By Melodee This afternoon, my husband drove our mini-van past a beige house with a tall evergreen tree crowding the front lawn. “You should take a picture,” he said. “I can’t take a picture. The people living there would think we are so weird!” I said. Besides, I don’t need a picture to remind me…
Category Archives: Melodee
Don’t Tell Me Things Will Get Worse
By Melodee “Worst decision I ever made,” she said. She spoke of adopting nine children. “Hardest time in my life,” she said. She spoke of giving birth to three children in three years. “Just wait until they’re teenagers.” “Small kids. Small problems. Big kids? Big problems.” “I thought age two was hard. But age three…
Happy Childhood
By Melodee I’ve always said I had a happy childhood. I’m not sure why I think that. My parents moved twenty-five times by the time I was five years old. And not just down the street. We moved from Wisconsin to Kansas to Montana and points in between until finally, we landed down in Washington…
Fudge Sauce on Ice Cream (Does Anything Stick To A Kid’s Brain?)
By Melodee First, a recipe. Keri’s Fudge Sauce (I got this from Keri in Wyoming–I don’t know where she got it) 1 cup sugar 2/3 cup cocoa 3 tablespoons flour 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 1/2 cup milk 2 tablespoons butter 1 teaspoon vanilla In a saucepan, mix sugar, cocoa, flour, salt and 1/4 cup of…
How To Win The War Against Terror
By Melodee Today’s task: Sort through last year’s school books, box up the non-consumables, discard the workbooks in the recycling bin, open up new boxes of materials, inventory and shelf them. After I unpacked the new materials from K12.com, I realized that I was missing an entire box of materials. I’d noticed an uneven number…
My Four-Year Old
By Melodee My daughter thought 6:12 a.m. was a fine time to wake up. I thought not, so I rocked her for two minutes and put her back to bed. I think she woke up because she was cold. She was cold because she refused a blanket last night because she is four years old…
On Being A Good Mother
By Melodee I sometimes hear mothers proclaim with great confidence, “I am a great mother!” This is often in tandem with a complaint about a mother-in-law’s meddling ways and criticisms, but still. There are women–mothers–who absolutely know that they are doing a fabulous job. I am not one of them. I worry. A lot. About…
Warning to cute bullies
By Melodee At our private pool the other day, six-year old Grace asked me for $1.50 to buy a snack from the vending machine. She likes the process of choosing a snack and putting in the money more than eating the snack. Feeling generous, I gave her the dollar bill and two quarters. She was…
The Myth of Sleeping In
By Melodee At heart, I’m a pessimist . . . except on Saturday mornings. On Saturday mornings, I somehow trick myself into believing that I will get extra sleep, even on days when my husband leaves the house early, as he did this morning. My daughter wakes up at 6:55 a.m. and I barely open…
Easily irritated or justified annoyance? You decide.
By Melodee Last night, while I rode my exercise bike and concentrated on the tiny print of Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady (which is taking forever to read) I may have been a little snippy when I asked my husband to, “TURN DOWN THE VOLUME!” of the television. He pointed out that I am…