writings of Church fathers or theologians or saints.  My one-volume breviary only has an abridged Office of Readings, just a couple of dozen different ones.  If I manage to incorporate the Office of Readings into my regular life, to the point where I have to start repeating myself, I'm going to reward myself.  I'm thinking: a brand-new four-volume breviary with a different reading for each day of the year.