The Rug

By request, here is the rug mentioned in my post Save the World With Oxyclean.

The whole thing:
One of the four seasons:

Not sure what this is:

I find it interesting that my house looks nicer than it is in pictures, but I look worse.

Non-Political Controversy

I am going to digress from my usual theme of familial comedy to talk about politics for a moment. Well, I want to talk about NON-politics for a moment. I don't follow politics anymore. Too stressful. I am registered Democrat. I don't believe 100% with the Democratic platform, but if someone who is corrupt and lacks integrity is going to become the leader of the free world, it may as well be a Democrat. However, a female fellow-blogger posted about Ron Paul. Ok, well, his politics sound pretty good. John Edwards, he is a Democrat and he looks like a president anyway. Barack Obama, a little wimpy for me. That leaves us with (for all intents and purposes) Hillary Clinton.

I will vote for Hillary Clinton. Not because I agree with all of her politics, but I don't agree with the politics of any one candidate. I will vote for Hillary Clinton because she is a woman. And in my humble opinion women have an obligation to vote for Hillary Clinton. By 2008 women will only have had the right to vote for 38% of this nation's history. Now we have the opportunity to put a woman in office when we have only been allowed to vote for 90 years. Effie Hobby recently remembered the days of the fight for women's suffrage, she could remember when women could not vote. Note: Effie Hobby would be 110 today, and I cannot find any record of her death.

So I believe women now have an obligation to vote for Hillary Clinton. Because Hillary Clinton will not be remembered for her politics. Hillary Clinton will be remembered for being the first woman President of the United States.

The Cadillac of Minivans

I know some of you must be wondering why I have not mentioned anything about moving. That's because we aren't. At least not right now. Here's why not:

1. I have come to terms in my mind with sending my kids to Catholic school. So what if they don't have science until 4th grade? We have "Science Saturdays" at our house anyway. Yes, Charlie is a quirky kid. That's in addition to having migraines, and possibly epilepsy (it is not as bad as it sounds). He's going to be quirky in public school, too. And besides, they won't have to spend half of Sunday in Parish School of Religion.

2. Charlie's teacher is awesome. Really, really awesome. She's about 24, cute as a button, loves being a teacher and genuinely loves kids. It gives me hope that the principal has a open mind and can move in the right direction as far as staff.

3. Not to be shallow, but we love our house. We have renovated the whole house, hands on, ourselves. We had a beautiful new garage built, and worked on the yard and garden for 9 years.

We made an offer on the house I mention in my post Legos and All, though we had not yet sold ours. It was a very fair offer in this abysmal housing market. The man who owned the home flips homes for a living and needed to sell this one in order to start a new project. Although the thought of owning two homes was scary, Mark did the math (he always does) and we could pull it off for six months. Well, the owner counter-offered with something ridiculous, actually he wanted over asking price. We let the contract lapse.

A few weeks later we were at a benefit gala for a school in memory of a woman we knew who had died recently. We had friends there from church, school, soccer, t-ball. As we spoke to people I kept saying things to Mark like "We can still play t-ball here, right?" and "Of course we'll still go to church here, right?" The husband of the woman who died, who had been bugging us for months not to move, begged us one more time that night. Is was like God Himself shined a light down upon us, and angels sang. Mark and I both had the same thought.

A few days later I called our realtor, who is our friend, goes to our church, has kids in the school etc. and told her the news. We wanted to take the house off the market. It had absolutely nothing to do with her, but that we decided everything else fell into place, and if we needed more living space, heck, we could finish the basement. There was silence on the line. I waited for the disappointment, irritation, veiled anger. It didn't come.

"You don't need a bigger house, Cindy. With three boys what you need is a better car."

Save the World With Oxyclean

I am pretty confident there is nothing I can't clean. I think of it as a battle. Woman versus mess. My Friend Ellie's weapon is Biz Bleach, my mother swore by laundry detergent, but only the suds, myself, I prefer Oxyclean.

My 4 1/2 -year-old tends to barf when he coughs too much when he is lying down. This has resulted in many a soiled bedcover, and if we are lucky he only hits the sheets and not the blanket and comforter. When he was younger, if he had a cough, we would put him to bed with a "barf bucket, " which, I swear, is an old Oxyclean container. Anyway, as of late we feel like he is old enough to make it to the restroom. Difficult, yes, because he doesn't always feel it coming on. The most recent occurrence, he almost made it to the potty.

Allow me to digress a moment. Many years ago my father traveled extensively for work, all over Europe and Asia. He frequently brought back artifacts he found along his journeys. One time, while in China, he saw a beautiful china blue wool oval rug, decorated with images of the four seasons as the artist perceived them. I don't know if you know this, but the quality of a rug is determined by how many fibers are in the surface. You cannot even penetrate this rug with your finger. It's about eight feet by 5 feet, and when we moved to this house, my father graciously gifted the rug to us because it fit perfectly in our center hall on the second floor. You, Dear Reader, are not stupid; you know where this is going.

So, back to the main crux of this tale. One evening I was sitting in the office writing when I hear Atticus' door open and see him run across the hallway. I knew he was attempting to get to the potty, and I was such a proud parent. He barfed a little in the potty, and I repeated "I am so proud of you, I am so proud of you," as he sobbed. Mark came and cleaned him up as I changed the sheets. We finally got him tucked back in, and as I was heading to take the sheets to the basement, I looked down. You guessed it. [WARNING YUCK YUCK AHEAD] In a path from Attie's room to the bathroom was a swath of barf. Chunky barf. I stood there for a moment, wheels turning in my head. I could only think of sending the rug out for cleaning. Then I took the sheets to the basement. The Oxyclean container mocked me from the shelf as if to say "I dare you." I grabbed a bucket, a scrub brush, and a few towels and whipped up a batch of Oxyclean.

[WARNING YUCK YUCK AHEAD] Step 1. With the brush, I brushed the chunks onto the hardwood floor where I could mop them up. Step 2. Using the scrub brush and some Oxyclean (mostly just suds, thank you Mom) I brushed the surface until it no longer smelled putrid (yes, I had to put my nose down there which excessively grossed out my husband). Step 3. We then took towels, laid them out and continued to dance around on them, rotating to new ones until they came up dry. I do not discount the density of the rug, but that does not take away from the genius of the process. Done. Mark looked at me with awe and amazement. By morning there was no evidence of a disaster at all.

Believe it or not, that is not even my proudest achievement. My coup was when Charlie was about 14 months old. We had just gotten the first furniture we've ever had that wasn't either passed down or purchased at "Value City" furniture. Somehow my angel got ahold of a Sharpie ( for which I take full responsibility) and in a matter of minutes took it to the new couch, entertainment center, floor and dining room wall which had wallpaper. I freaked. Then I vaguely remembered from my retail days that rubbing alcohol got ball point pen out of fabric. Might as well give it a shot, right? I had also learned by experience you have to dab these things, not wipe or you just spread it around. The entertainment center and wood floor were a breeze. The dining room wallpaper would not come clean. I did not expect it to. Sharpies are supposed to be permanent on paper, right? So I chalked that up to stupidity on may part, but it didn't really matter because we would eventually replace that wallpaper.

I stared at the couch. If I messed this up, the warranty would be void. The pressure was on. I looked at the stain. "You versus me," I thought. I dabbed. I looked at the cotton ball. There was some ink on it. I was encouraged. I dabbed some more. Same deal. I decided to get a cloth. More ink came off. I dabbed faster, the stain started to fade. Thirty minutes later I was victorious. I looked at the clean couch, and collapsed on the floor, spent. Then, just for good measure, I cleaned the area with Oxyclean to remove any rubbing alcohol residue.

The moral of the story is this: No talent is insignificant. No battle too small. Whatever it is that you can do to improve this planet is very important, even if it's your little corner of it.

The Tears of the Phoenix

In the fall I realized I was behind the times in that I had not read the Harry Potter series of books by J.K. Rowling. They are extremely well-written, and the plot-lines are brilliant. Being a huge Star Wars geek, I was immediately immersed in the whole fantasy thing. The stories could be considered a little scary for the target audience, but for adults just good fun. I am presently reading the fifth in the series: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Last night when reading I was caught off-guard and driven to tears.

In the fourth book, I believe, is the introduction of a type of ghoul called a Boggart, which is a little bit different than the "real" Boggart of English mythology. In the Harry Potter books, the Boggart is a ghoul which has the ability to manifest itself as the thing that the witness fears the most.

Forgive me if you already know this, and correct me if I'm wrong, but Harry's best friend is Ron Weasley, who has four older brothers and a younger sister. Ron's mother, Molly Weasley, considers Harry another son since Harry is an orphan. In the passage I refer to, Harry is passing the study where Mrs. Weasley was supposed to be "cleaning" which in the wizarding world means clearing the room of messy magical creatures. Harry enters the room only to see Mrs. Weasley sobbing over the dead body of Ron. Harry feels his heart jump out of his body, and as he approaches Mrs. Weasley, the dead body changes from Ron to the dead body of another of Mrs. Weasley's sons, then the dead body of her twin sons, then another brother, then finally to Harry himself. Each time Mrs. Weasley attempts, through her sobs, to cast the spell to destroy the ghoul, she is overcome by grief and is therefore unsuccessful. As Harry stares at his own dead body two other wizards come and extinguish the Boggart, then console Mrs. Weasley.

"I see them d-d-dead all the time!" Mrs. Weasley moaned... "I d-d-dream about it."

You don't have to tell me that my boys are not wizards in the midst of a battle between good and evil where wizards are killed all the time. And although we don't think about it all the time, don't we occasionally visit our own fears in our heads? Mrs. Weasley had only to witness a false image of the dead bodies of her children, her sons, to be taken to that level of horror. Isn't there a level of grief that is only imaginable? We can only hope that grief will always remain a ghoul locked in a writing desk.