It’s amazing how quickly I fall out of the habit of writing. A few busy days, a (routine) doctor appointment (or two), news of company coming, an afternoon nap, and whoosh, my carefully planned writing time just shrivels up and blows away.

But I’m here to take it back! To reclaim my sacred writing time! To force myself to sit down and write! Because just because I like to write doesn’t actually mean I like to write. Know what I mean?

I made it through the weekend of camping and managed to enjoy myself at the same time, which is a minor miracle, all things considered.

I didn’t sleep (much) the first night and then spent Saturday morning laughing and crying (the theme of the weekend was Laughter and Lament and the speaker delivered a hefty dose of both) so I ended up getting that wicked headache I was so afraid of. I took the pills, and they dulled the pain, but just.

For me, the best part of the weekend was watching my kids have a blast while not actually having to watch them. This was the first year they were independent. They ate and played and showered with their peers. (Okay, so we helped the littlest out with some of that stuff, but just.)

There were many, many, many occasions where I was able to fully sink into a conversation with other adults. Any time I was away from my kids (which was much of the time) or conversing uninterrupted with another adult (again, much of the time), I kept squealing to myself in my brain, “My kids are nowhere in sight and it’s totally okay!” It was kind of like poking at the proverbial sore tooth, but the opposite of that. A jolt of happy, not pain.

(A word to parents with young children that still need their butts wiped: when the little leeches de-leech, it is absolutely and totally the most wonderful thing ever! The agony and mind-numbing routines you are going through now will only heighten the feelings of ecstasy once you are set freeeeee! Believe me, tired friends. It is glorious.)

One thing I learned about camping: my husband—the guy who always picks on me for being such a stick-in-the-mud, anti-camping-and-roughing-it homebody—fussed even more than I did about going rustic. I’d be holding real still on my half of the air mattress, willing myself into the land of nod, and the entire time my husband would be delivering a running diatribe. Stupid air mattress….can’t get comfortable…the ground would be better…it’s hot in here….I’m sticky….everything feels wet…. Etcetera. It was rather distracting.

Now we’re back home and the last of the mountainous pile of laundry is billowing merrily in the breeze. We’re acclimating to being in each other’s space, 24/7, with no friends, ponds, woods to entertain us. It’s going okay, for the most part, though there was that one incident where Daughter One smacked Daughter Two in the mouth and knocked out her (loose) tooth. Once the blood and hollering subsided, I started chuckling (cue more tears from Daughter Two) and couldn’t stop. Then when Daughter One apologized, she quipped “and you’re welcome,” and Daughter Two (once she saw the humor) replied, “I forgive you. And thank you.” Oh my!

But let me tell you, there’s nothing like a mouthful of blood and a flying tooth to make you feel like you’re raising barbarians… (and then a tooth fairy no-show to make you feel like you’re losing your mind).

Oh yeah, and speaking of injuries. At camp, my oldest son ran through a door that wasn’t open.

When our friend reported the incident to us, I had two reactions.

1. “Is the door okay?”
2. Hee-hee-hee— “Wait. Is he okay? Yes? Not crying?” HEE-HEE-HEE-HEE-HEE-HAW-SNORT. I nearly fell off my metal folding chair.

This same time, years previous: lemon butter pasta with zucchini, hot chocolate, brown rice, white rice, and Indian chicken, pear-red raspberry coffee cake, family pictures

Popping in quick to tell you it’s kind of sunny outside and we’re going camping as a family (and with the rest of the church as witnesses) for the first time EVER. (I think.) Yours truly is going to sleep (ha!) on the ground in a tent in the forecasted crash-boom storms for two nights in a row and then attempt to not bite anyone’s head off for the rest of the weekend. I’m packing Tylenol for the aching muscles I’ll be sure to get from my bed of sticks and stones, and for the killer caffeine withdrawal headaches I’m hoping I won’t have. Wish me luck.

In other news, I made the cake that’s in the most recent issue of Bon Appétit.

I followed the instructions perfectly—except for the part where I subbed in a blow torch in place of a kitchen torch and set the icing on fire a handful of times, what a blast!

But, problem is, no one really likes the cake. There’s black pepper in the frosting and, while creative and kind of yummy in a surprising sort of this-really-IS-devil’s food! way, it is a bit much. Plus, none of us like the crunch of cacao nibs in the cake. Wow, such a tender cake and—CRUNCH, CRACK—oh my, what was THAT?

There were good things about the cake. Like the tablespoon of ground espresso stirred directly into the batter. And the ultra-smooth texture of the chocolate cream. And the fact that the cake was decadent without being overly sweet and rich. And the torched icing—now that was awesome. Fun, artsy, and dramatic, yay!

All things considered, though, the devil can have his cake.

This same time, years previous: fruit-on-the-bottom baked oatmeal, grilled salmon with lemon butter, oven-roasted shallots, drying pears

My husband knows a lot of tricks. He knows how to say just the right thing to make me boiling mad. He knows how to make me purr like a cat with a surprise shoulder massage. He knows how to jack up houses and make the car run when it’s broken. He knows how to bake an apple pie. He knows how to fold a shirt (and soon after meeting my mother, he liberated her from the bondage of wrong shirt folding).

Which is another trick he knows: how to think he always know how to do something better than other people.

Problem is, he’s often right.

I don’t know about you, but I was raised to clean a room in the most traditional of ways.

1. Generalized pick-up.
2. Dust, from high to low.
3. Floors.

My husband doesn’t do dusting (he thinks it’s unnecessary, instead preferring to better insulate the crawl space so dust doesn’t keep blowing up through the floorboards—I guess you could call it Big Picture Dusting?), and when he vacuums, furniture gets tosses helter skelter in his attack on the linty floor crumbs.

However, it’s his pick-up skilz that I want to talk about. They’re tricky smooth. He can clean a room more thoroughly, more efficiently, and more quickly than anyone I know.

Here’s how he does it.

Step One: He enters a child’s pigsty—I mean, bedroom.

Step Two: He looks about him, at the mountains of clothes, bits of paper, scissors, pens, needles, cups of water, books, feathers, pillow stuffing, string, plastic toys, stuffed animals, empty boxes, decapitated glass figurines, Sunday school art projects, scarves, games, puzzle pieces, and underwear, and…

Step Three: He roars loudly, angrily, frustratedly because getting emotional and angry is key to good deep clean—you must HATE the mess. He shouts: THIS IS A DISASTER! YOUR ROOM IS FULL OF CRAP! THIS IS COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE!

Step Four: And then—here we go, people, it’s Trick Time!—he throws everything that is out of place into a pile in the middle of the room. It’s brutal. It’s swift. It’s— Hey! The room is clean! (All except that mountain there in the middle of the floor. Shall we name it? How about… Crap Mountain?)

Step Five: With the meek owner of the messy room at his side, he begins to methodically dismantle the pile. Some of the things he might say while wading through:

“Do you NEED this?”
“Will you ever actually USE this?”
“Where does THIS go?”
“Fold up these clothes and put them in your drawer—good grief, you’d think you were born in a barn.”
“These papers are trash, right? Please tell me they’re trash. Your room will look so much nicer if they’re gone. Yes? They’re trash? Good! RIIIIP. If they weren’t trash before, they’re trash now!”

And that, my friends, is how to clean a room using The Pile Method.

I’ve taken his method and adapted it to suit my needs. I call it The Wash Basket Method. When a bedroom needs to be cleaned, I send the child upstairs with a wash basket and orders to fill it with all the junk on the floor. Once filled, the wash basket gets hauled, thumpity-thump, down the stairs to the kitchen where I help sort and organize and the child runs hither and yon putting everything away.

The genius of this method is that…
*it cleans up large sections of room in mere seconds
*it centralizes the mess in a neutral location
*it removes distractions (like, I wonder how high I can stack these seashells)
*it provides a clear ending, i.e., an empty basket

Of course, all this would be much easier if the kids would just put the freakin’ stuff away to begin with. But they don’t and I’m not going to go around banging my head against the wall for the next ten years over it. I’d rather save myself the headache and hand them a wash basket.

Actually, that’s a lie. I still get headaches over their messy rooms, but a wash basket and an Aleve do make a killer team.

And if all else fails, I can always send my husband in to work his magic.

This same time, years previous: almond cream pear tart