If you slid open my shower door, you’d find an amazing array of bottles, tubes and cans.  I counted twenty-one the other day, a clear violation of bathroom protocol.  Who needs more than one shampoo, conditioner, kid’s shampoo, shaving cream and maybe a fancy tube of facial cleanser?  Five items, right?

Twenty-one is excessive.

Unless, of course, you are six years old and possess a healthy imagination.

Grace produces, writes, directs and stars in dramatic productions in the shower.  She acts out the parts played by various empty containers.  I can hear her reciting the parts, wholly present in her imaginary world while water sprays down on her.  (We waste so much water.  Please do not tell the Environmentalists.)

And so I can’t throw away any empty bottles.  (Look!  I’m saving the landfills!)  I know that one day my shower stall will feature a tidy collection of full containers because my little girl will have abandoned the pretend world of empty shampoo bottles who talk to empty conditioner bottles.

As we meander through each stage of childhood and parenthood, I try to notice the good parts.  I try to savor the joys.  I try not to scream my head off unless it’s absolutely necessary.

And I retrieve the empty shaving cream can from the trash so Grace will have a trio of shaving cream cans.

My husband thinks Grace and I are both a little nuts.  (We creative types baffle him.)

The children.  They are driving me crazy.  The 6-year old wants to play with the 11-year old boy and his pals.  They tolerate her but only barely and so she cries periodically.  She insists on running around after them in the backyard and so her clothes are filthy and she fell on her knee.  Earlier, a bumblebee had the nerve to chase her around and she came in crying about that.  Weeping may last for an afternoon, but joy comes at bedtime.  (For mom anyway.)

The 11-year old boys are upstairs playing video games.  This activity involves screaming and yelling and bickering (with the 6-year old).  STOP HOLLERING.  Why must they screech?  They are boys.  I thought boys just wrestled until someone broke their arm?

The teenagers are in their room, arguing with each other.  Or talking.  I can hardly tell the difference.  You’d think that twins would be on the same wavelength, but they are fraternal twins, different in every way from their eyes (brown and blue) to their interests (reading and not reading) to their personalities.  And they left their lunch dishes in the family room.  Again.

One of them came in earlier to report to me that his new bike is  breaking down.  I was working at the time.  I already know about his issues with his bicycle . . . as soon as he got it, he started fiddling with the brakes and one thing led to another and now the bike needs to get to the shop.  This is an extremely low priority for me.  In fact, find my lowest priority (dusting?) and you’ll find “take bike to shop” beneath it.  I need to do it, though.  This week.  However, this boy would not stop repeating himself about the bike.  He disagreed with me, even when we were in total agreement.

Now, in the midst of this chaos, I am juggling my writing (I must send in my sample chapters and synopsis this week) and my full-time job (which is complicated by my computer which is driving me crazy).  Add to this the chores that keep a home running and you have me wishing I was running, too, far away from here.

How do people do this?  Work full-time, pursue outside interests, take care of children, keep a household running without looking like they let a tornado dry their hair?   (When I say “they”, of course I mean “me.”  You should see my hair today!  And I have to do something about it before I take my daughter to T-ball practice or risk arrest for vagrancy.)   I don’t know.

Meanwhile, I’m preparing a delicious an healthy meal of frozen pizza ($3.99 a piece for DiGiorno) before we rush off to T-ball practice.  Then I will return with less than an hour until I start working again until midnight.  THEN, and only then, will I have time to write.

Yeah, I sound like a whiner.  But, hey, at least I blogged!  Two days in a row!  That’s got to be good for a sticker.  Or something.

The petals from the flowering trees flutter in the autumn-like breeze.  The seasons seem as mixed up as I feel.  Rain pounds down.  The sky miraculously turns blue and the sun shines until the wind blows clouds across the sky again.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find a light dusting of snow in the morning, though I do believe we are past that annoyance.  After all, the dandelions are in full bloom, though my neglected lilac bush displays my negligence.

Do you ever have to ask yourself what season it is?  Maybe that’s just me.  Autumn and spring resemble each other so much.

I’m simultaneously locked into three separate seasons of parenting life, too.  My teenagers inhabit that moody, occasional surly stage.  Sometimes they shock me with their helpfulness and sometimes they make me wonder what I was thinking.

My 11-year old never wants to grow up.  He’s Peter Pan in a chubby body with freckles on his pert nose and a tendency to annoy his sister until she cries.  But this child is smart and funny and sweet, even though he “forgets” to use shampoo on a semi-regular basis.

And then there’s the 6-year old who loves kindergarten and gives me a full report almost every day when I pick her up.  “Matthew talked about violence again today.  Angelina made me sad, but Alyssa cheered me up.  We had a substitute in music class today.  I had to sit on the wall at recess.”  (“Sit on the wall” is the punishment given to children who stray beyond the boundaries or disobey the rules.)  “But I didn’t mind because I just talked to the other kids on the wall.”

Every other time I had a kindergartener, I had a baby at home.  This is the first time I have a kindergartener with teenagers instead of a baby.  (Teenagers are easier, only because they sleep until I wake them.)

I’m planning our summer vacation.

Enrolling my teenagers in virtual school for next fall.

I’m living in different seasons and trying to keep myself from flying away in the tornado of it all.

(And my kitchen sink is full of dishes, the dirty laundry needs attention and all I want to do is float in a bathtub and read a novel.)

Tonight at 8:15 p.m., my 6-year old daughter came to me and begged.  “Please, will you make me broccoli?  You promised!”

I told her I did not promise and that it was far too late for broccoli.

Five minutes later she came back.  “It’s not that hard to make.  All you have to do is wash it, put it in the microwave, cook it and then put some cheese on.  That’s easy!”

I sighed heavily at the craziness of her asking for BROCCOLI right before bedtime.  I couldn’t believe that I was actually having a conversation in which I was refusing to make broccoli.

So, I went downstairs and microwaved her some broccoli.  I shredded some sharp cheddar cheese over it and she ATE EVERY BITE.

Just when you think you have heard it all as a mom, someone says something nuts like, “Please, please, I need some broccoli.”

(When my 16-year old twins were young, they refused to eat all fruits and all vegetables.  On occasion, they’d eat a bowl of ketchup for lunch.  Just ketchup, so you can understand my confusion at a request for broccoli as a bedtime snack.  Also?  My teenagers now eat pretty much everything, including couch cushions and stale potato chips.)

According to family lore, my parents moved twenty-five times during the first five years of their marriage.  I don’t remember much of that because by the time we “settled down” I was four years old.  By then, I’d lived in a few different states–Wisconsin, Montana, Kansas, North Dakota?  I don’t really know.  My dad was something of a nomad who thought he could do better than working in a jello factory or plucking chickens or selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door.

We landed in Washington state in 1969 and shuffled around to three houses I remember: one in Puyallup, right next door to a doctor’s office, one in Everett on Wetmore, next door to a house that had a red-painted porch that retained the warmth of the day after the sun faded, and one in Marysville with two birch trees in the front yard and a yellow window in the entryway.

We lived in that house in Marysville from the time I was in kindergarten until I was in fifth grade.  It seemed like an entire lifetime to me.  When I think of my childhood, I think of that house on the corner of the cul-de-sac where we played kickball and of the “big hill” leading to the creek where we muddied our sneakers and crashed our bikes and skinned our knees.

That lifetime came to an abrupt end and we moved into a rental house with my dad and his new wife.  My bedroom in that house had hot pink carpet and an expansive backyard.  We lived there while our new house was being built.  Then, a year later, we moved to the house where I spent my teenage years.  The cemetery was just beyond the woods bordering our backyard.  I would wander through the woods and meander through the cemetery and mourn for the strangers buried beneath gravestones.  I never suspected that one day my very own dad would relocate from our house near the cemetery to the cemetery itself.  I thought we would all live forever, probably in that house decorated in earth tones, that house with the lilac bush in the courtyard, that house almost at the end of the dead end street  You knew it was my house because it was right by the streetlight on the left.

I lived in that house for six years.  An eternity, for adolescence seems to last forever and ever–even if you are not the parent of the adolescent.  I thought I would be imprisoned in that house, in that lavender bedroom forEVER, not allowed to wear make-up or stay up past 10 p.m. or be my own self.  I had a piano in my bedroom and sang along to my Barry Manilow songbook and Olive Newton-John sheet music.  (Don’t judge.  Have YOU ever been mellow?)

Here I am now.  Living in a house for eleven years, a house with my name on the mortgage and my choice of paint on the walls.  I’ve been here so long we’ve had to replace the kitchen faucet and the patio door and the washer and dryer.  My daughter was born upstairs in the bedroom on Labor Day, a fact which will forever amuse me.  My 11-year old has lived here since he was a baby himself, not quite rolling over.

This is their Home, their home-base, the place they’ll envision when they think about childhood and the fuzzy memories of long ago.  They’ll remember digging the gigantic coffin-sized hole in the backyard, racing around the yard in a pack of neighborhood kids.  This is the backdrop for their memories.

I can’t quite believe I’ve lived here so long–until I look in my unpurged storage room and understand the true value of moving often which is getting rid of stuff you don’t want to pack, carry and unpack.  We’ve accumulated a lot of stuff here:  memories, dreams and giant styrofoam containers that cannot be recycled nor easily stored.  I know if we had moved more often I wouldn’t retain ownership of all those cassette tapes from the eighties.

On the other hand there is great comfort in the familiarity of this home from the cobwebs in the corners to the stack of abandoned quilting fabric in the closet to the clutter in the storage room.

This is home.

I just wish someone else would clean it from time to time and do something about the entryway.  And some day I am going to peek behind the panel in my bedroom closet ceiling that leads to the crawl space up there and hope to find a million trillion dollars stashed away by the previous owners (God rest their souls).   Also?  I will dust.

It’s 2:00 a.m.  My teenagers are still awake.  I can hear the murmur of their voices in their room.  They are playing XBox with the youth pastor online . . . killing virtual enemies, probably.  If I cared more, I would march right in there and announce the time, but I don’t care that much.  Tomorrow’s a half-day of school, meaning that it’s pretty much a day off as far as they are concerned.

But.  Hold on a minute.  I’m going to tell them to go to sleep.

Okay.  Now it’s at least dark in their room.  You can make a child’s room dark but you cannot make him sleep.

What’s awesome about staying up until 2:00 a.m. is that when your six year old wakes up at that ungodly hour, you are already awake and do not respond with the same annoyance that you might feel if you’d just gone to bed thirty minutes earlier and just drifted to sleep and then startled awake to find a six year old by your bed.  No, this is much better.  I’m already awake and just now handled the middle of the night awakening (she has a cold and is prone to wake up when she is sick).

Also?  When I was upstairs in the bathroom, I had mercy on the beta fish and sprinkled some food into their habitat and they did not respond whatsoever.  I jiggled the container, tapped on it.  No response.  So I shook it with more force, creating a sort of earthquake for the dear beta fish and startled them awake.  Oh, sorry!  I didn’t know you were asleep. The lack of fish eyelids really is problematic from time to time, especially for the fish.

SHE JUST CALLED DOWN THE STAIRS:  “Mommy?  Can I watch a show?”

Seriously.

I have finished writing for the night.  I’m almost 12,000 words into my fledgling novel.  When you figure a novel needs a good 80,000 words, you can understand why I am still awake at this hour.  This novel cannot write itself.  Added bonus:  Very very very late at night the voice telling you how insane you are to think you can write a novel has already fallen asleep.  So it’s just me and whatever part of my brain thinks we can do this.

This weekend already has big chunks missing from it.  One child has a lacrosse game.  (It’s our week to bring orange slices.)  Another child has a birthday party.  My husband and teenagers were volunteered to help during our town-wide clean-up day.  And I am predictable.  I want to see a movie . . . and I need to work on my novel during daylight hours.  I have to keep on track to meet my deadline–Thanksgiving might seem far off to you, but it’s alarmingly close to me.

But for now, I must sleep.

I know what you’re thinking.

You’re thinking  is Mel ever going to actually put up some new, real content?  Will she reveal some hidden part of her life, some mystery previously hidden from the World Wide Web?

And the answer is . . . well, no.  I have just finished working and now plan to watch “24” . . . I recorded it while I was working because you have to pay attention to that particular show and can’t just sort of watch it like you can sort of watch “American Idol” or “The Hills.” And I’m going to watch it, even though it’s now 1:15 a.m. and I should be writing–WRITING?!–or sleeping.  Normal people would be sleeping.

Every single weekend, we have an activity, though I can’t really count Tuesday and Thursday lacrosse practice since all I have to do is pick up my son on those evenings.  I hate being locked into a schedule with no wiggle-room so I feel a little trapped.  It’s like being in school only with no hope of graduation.

If you have any spare time to spare, could you send it this way?

My teenagers turned sixteen today.  Someone congratulated me on their birth, but I wasn’t even there when they were born.  Some might argue that such a situation is the best possible scenario in terms of birthing, but not me.  I loved being pregnant, loved giving birth.  But I was not pregnant with them.  I did not give birth to them.

My husband and I adopted them seven months after their premature birth.

I think about her today, of course.  I wonder if she thinks about them–I know she must.  I wonder why she stopped contacting us.  I hope she is well.  I hope that one day, when my twins grow up, they will circle back to her and understand how they fit into our world and her world.  I hope and I pray.

Meanwhile, I bought them sixteen Mylar balloons today and all the food they’ve recently requested.  I regretted the balloons almost immediately and have spent an unpleasant amount of time today ordering various kids to “STOP HITTING THAT BALLOON!”  All my kids relish a boxing match with a balloon.  And it drives me crazy.  I forget that fact from celebration to celebration.

I grocery shopped with them in mind and specifically brought home Ruffles with dip, cans of clam chowder and spaghetti sauce (among other things).  A few years ago, they complained that there was nothing to eat–I said, “Eat a sandwich.  That’s what most kids do.”  But they turn up their noses at a run-of-the-mill sandwich.  They didn’t believe me and I said to their friends, “Hey, what did you have for lunch?” and every single boy said, “A sandwich.”

My boys have never eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  (Their weirdest meal?  When they were about two, they each ate a bowl of ketchup for lunch.)

Tonight, my husband planned to take the two of them to dinner to celebrate.  (They are having a birthday sleep-over Friday night . . . save me!)  The boys wanted to invite their friend.  But another friend was over, too, so my husband invited that boy, too.  Then my daughter wanted to go.  (I couldn’t go because I was working and then had to pick up our 11-year old from lacrosse practice.)  My husband agreed to take her, too . . . but she was at her friend’s house down the street . . . and so she invited her friend and then they couldn’t leave the other brother home alone, could they?

And that’s how it happened that my husband took seven kids to a restaurant tonight.  And I wasn’t there.

I did not ask how much that cost!

After dinner, our boys went to youth group and had ice cream cake (provided by my husband).  (He is such a good dad.)  They came home smelling like garlic and hopping around with birthday joy.

Tomorrow we’ll be back to normal.  I will look up at their blemished faces and daydream about those long toddler and preschooler years that seemed like they would never end.  How do those warm bodies curled on my lap–both of them at once–grow so quickly into these young men with deep voices and giant feet who know more about being a parent than I do?  (Oh, I laugh.)

Blink.  Babies.  Blink.  Toddlers.  Blink.  Preschoolers.  Blink.  Elementary school.  Blink.  Teenagers.  Blink.  They’re gone.

Just that fast.

Leaving home is a flurry of packing, organization and rushing around.  Returning is an implosion involving laundry, utter fatigue and disorientation.  I left California and my independent, separate self and became Mom, the do-er of laundry and provider of food and referee of fights.  My husband claimed the children were on perfect behavior while I was gone but today they have all nitpicked and annoyed one another and me.

It doesn’t help that I started back to work and put in a full eight hours today.

My experience at the conference was beyond my expectations.  First of all, I hung out with the cool kids, Annie, Sarah, Andy, Brad, and some others who don’t have blogs.  I rubbed elbows with novelists and editors and agents.  And I walked among the Redwoods and laughed until my face hurt. (You can find photos on my Facebook account–just look up my name and request to be a Friend if you aren’t already.)

I took a class and found out that I am not ready for an agent (my novel is unfinished); despite that, one of the reviewers of my first twenty pages insisted that I speak with an agent (“I love your writing,” she said) and that is how I ended up agreeing to finish the novel in six months so I can send it to her.  More immediately, she wants the first three chapters and a synopsis as soon as possible.

I find all that super weird and unexpected.  Is there a more emphatic way to express that?  Because it is SUPER WEIRD and UNEXPECTED.

I am not being falsely modest when I say that I sent in the first twenty pages because I needed to know if I was delusional.  I half-hoped someone objective would tell me to stop writing fiction and to learn to weave baskets instead.  That was not what I was told.

Instead, I have to write 70,000 words by Thanksgiving.  Or sooner.

I am going to do that while working forty hours a week and trying to keep my kids clothed, fed and free of rickets and scurvy.

I guess I’m up for the challenge.

Send cookies.

And a maid.

Mt. Hermon has a tradition on Palm Sunday.  At six a.m. a few dozen hearty souls meet in the dark to hike up to the top of Mt. Hermon, which it not an actual mountain with glaciers and ski slopes, but rather, the uppermost point on the 400 acres that Mt. Hermon owns.

My friend, Sarah, and I were among the hearty, sleep-deprives souls.  We began the trek up the winding paved roads in near total darkness.  At each “Y” in the road, Sarah noted aloud the name of the street or a landmark because she remembered the year before when I insisted that I knew the way down and then doubted myself half way down.  But that ended well when we emerged at precisely the point we began–last year, that is.

So, Sarah’s awareness coupled with my excellent sense of direction would help us get down the hills this year.  At least that was the plan.

We arrived at the top of the hill in time to watch the sunrise.  Then, ever cognizant of time, we headed back down.  A man and a woman said, “Do you know the way?” and I said, “Yep.”

At the first “Y” in the road, Sarah said, “This way?  Or that?”  The left led down, the right seemed level.  I honestly had no idea, having been utterly distracted by a riveting story that Sarah was telling.

“Um,” I said, “I think it’s down.  I’m going this way . . . but you’re welcome to go that way.”

The two people following us decided to continue following us.

So, Sarah and I continued, her talking, me listening, unconcerned about our route until we reached the next “Y” in the road.

It did not look familiar.  At all.

Huh.

“I’m going down,” I said, “But you can go that way if you want.  Don’t feel like you have to follow me.”

And we continued on.

At the next “Y” in the road, nothing looked familiar.  At all.

However, I knew that if we continued down, all the winding roads would eventually deposit us on the main conference road.  I’d wandered up in the hills before, I’d seen maps, I was not the slightest bit worried.

“I’m going this way,” I said, “But feel free to go that.  I’m not positive, but I’m going down.”

I heard someone say, “I’m just following the crowd.”

This continued for a few more turns . . . and by then, the crowd following us had increased to ten or fifteen people.  At every decision point, I offered a disclaimer and every single time, everyone followed Sarah and me, even though it was obvious by this point that we were far off track–we should have arrived at our original departure point long ago.

And then we saw the lumberyard through a clearing and found that we were right next to the road we sought–only we were on a seemingly impassable ridge and the road was far below.

We all clustered like a group of disoriented bees.  I peered over the ridge.  Only a teenage boy would be foolish enough to shimmy down the side onto the road below and I am a forty-four year old woman with a tricky back.

Stark terror appeared on the faces of several of the woman who’d been trailing us.  “It’s okay,” I said, “I know exactly where we are.”  Doubt clouded their faces.

And then a hearty man said, “We can get down.”  He forged ahead and found a trail.  We followed him down the dirt path, then descended a rickety wooden staircase and found ourselves standing on the road that would intersect with the main conference road.

At that point, Sarah and I hastened our pace and raced away from the angry mob behind us.  Their willingness to follow my confident leadership led them a mile or two out of their way and caused them to appear at breakfast coated in sweat and annoyance.  The twenty minute hike up the hills turned into a forty-five minute hike down the hill.

At no point in time were we lost.  We merely took a different route down the hill.  It’s hardly my fault that my confident leadership outweighed my directional abilities, nor is it my fault that so many people are so willing to follow someone who clearly has no idea what she is doing.

And if anyone asks, it wasn’t me.  I have no idea what you’re talking about.  Mountain?  Lost?  You must have the wrong Melodee.