Tribal

You’ll have to excuse us at the Fun Apartment this month. We have birthday fatigue. Our Little grew a bit bigger a week or so ago and, well, the jump from four to five required quite a lot of effort and energy.

See, in New York, it is hard to just . . . have a birthday party. At least, it is hard to have a birthday party attended by more than one child. So we have been putting off whole the “birthday party with your friends” business because, well, there are difficulties to be faced. But we thought, if we kept it small in stature and size–only his three close friends–then it might just be manageable.

The main difficulty, as it always is in New York City, is space. It is at a premium, especially around the Fun Apartment where one kid coming over for a play date creates a standing room only situation. Also, all of our extra chairs are broken in various eyebrow-raising ways. We could go outside, of course. There are parks and playgrounds, but these will probably be too cold to sustain a party longer than half an hour — what poor planning to have winter children! We could try an expedition party and head off to some fun destination, but then one has to schlep a cake and gifts through the zoo or a museum, while still keeping track of the guests. (Telling another parent that you are sure that you saw their child somewhere in the room with the giant whale, an hour previous, tends to put a damper on budding friendships.) And our local restaurants will demand a rather exorbitant fee for the disruption that a party of five-year-olds would provide. Or they might just laugh in your face.

So our inner party-planners were stymied, and decided to sleep on it. That is, until we realized that the ideal party space lay not two feet from our sleeping heads! Our beloved neighbors recently decamped to Brooklyn in order to accommodate two new roommates: twin girls. Their apartment–Ready to rent! You could live there!–was standing empty. So they graciously allowed us to have a riotous party in their former living room.

Space problem resolved, we tackled the problem of theme. If only indecision could be considered a party theme. An early birthday present of a woolly mammoth convinced the birthday boy that an ice age-themed party was his heart’s most intense desire. But, just like last year, after I had already bought the sharks, he changed his mind, a mere five days before the guests were due to arrive. Wild Kratts, he insisted, was his one and only party idea. While I love these crazy bros, I was not so eager to embrace this new idea. But, because, I am able to see the bright side of everything, I did not collapse into a(nother) screaming panicking fit. Instead, I patted myself on the back for my foresight in accidentally holding onto our amazon prime membership I signed up for to get the Christmas presents here on time. (How was I to know that you had to actually cancel after the one month free trial??) Smart by accident again!” I congratulated myself, while clicking on the free two day shipping button! Soon, small quantities of various animal print goodies arrived at our door.

(Although, I will pause here to concur with a friend who thinks that it would be good for us all as a society, if we agreed to give up on this whole goody bag thing. Although I do like the idea of giving presents on one’s birthday, instead of expecting them. But what to do with all those random little items? I have a special bin, specifically for “small toys we got for free somewhere!” Perhaps I sort too much. At any rate, I digress too much.)

I even managed a crafty type thing I’ve been intending to do for years. “I know!” I thought. “I’ll clean out all these random broken crayons and melt them down into rainbow crayons! They’ll be perfect for the birthday party! They are recycled! There may now be room in the crayon bucket for all the crayons! I am a such a domestic demi-goddess / mad genius!” Naturally, this project was a disaster start to finish. After I wore my fingernails down to brightly colored stubs, the Mister asked “Why didn’t you just soak them to remove the paper?” Luckily we didn’t have to go to the emergency room to remove the crayons I stuffed up his nose. Chopping and melting the crayons was easy, but Martha Stewart neglected to mention that this process turn your previously-serviceable muffin tins into a brown field super fund site. And the rainbow crayons, while kind of cool looking, only color on one side. And they looked so interesting and unrecognizable that one unfortunate party guest mistook them for a colorful snack.

Me love cookies.

But despite my domestic demigoddess failings, it was a wildly, successful birthday party. And it was grand! My son and his three besties ran rampant. We opened the door to the Fun Apartment, and the door to the neighbors’ cool, enormous empty apartment and the guests immediately sorted themselves. The kids dove headlong into the Fun Apartment, pulling down every toy bin in reach (and a few I’m not entirely sure how they got to),  while their parents enjoyed some adult celebrating in the cool whiteness of the neighbors’ apartment. I have always maintained that the secret to a good kid’s party is in the cocktails. Thus, I found myself at Chelsea Wine Vault asking the rather unlikely question: “What wine would you recommend for a five year old’s birthday party?” They picked a winner!

“Should we go check on the kids next door?” I asked, setting down my wineglass. This naive statement earned me such withering looks of pity–looks that said “No, of course not, you foolish woman. They are fine and will find us if they are bleeding.”

“I could really get good at this parenting of increasingly independent children,” I thought, passing the bottle around again.

The lads eventually joined us to wrestle in a large pile at the center of all that empty space. Then they invented a game that involved throwing their inflatable animals at each other. I’m sure it was something totally sanctioned by the Wild Kratts: Living Free and In the Wild!

 

Keep on creature adventuring!

Our guests stumbled home when the threat of bed time began to loom. I even thought about how fun it would be if we woke up in the morning with the three extra kids in residence. But alas, or luckily, they all departed for home–hopefully two steps ahead of an impending meltdown.

But by the time the school birthday party rolled around, I had run out of celebration stamina. Fridays are rough around here anyway and when you throw in attempting to make rice krispie treats with uncooperative marshmallows, let’s just say that the bloody decimated bodies of Snap, Krackle, and Pop, or those of their bastard cousins from Trader Joe’s, were littered throughout the Fun Apartment’s kitchen. I kept expecting the Keebler Elves to show up with some crime scene tape. And I showed up late at school anyway. But at least nobody took a bite of the rainbow crayons.

Another reason to celebrate: this little guy’s birthday is also a party for all of us Fun Apartment residents, because it was on his first full day in the world that we decided to move back to New York, in a post-natal haze, with only a vague sense of, oh who the hell knows what to guide us. “If New York is in your heart,” said a friend, ” then that is where you need to go!” But for the longest time after we moved, even we–the Fun Apartment natives–weren’t sure that we had made the right call. After Little’s first birthday–a walk along the high line with balloons–even after champagne, the man of my dreams and I cried a little. “Did we make the right choice?” We asked. After giving up good jobs, an awesome house with lots of space, we weren’t sure we had arrived in Paradise. Instead the Fun Apartment felt more like Easter island. We moved here only to accustom ourselves to ever-increasing, ever-more expensive hardship. “Will he ever have a birthday where we don’t cry ourselves to sleep, in between kicking ourselves?” We wondered.

The long view won out, of course. This month, along with the Little’s birthday, it felt like we actually celebrated our 5th anniversary of Fun Apartment living, rather than just marking it by nodding solemnly at each other. Five years is more than twice as long as we planned to stay, but hey, plans change. We are finding our tribe. And loving it.

 

Containment

With all of the holiday bounty comes another uniquely Fun Apartment moment: finding places to actually put away the new toys, all of which seem to be enormously larger than last year’s toys.

So, first comes the purge. I have been sneaking old stuff out of the fun apartment all week (hey, I’m basically unsupervised all day, what did they think was going to happen?) I have a sort of de-cluttering quirk that allows me to give away basically anything we own, as long as I know it is going to a good home. (The flip-side of this quirk is that I have a lot of stuff we are hanging onto because I just know there is a good home for it out there somewhere. Wow, do I hope my knocked up sister has a boy, because that would clear out half of our basement storage closet in a single shipment!)

Because things can really pile up around here. And I seem to be the only one who raises even one eyebrow at the piles. Sure, we live in a small place, there’s going to be stuff around, but sometimes a girl might want to see some flat unoccupied space, like a table top, without waiting for the accompanying unicorn or blood moon. We heard this study on the radio a few days ago (my bit is at the end) and I was basically jumping up and down pointing at the radio, while the man of my dreams shrugged charmingly at me. But science has proven: I am being neuro-chemically altered–in fact, poisoned!–by all this crap around here! Thank you Science! I am vindicated! Now, I have to go to the Salvation Army carrying these large plastic bags. And, no, I don’t know what happened to your magazines from 1998. Or Thomas the &*$#ing Tank Engine, but whatever happened to him, I’m sure he totally had it coming.

After the purge, more bins. Today I spent $35 on Lego storage. And I thought I was the one getting the bargain. I admit, I have a complicated relationship with this temple of organizational commerce. But it is the only place where I could remotely be considered a pop star. The clerk seemed to have his world-view shaken when I asked for “under-couch” storage bins. “Santa brought me several Lego storage problems,” I explained.

“Lego storage opportunities,” he corrected. They should give that guy a raise.

That’s what we have at the fun apartment: opportunities. Lots of opportunities.

Workshoppy

Now that the holiday craziness is over, I have time to write everything I have been thinking about holiday craziness. So, guess what happened here at the Fun Apartment in Decmber? It was projects! A. Lot. of Projects! We were very busy in Santa’s Sweatshop.

I have no idea why your hammer smells minty. I think you are imagining things.

For instance, there are the Christmas cookies. The fourteen kinds I made this December, and then forbade my household to eat. And now I have lots of leftover, slightly stale cookies. That was bad planning on my part, especially for my new January theme: “cleanliness is next to Momliness.”

White chocolate. Peanut butter. Marshmallows. Grandma was right.

But Midwesterners often express their love through butter. And one thing I love about the holidays, among the bajazillion other things I love about the holidays, is that it is one thousand percent acceptable to invite people over and ply them with cookies and drinks and call it dinner! Cheers!

There is also this job I invented for myself: making embroidered felt ornaments for everyone. I love making them, but I have to make rather a lot, and I am running out of holiday themed items that can be reproduced in felt. Somehow I have a sad feeling that next year’s ornaments will be a mini felt Christmas potholder and roll of scotch tape. (Suggestions gleefully accepted!)

And let’s not forget these dudes. Apparently all the dinosaurs at the Fun Apartment never heard about that whole K/T barrier business. Or I am running some sort of dinosaur safe house in the Mesozoic extinction level event witness protection program.

Also, if I ever hear the words “shutter” and “fly” together, I will start to throw knives around.

But, really, I love all the doing. Because, for us, or well me at any rate, Christmas is just a lot of projects! In fact, the lads and I spent most of Christmas Eve engaged in one sort of holiday craft or another, largely because I needed them to be occupied while I was madly embroidering, and because the YMCA insisted that I spend the day with the boys, rather than dumping them in childcare while I went to kickboxing. But it was fun, because, well, they’re my kids after all, so they love complicated projects.

Because of this tremendous project list, however, I have very little energy to disguise my handwriting to fake correspondence from Elf on the Shelf. I wish he were back in Africa. One wise woman told me recently, “Don’t you know? All magical creatures type!” She’s right. They do (now).

However, we encountered one major holiday problem here at the Fun Apartment: the deplorable lack of good hiding places for presents. In a normal household, people just hide their presents in some secret, out-of-the-way spot. But at the Fun Apartment, those secret out-of-the-way spots were colonized long ago by summer clothes or sea monkeys and therefore cannot possibly accommodate a large Lego set. Mommy had to get creative. Sometimes, I had to rely on the fact that they are not overly curious about the piles of random crap err detritus that seem to form all over the place without any encouragement from me and at a rate that would alarm the CDC. So, I just arranged these piles more artfully around holiday gifts shrouded in many layers of plastic shopping bags. I’m a little discouraged to say that this approach worked pretty well. Perhaps they are a little too accustomed to living cheek by jowl with those random piles. But I spent the whole week leading up to Christmas cringing inside whenever the boys gasped or said “Mommy! Look!” Luckily, though, none  of my stash houses were raided.

But this was also a problem when, at 11:30 on Christmas morning, my older son looked at his payload curiously. “Hey!” he said, poking through his Legos and whiskey for a gift he had already glimpsed bringing it home from school (Damn you Scholastic and your ridiculous packaging, too !) “Where’s my weather station?”

I stopped mid-coffee swig. I had hidden the weather station, and its co-presents, the oft-requested remote control monster trucks, somewhere so secret that I had forgotten its location entirely. But, of course, I couldn’t exactly go on a room to- um, well, a room search anyway, because then I would be revealing all my hiding places and expressly destroying my children’s belief in Santa.

Happily, the lad seemed to accept my snorting coffee out of my nose as an answer to this query, and I was able at last to locate these stray items by surreptitiously searching the one cupboard that I can reach without a ladder. And Santa trotted them at the next Christmas celebration we attended (We had five. Check the Shutterfly calendar: It’s a big family.)

We also made wrapping paper. Every year it gets a little more recognizable as such.

Actually, one of my favorite holiday moments was sitting at Fika with a cup of coffee and a candy cane while I wrote out my holiday cards. Never mind that this cozy “holiday” moment happened on January 6. It still had that feel.

And, your holiday card is (finally) in the mail!

Shelf Life

When we are (okay, when I am) looking for new and innovative ways to clear some space around the Fun Apartment, the answer usually involves the local Salvation Army or more shelves. When considering the bathroom, I figured that toilet paper is generally useful and not really an item one outgrows. So, I began my campaign for some bathroom shelving.

Really, the bathroom is not pulling its weight, storage-wise. I mean, look at the place:

The potty isn’t there anymore, but when it was, it was like having 1.5 bathrooms.

It is practically monastic in there. It’s also acidic, thanks to all the vinegar.

My request for bathroom shelving was hung up in committee for a while. (You know the old saying: if a man tells you he is going to take care of something, he is going to take care of it. There is no need to remind him every six months.)

But, finally after the annual shelving sale at this blank-ity blanking place, and after one weekend of having to kick the work crew out once in a while so I could pee, well, looky here:

Trust me, they are *level*

Now all I need is are some bins, because I don’t really want to discuss the function of tampons with boys of any age, but particularly not those living in my household, aged four and six.

And since this whole shelving thing was working so hard for us, we looked around to see what else we could store on shelves. Here’s what we came up with:

Tiger Sharks! The Giant Squid!

That’s right! Two can sleep more efficiently than one if they are stacked up on top of each other!

This is exactly the kind of sleeping arrangement I wanted when I was a kid, largely due to this exhibit at the Milwaukee Museum. I was fascinated by those the little pretend houses, where curious strangers from the future can peer in the windows. One of them–maybe Dutch? German? Not sure–had a little bed cabinet built in the corner with a curtain drawn across it. I don’t know if English has a strong enough word to express how badly I wanted to sleep in that  cabinet/caboose/magic tent. But, alas, it didn’t happen for me. So, in order to live out my dreams through my children, I seem to have recreated it for the boys.

After all, isn’t this a little bit magical?

Scoot over, kid.

It’s going rather swimmingly. After all, we reasoned, a four year old could probably stand to stop sleeping in a crib, even if we did pull one of the sides off to make it look more like a toddler bed. And–even more thrilling!–at least two square feet of floor space reclaimed! The boys love sleeping in their little compartments and, unlike some of our neighbors, they don’t really keep each other up with raucous parties.

And now bedtime is less fuss, more fun. But we still have to whisper. Eh, I’ll take it.

Grandma Makes Her Move

It was bound to happen sooner or later. But when I was least expecting it, when my back was turned, I was unseated as the family member with the smallest home.  Over the course of mere hours — HOURS — Grandma swooped in to claim my title. After we packed what seemed to me to an almost obscene amount of throw pillows and pretend flowers, she is now cozily ensconced in an assisted living facility.

It was not without some family drama, but Now That’s All Over. I have to say, I could use some assistance in our living. That place looked pretty good to me. After all, we are totally cool with small spaces, and I wouldn’t mind the cafeteria with full meals cooked by someone else. There’s a library with large-print books, all of which seem to be shouting at you from a great distance away. And there’s bingo. I love bingo.

The boys were also very into the exciting new home for great grandma, because it has this terrifically thrilling feature: showers with benches.  

The Shower Scene.

When I called yesterday to check in on how she’s digging her new digs, Grandma regaled me with tales from the day’s field trip. It sounded awesome, and everyone got ice cream cones. But apparently, it takes a really long time to load the bus.

Y’know, Grandma doesn’t even need all the assistance. Nobody has to help her get dressed or change channels for her. She just needs someone to pop in a few times a day and remind her of things. Really, who among us couldn’t use that? Oh, and the food — she can’t really see so preparing a meal that isn’t ice cream can be kind of tricky. This woman is 98, people — almost 99 — and she just needs reminders and somebody to cook for her. That’s pretty great. I only hope I’m still upright when I’m 98. Maybe they will have a room right next to Grandma. . . .

Hey, the door’s always open!

Until then, we’d better stay here, because something tells me that the assisted living facility might notice all four of us racing around the place in wheelchairs and throwing tantrums when somebody else yells “Bingo!”(Me, probably.)

But a girl can dream.

Ten things only people living in micro apartments say

In honor of us staying up to watch David Letterman’s final show, here is a list of ten things. Ten Things one hears at the Fun Apartment:

1. I bought the smaller, more expensive one.

Nobody ask me about how the physical therapy is going.

 

2. Don’t buy a gallon of milk. There isn’t room in the fridge.

There is enough room for box wine, though.

 

3. Your scissors are too loud for nap time.

Monkeys probably shouldn’t use scissors.

 

4. Put your shoes under the bathtub where they belong.

What? They don’t get *that* wet.

 

5. What was I thinking, buying all of this toilet paper?

My request for bathroom shelving is marked as “pending.”

 

6. Sam’s Club? What’s Sam’s Club?

(Sorry, no picture. I really have no idea.)

 

7. Your wallet? I think it is by the sink. Or under the crib. Did you check the salad spinner?

Bingo.

 

8. Let’s go to Yonkers to visit the furniture.

Sigh, I miss our furniture.

 

9. Don’t put your feet on your brother. He’s sleeping.

Do not wake, upon pain of death.

 

10. Hang up your keys! I just cleaned and now the place is a mess!

Does anyone have a good way to clean A LOT of grout lines?

 

(By the way, did everybody realize exactly how late the Late Show is on? No wonder I’m exhausted today: apparently I’m old.)

Spring Breaking.

We did not go anywhere for spring break. And by anywhere, I mean we didn’t go past 6th Avenue. It was a true staycation.

We stayed. We played. We watched some videos. We had a couple playdates. We went to Trader Joe’s. And we did not get bored.

There are several actually worthwhile New York things to do within shouting distance of the fun apartment. And we did none of them. The weather did not know it was spring break, so there was not a lot of outside time. There was hanging in. The man of my dreams worked late. Twice.

And I did not succumb to alcoholism.

I worried a bit before spring break that it would be messy and grim — a true test of survival. But instead it was a nice, low-key week of doing little boy things.

See, being on spring break with girls looks like this:

Not my kitchen. Not my kids.

Being on spring break with boys looks like this:

WWE Cage Match

Or sometimes this:

They grow up so fast that he’s ready to shave.

On Sunday night, as I tried to remember whose lunchbag is whose and which pants belong to which boy, I thought to myself, “Wow! That was easier than I thought! Hey, we did it! Yay! Now, what street is the school on again?”

But then, as I typically do after surviving something stressful, I had a mini-breakdown over nothing after the main event. On Friday evening, I found myself sobbing into a sinkful of dishes, weighed down with angst about never finding a suitable (i.e. paying) job.

But luckily that passed quickly and we sat down to a spur-of-the-moment living room picnic dinner, buoyed by wine and surprise cupcakes provided by the Mister.

After all, this is the Fun Apartment. We can put legs on anything and make it walk.

Monkey See

Recently, the Fun Apartment had a population explosion. And I do mean explosion. Like in the millions. We are completely overrun.

You see, it all began at the Dino-Store. During our monthly pilgrimage to the New York’s most awesomest place of fun for little boys who love animals, science, and large open spaces, we saw a kit for growing sea monkeys.

Happily, curiously, miracle of miracles! I happened to have a kit for growing sea monkeys! Even more astonishing: I knew where it was!

(I wish this would work for my snow pants. Boy, are those suckers cleverly hidden somewhere around here. When I find them, I am going to hide all the Christmas presents there.)

(Also, of course I had a kit for growing sea monkeys just sitting around doing nothing. Doesn’t everyone? Where’s yours?)

So I rescued the sea monkey kit from its cold dark hiding place. And I wish I could convey the thrill that both boys felt over these creatures. We bought the bottled water. We purified. We poured. We added the eggs with bated breath. And we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

This was not entirely wasted time. The boys used this time to plan an elaborate birthday party for the sea monkeys, 362 days hence.

We waited again. We added the food to the tank.

We waited. We fed.

We gave a sea monkey kit as a birthday present to an unsuspecting dear friend turning 6. (Sorry buddy! Great party, though!)

We waited. We fed.

The boys’ enthusiasm did not dim, but I finally began to suspect that we were feeding an empty tank. I began to read up on sea monkeys. At the university lecture, I learned that sea monkeys appear within 24 hours of meeting water. We were now at least a week past that. The sea monkeys were not coming.

But the boys did not notice! See, these are, after all, *my* children. They need no evidence to believe in the impossible, or even the unlikely! In fact, they can completely ignore evidence that runs contrary to their enthusiasm. They believe! They adore! They blithely ignore!

(I shall pause here to wipe away tears of pride.)

Eventually, the Mister and I broke the news to the faithful. They were not exactly heartbroken, especially because I assured them that we would remedy the sea monkey population situation as soon as the ridiculously archaic system would allow us.

And we are not without pets. We have an ancient yet understanding cat. He’s probably the most constant thing in my life. If anyone knows anything about cats who do not live to be 45 years old, keep it to yourself, please. Ironically, it was this feline fellow who offered the solution to the sea monkey problem. By throwing up. All over.

I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with the need to clean up cat vomit, but if you have ever done it, then you know about Nature’s Miracle. And it is a true miracle: you spray it on the vomit stain. And you walk away. And so does the stain. (Loaves and fishes, I tell you.)

But we had let our supply of this necessary tonic run perilously low before the most recent vomiting incident. So one day after school, we headed off to the pet store for . . . several hours. You see, pet stores are like fun houses. They are full of fish tanks, bunnies, lizards, turtles, and, of course, shipwrecks. Because if there is one thing we are really into here at the Fun Apartment, it is shipwrecks. In fact, if you ever find yourself, as I have, in desperate need of a shipwreck model, get thee to a pet store! There have more shipwreck models than pets! So, in between the many attempts to pry the boys away from the wrecks of sparkly pirate ships, I asked the clerk in an offhand way if they carried sea monkeys.

That clerk looked at me blankly, but another clerk behind her said “Yes, they’re right over here!”

Did you guys know you could buy sea monkey eggs at a pet store? Well, you can.

You can buy a lot of sea monkey eggs, as it turns out.

I’ve got the whole world in my hands. . . .

So we brought home our canister of life. The packaging assures me that our goldfish will never want for food again. Never mind, our fish (Happy, Healthy, Hopeful, and Thirsty) all departed the Fun Apartment long ago. Free range sea monkeys, I thought, in a vaguely Whole Foodsish way. None of those farm-raised captives waiting to be slaughtered for us! Those are for the fish whose mommies don’t love them.

So we tried again. I put what I thought was a conservative amount of sea monkey eggs into the tank.

We wai–

“Did you see that?? Look! They’re moving! Yay! Sea monkeys!”

That crytobiosis or whatever is powerful stuff, let me tell you. Soon we were in danger of being overrun by these little suckers. If they had banded together to vote, let’s just say it wouldn’t be the sea monkeys leaving the Fun Apartment.

There was much celebration. In fact, there was rather too much celebration, considering that sea monkey observation time happened just before bedtime. Whispered conversations about marine biology were heard long after lights out.

But maybe my conservative amount of eggs was too liberal. There was definite overpopulation in the tank (and believe me, we at the Fun Apartment know about overcrowding and density.)

We fed this new hungry crew, but that only seemed to make them sluggish. Perhaps brine shrimp eat their young and need no other sustenance?

Then, on Friday morning as we were getting ready for the day, I remembered we were having dinner guests. “Clean something!” I urged the Mister. “Like what?” he asked. “Anything,” I assured him.

So later that day I was mildly surprised to discover the sea monkey tank missing from the bathroom. Hmm. That’s a rather odd choice for cleaning up, but as I’ve noted before he’s not so great at prioritizing when guests are imminent. I assumed he had relocated the sea monkeys to some undisclosed location.

But as the weekend progressed, no sea monkeys made themselves apparent, nor did the man of my dreams know what I was asking about. “Perhaps they moved,” I thought. “Maybe they’ve got a bigger place in Queens. They’ve gone off to make all their little brine shrimpy ways in the world.”

But no. They were here, in the sea monkey graveyard / pile of washcloths that now all need laundering. They must have been knocked over in the morning’s excitement of . . . oh god knows what these boys get excited about, but it isn’t putting their shoes on, that’s for sure.

It was clean washcloths. Now its laundry.

And so, we begin anew. The sea monkeys shall (hopefully) rise again. Maybe I can put them in charge of something. Like meal planning.

I hope they like their water salty.

Hmm. I did not know I had more than one thousand words to share about sea monkeys. Motherhood changes one so.

 

 

 

 

Clutter

The magazines I was supposed to read in January are getting a little bossy.  “Lose Your Clutter Now!” they tell me. “Start the New Year Clutter-Free!” “Organize Your Bathroom!”

Really, I feel like the bathroom is the only room I can organize. Perhaps this is helped by the fact that it’s minuscule and I am not super girly, so there are not a lot of products in there. But I do wonder why four people need four different kinds of toothpaste.

But do they need to be so bossy about it? They don’t live here. They don’t know how it is here on the ground.

Ok, I admit, there’s a clutter problem  at the Fun Apartment. But the magazines don’t seem to understand that microapartments are immediately cluttered by the simple proposition of setting down one’s keys or owning possessions. The Fun Apartment is really &%^#ing small. I can clean the place up within the limits of possibility. But then I do something crazy, like get the mail and the whole thing starts all over again.

Also, there never seem to be any kids in the magazines. I mean, even if they have kids, they don’t have real kids. The kind that play with toys. The kind that are a little bit like rock stars at hotels. The kind who consider a day without the lego bins dumped out a day not fully lived.

I might be part of the problem, too. After all, I have a natural inclination to keep stuff I like. And then there’s the Mister, who would prefer that I not mention him in this post, lest the producers of Hoarders be trolling around for material. But really, how many pith helmets does a man need?

Trust me, I’m a believer in the latest home organizing religion: bins. But we’ve run out of shelves for the bins. So the bins just float around like lifeboats for the couch.

More bins! Different bins! Lots more bins! Well, eventually one reaches a point where one believes that this is all just some Container Store shakedown. Also, I haven’t really seen a bin in the shape of a rocking giraffe, or an old typewriter, or a basketball hoop. I think they’re missing an opportunity there.

But the magazines of January make one quite purge-ish (in non-eating disorder and non-Stalinist ways). So we’re condensing the whole Pandora’s Unit of our storage situation. Countless hours of fun, I assure you.

But I might have discovered a solution to keeping the Fun Apartment clutter-free.

I’m sure Mommy will be back any minute now. . . .

But it wouldn’t be fun anymore.

So, Clutter, it looks like you’ll be sticking around a while. Make yourself at home.

But, as one reader suggested, I am going to get rid of the magazines.

Hey, thanks!

Now that the rest of the world has moved on to some new holiday, I thought I’d reflect on the last one, because I come late to every party.

Here’s how we celebrate Thanksgiving at the Fun Apartment:

I better get a rake. . . .

Throughout November, every night at dinner. we each say what we’re thankful for that day, and write it on a leaf. So the tree starts out bare and ends up full of happy-thanky little leaves. It’s like watching Fall happen in reverse. I’m not sure where I got the idea, but I probably stole it from a magazine.

And it’s kinda fun! When we started, the oldest could barely articulate his thanks, and I think his leaves usually featured “Mommy” or “Cake.” But now he can write his own thanks, complete with illustration! And I do think he (mostly) grasps the concept of being thankful, even if he isn’t thankful for the usual suspects (Quick Poll: is anyone else in the world thankful for shipwrecks? Just checking. . . .)

Our younger fellow is now in the early stages. Most of his leaves maintain that he is thankful for “Lightning McQueen” or some other inane thing for which I am decidedly unthankful. But we’re getting there.

And it does help, after a wretched day of whining or after-school meltdowns, to pretend to be thankful for something. Because, usually it leads to being actually thankful. And if not, hey, fake it til you make it.

So, did we host a 14 person dinner here at the Fun Apartment? Not with our four chairs we didn’t. Instead, we joined some family upstate in a rambling house that slept all fourteen comfortably. It was like a wonderful dream! There was turkey! There was a fireplace! There was wine! There was snow! There were leftovers! There were games! There was more wine! It was a very “It takes a village” situation, because every time my kids wandered into the kitchen, someone fed them. And one day we all stayed in our jammies until nightfall, when we went out sledding. That may have been one of the best days ever.

The house was so big that I sometimes went hours without seeing my kids. They were content to play with their cousins, and seemed to never know boredom. It was brilliant, but I also kind of missed them. And by the end of the weekend, they were kind of falling apart. It was as if so much freedom made them dizzy. Despite all the tremendous good times, I think we were all kind of glad to be snuggled up together back here.

So, as always, I am thankful for the Fun Apartment.