My Real Life

A big storm was brewing for this weekend.

At one point, they were predicting 10-13 inches.

My original plan, this weekend, was to be in the city with Kim, Erin, and Michaela, celebrating my birthday at Sleep No More NYC.

Then the weather reports started rolling in and those of us who lived outside of the city started getting nervous. If they shut down mass transit, would be we able to get home? Would we have to pull over and sleep in our car on the way from the train stations home?

For people that needed to be home on Sunday night, it just was a little risky given the forecast.

So, we sold the tickets and cancelled our plans.

Not happily, but things happen.

So, I shifted my brain and started looking forward to a weekend snuggled in with Monkey Girl, Baby Monkey and Tiny, as Real Man and Monkey in the Middle were going to be out of town for a hockey tournament.

Snowed in with most of my babies, board games, fire in the fireplace, books, movies.

Okay, yes. I was starting to look forward to this.

So, Saturday rolled around and I went to work for a few hours, with the stage crew for our school musical. When we finished, Baby Monkey and I went to the store to pick up Smartfood.

You know, the cheesy popcorn?

It’s what he decided he wanted to have in the house to ride out the storm.

No problem, little guy. Smartfood we can do.

When we got to the store, we headed immediately to the popcorn aisle. But, when we got there, Baby Monkey decided that he was more in the mood for microwave popcorn, Extra Butter flavor.

I wasn’t quite as on board with that, but, eh, it’s a storm. Why not?

So, we grab that.

Then Baby Monkey says “Actually, can we also get some more grapes?”

If the kids ask for fruits or vegetables, it’s an automatic yes, so we moved to the produce aisle.

He grabbed the grapes, and then as we walked, I saw a container of snap peas.

I love snap peas.

Baby Monkey is allergic, but man do I love them.

So, I grabbed those, too.

Suddenly, I remembered we needed batteries, and the batteries were all the way across the store, so Baby Monkey and I started to make our way there.

And on the way, we passed the cookie aisle.

I keep seeing ads for the new “Oreo: The Most Stuf” and have been wanting to try them out.

They didn’t have those, but they did have Double Stuf, so I picked up a package of those, too.

By now, Baby Monkey and I had too much to carry and I wasn’t sure where we would find the batteries, so I sent him to the parking lot to get a cart.

And I kept walking.

And, oh, there was some hot apple cider in K-cups!

See, my vision of us all snuggled in front of the fire included a lot of food and hot beverages.

Despite my Danish roots, there’s an Italian grandmother in me somewhere, and I show love by trying to feed people.

I grabbed the K-cups, and then saw the Spaghettios.

Yeah, we need those for a snowstorm.

Ooh, and soup. We needed soup. Definitely soup.

And look what’s next to the soup!

It’s the crackers! Triscuits. Soup and Triscuits for a storm. Yes.

Oh, and you know what’s so good after playing the snow?

Peanut butter and jelly on toast.

But, I couldn’t remember if we had enough peanut butter or jelly in the house.

Or bread, for that matter.

Luckily, at this point, Baby Monkey had come back with a cart, which was a good thing because I couldn’t carry another thing.

Or, maybe it wasn’t a good thing.

Because I then laid eyes on the Pepperoni Pizza rolls.

Oh, how I love thee Totino’s Pizza Rolls.

To make a long story short, I checked out 30 minutes and $145 later.

I always roll my eyes at people who go crazy at the whisper of snow.

The Facebook memes of empty shelves before an impending storm make me laugh out loud.

Yet, I fell prey to the madness more easily than I would have imagined.

Now, I wasn’t panicking, thinking we’d starve without bread, milk and eggs.

But I certainly went overboard in the anticipation.

This post may seem like a contrast to my minimalism post, but, I know that everything I bought will be eaten.

Maybe not this weekend, but mark my words, it will be eaten.

Just don’t be surprised if Tiny winds up taking a frozen burrito to school for a snack next week.

Okay, this post isn’t actually about Genesis, or this amazing song, but once I came up with the title, the song popped into my head and I couldn’t shake it.

And now you can’t either.

You’re welcome.

A result of my Netflix addiction is that I recently binge-watched Marie Kondo’s “Tidying Up” and then watched the documentary “Minimalism.”

I’ve always been a purger of things.

I dabbled with professional organizing and was just about to get certified when I had baby number 3.

Number four?

At this point, who knows, but it didn’t work out.

My favorite show on TLC was always “Clean Sweep” and then “Clean House” which was on the Style network.

I love organizing.

Now, I’m way better at organizing other people’s things than my own, but I keep my stuff in order.

Having four kids in the house does not really make it easy to keep this place neat and tidy, and I’m okay with that.

I don’t want to have a room in my house where no one is allowed to live.

But I also don’t want clutter.

So, I’m the purger and organizer in my family, even though it makes me bananas, sometimes.

As I watched “Tidying Up,” I emptied my nightstand and cleared it off. Tossed the junk, put things that didn’t belong there where they actually belonged, and then put it back together neatly and cleanly.

The next weekend, I went to Monkey Girl’s room.

She’s been talking about wanting to do a pre-college purge so that when she is leaving for college she doesn’t have to go through years’ worth of belongings to decide what to bring.

So, I brought a grocery bag to her room and said “Let’s toss 25 things.”

I figured, a little at a time and we could get it done.

Five hours later, we had filled three large, lawn-sized trash bags with old notebooks, stained and ripped clothes, wrappers, and all kinds of other things that had accumulated for the past few years.

We also had two large, lawn-sized trash bags full of clothes that we immediately put in a car and dropped at a donation bin.

It’s been awhile since we went through her stuff.

Now her room is neat, clean, organized, and even she said that she just feels like it’s easier to do everything because she doesn’t have to hunt for anything anymore.

Then, last weekend, I watched Minimalism.

I found it to be more about consumerism than minimalism, but it really spoke to me.

I have always said that I would love to live in a tiny house.

I could use the library for my books, my phone for my music, my computer for my writing.

I’d be set.

I truly don’t need stuff.

But I do have stuff.

Because I live in a house with five other people and in this house, there is space, and people seem to always need to fill space.

I’d be so fine with some unfilled space.

One of my favorite pictures in the world is this one:

It’s a picture of Monkey Girl and Tiny, a few months after we moved into this house.

We had quite a few rooms that were empty because our other houses didn’t have the rooms that this one has.

So, this was what was to become our dining room.

It’s my favorite picture because of the people in it, obviously, and the moment that I captured without either of them knowing.

But that room is now full.

It has a dining room table that seats 8, a china cabinet and a sideboard.

You can’t move around in that room.

And it’s functional and we use it frequently and I’m not saying that I wish we didn’t furnish it the way we did.

But look at that picture.

Think about the dreaming and thinking and twirling that could go on in that room.

There’s nothing to clean, nothing to break, nothing to have to deal with.

This year, I’m trying to have less.

Sounds weird to even write it.

But I have way more than I need, and this year I’m going to be paring down.

Except for my books. We aren’t discussing my books.

But everywhere else, things are going to go.

Because I don’t need it.

I have what I need and who I need and the rest can go to people who need it more than I do.

So, no, I’m not taking a cue from Phil and the gang and throwing it all away, but I am going to start to whittle away at the excess.

I’d rather spend my money on experiences and only bring in the things that will truly bring me joy.

Because if it doesn’t make me happy, why bring it here at all?

We have a saying in our house.

“Don’t yuck my yum.”

We use it when someone starts saying something nasty about something we like.

Kid 1: Ooh! I love X!

Kid 2: Ew! That’s so gross.

KId 1: Hey, you don’t have to like it, but don’t yuck my yum.

We didn’t make it up. One of us must have heard it somewhere. But, it works for us.

I mean, it’s no magic cure-all. There are still WWF quality wrestling matches, slammed doors, and “He won’t quit touching me!” at our house, but this phrase has helped my babies understand that you can not like something that someone else likes without trying to make the other person feel bad for liking it AND without saying anything bad about the other person.

And although “yum” is usually a word that is associated with food, it’s not a phrase that we use in only that way.

We use it for everything.

I think we need a little more “don’t yuck my yum” in the world.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.

We. Don’t. All. Have. To. Like. The. Same. Things.

This applies to so very many things.

It applies to food.

Kale is the best thing that has ever been grown on this Earth. Kale is the most disgusting thing that has ever been grown on this earth.

It applies to books.

People were ready to go all Hunger Games on whether or not they enjoyed the Divergent series.

It applies to movies.

Geez. For awhile there, I thought Facebook was going to break with the people arguing over whether “Birdbox” was a good movie or total crap.

(I’m somewhere in the middle on that one.)

No, we don’t have to agree on everything.

But, the danger comes when we start to personalize the differences in preferences.

When the kid who brings kale in their lunchbox is told that he is disgusting instead of the food getting the insult.

When people who love the Divergent series are told they aren’t serious readers.

Last week, Kim Bongiorno, who writes the blog, Let Me Start By Saying, authored a post where she was comically contrasting her love of books, and her subsequent difficulty in parting with books, with Marie Kondo’s philosophy that you only need to own and keep a few books, total.

It was, as is everything Kim writes, humorous and on point. She made herself the butt of the joke, while not saying anything negative about Marie. It was her own inability to part with her books that was the punchline, and, wow, did I identify with what she said and it made me laugh.

Most people got the joke and played along.

But then the inability to understand Marie’s point of view of books as clutter reared its ugly head and commenters began to make ugly statements about Marie Kondo, herself.

Kim removed the post.

Yucking someone’s yum is everywhere.

And, of course, it applies to politics.

Because, these days, everything applies to politics.

I’m a History teacher, and in my class, we discuss current events every day.

Always have.

There are two schools of thought on discussing politics in a classroom.

One is, never tell the kids where you stand on the issues.

That’s not the school that I subscribe to.

I share my opinions with my students, yet, I tell them, up front, that anything I share isn’t with the goal of changing their minds.

I share my opinions with them so that they will share their opinions with me, and so when we disagree, I can model for them how to disagree with someone respectfully.

And they do it beautifully.

My classrooms are beautifully and radically diverse and we tackle the tough stuff.

I have students who are staunchly anti-immigration having conversations with students who have just arrived from another country, asking questions about their experiences and why they came here, as well as answering questions about why they feel a wall will solve some problems in this country.

I’ve heard students on both sides of every issue say things like “I never thought of it that way before.”

Because they hear me say it to them.

And while, at the end of the class, no one has changed their mind about anything, everyone has learned a little something that they hadn’t really considered before.

Sometimes the “why” someone feels a certain way about something is just as important as what they feel.

I’m not saying we need to be Kumbaya about everything.

We all have non-negotiables.

We all have things where we say “This is absolutely not okay with me, no matter what you have to say about it.”

And that’s okay, too.

But we never get anywhere when we put our hands over our ears and yell “Nah nah nah…I can’t hear you!” when what someone is saying makes us uncomfortable.

Listen to each other.

You don’t have to agree. You can even staunchly disagree.

But listen.

Because the more we refuse to listen, the more divided we become and the harder it will be for us to ever get to a place where we can find the small similarities between us and eventually find compromise.