Obstacles to Writing

House Full Up

Whoopsie Piggle is currently home to eight people, four dogs, three cats and a singular goldfish who resides in a red plastic sandbox, shaped like a crab, which became a mini-pond two years ago when the lid was left off during a summer storm. The acre and a half of yard and gardens are robustly blooming with both intended and unintended plant life. Daisies and dandelions, rhododendrons and thistles. Many of the birds that Jules lovingly feeds are thistle eaters and while he feeds them only sterile thistles, the seeds they bring in their bowels and evacuate all over our gardens are viable and innumerable.

Big Yard

Last fall, Superstorm Sandy took out two trees in our backyard. The trees took out five sections of our wrought iron fence. Rather than pay for tree removal, Max cleared the trees himself and the homeowner’s insurance covered the fence repair. Thanks to the storm, we now have a sunny corner  for Leif and Lyra to have a play area. That is, once we clear out the undergrowth, level the ground and landscape. Claude and Hugo worked on pulling out the rooty undergrowth the weekend before last. The next day a rash began spreading across Claude’s limbs and chest. Like my Grama Dorothy, Claude only needs to be upwind of poison ivy in order to break out with the signature streaks of itchy rash. After a medical visit and prednisone prescription, the Toxicodendron radicans still went systemic and Claude had to return to the doctor’s for a shot.

 

Medical Appointments

When I think of working fulltime, and I am still applying for positions, I wonder how we will manage all the family’s medical appointments. We had nine this week alone. The big boys had four separate appointments, I had two, and Lyra had PT, a well-baby check up and a contact lens change and eye exam with her ophthalmologist. Last week, the eye surgeon had planned on putting Lyra under general anesthesia in order to perform a complete evaluation of her eyes. The surgeon would have changed her contacts then, but Lyra’s lab work was not acceptable for anesthesia. When Lyra first went on Synthroid, her TSH levels were too high. After six weeks on 25 mcg of the medicine, her TSH levels were deemed too low. We sre now trying six weeks at half the previous dose of Synthroid before testing her levels again. Even though we haven’t fully figured out her ideal dosage, Lyra has begun growing more rapidly in the two months she has been taking Synthroid. Though still on the small side, she now feels less like a baby doll and more like a baby.

Teens & Tots

For six months, beginning when Jules turns thirteen later this month and until Claude’s twentieth birthday in January, we will have three teenagers in the house. Just because they are big doesn’t mean they don’t need time and attention. Claude came home in early May from the University of Michigan and while he did odd jobs as a catering waiter and babysitting, it has taken him a month to land full-time employment for the summer. We’ve learned that the ease of online applications has facilitated employers asking endless and often goofy questions. Each week as I try to write during the scant hours both tots are at childcare, Claude has strolled into my room with his beautiful laptop (the one I bought for his high school graduation because it was required by the UM School of Art & Design), sat next to me at my desk, and read off the questions he thought were obtuse, silly, or both:

If you are working on a project and customers keep coming up to you for help, you should a) tell them to see someone else for help b) ask a manager to assign someone else to the project c) help the customers and tell the manager to do the project herself.

There are 26 weeks in a year, true or false?

Amy and Bill have five lollipops. Amy only wants three. How many does Bill want?

On the tot front, Leif has graduated from diapers to underpants in the past month. That means we’ve all be spending time encouraging him to go potty and cheering him like he has hit a home run at Progressive Field when he does (especially #2). And when he has accidents (particularly #2), Leif has been shown the joys of rinsing one’s own underwear in the toilet.

Max the Invisible Attorney

Okay, so we can see him, but we rarely do these days. Law is a profession driven by, among other things, deadlines. He has a big one coming up and it’s hard to remember when he regularly slept past 4 a.m., left the office before six p.m. and didn’t work on the weekend. We do miss him because he’s fun to be with but also when he is home it helps tip the ratio of adults to children from being wildly askew.

And so we were delightfully surprised yesterday when Max pulled in the driveway at five o’clock. Together with the three younger children, Max and I strolled through our neighborhood farmers’ market, Leif keeping close to his dada.

Value Added Adult

At the beginning of May, our friend Nancy moved in with us. After living in Akron for decades, Nancy moved to California eight years ago. She’s returned because her family, including two granddaughters, is here. Rather than complicating our already hectic lives, we’ve soon come to wonder how we managed without her. When she isn’t looking for work or a home of her own, Nancy has taken on several projects in the garden. Just behind our house are two rows of sweet bay magnolias growing in  long beds of liriope muscari. For the first few weeks she was here, Nancy spent many of her mornings in those flowerbeds. She pulled her gardener’s belt, with its impressive collection of tools, from a box and strapped it on. She then trimmed last year’s dead leaves from the lily-like plants and weeded the grass, nutsedge and scourge of thistles from the beds.

Nancy also loves mowing the lawn and is able to create diamond patterns in the turf, so it looks like some professional sports field. Another adult, she willingly drives the kids places, goes to the grocery, feeds the dogs, holds the baby. Even when Max is home, having a third adult in the house is an advantage. But with him currently gone so much, it feels like a gift.

The only drawback, if it can even be called that, is how much I enjoy talking with Nancy and I find myself lingering in the kitchen when I should be up in my office writing. Then I think back to when the big boys were little and how starved I was for adult conversation. Talking into my writing time is the better “problem” to have. Hands down.

Finding Balance

Yesterday, I gave myself a day off. It’s the first full week of summer vacation for Hugo and Jules, the weather was mild and I gave in to the call of the garden. For four hours, Jules helped me as we planted sunflowers, weeded flowerbeds and the cracks between flagstones pavers. I fixed a planter that wasn’t draining and planted lantana in two others. Hugo attacked the English ivy in the front, cutting it off of a tree and pulling up the roots around the trunk. Nancy uncovered a drain in the back corner of the driveway, which had become so clogged with pine needles and debris that a small lake would form after each rainfall. Her two English labs, water dogs that they are, will miss frolicking in the muddy water as they have several times in the past couple of weeks.

Writing is easiest for me when I have the house to myself for several hours, beginning early in the morning. But now it’s summer and the big, old house is full of people, the park-like yard is full of happy dogs and (as a result) not-so happy cats. The gardens need tending and I, too, want to be one of the gardeners.

If I were dying, what in my life would still be important to me? I ask this question of myself regularly to separate what keeps me busy from what is truly important. The people, the conversations, the meals, the home and, yes, writing about it all. The endless bustle is exhausting but one day they will all be off and it will just be us, Max and me. As delicious as that sometimes sounds, I am sure I will look back on these days as the best of my life. For I already do.