The difference

This post was originally shared in 2008. I am waiting for the hot soccer player with the pretty hair, and I have not thought all the right things through. I haven't explained to him how to get to my dorm room, and I haven't offered to meet him at a more central location. It is a first date and all I have been able to focus on up until this point is what I am to wear and what music will I be listening to when he knocks on my door. I am starting to get that nervous adrenaline that makes my voice rise an octave and my feet twitch.

I live in the women's hall that always smells like Bath & Body Works, on the floor with the lavender walls. I sit on my bed with the yellow gingham bedspread, the one I picked out two years ago when I thought yellow gingham said "cheerfulness" and not "little girl tea party."

I finally settle on a compilation tape of the Beatles that my friend made me. Neutral.

I start to wonder if he is coming. I grab a highlighter because I should look busy instead of like I have had nothing to do all day besides prepare for this moment. My floor is immaculate, every drawer and closet door closed; there are no clothes helter skelter. I am the RA on the lavender floor and my room looks more like a kindergarten room ready for the new school year to begin.

I need to do something and quick before my date comes to my door and discovers he is taking a girl from an Edward Hopper painting out for pizza. I throw a hoodie over the Issues chair. I knock over the stack of floppies. I kick my shoes across the room.

I am so uncomfortable now. My room is trying to be messy and trying not to be contrived about it. I am overthinking the floppy disks toppling over. That's normal, right? For people to just let them topple and not pick them up?

***

Loverpants and I are picking up the living room before he runs the Roomba. Saturday night ritual in our first year of parenting. I am coming up the spiral staircase and as I step into the living room, I see my foot kicking something across the room. There is always detritus on our floor these days because Baby Girl is apparently preparing for hibernation, as she squirrels away finger foods between her thigh rolls. We are not perturbed by wads of food all over the floor; we sweep several times throughout the day. Or sometimes we don't, because, why? So I look down and am just a flash away from picking up a bite of the Cocoa Rolo cookies I made earlier in the week. But then I ask self why would I have given Baby Girl a Cocoa Rolo cookie? That is not on the approved list of finger foods?

I ask Loverpants, Is this a cookie or...?

He leans over. I nudge it with my foot. It's hard all the way through.

He picks it up with a scrap of paper. Smells it.

"It's definitely poop."

We will not even begin to explore how it got there.

A new age of injustice: Chutes and Ladders

I know that Chutes and Ladders has had to make some serious reparations over the years. People (who enjoy counting) figured out that past iterations of the game rewarded the behaviors exhibited by boy characters on the board more than girls. I am sure we could stack a great many other racist, sexist, and ageist allegations against C&L, but for $5 at Tarjay, I was thinking this was just a really solid investment. Plus, if you lose the game pieces, you can just replace them with gummi bears, which does not appear to be the case with, say, Wii Disney Princess Enchanted Castle. Little Man really took to C&L and we spent a good 30 minutes or so navigating the acts of service and moral falls of our two game pieces: Punk Rock Asian Girl and Toe-Head Crewcuts Boy. I was impressed that Little Man really got the concept of direct consequences for certain actions, because he kept landing on spaces where he was "just thinking" at the end of a chute. There are many ponderous faces on the playing board of C&L -- I guess pre-schoolers these days are just emo, yo. We had several good chats about how one did not just land at the movies, one actually has to work to earn a living so she can pay for her movie ticket, and also for that of her son. This did not compel my 4 year-old counterpart to go get a job, so I guess I am still stuck with a high-maintenance movie buddy. Whatevs. It was good bonding time.

Then I really examined the actual crimes and punishments illustrated on the board and I have to say...the government of Chutes and Ladders Land is operating as one really wack meritocracy.

Take for example the longest chute on the board, demoting a game piece a good seven rows for the high crime of reaching for the oft-desired cookie jar.

And yet, the shattered pottery seems to be the worst outcome of precariously perching oneself to get the illicit cookie. It's not the consequence of possibly breaking a bone or being sneaky instead of asking. We're taking chutes to our disgrace because the totally replaceable clay pot we bought on clearance Homegoods is in humpty dumpty pieces.

Then there's the happy-go-lucky lad who rides evil knevil on his two-wheeler, showing off sans helmet. He rides that bike down a measly little one-row chute, and lands with a busted looking eye and only a wheel for a souvenir. Hmm. I'm going to call bologna on the judge here, because if this brazen chap doesn't have a concussion, he should really be doing some hard time. He could have caused a crash and nothing tears down pride of folly more than a long ride down a long chute.

Then, here's a juxtaposition of chute and ladder that seems to have turned the scales of justice upside-down. Yay for baking a cake for your birthday. Yay for eating it all by yourself. Yay for child obesity! As long as you're not spending your idle time reading. Yeegads! Down with literacy. Take that chute on down to where the reader losers go. Only, how can you follow that cake recipe if you can't read I wonder? Ah, that Justice, no wonder she's a blind one.

Oh, and finally we're back with another blondie who also can't seem to keep a steady step. She's trying to balance too many plates at once. We once again revisit C&L's fixation with shattering pottery because blondie rides another long chute to the punitive pit of plateware in pieces. I wish kids would just learn not to unload the dishwasher and not put dishes away, but rather just go eat some cake?

The 5 stages of moving (with kids)

I imagine there are worse things than moving with children. Being buried alive, contracting giardia, getting stuck in spinning class behind the person who ate onions and garlic for dinner last night--these are all worse than moving with children. Moving with children is a special blend of punishment, though, mixing chaos with emotions, pouring it over the ice of having to clean everything, and not being able to find the umbrella for your drink because someone probably packed it with the snorkeling gear. We are nearly at the end of our move, the second move we have made with children, and I have come to recognize that, mirroring the 5 stages of grief, there are

The 5 stages of moving:

1. The Nostalgic Stage You spend precious time gathering and then reflecting on the significance of each possession, thinking about the time you bought that grass skirt and coconut bra on your Hawaiian honeymoon. Nevermind that you will never again be the size you were on your honeymoon. This skirt/coconut ensemble is to be an heirloom, treasured by generations to come! It shall be folded and wrapped in tissue paper and placed in a hope chest, layered between memories and rainbows and lucky rabbit feet.

2. The Selling Stage You have set aside a pile of items you believe to be of great value, that will sell high on e-bay or at a premium on craigslist. You are overjoyed to be doing this because you will net so much money, which you will help defray your moving costs! You have staged each Laura Ashley bedspread in a romantic environment with soft lighting and are just waiting for that big offer to come through!

3. The Minimalist Stage You are relishing this newfound simplicity as you prepare for this move. You find it so refreshing to live minimally, with the majority of your belongings now packed away and neatly marked with the name of the room into which they will be unloaded in your new domicile. You are feeling so much lighter! You are practically Thoreau!

4. The Resistance Stage Your children are starting to resent all their toys being packed away. All of craigslist is flaking out on you, and Laura Ashley didn't even get one bid on e-bay!? The more boxes you pack, the more your yet-to-be-packed stuff seems to multiply. You are starting to lose memory of what has been packed and what you haven't packed and what you actually own or what you gave away through craigslist. You do random headcounts throughout the day just to make sure your children who had taken to playing in boxes aren't actually sealed in.

5. The 'I don't give a flying UHaul' stage You are freaking out. It seems Oriental Trading has exploded in every drawer, with useless trash made in China standing in the way of your move. You have taken to just throwing random crap into any box, bag, or Barbie dreamhouse that will contain it. You are convinced your sanity is buried somewhere deep, within the Christmas decorations, perhaps? Or was it with the coconut bra? Your spouse says, We are not moving the crazy with us, so you throw everything away, vowing to recycle for the rest of your life to reduce the huge carbon footprint you have just made on the way to the landfill. In the end, you move. And there you are, in a new place with all your old stuff. Join us next time for "the 5 stages of moving in." Right now, we're still on stage 1: denial.