Home is the place where,
when you have to go there,
You have to clean it up.
Do I sound bitter? A little, maybe. (Some of the other kids feel the same way, so I’m not the only soul doing the clean up. But it is causing something of a rift between the cleaners and the cleanees.)

My liminal moment? Asking dad what has been going on in my absence. (Did I sound too strident? I hope not...) The house is something of a (relative) shambles...it’s not like I am a perfectionist. So if something violates my meticulously low standards it may in truth be pretty bad. Rick actually blurted out the old “Do you think I’m sitting around all day eating bon-bons?” defense. Yeah, I know what it’s like to have people think that being the stay-at-home parent is like a non-stop vacation. But...he also has no toddlers to watch, diapers to wash or nursing marathons. (I should hope!)

Then there are the disagreements on the schooling front. If the curricula decisions are collaborative, they still fall on dad these days for the actual execution. And the exact content and method are dad’s call. I am bristling a bit over his derision of the idea of the boys maintaining nature diaries as they go about the neighborhood and visit the forest preserve. The fact that I used the exquisiteThe Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady as an inspirition does not mean that I expect the same dainty work or philosophical perspective from the boys. And even I joined in the laughter as he described how Eddie might fill his ‘diary’ with sketches of gladiators, paratroopers and space ships dropping bombs on the unsuspecting. At this point I don’t care. Just so he sketches some wildflowers and butterflies in between. Soon to be published: The Edwardian Diary of a Suburban Lad by one Master Edward von Huben.