Toys Fall to Pieces

I’ve never been a neat person.  My mother, my wife, and my college roommates can attest to that.   In fact, my cleaning philosophy has always been never be the neatest person in the house.  When you are the neatest person in your house, messes start to bother you before anyone else. You are the first to start cleaning and you spend the most time cleaning.   Recently, two roommates moved into our house and unfortunately I’m neater than both of them.  In two quick years, I’ve moved from messiest in the house to second neatest--not a comfortable place for me to be.

It’s not even so much that I want the house to be cleaner; it’s just that the scattering of toys is really starting to stress me out. For example, Chase enjoys playing with the colorful stacking cups.  Let’s say we start the day with all eight of them in our family room.  Between  the travels of both boys, all eight cups will flee to the far corners of our house.    Some cups will make it upstairs, while others hide under couches.  It’s like the boys are preparing an Easter egg hunt for Mom and Dad,   And it doesn’t end with the cups--virtually every toy is modular and comes with multiple pieces.   Suitcase shape sorter with hammer--7 parts.  Puzzle with numbers--11 parts.   Novelty Star Wars Spudtrooper Mr.  Potato Head--12 parts.  That’s thirty parts from three toys and we haven’t even finished breakfast!  Before you say anything, believe me I know that it will only get worse.  I shutter just thinking about the distinctive sound of legos in the vacuum.

The problem with now being in the neater half in the house is the need to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.  Putting all the toys in the toy-box is one thing, but what about making sure all the respective parts have been reunited with the right toys?   Again, I’m not a neat person by nature, but on some level it bothers me when we’re missing pieces of the Thomas the Train railroad.   What if we can’t construct the bridge because one the train tracks is wedged in someone’s crib?  Just think of the potential damage.  I refuse to have that kind of cartoon carnage on my hands. You can see it’s not about cleaning; it’s more of an ethical dilemma. 

In terms of day to day cleaning, we stick to the basics: make sure that everyone has a clean path to their bed and that no one cuts open a foot on a matchbox car.  But every now then, I feel the need to inventory what toys have survived.  I try to make sure Farmer Ted has his tractor, his trailer, his sheep, his sheepdog, and two pieces of hay--that’s 7 parts if you’re counting at home.  Inevitably, 6 pieces will be found quickly; finding the seventh will involve checking the diaper bag, the car seat, outside under the slide, and of course in the impossible to reach crevice behind the TV. I feel like I am perpetually looking for the lost sock in the dryer. Is it worth it?   At times yes.  There are some pieces that are so rare, finding them is a small victory.  Take for example the red hexagon in the aforementioned shape sorter. It’s harder to find than a Ken Griffey rookie card and locating it is an event worthy of a small celebration.

The reality is that any cataloging efforts can’t possibly keep up with  the increased activity of the boys as well as any new acquisitions of toys.  Someday Farmer Ted will lose his sheepdog, and without his sheepdog will probably lose his sheep.   The red hexagon will go too far down the TV crevice only to be found by moving or buying a new TV.  I’m sure some hyper organized parents with label makers won’t lose the red hexagon and as a result their children will graduate with honors.  As long as my sons can room with their neat freak offspring, that’s fine with me.

Six Legged Proganda

With a two year old throwing bananas and jelly on the floor, it was only a matter of time before the ants breached our security perimeter and established an offensive position within our home.    However, after a battle known as “The Labor Day Massacre,” we’ve pushed back the enemy for now.  

There’s not many insects people really like.  Bees sting, but they’ve demonstrated their worth through pollination and honey production.  Ladybugs have built strong brand name recognition with their black and red logo.  Crickets and grasshoppers have been associated with good luck and learning kung fu.  Ants, on the other hand, have not really broken through and found their niche with people.

There have been a number of attempts to improve ant/human relations, most notably in the 1940’s and 1950’s.    Targeted specifically at young boys, these marketing efforts aimed to have ants bond with their would-be tormentors at a young age, creating a more positive psychological imprint.   “Ant Farms” were one of the strategies employed.   What a scam this was.   You take a household pest you normally try to eliminate from your home and get people to pay money to now bring it inside their home.   The goal was to promote the ant’s positive attributes: discipline, community, structure.   Also during this era, we see the appearance of Cootie. While supposedly a children’s game, this was nothing more than six legged propaganda.  

These efforts ushered in a period of human/ant détente.  Unfortunately, by the mid seventies a soft magnifying glass market wrecked the post WWII gains, and boy-on-ant violence skyrocketed.  Another PR attempt was made in the late 90’s with the almost simultaneous release of the movies Antz and A Bug’s Life.   As beautiful as the insects were in CGI, the public wasn’t fooled.   Disney sold very few Bug’s Life Halloween costumes and while there was ant royalty in both movies, it was obvious little girls preferred their princesses to be mermaids or French peasants.  The current decade hasn’t seen much movement in human/ant relations.  You may have seen the last Indiana Jones movie, that certainly didn’t help. 

Perhaps I should extend more compassion to my ant neighbors.  The current recession has probably affected ants as well; picnicking is way down and ants are probably traveling farther for less food. This morning I watched as thousands of worker ants marched towards a stray piece of birthday cake in the backyard. Approaching the job from all angles it looked like ribbons of highways jammed with traffic during the morning commute. It was impossible not to be impressed with the levels of coordination and integration.  The only thing missing from this urban setting was a dragonfly helicopter giving the traffic report. As I sipped my coffee and marveled at their little civilization, one thought came to mind, “Where can I get a really big magnifying glass?”

I Need a Staycation from my Staycation

With a looming recession and skyrocketing gas prices, staycations became all the rage last summer. If you’re not familiar with the term, a staycation is a period time when you “vacation” without actually going anywhere.  You stay home, relax, and take in local points of interest.  It may sound simple, but a good staycation should be well planned and carefully executed.   With that in mind, here are some guidelines for you novice staycationers. 

Even though you’ll be staying in your home, you should leave your house and journey back to it.  Imagine your  mini-van overstuffed with  your family of four, your accompanying luggage, dad’s golf clubs, and half dozen fluorescent styrofoam noodles--it’s the essence of the American vacation.  Drive around California’s freeway system for a few hours.  Use all those great parental expressions like, “If you kids don’t knock it off back there, we’re going to turn around and head right back home.”  Which in this case is true no matter what happens. Ideally, one your children should have to go the bathroom at an inopportune time.  While this travel may seem unnecessary, you’re going to have to suspend some disbelieve to make this vacation work.   Buy into the journey; it will make it feel like you’re going somewhere.  Keep in mind: if getting there is half the fun, you’ll need to have a lot of fun on the way there.

Outfit your bedroom with a dorm size fridge secured with a padlock.  This will be your mini bar.  Stash it full of sodas and bottled waters and print up a price list on the outside of the fridge.  I know this sounds a bit odd, but it will  feel like a vacation when your husband startles you as you’re unpacking, “This is outrageous! $12 for a Heineken!”

When it comes to tourist attractions, you’re in good shape if you live in San Diego.   Hit the usual suspects: the beach, the zoo, Sea World, etc, and collect plenty of evidence of your stay.  Document your staycation appropriately in pictures and/or videotape.  Buy 5 T-shirts for $20.   But beyond pictures and souvenirs, a good vacation should produce lots of memories.  Manufacture some memories if you have to; injuries always make for good yarns. Make up new stories about existing scars for the family cannon.

Follow these tips and you’ll experience a first rate staycation the whole family can enjoy.  I’ve happily provided this  advice for free, but it appears others aren’t so generous. In my research, I found actual books and websites about how to staycation.  At some of these websites, you can pay for some staycation ideas. On a Google search of the subject, Travelocity came up in the sponsored results. Hmmm...could it be there’s a profit to be had in this strategy to save money?   Will the staycation industry pull us out this recession?  I don’t know, but I won’t be surprised if I see William Shatner on TV telling me I can name my own price to vacation in my own home.

Happy Critters

Leaf through the stylish pages of home designs in Southern Living, House Beautiful, or even a  Pottery Barn catalog and you know what you won’t find?  Small children. Oh sure Pottery Barn has its own kids division, but I’m pretty sure it’s designed for children that are made out of pottery.  That’s the most likely explanation their children’s rooms are neater than a museum--there is no actual Katie living in the “Lavender Katie” bedroom.   At the pbkids website you can browse an immaculately coordinated and absolutely pristine bedroom design called  “Happy Critters.”    How could the critters possibly be happy when they’re apparently not allowed to touch anything in the room?

In the household battle of order vs. chaos, the toddler lobby has a long standing and loyal allegiance to the latter. Their entropic efforts make interior design a luxury most families can’t afford. Even the best feng shui-ers would have a hard time designing a house with children.   My son doesn’t care that a grouping of three candles on an end table creates interesting visual tension.  He seems more interested in candle throwing that creates parental tension headaches.  So anything breakable, shiny, throw-able, or vaguely interesting has moved to a higher counter where it’s safe...for now.

So there’s no more potpourri or fake fruit adding splashes of color to our living room.   There are, however, sippy cups adding splashes of milk to our couches. But beyond the removal of these accents, we’ve also added various safety devises.  Bulky plastic gates divide up the house, every cabinet is guarded with a obtrusive locking mechanism, and every possible right angle has been bubble wrapped in a foam cocoon.  OK, so we haven’t gone that far, but the point remains that “baby proofing” and “interior design” aren’t uttered in the same sentence.  You can’t walk into Restoration Hardware and find a bronze plated toilet guard or designer plugs for your electrical outlets. You can find a handful of professional “baby-proofers” in your area, but I bet none are certified interior designers.

Perhaps there’s a unserviced market here that’s ripe for a new business enterprise.   Even in this economy, I’ll venture there’s a population of parents that would be seduced by  more prestigious forms of baby safety.  The voice spot would read, “You protected them from danger, now protect your house from the danger of bad taste.”

Ultimately, your home and home decor are reflections of who you are. Jenni and I are new parents and every square inch of our house screams that.  Instead of fighting it, I will embrace the fact that our living room looks like it was designed by Fisher Price.   As a testament to fatherhood,   I will cherish the green crayon scribbled on the floor, especially it that means I don’t have to clean it up.

Open Door

In converting our home office to my son’s new bedroom, I made the decision to upgrade the door to a more interesting raised panel door.   How hard can replacing a door be?  It’s a piece of wood on metal hinges. Just in case, I made a preemptive call to the Cavalry and enlisted my father-in-law’s assistance for the day. Surely, two reasonably intelligent adults should be able to handle a door replacement. During an earlier trip to Home Depot, I learned that manufactured doors come in nice even sizes like 30 or 32 inches wide.   We measured the old door and found it to be just under 30 inches, 29 11⁄16” to be exact. Knowing there were no 29 11/16” doors at Home Depot, I logically concluded doors must be like ceramic tiles or McDonald’s hamburger patties.  Doors, tiles, and hamburger patties  must start out a standard size and then are reduced in the cooking process.   What cooking process a door goes through I wasn’t sure, but somehow I had equated a new door to a quarter pounder.

We bought the door and wouldn’t you know it? My new 30 inch door was exactly 30 inches wide; it had not lost a fraction of an inch in the cooking process. (It turns out there was no cooking process.)  After trimming the door to the proper  width, we realized that the door was also too long.  We could get the door on the hinges, but it wouldn’t close because it was caught on the carpet.  Familiar with my wife’s high standards, I knew she would want the door to operate in both the open and closed positions.  The only concern with cutting the length of the door was that today’s prefabricated doors are hollow.  If you cut too much off one end, you risk hitting the hollow center. Shaving off incremental shims of door, we cut and refitted and cut and refitted.  Still caught on the carpet.   And then just like the number of licks to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop, we hit the center of the door on our third pass.   Except it wasn’t sweet and chocolatey.  It was dark and barren and it’s emptiness mocked me.  My carpentry efforts had produced a hollow door with the opening at the bottom.

I’ll save you the gory details, but in the end the door was successfully installed. While this story has a happy ending, it goes to show how home improvement is a tempting mistress. For whatever reason, I was predisposed to take on the labor, sweat, frustration, sawdust, and new tool expense of replacing a perfectly functional door with another perfectly functional door. Every night before bed, my son  walks into his room and closes the door.  It’s very cute.  As we read a bedroom story, I admire the door to a degree I’m sure no one else will.  As I shut off his light I can’t help but notice how the ceiling fan doesn’t match his new jungle-themed room.  This white one looks like it belongs in an ice cream parlor; clearly we need a more tropically inspired ceiling fan.  How hard can that be to replace? 

 

The New Halloween 101

For a child raised in the suburbs, Halloween is more than just about maximizing the high fructose corn syrup in your system, it's about learning valuable lessons.  Not overt lessons, mind you--just subtle steps in the American acculturation process.  Here’s a sampling of what one can learn from All Hallows Eve:

Lesson #1:  First impressions count. Most Halloween door answerers aren't stupid.  Based on anticipated door traffic, they've budgeted the appropriate amount of candy to last from the afternoon toddlers to the annoying teenagers that show up at the end of the evening dressed up as…teenagers. While their bowl of treats is carefully meted out, there's some play in distribution.  A dimpled princess or extra charming cowboy might just earn a second Mars bar. The best way to earn bonus Halloween riches?  Be punctual, have a cute costume, and really sell, "trick or treat."  This is the same advice I would give someone applying for job:  be on time, dress appropriately, and speak clearly. Think of Halloween as building good job interview skills.

Lesson #2:  The American Dream is alive and well.   By the time you’re in third grade you’ve learned the most important Halloween truth: the more houses you hit, the more candy you get.  Office politics may dictate promotions, but on October 31st  hard work is measurably and tangibly rewarded.    And while your local government may redistribute the wealth (Dad steals your gummi bears), the trick-or-treater retains the lion’s share of the profits. You may see witches and goblins; I see future capitalists.

Lesson #3:  Halloween teaches kids about real estate.  As a child, your real estate knowledge consists of playing Monopoly and owning doll houses. But at Halloween you start to make some pretty important evaluations about the real estate market and the value of different houses.  Kids learn quickly  that the house with no lights on equals no candy. Consider it the first lesson in curb appeal.   Secondly, as you progress into your trick-or-treating career, you learn which houses are traditionally more rewarding than others.  You know who on the block gives out full size Snickers and who doles out sugarless gum.  The savvy Halloween veteran may even leave his neighborhood to find a “better” neighborhood where they give out “a better class” of  candy.  Location, location, location.

Some teachers decry Halloween for the toll it takes on learning.  The day after is not a great teaching day with many students recovering from sugar highs or just plain tired.  While teachers may feel that students aren’t learning their lessons on November 1st, they can rest assured there was plenty learned the night before.

Control

You might remember my earlier claim that the disposable battery industry is secretly running this county.  There may be macroeconomic or geo-political explanations for the rise in gas prices, but I’m sure the Cooper-top Lobby is  behind it.  If they and their pink percussion-playing friend have their way, gas will become so expensive, drivers will opt for battery operated vehicles playing right into their fiendish hand. Another conspiracy they’ve shielded from the public--an unsavory partnership with electronic manufacturers to litter our home with a remote controls--siphoning our wallets; two double A’s at a time. 

But truth be told, I’m a willing participant in this ruse. I would estimate that I easily have 15 to 20 remote controls in my home right now and I need and love each and every one of them. They range from the obvious and fairly useful: DVD player and garage door opener, to the less necessary: ceiling fan, to the absolutely baffling: baby mobile remote. But all of my remotes, the television has, is, and will always be king.

It almost brings tears to my eyes when I think about how the technology of the remote has helped me watch sports more efficiently.   Back in the 70’s, I would sit next to the warmth of our giant faux wood encased RCA flipping back and forth trying watch two playoff games.  In between plays I would violently throw the knob in an effort to quickly traverse the desert of static between the network oases. I always wondered why there were channels of static between the networks and why the volume of the static channels was exponentially louder than the normal channels.   Now, armed with my trusty remote guiding satellites across the sky, I have the ability to watch every football game on any given Sunday.  I can stop and start the action, look up statistics, and never watch a commercial.  Sure, I’ll admit it: the remote is a great outlet for my Napoleon complex.

My house has a typical gender driven remote policy; my wife has court appointed remote visitation rights when I’m not at home.  It’s sexist and very unfair but I know genetics are to blame. Along with the inability to ask for directions, the need to hold the remote is encoded in the male DNA. To deny our desire to watch five programs at once to to deny the very thing that makes us men. Is it a coincidence that the Y-chromosome is named for a letter that looks like an old TV antenna? I think not.