Archive for the ‘Family Life’ Category
May 29th
Kelly and Katie McMenamin are two sisters who run a home and life organization service called Pixies Did It. Their philosophy: if your life is not organized around your own habits and personality, it won’t run smoothly. Here, Kelly takes on a subject that I, for one, find terrifying: organizing the linen closet…
Every once in a while, I’m tempted to try to be someone I’m not. Someone carefree and able to ignore “to do’s”. Yesterday, I felt like watching TV all day but knew I couldn’t as I had writing to do. I thought, “Hey, I know! I’ll be like my sister & business partner, Kate. I’ll finish my writing while simultaneously watching TV.” So, I tried to write this bit while watching movies all afternoon. I didn’t get farther than a few sentences and had to keep rewinding the movies. End result: I neither enjoyed the movies nor experienced the joy of crossing off “Write blog” from my to-do list.
No matter how hard I try, I cannot be someone else. I work and then play, not because I’m virtuous or have superior willpower to Kate, but because it’s easier for me this way. If I don’t do it in this order, I don’t get work done and then I’m anxious and unhappy. That’s it. That’s the only reason.
I like to keep my house tidy because I can’t relax if there is obvious work in front of me, i.e., junk everywhere screaming to be put away. I’ll honestly never know how people can truly relax amidst genuine clutter. I can tolerate things temporarily but eventually it grates on me and I must find a home for something.
So now you are probably wondering how anyone like me could possibly have problems with organizing.
Read the rest of this entry »
May 12th
I’m not usually the kind of person who plans her life according to what’s on TV. Around this time of year, however, that all changes, and my schedule revolves around one thing: the NHL playoffs.
I didn’t grow up playing or watching hockey, but I’ve gotten into both over the past few years. And if the New Jersey Devils are playing, then chances are I’ll watch. I saw all seven games of Round 1 against the Carolina Hurricanes—including the last, tragic one, during which Carolina scored two surprise goals in the last two minutes of the game to beat the Devils 4-3 and eliminate them from the series. Fortunately, none of the games conflicted with any actual social obligations, and in fact it became a kind of anchor in my life, motivating me to get my work done during the day in time to join my boyfriend in the living room.
Now that the Devils have been eliminated, the playoffs are less an organizing force than an opportunistic indulgence, but I’m still keeping my eye on Round 2… especially the high-charged Penguins/Capitals series. Last game’s tomorrow night!
February 12th
A recent article in the New York Times described the sale of several lots of Amish diaries. The author of the article posits what people choose not to write about is unintentionally revealing.
The sale was held at Horst Auction Center in Ephrata, PA, just north of Lancaster in the heart of Amish country. A dozen bidders spent $3,000 for all the lots, which ranged from 1850s day books and medicine and dessert recipes by one Christian Lantz Fisher ($130) to Sarah King’s 1930s-1990s annotations ($25) that the Horst catalog described as “weather, company for supper, visiting, quilting, baking, household chores, stitching rose chair cushions, painting door stops.”
The diaries did not describe the feelings of the writer, but instead noted each day’s rounds of chores and events, like collecting duck’s eggs, cleaning stables, boiling pear butter, taking a sleigh ride, or attending church.
Meticulous diary keeping “has been a fairly common practice since at least 1800,” said John Parmer, a historian in Akon, near Ephrata, who is writing a book about the Amish fraktur tradition of writing and illuminating family trees and religious manuscripts.
“I’ve never come across a single emotion expressed in the many, many that I’ve read,” he said. “And there is very limited contact revealed with the outside world. You do see mentions of local happenings that would send ripples through a whole county: barn fires, wagons being struck by trains, the floodwaters along a creek so high the doctor couldn’t get his buggy through to treat a sick baby and the family had to muddle along without him. You can sometimes read emotional content into the dramas, but nowhere does it explicitly say, “I was terrified,” or “I was crying.”
Read the whole article here.
It made me think of the times when I have kept a diary, most recently last year when I took a pilgrimage to Ireland with other members of my parish to follow in the footsteps of St. Patrick and St. Bridget. Each page is scribbles of what I saw or did that day, and includes at least one anecdote about a person, event or legend associated with the place. Rereading my diary, I found the anecdotes usually captured the mood of the day or the character of the place better than any guide book.
What is unique about your diary?
December 24th
The North American Aerospace Defense Command-or NORAD-which monitors air and space threats against the U.S. and Canada is in charge of the annual Christmas mission to keep children informed of Santa’s worldwide journey to their homes.
According to NORAD, Santa began his latest flight early Wednesday at the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean. Historically, Santa visits the South Pacific first, then New Zealand and Australia. NORAD points out that only Santa knows what route he is going to take. Find Santa here. 
Last year, NORAD’s Santa tracking center answered 94,000 calls and responded to 10,000 emails. About 10.6 million visitors went to their website, which can be viewed in English, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Japanese and Chinese.
NORAD’s holiday tradition can be traced to 1955, when a Colorado Springs, CO newspaper printed a Sears, Roebuck & Co., ad telling children of a phone number to talk to Santa. The number was one digit off, and the first child to get through reached the Continental Air Defense Command, NORAD’s precedessor.
Col. Harry W. Shoup answered.
Shoup’s daughter, Terri van Keuren, said her dad, now 91, was surprised to hear that little voice on the other end thought he was Santa.
“Dad thought, ‘What the heck? This must be some kind of code,” said van Keuren, 59.
Shoup, described by his daughter as “just a nut about Christmas,” didn’t want to break the boy’s heart, so he sounded a booming “Ho, Ho, Ho!” and pretended to be Santa Claus.
Enough calls followed that Stroup assigned an officer to answer them while the problem was fixed. But Stoup and the staff he was directing to “locate” Santa on radar ended up embracing the idea. NORAD picked up the tradition when it was formed 50 years ago.
The task that began with no computers and only a 60-by-80 foot glass map of North America now includes two big screens on a wall showing the world and information on each country Santa Claus visits.
Everyone, adults included, can now follow Santa’s path online with a Google two-dimensional map or in 3D using Google Earth, where he can been seen flying through different landscapes in his sleigh.
NORAD offficials are hesitant to list all the potential sites Santa will visit with certainty.
“Historically, Santa has loved the Great Wall of China. He loves the Space Needle in Seattle. He of course loves the Eiffel Tower,” Maj. Stacia Reddish of NORAD said. “But his path is completely unpredictable, so we won’t know.”
Merry Christmas to all! Joyeux Noel!
November 14th
Now that my garden’s up and running, I figured it was time to take the next step in domestic outdoor activities. I ordered a birdfeeder from the amusingly named Droll Yankees company website, bought a shepherd’s hook out in New Jersey, and hung everything on a fencepost.
Not so fast, evidently. Here’s how things played out:
Phase one. My first hook wasn’t nearly long enough, and the squirrels had a lovely time hopping over from the fence and eating all the seed. Also, the birds weren’t very interested; they hung out in the tree behind our shed and didn’t approach the feeder.
Phase two. I went back and bought a longer hook and re-hung the whole contraption. A few days later, the birds discovered it. And a couple days after that, the squirrels figured out how to make the longer leap.
Phase three. My birdfeeder came with a small tray on the bottom to catch the seeds the birds spill as they eat (they’re very messy eaters!). It also gave the squirrels a nice place to land as they leapt over from the fence. Once I figured that out, I removed the tray, and the squirrels suddenly became much less adventurous. I can’t describe how satisfying it was to watch them try and fail to make the leap—or better yet, to try to shimmy across the hook and dangle down over the feeder itself, which has a protective dome.
Nature: it’s an arms race.
September 16th
The Butler Bag is designed to help women find things in their bag.
A busy working woman who’d just given birth to twin girls, Jen Groover was frustrated by the lack of organization in her purse. 
She envisioned designing and marketing a “Butler Bag” – a purse-meets-tackle box aimed as busy women looking to organize their lives.
Unlike standard pocketbooks, Grover’s Butler Bags would come with built-in compartments, with slots for everything women carry around from Blackberrys, compacts, iPhones, brushes, keys, wallets, etc.
“I wanted to solve the problem of the black hole of women’s handbags,” said Grover, 35. “This is organization without compromising fashion.”
While the Butler Bag looks like other bags on the outside, hidden inside are dividers. With this tidy system, women don’t have to fish around for keys, or change, or mints that have dropped to the bottom of the purse.
The bags are priced from $125 (shown here) to $1800 for deluxe models. 
August 20th
Here’s a picture of my latest garden surprise—a Rose of Sharon bush that looked all but dead when we moved in, miraculously came back to life, and then lost a bunch of leaves when we transplanted it to the other side of the garden. Needless to say, I was not expecting flowers, but flowers are here, and they’re spectacular!
The name “Rose of Sharon” reminds me of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath (which I haven’t read since sophomore year of high school and can only dimly recollect), because there’s a character in the book who’s called Rosasharn, after the plant. It’s a Biblical name—in the King James translation of the Song of Solomon, the beloved claims “I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys”—though that’s apparently a mistranslation of the Hebrew word for “crocus.”
When I lived in Europe, I had a plant called the Rose of Jericho, which is basically a tumbleweed: put it into a bowl of water and it unfurls its frothy leaves, take it out and it curls up into a dry, brown ball and goes to sleep.
August 6th
Every summer articles appear in newspapers and magazines extolling the benefits of taking a complete, utter and total vacation from work for an extended period of time.
This advice may have been feasible 15 or 20 years ago before laptops, iPhones, blackberries, telecommuting, few support staff and fierce global competition, but it isn’t practical now. How do you take a vacation from the computer in your living room? Because of the internet, customers and consumers expect timely, if not instant, answers.
On a practical level, if you don’t check your devices for one or two weeks, there will probably be 5,000 emails waiting for you, and voice mail and cell phone messages checking on your unanswered emails. The exhaustion of dealing with this avalanche of demands will wipe out the benefits of your vacation by the end of the first day back to work. It will be as if you never left.
Here’s my solution: check your email and voice mail once a day and respond to everyone very briefly. Keep things moving, but resist the temptation to start any new projects. Instead, keep a list of your ideas for when you get back to work full-time.
I find I’m less stressed (which is the point of my vacation) if I keep in touch lightly and don’t have to return to a mound of messes and demands.
How do you spend your summer vacation? 
July 14th
I made an impulse purchase at the garden center recently: a beautiful little dwarf pomegranate that I walked by and fell in love with. It’s too cold here in New York to let it winter outdoors, but for the moment it looks fabulous in its little pot on my patio.
Apparently, dwarf pomegranates are very popular bonsai plants. Right now, that seems like more work than I can handle (I’m still figuring out plant names and what I should and shouldn’t compost), but I’m very curious about it. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden has a whole greenhouse full of bonsai trees, and if I remember right, some of them are decades old.
Do any of you bonsai? (Can I use that as a verb?) How did you get into it?
July 2nd
My garden is small, and young, so everything seems precious. The bowlful or two of strawberries we harvested last month felt like the best I’d ever tasted; now, my first daylily blossom—pictured above just after a light summer rain—strikes me as beyond gorgeous. I even love its small asymmetries, because they make it seem more natural and less expertly cultivated.
The daylily offers a great lesson in appreciating the beauty of a moment. Most daylilies blossom only for a single day, opening in the morning and closing up at nightfall. (Each plant has several blossoms, though, so the pleasure’s not quite so ephemeral.)
