Anyone who has hung out with me for more than a few hours knows that I love to talk about food. Usually, talking about food is a pleasant thing but I'm afraid once in a while I get carried away when a certain food item is mentioned. I'll start yammering on with, "Oh my god, I made that!" and then proceed to list off each ingredient, where I got it, how much the ingredients cost, how I prepped it, how long it took to make, how it tasted, etc... and ten minutes into this monologue I realize that the person I'm talking to has zoned me out and their eyes are glazed over. Only the die hard foodies will still be tuned in.

So, yes, I need to be careful about that in the future.

I can write about food all I want, however. Feel free to zone me out. Blah blah blah blah.

Have you heard of Spilled Milk? It's a podcast starring Molly Wizenberg (Orangette) and Matthew Amster-Burton (Roots & Grubs). They're funny and cute and silly and they always make me laugh and almost always make me hungry. I just listened to their "junk food" episode and even though I don't like sweets I kind of want to go out and buy a few twinkies and ding dongs.

(And remind me to ask Sid if he knows that twinkies have beef fat in them...because they do...something useful I learned on that podcast.)

Okay, so the first episode of Spilled Milk I ever listened to was their fried egg show. I love eggs, especially fried and sunny side up. And my favorite ever bowl-of-a-bunch-of-good-stuff is bibimbap because I love the way the egg yolk spills down into the rice. Mmmm.

Molly and Matt made kimchee fried rice (mmmm...egg yolk and rice and oh so much more) in the episode and I happened to be super hungry (and running at the track) at the time so I started scheming about how soon I could make it. (Heh, am I the only one who listens to food podcasts while exercising?)

Hm. Oh, here I go again with the silly details. Instead of just getting to the recipe and photos I'm telling you why I decided to make it. Where I was when I decided to make it. When I decided to make it (premiere night of the first episode of Lost's season 6 if you must know).

Okay. Without further ado, here's the recipe.

Kimchi Fried Rice

Adapted from Kye Soon Hong
Makes 2 hearty servings

4 cups cooked Japanese-style (calrose) rice, cooled and chilled in refrigerator
4 strips bacon, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch pieces
2 cups Napa cabbage kimchi, the riper the better, diced
1 tablespoon butter, plus more for frying eggs
2 teaspoons sesame oil
salt and pepper
sesame seeds, for garnish
sliced scallions, white and green parts, for garnish

4 eggs

1. Cook the bacon in a large skillet or wok over medium heat. Add the kimchi and cook several minutes.

2. Raise the heat to high, add the rice and stir-fry several minutes, until rice is beginning to brown.

3. Meanwhile, fry the eggs in butter, seasoning with salt and pepper to taste.

4. Stir butter and sesame oil into fried rice. Season with salt to taste. Divide into two bowls and top each with two fried eggs. Garnish with scallions and sesame seeds.

I followed the recipe exactly except I only used 2 eggs (well, 3). Amazon Fresh delivered all the yummy goodness (although they only had one kind of kimchee but I was clearly too lazy to go out and shop around).

Just look at that hot mess:

Take a closer look. Hot. Mess.

I browned the bacon in the wok, and added the kimchee, then added the rice. I always get nervous when I add the rice because it's a day old, hard and breaky and really doesn't look appetizing at all. It always turns out fine, yet still I worry.

Meanwhile, while the rice cooked I got out my amazing cast iron skillet (thank you Bossy for your influence) and fried the eggs. I biffed it and broke a yoke so I added an extra egg to the buttery pan.

The photo above reminds me of two wishes I've had for a long time. 1) To be able to fry an egg all pretty like. This one I'm finally figuring out (with the exception of the particular eggs in this photo). For me, there needs to be some kind of fat involved and it has to be fried in my cast iron skillet. 2) A level stovetop. Sigh.

I finished up the rice by adding and stirring the oils and chopping the green onions. Bowls were filled and garnished.

Done. Chopsticks readied. Time to eat and watch the Losties.

Yum. Since then I've substituted the bacon for spam but bacon is so much better. I feel a little decadent using butter but I can always burn it off at the gym, right?

Oh, and now off to find a twinkie.

My last entry was all negative Nelly and woe is me. I gotta post something positive to push that old entry down.

Things that are happy:

1) I solved my pain problems temporarily* by (you guessed it) bleeding. I never thought I'd choose having a horrible period over anything but a few days of misery was well worth it. I can't tell you how much better I feel. Unfortunately (uh, oh, more woe is me) I got a nasty cold on the same day as the bleeding which was not fun but getting both things out of the way at the same time was the way to go I suppose because when I finally recovered from both things I felt super high and happy. I've kind of gone overboard on the smiling and exercising and being pleasant!

*I need to talk to my GYN a bit more but I see a Mirena IUD in my future...

2) I had a horny kitty. Have I mentioned our latest foster, Vespa? She was in heat for about 5 days. Wow. I felt so bad for her. If you've never seen a cat in heat you are a lucky person. I took her in to be spayed yesterday and now she's keeping her nether regions in their proper location instead of pointed in the direction of any breathing thing. She's cute, don't you think?

3) A friend and I hosted a baby shower last weekend and it was really enjoyable and turned out very well, I think! Maybe I can actually do these girly things after all. I'm not claiming to be a Martha Stewart type or anything (because she'd certainly not drink wine and more wine and more wine while hosting) but I think I could do this again without breaking a sweat. (Now I just need to get over my fear of hosting dinner parties.)

4) Zoe is exercising! She needs 225 hours of "P.E." before graduation and because her high school doesn't offer it she has to do it on her own. We've been pushing it all year and finally she's found something that she enjoys. Yoga.** Her goal is to be more flexible (she's not bendy like her mom) so this is a good one. She's going to add a few other things to her list soon (I hope) like rock climbing and weight training (after all she wants to fit into adult jeans so gaining a little muscle in the behind can't hurt).

I'm really happy with Zoe's attitude lately. I think a lot of it is due to Robert interacting more with her; helping her organize her school schedule and chatting with her every day while they go over things. He tends to be more pleasant than me and often, in the past, the majority of interacting he had with teen Zoe was after I'd had a fight with her and he'd come to intervene. Those interactions were rarely pleasant. 

**Strictly at home yoga but I'd love for us to eventually take a class together.

5) Sid has been invited to compete in review writing contests at the Journalism Education Association's state and national conventions. The only problem is getting him to actually go the competitions. He has many excuses including:

a) "My time is precious!"
b) "The rules state that my review has to be 350 words or less but all my reviews up to this point have been 900 words!"
c) "I don't know AP style rules!"
d) "I'm not taking journalism next year so who cares?"

He has time. He can condense. He knows AP style. College admissions (and I) care.

There are other reasons he doesn't want to go but hasn't mentioned them. I'm sure one reason is he's not super social and hanging out with 5 other teenagers for 3 days, attending dances, meet and greets and dinners ranks at the bottom of his "fun things to do" list.

The state competition (which is just over a week away) is a day long and near us so I can't think of a reason why he shouldn't give it a shot and it doesn't entail anything major on the social scale. The national competition is also conveniently located in Portland and with some fund raising and grouping of 3 boys to a room with a single queen bed (heh, heheheh) it'll only cost him $200 to go and it's not until mid-April. He will miss 2 days of school but I think participating in the seminars, the social events and just being away from us will be really good for him. As I always say (and god, I never thought I'd say these things) he'll thank me one day.

6) I hate to be bragging on Sid but I'm very impressed with all the mail he's been getting from very selective universities and colleges. I wish I had half his brains. He's picked his top 5 (all located in urban areas, mainly NYC) so now the fun part is to figure out how to get a scholarship. I'm sure I've mentioned that there is no college fund, right. Heheheheh. Heh. Hm.

We're looking at the various college admission requirements and he's on track academically. He's going to be busy his junior year:
AP language arts, AP US history, AP Spanish, pre-calculus honors, chemistry, swimming and photography. No room for journalism but he can get back into that senior year if he wants.

Now he just needs to keep up the good grades, test well, and work on his wow factor.

p.s. Just before publishing I found out that Sid talked with his journalism teacher about the conventions and will be attending both...and the bad attitude is gone. I think he figured that if his peers nominated him to go and very few of the newspaper staff were nominated then maybe it's worth going and trying to win something. Wow factor.

WARNING!!!!! TMI LEVEL RED

O-Lan, the sad wife in Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth occasionally let her husband know that something was not right with her, physically. Her complaint: "There's a fire in my vitals."

Poor O-Lan. I felt so bad for her.

And, well, lately I've been feeling bad for myself because I, too, have a fire in my vitals. No, it won't kill me and it's pretty mild as far as things that can go wrong with your body go but still, finding out recently that I have a golf ball size fibroid tumor wasn't a happy fun time for me (and usually I try to make happy fun times about everything).

Really, there are many good things about making this discovery (discovered by way of a super fun (no, really!) trans-vaginal ultrasound).

1) I know why I have horrible, REALLY HORRIBLE, periods.

2) I know I'm not infected by a giant parasite with large teeth. That's a relief. Turns out I just have a rebellious uterus (see bad thing #2 below).

3) I know that I don't have anything wrong with the other inside tubes and nothing horrible (besides the cute little fibroid) is growing abnormally in there.

4) I'm fortunate that I've had my children and I'm in my 40s (some women get fibroids at a much younger age which can cause infertility and years of pain and problems).

5) Here's a cool thing: now I know the size of my ovaries and my uterus!

But there are bad things:

1) Fibroids don't go away but they can get BIGGER. And MORE can grow.

2) I can no longer stack the pill (skip the sugars) and just skip my period. With the fibroid, skipping my period just causes my uterus to rebel, have a tantrum and spew pain in all directions (I even think it regularly forms a huddle with surrounding body parts to get them to join in the tantrum, thus I walk around with menstrual cramps (sans the menstrual), nausea, diarrhea, constipation, ligament pain, back pain, and GASSSS ALL AT THE SAME TIME...I AM NOT EXAGGERATING...NOPE).

3) Symptoms of doing nothing: Try not to become anemic, hide at home for several days a month, take lots of pain meds. Hope things don't get worse. Get angsty, whiny, and annoy everyone around me all the time.

Hey, at least I found more good than bad!

Treatment options include hormones (which cause menopause symptoms? no thanks), myomectomy (removal of the fibroid, eek, surgery), and hysterectomy (eek, MAJOR SURGERY).

I'm still doing some research and thinking about what I want to do next. It's too bad O-Lan didn't have those luxuries.

Stay tuned!

I celebrated my birthday yesterday by getting my first facial! My awesome girlfriends treated me which was so sweet of them and well, now I'm hooked. My face feels amazing! I like to think that I can fit one into my budget now and then but probably not for a while. That's fine. If I can go 41 years without one I can manage. But enough about me.

I missed telling you about Sid's birthday. Did you notice?

Sid turned 16 while he was in New York City with his dad which was a perfect way for him to celebrate. He and Robert flew out there on Christmas night and spent 3 1/2 days walking around and riding subways through 4 of the 5 boroughs (they skipped Staten Island). Robert was a sport for walking so much. He did something to his knee, perhaps on the flight out, and was in a lot of pain the entire time but enjoyed himself and he and Sid really bonded (in their silent, Moulton-style of bonding). You can tell from the look on Sid's face in the single photo* of him taken on the trip, that he was immensely happy.

*Sid and Robert managed to only take 4 photos for the entire trip. Sid was adamant about not doing touristy things (which meant no taking photos!). It was the first visit to the city for both of them but other than seeing an Off-Broadway show (The Toxic Avenger) they managed to avoid most of the tourist-y stuff. They didn't go up the Empire State Building or visit The Statue of Liberty. They did, however, get to walk around (like awkward outsiders) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with Hasidic Jews and they walked through neighborhoods in the Bronx and checking out Flushing, Queens. All this, in either extremely wet or windy/cold weather. When they came home, they rented The Warriors, which Sid had never seen, and it seems like they took almost the same journey (without all the crazy stuff with gangs and shit happening...).

Because Sid was gone on his birthday he didn't get a birthday cake. After things settled down post-holidays (about 3 weeks later) I finally made him a cake, his favorite, German chocolate. Always yum.

So how's Sid? Sid's doing well. He finished his driving course and just needs to log the hours so he can taking the driving test. (He loathes driving, btw.) He's still writing fun (albeit cynical) articles for the school newspaper. He has is own section now called "Story Time with Sid". One of these days he'll actually review a book he likes, I hope. All the work he put into AP Euro paid off. He got an A, which is quite an achievement. He had a few issues in other classes (not turning in homework because he was working so hard for his AP class and the school paper) but he learned some great lessons about time management and has already started off much better, with more balance, this semester.

He also did extremely well for a Sophomore on this year's PSAT, getting a 205 (77 critical writing reading, 63 math, 65 writing skills). It'll be interesting to see how these scores compare to his SAT next year. He's getting flooded with recruiting mail again and this time he's actually looking through it all and thinking a lot more about where he wants to apply for college in 2 years.

Sid's favorite thing he did recently? Donated blood. He was very proud of himself and said he'll do it again. And again. And again.

Happy Birthday little dude. Keep on keepin' on. Love you.

Dear blog,

Sorry that I've been ignoring you. I had a few things involving cats to do in January. I promise that cats won't be the subject of every blog post; just let me get this out of my system, 'kay?

Foster cat adoptions

Odin's original adoption fell through due to a flaky potential adopter (she kind of assumed we'd hang on to him indefinitely until she could get her act together to pick him up; after many unanswered voicemails, I bumped her). He was super popular and we had oodles of people calling to see him. In the end, we picked a wonderful couple who already have another poof ball named Bella (who was just getting out of a cast when they got Odin and I'm betting Odin didn't give her much of a break, poor girl). We received photos; they're cute and he's very loved.

[Odin is pictured here with his new mom Jennie]

Tonks, coincidentally, was adopted within minutes of Odin. Her adopter, Cynthia, drove all the way up from Sumner, WA and even though Tonks would have nothing to do with her, Cynthia fell in love with her. We boxed up a very unhappy kitty and said our good byes. *sob* Tonks was hard to let go because we'd had her for two months and I knew she'd be very unhappy leaving. She'd only just started to feel comfortable with us all and then what do we do? We shove her in a box and send her away. (Ah, the downside to fostering.) The last update received (one week in) was that Tonks does not like Cynthia's two other cats (not surprising) but Cynthia adores her nonetheless.

A very sad day

During December, our old cat Frasier's mental and physical health really went downhill. He quit using the litter box completely just before we were having family over for the holidays. Fortunately, our visitors (my mom and her husband) are the owners of 8 cats and some of those are rescue cats and a few of those are bad litterbox users as well so they were very sympathetic to our issue. It also helps that my mom's husband Randy is a cat whore lover of cats. We somehow made it through the holidays and Sid's birthday but the work to take care of an elderly cat who needs cleaning up after, shots, pills and baths was taking its toll and clearly, Frasier was ready to go. He no longer jumped on our laps. He no longer made eye contact. Just moving was a huge effort for him. We decided to have a mobile vet come to our house and euthanize him because we wanted him to be with all of us in a warm, familiar place with Gumby nearby. It was a very difficult thing to do but when he died, a huge, heavy chunk of my heart broke off...but in a good way (? I can't really explain it). I felt so at peace.

In the end, Sid and Zoe were too upset to be in the room but Gumby sniffed around at the vet's supply box and Frasier's blanket and in the end, settled into a little cat bed to rest just below where I was holding Frasier. After he was gone, Sid visited with him for a while and then placed him in a box along with a few cartoon drawings of him that Sid and Zoe had drawn over the years. We then buried him in our backyard on a late, rainy, and very sad afternoon.

I took this photo of my boys a few days before Frasier died:

And let's not forget the young, wild boy:

And the kitten friend who kept me company as I read Henry Miller back in the day:



Sadness be gone! Bring on the Gus

We only had Odin for a month but in that month he stole our hearts. He was a pretty awesome cat; friendly, puppy-like, goofy, smart. I knew that he was at least part Ragdoll and after reading up on Ragdolls I decided I might like to have one...eventually. I didn't want to bring a new cat into our house until after Frasier was gone and I wasn't sure how long I'd need but figured I'd wait at least a month or two. However, just after Odin was adopted, I searched Craigslist and it just so happened that a Ragdoll teen kitten was looking for a home. Oh man. So adorable and just 9 months old. His mom was incredibly allergic to him but was clearly torn about having to give him up. I restrained myself. I didn't email her. I figured he'd get adopted over the weekend anyway, and I couldn't take a new kitty for at least a month or two.

Then I peeked back at Craigslist on Monday morning and he was still up there. Perhaps it was a sign? I figured I'd give it a poke. I emailed his owner and told her about our foster cat Odin and my recent interest in Ragdolls. I didn't hear back. I checked the listing several times that week and he was still up there. Robert suggested that his owner might just have forgotten to take the post down. I agreed. Time to move on.

On the following Monday, a little more than 12 hours after Frasier died, I got an email from Erin, Ragdoll kitteh's mom. She wanted to hear more about me, my fostering, etc. I ignored the email at first. I was a little shocked to hear from her a week after I'd sent her my initial email and really, I was mourning and not ready. It was a holiday and I was super depressed (understandably) so I decided to treat Zoe and myself to a movie. I let Zoe pick. She picked The Lovely Bones. What a terrible movie to watch when you've just lost a loved one! Seriously, every time that girl wandered around in the fields I saw Frasier prancing around with her. It was insane.

We returned from our movie in the afternoon and I decided to email Erin after all. I figured if he was still available I should at least get more info. I wrote more about our fostering (kittens then cats), our old cat Gumby, and my kids. She emailed me back right away and wanted me to call her. We talked about Gus a little. She told me that she'd received over 50 responses but that none of the responders seemed quite right for him and over the past week she'd been going back and forth about whether to give him up or not and then she asked me if she could visit once I adopted him. Whoa, um, that was unexpected. I think she'd already made up her mind. I wasn't quite ready to bring a kitty into our house but I definitely wanted to meet Gus. Fortunately, Erin lives nearby (which I believe is the main reason she picked us along with the fact that we foster -- she liked that for some reason and is looking forward to seeing Gus with kitten friends) so Zoe and I drove over and hung out and played with Gus for a while. Before we knew it, Erin had pulled out his carrier and between sobs, told us she'd already said her goodbyes and handed him over to us.

We brought him home, introduced him to Gumby and that was that. (Gumby likes him, if only in small chunks. They do a lot of running around which is good for the old boy's heart, I think.)

Meet Gus
(aka Mr. Von Peabody or Gusafuss or Snuffleupagus or GUS!staffson or Gussers)

I kind of want to eat him

I'm sure you'll hear more about him (like the fun thing he did last week that cost me $360).

Sincerely, Crazy Cat Lady

p.s. Gumby deserves a photo in this entry, don't you think?

Sure, we can't all be Dooce but we all can make cheesy videos. This is my year in review. Lots of good times.

"Wild World" sung by Mike Bailey who plays Sid on Skins (our new favorite show)

So here we are, it's Christmas eve. It arrived too quickly. This year we have guests in town. My mom and her husband Randy drove in on Tuesday (just as I had the unfortunate timing to have both the most horrible period of my life* and a migraine headache). Luckily they cheered me up. I made them an Irish beef stew for dinner (ala crock pot) and we watched Julie and Julia.

On Wednesday we went out for breakfast at Voula's and Voula told Randy he was handsome. He liked that. After getting thoroughly stuffed I returned home to make desserts. Nothing fancy, just sugar cookies and Rice Krispie treats. I was going to make a pecan pie as well but somehow ran out of time. We had a quick dinner at Ballard Brothers Seafood (I enjoyed a basket of fried oysters** and chips) and then Zoe, mom, Randy, and I went to see Sister's Christmas Catechism downtown. Sister is funny and she only picked on my mom once for talking out of turn. Fortunately, the rest of us escaped without incident.

This morning I'm up early to prepare for a long day downtown. Normally our family does something called "The Friday Before Christmas". We go downtown, see a movie, eat lunch and do a little shopping and Christmas light looking. This year, because Friday was still a school day and we wanted to include my mom and Randy we're doing it on Christmas Eve. I have no idea whether it'll be crazy downtown or not. I'm hoping not. We plan to see the early showing of Avatar in 3D and then lunch at one of the many restaurants in Pacific Place. Tonight is our usual viewing of A Christmas Story projected on the wall with many snacks including spiral sliced ham, artichoke dip and crackers, raw veggies, chips, and cookies. Somehow, I need to find time to buy a pork shoulder today before the stores close since all I could find yesterday at my local market was a bone-in picnic cut.

Tomorrow's plan is to have a sausage, bacon and egg breakfast after gift unwrapping and then a late dinner with the roast I'll hopefully purchase today along with mashed potatoes, creamed spinach (planned when I was originally going to brave cooking prime rib, then chickened out), and a feta and cranberry green salad. Sid, I believe, is cooking a tofurkey roast for him and Zoe. An unexpected event for Christmas evening is to drive the boys to the airport so they can fly off to New York City. They were supposed to leave Sunday morning but their flight was canceled due to the east coast snow storm.

So yeah, that's it, in a nutshell. I'm looking forward to the next 2 days! Have a Merry Christmas!

Wow, I'm going to need to diet after all this.

p.s. My friend Allyson and Paul are getting a brand new baby early next week and that really makes this the most wonderful Christmas ever!

*tmi alert: the WORST period ever. Horrifying. I'm calling the doctor next week. I can't live with this anymore. Birth control pills aren't helping. What's next?

**more tmi alert: oysters help w/ anemia and well, I can't imagine how I couldn't be anemic after having the WORST period ever.

Hello. I'm a crazy cat lady. I especially feel like a CCL when I'm standing in my kitchen and I look around and I see one old cat on the counter eating his fish only diet and another old cat on the other counter eating his no-grain turkey diet and one floppy foster cat sprawled out in the middle of the floor looking at both their tails waiting for seconds and another foster cat sulking off in the corner waiting for ham handouts or an opportunity to swat any male cats that dare come near her.

Yes, that's what my mornings are like.

Oh, and then there are the cat food costs. The old, OLD cat cannot eat beef, chicken, rice or corn so I'm left with a brand of canned food that costs nearly $2/can and he eats AT LEAST a can a day. Cat food with names like "Polynesian BBQ" and "Meow Luau". The other old cat also has a special canned food diet and it cannot be sniffed, licked or near the other old cat. Then there are the fosters. The old shelter provided cat food but the new shelter doesn't. Fine. I'm okay with that. The problem is that I feel guilty giving my cats top of the line foods and giving the fosters cheap cat food so they too are getting fancy organic kibble. I feed them in the master bath and that was working out okay until old cat Gumby found out about it and started sneaking in to eat it at night and then apparently told Frasier about it and Frasier decided not only to sneak in at night but to poop on the tile floor when he found out I'd put the food up beyond his reach. Also, I was reminded that young cats are in fact able to bite through food bags and make a huge mess. How had I forgotten that they can do that?

Inspite of it all. I love them. They are fluffy and soft and they purr and they do silly things and they cuddle with me and my kids and they mostly take care of themselves. Yes, there are many days when I'm about to take Frasier in to euthanize him but there are just as many days when I see a nice old cat that isn't doing much harm.

I haven't been so good at promoting my foster cats which is a shame since I did so well with the kittens and they really don't need any promoting; their cuteness sells itself. Currently I have 2 adult fosters. Tonks has been with us since November 10th and Odin has been with us since December 9th. The shelter provides monthly opportunities to showcase the cats at adoption events but unfortunately I missed them because a) Tonks is not keen on cages and strangers; in fact she would hiss and possibly disembowel all living things around her in that situation and b) Odin was still getting over Calici virus when the last one came around.

So the challenge is, how get them adopted?

Well, I wrote earlier that I thought Tonks had found a potential adopter. That unfortunately fell through because the adopter had very little experience with cats and expected Tonks to immediately fall in love with her male cat. When that didn't happen immediately she felt sad and Tonks came back to us. Really, I'm glad she is back with us. She deserves a more cat experienced human as she is a complicated gal. I need to have someone help me re-write Tonk's Petfinder description. The one I wrote for her doesn't really tell her story or give a potential adopter much of an idea of what she's really like, unlike the wonderful Petfinder description for our other foster, Odin, which was written by his previous foster mom.

Odin really is a marketable guy; I don't think I have to do much more for him. In fact, someone is coming over to meet him tonight and once he flops on her lap its a done deal*. I feel a bit bad for Tonks because she made friends with our foster kitten and we adopted her off and now, just as she's starting to trust and play with Odin, he'll be leaving her as well. If Odin does get adopted I'm going to try to find a foster at the shelter that is a good enough match with Tonks that I can possibly get the 2 adopted off together. That would make Tonks the happiest girl in the world. Either that, or I think Tonks would prefer that I never bring another new feline into the house and while I'm at it get rid of my old cats. She'd really like to control the humans and the house single-pawedly if she had a choice.

*I wrote this earlier. Odin is getting adopted! I'm so happy for him but a little sad because he is currently playing fetch like a dog with Zoe and she (and he) are really having a great time.

Frasier

Gumby

Tonks

Odin

Three months ago Zoe asked to move her bedroom downstairs. We complied. She moved whatever still mattered to her and left everything else behind, stowed away in her old closet and on the floor of her old bedroom. She said, "Get rid of everything." I said, "Um, no, YOU get rid of everything." Nothing happened.

3 weeks after her move, kittens moved in and stayed in her old room. Whatever was still on the floor got shoved in the closet on top of whatever else had already been shoved in the closet.

6 weeks after her move, the kittens moved on and the old cat moved in. Robert opened the closet and started sorting and tossing.

10 weeks after her move to the basement, she decided she'd like to move back to her old room. The closet was emptied, the room was swept, the curtains taken down and laundered, and the room was painted.

12 weeks after her move to the basement, she moved back into her old room with a fresh start. A new chandelier. A "new" bed. Fresh walls (ready for artwork and sparkly lights and posters of werewolves).

And a clean closet.

All of this happened with very little effort from the 14 year old girl. She drew plans for her room. She flipped through Ikea catalogs and bookmarked almost every item in Wake Up Frankie. She painted a wall (sort of) and did a little taping. She vacuumed the rug. She put the light bulb in her lamp.

We, the parents, were tired of being the laborers to her contractor. We'd done a lot. Moving. Cleaning. Sorting. Painting. Sawing. Patching. The last effort was to bring up all her clothes and return them to her dresser, sorted. We weren't going to do that for her.

Zoe begrudgingly agreed to carry up her clothes. They sat on the clean rug. 2 feet deep. Encompassing the majority of the room. Clothes everywhere. Zoe tossed the last handful down and ran.

I called after her. "Come back!"

She complained. "I have things to do! I need to go draw!" I stood firm. But then backed down. I knew it wouldn't happen without my help. "Okay, you will sit here, help me, tell me what you like and what you can get rid of, what you can put away until summer." She tried to scoot out the door. I mentioned the show "Hoarders" more than once. Eventually, after about 30 minutes she was happily sorting, chatting and comfortable (no more edging out the doorway). We finished in very little time and everything was in just the right place -- summer clothes stowed on shelves in the closet, winter clothes in the drawer, jackets and sweaters and coats hung on hangers. It wasn't that big of a deal. I heard myself repeating my mantra, "Just keep at it, learn to fold well and quickly, have a place for something and return it there. Is this really that hard? Just don't let it get too intimidating! Isn't this fun?! Doesn't this make you feel happy?" Maybe this is how hoarders are made. Mothers with mantras. Mothers that help too much.

(We've had this conversation so many times before. She's got the mantra memorized.)

That night, when she was tucked in bed and I went in to say good night, she said, "Thank you. Thank you for helping me with my room."

Zoe drew a lot over the Thanksgiving break. You may remember that she loves to draw comics and her inspiration comes from the Perry Bible Fellowship (not kid friendly but it wouldn't be Zoe if she liked something kid friendly).