How hoarders are made.

{Observed last week, as we were making final preparations to leave our house.}

Mike:  So, you don't need to go over to the house today, I got the kitchen cleaned.  Everything is out, except for a pile of wood in the garage, and I'll get that later.

Me:  What kind of wood?

Mike:  I don't know, it's wood.

Me:  Are they like planks?  That I could paint and write sayings on?

Mike:  Yeah (tentative pause)...I guess.  But technically doesn't that describe ALL wood?

Me:  No.  Or maybe...yes.

Mike:  You're going to paint these and hang them where?  We're not talking about nice wood here.

Me:  But you could sand it, right.

Mike:  And where will you put them, exactly?

Me:  Anywhere!  Tops of bookshelves, dressers, on the kitchen counter!

Mike:  And this is why I'm terrified that you aren't going to get rid of anything.  EVER.

Ohmygod, he's right.  I am CLINGING to old wood planks, even though I'm pretty sure they sell those for free in dumpsters.  But in the midst of all this change and uncertainty, my tendency is to run toward something that I can control with a bottle of acrylic paint.

I have TWO PODS worth of crap that will be upon me in a few short days, and aside from my couches, I can't think of anything I need.  Particularly in an old house that is light on closet space.  We have lived with a hanging bar in our dining room for the past eight months, but I think that most normal, functioning adults DON'T decorate their living spaces with business suits.  And we need to pretend to be normal and functioning, because there are new neighbors to impress!  With my painted wood planks, no doubt.  People in Kirkwood love that kind of thing.

Also on my to-do list:  Convince my nine-year-old that it is unneccessary to sleep with every empty vitamin container and empty Sam's Club box she can get her paws on.  Because *obviously* this is a genetic condition.

Sometimes the freedom of choice is EXHAUSTING.

It's a universal truth:  Choices are like bricks, drowning me in orange (or blue?) tables and school districts and furniture arrangements.  Well, that's the case in my universe, anyway, but I realize that we don't always revolve around the same sun, and it's endless expectations for housewivery, and mothering and general sainthood.  Some of you can actually manage to DECIDE things, without hoarding your choices in a lovely ocean of simple choices and never-ending projects and to-do lists.

Choices mean I don't make the same dinner in an eight-week period, and they keep me running to five different grocery stores a week to find the best produce at the cheapest prices. They sent me to Hobby Lobby, Target, Walmart AND TJ Maxx, searching for the *perfect* melamine plate this week.  Lately, I have been easily overwhelmed by choices in suburbs and school districts and proximity to community pools, and floor plans and full basements and third floor spaces with dormers.  Would I like a house with a large hearth room on a small lot, or a small and efficient house on a half an acre?  Will they be safer in a cul-de-sac than a corner lot?  The pressure to decide if my kids would be happier with a large yard or a great playroom is enough to violently drown me in the possibility of where, exactly, I will hang fabric buntings.  

That's the funny thing with getting what we want--the temptation to think it isn't enough.  Because too many choices manipulate us into believing there is something else, something more, something better, something that costs less.  

Today, I am struggling with the endless tide of choices.  Yes, the big ones are made--the house is *almost* ours, the plans are in beginning to fall into place to switch the kids to their new school, the PODS are being delivered, our boxes are being packed.  Today my choice is whether or not to send Little J to full-day kindergarten; a choice I've already made once.  The school we are moving into has just one, full-day class--and it tends to fill up on the day of registration--so I had always ASSUMED (fyi, every single assumption I had regarding this move has been WRONG) that he would be in a half-day class, and I've settled into that idea.  I've become used to having seven hours a day to get stuff done check facebook, and yet the idea of having him at home with me for part of the day is...appealing.  There's some stuff he could use work on, and I'd be able to help him and give him my full attention--even though, let's face it, I am romanticizing how this will play itself out.  At the end of the day, however, it's really my last chance to have a kid at home, with me.  Except!  He's in full-day now, and he likes it.  It would give him more hours to get used to his new school and make friends.  It will allow me to write (or unpack or check facebook, or run).  It will keep everybody on the same schedule.  


There are great arguments either way, so how do I KNOW?  I feel like I've made so many decisions--so many QUICK decisions--that I'm finding myself paralyzed with choices.  And it's all so freaking insignificant, and also so INCREDIBLY AMAZING that we even have options--and yet it feels like drowning.  Particularly as we play out these last couple of weeks at a school we love, and realize that we are CHOOSING to leave it, and it feels CRAZY and MANIC, even though we are only talking about moving two miles down the road, and not sailing a house boat in Arkansas.


Someone just tell me what to do.  And....GO.

The homemade granola stage of my life's story.

Mike has dubbed this my "homemade granola stage", similar to one he experienced in the mid-80's with my mother-in-law.  This is offensive on MANY levels, mainly because this isn't a "stage", so much as a lifestyle choice--if that's what one would call it after whipping up ONE, singular batch of granola.  And also, it is a universal truth that daughter-in-laws need to believe we are doing things DIFFERENTLY than our husband's mother, or else it feels like a gigantic Stepford-like experiment in cloning.  


I found the recipe on Pinterest (link HERE).  Freaking Pinterest--there isn't a single idea that hasn't already been glue gunned or bedazzled, and Pinterest will prove it.  You can no longer sport a wooly-mammoth skin, without finding it on Pinterest first, and then having it labeled as your "Lady Gaga stage".


I digress.


In a week or so, the juicer is being returned to it's owner that never uses it, and I will be without a fresh cup of kale/carrot/spinach/rhubarb/apple/orange/lemon juice for breakfast.  Hence, my need to find breakfast alternatives, so that I don't jump back on the Jimmy Dean sausage biscuit wagon (again).  I need to experiment with putting spinach and kale in the blender with frozen fruit (to make a smoothie)--but I fear that if it has any sort of leafy consistency, I will vomit.  Anyone have any experience with that?  The blending, OR the vomiting?  


So this morning, I chopped an apple, added a cup of low-fat vanilla yogurt, a shake of cinnamon--and topped it with the GRANOLA.  Ohmygod.  Apparently, healthy people have been doing this since the mid-80's (what's that?  LONGER, you say?), but I have been on the fat bus to diabetes town, so I am just catching up, people.  But let's call this not-your-mother-in-laws-granola, because my version utilizes a seafoam latte bowl from Anthropologie (purchased, ironically, by my mother-in-law)--because our generation cares about what we look like when we eat, and where our tableware is purchased.  This, friends, makes us bats#! crazy, but DIFFERENT.  


In case you would like to join me in my granola-inspired-by-the-color-of-seafoam-on-Martha's-Vineyard-in-June, here is the recipe:

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Homemade Granola


4 cups of Old Fashioned Oats
1/2 cups Chopped Almonds (I used sliced)
3/4 cup shredded coconut (meh.  I left it out, because I think shredded coconut tastes like wax)
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 TBSP vegetable oil
1/4 cup honey
2 TBSP pure maple syrup
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1-1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup (each) raisins and dried cranberries (I omitted these also, because I wanted a more generic granola)


Combine the oats, almonds and coconut (meh) in a large bowl, and set aside.  In a saucepan, combine brown sugar, oil, honey, maple syrup and cinnamon--bring it to a boil.  Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla.  Pour over the oat mixture, and stir it well to coat.  Spread the granola in a large, shallow baking pan--and bake it at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Cool and add the raisins and dried cranberries.  Store in an airtight container.  


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Welcome to my granola stage, friends.  In the event that you would also like to follow my Martha-Stewart-on-acid stage, follow me on Pinterest (link HERE).  But if you really want to help a girl out, you'll follow me on Twitter (@sdenckhoff), because it's been almost a year, and for the life of me, I can't figure out how to make more people like me on there, in 140 characters or less.  Because you know, I'm kind of wordy.

The laundry is militarizing, and armed with ebola.

I've been a little distracted lately, and as a result it seems that I have ripped a hole in the laundry-time continuum.  In case you are curious, this happens when you wash  a load of clothes, and FAIL to remove them from the dryer, before the NEXT load is done in the washer.  It gets even worse when you take the first load, and immediately dump it on the floor directly in front of the dryer.  And repeat this cycle three times.  Ironically, this equation can also be applied to Duggar pro-creation.  


I don't know WHY I didn't carry the clothes downstairs and fold them.  That would be like explaining WHY the Kardashians are popular, or WHY Snuggie's exist, or WHY I can't find five minutes to shower everyday.  Add to this mystery the fact that we are finding ourselves smack in the middle of the season when I can NEVER FIND ANY SOCKS EVER, which honestly gives me hives on a daily basis.  I will likely live in this kind of despair until allergy season hits in a few weeks, at which time I will *actually* have hives.  On my eyeballs.  


But I will have hives on my eyeballs in a new house, and it will be GLORIOUS.  


At the moment, I am packing the basement--and you with be SO GLAD to know that my 2007 ponytail has been placed delicately in a box of office supplies.  Right next to my post-birthing pads, because I am nothing, if not disgustingly consistent.  I'm actually saving those for some kind of blog giveaway, or birthday present--because I know you guys are TWISTED like that.


And because it's been a while, and I am yet unprepared to share the ending to our housing story, I will expose my innermost demons, and tell you that my weight loss total is anywhere from 8-11 pounds at this point.  Mostly because bloating is an unpredictable BITCH.  I am now so in tune with my body that I can tell by the amount my waist overhangs my flannel pj bottoms, as to whether or not it's going to be an 8 or 12-pound day.  The moon and global warming still factor in heavily with my weight loss; but surprisingly, (mostly) giving up Diet Coke has done jack.  And I miss it, dearly.


But in a little bit, I will be missing it in my new house, and it will be glorious.

I was thinking obvious like a porch with character--not a school door slamming shut.

Now where were we?  Oh right, basically nowhere.  Or everywhere.  I guess it depends on how you're looking at it, and what it means when you are considering 20+ houses with no concrete or obvious direction.


Let me back up a second and tell you that our suburb is divided into FIVE different grade school territories.  This is significant, because up until this point, SCHOOL DISTRICT was the driving force behind all decisions; which, in retrospect is really dumb, because this whole exercise in moving was to figure out what works for our family, and doing so means being open to CHANGE.  Except that we changed G's school this year, and so I was thinking we had already checked that box.  I was wrong.  Life is not a series of boxes, apparently.


Now.  From the very start of this eight-month ordeal, I was told by *people* that once our kids began their grade school career at our particular school (let's call it Hogwarts), we'd be able to STAY there, so long as we were still living in our particular suburb, or school district.  They would bend the rules and let you stay, mostly because "Hogwarts" isn't busting at the seams with kids, and therefore it's not so big of a deal to choose one school over another in our district--except that I'm beginning to learn that everything about suburban education is a big f-ing deal, so whatever.  This was me all young and naive and believing the playground banter.   And it seemed like a bible truth to me, because half of the families that I know up at our school don't live in it's particular territory, but as I was about to learn, opinions expressed during afternoon pick up are not always RIGHT.  


As I was informed, when I approached the principle, who told me I needed to write a letter to the District Superintendent and request to stay.  Ultimately, the superintendent would decide, but Big J & L's class is on the smaller side, and therefore has three very full classrooms--and "Hogwarts" wants to add another class (and teacher), so if our kids leave the school, then that might solve the Superintendent's problem of having to pay for another salary.  You see how that happened?  It just got political.   It's like the Komen Foundation/ Planned Parenthood debate--EVERYTHING is freaking political, people.  It's the nature of society, and to say it isn't is ri-donk-ulous.  I'm not going to change that without creating another whole sub-species of humans that can exist without opinions--and I am WAY too tired for that crap, because who has time to clone while MOVING???


But it's even MORE complicated, because we hadn't ACTUALLY found a house yet.  So I didn't even have a new address to reference, when begging the superintendent to please, please, PLEASE let my kids stay at Hogwarts.  I have 20+ possibilities and an active imagination for placing orange tables within them--but I was seriously doubting that was gonna fly as school-district-worthy criteria.  If we cut our house search down to the three square miles that is Hogwarts "zone", well, that gave us five choices, and again, it just didn't sound like we were giving ourselves any kind of freedom.  It felt a lot like the opposite of freedom, and EVERYTHING we sold our house for, actually.  So, I sat paralyzed and eating baby carrots, because I am still on my diet--but I would very much have liked for them to be bon bons, or Cadbury mini eggs (best. candy. EVA.).


Now is a good time to tell you that I have prayed, RELENTLESSLY, that our next choice would be...obvious.  I think we've established that with enough paint, I could be happy ANYWHERE--which is exactly why I need to know, definitively, what the right move is.  I assumed this would happen just by playing the odds; that of the 20+ houses we were looking at, some owners would want nothing to do with renting, and a handful would.  Once we had that list narrowed down, I figured it would be pretty easy to identify the Lord's hand in all of this, because he would manifest himself as some sort of "nook" or a third floor with slanted ceilings, or a finished basement--and that would be the equivalent of angels descending to earth and blowing trumpets, or something.  I'm joking, but I'm not.  How many of us envision heaven-on-earth as a large Victorian mansion (or insert your particular brand of architectural porn here), REHABBED with granite counter tops, but retaining all of it's old charm?  WTF is wrong with us.


I NEVER envisioned the obvious part of this being the letting go of our school.  Or, more specifically, it letting go of us.  The school I have grown to LOVE, even though I felt completely foreign there last August.  Do you see what I did?  We went forward with changing our lifestyle, and I went ahead and latched right on to whatever I could make mine.  Whatever I could keep and cling to.  Have you SEEN my basement?  This is what I DO, people.  I hoard everything, including schools.


On day three of my stress-induced baby carrot binge, Mike happened to come home for lunch.  For the first time, I asked him how he thought we should move forward.  And he said the words I KNEW he was always thinking, but waited ever so patiently for me to be in a place where I could receive them.  


We needed to look outside of our school district.  We needed to also be looking ONE suburb over, to the school district we thought we would move to when this whole debacle began.  There was NO reason not to consider it, since we had no guarantees that we would be able to be back at Hogwarts.  It was freaking obvious, but not like that charming sun room I was looking for.  


I knew I didn't have an argument, really--and so I jumped on my computer and pulled up listings, and I played my only card, the HEAVY SULK, which REALLY loses it's power in the age of the iPad, because Mike is never actually looking at me anymore.  Now he's looking at me on facebook, and my sulk does not translate there, in real time.  He suggested that I start with properties that were for rent--and then I sulked some more, because properties that are listed for rent are NOT WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR, MIKE.   I say this, because properties that are listed for rent are typically more run down and smaller than would work for us (because renters are generally NOT families with four kids).


And blog world, I KID YOU NOT.  I sighed, and clicked the "search" button, and listed among the ten houses that popped up was OUR HOUSE.  It stood out because of it's street address.  Because I KNEW that street.  Everyone KNOWS that street.  And then I clicked on it's link, and I yelped--and then I panicked, because I KNEW what I was looking at.