Help!

I’m baaaack! This is my first official Pickle Patch post since taking “maternity leave” in late May. And I’m excited, because this is a post that I feel passionate about. It came about based on MANY conversations I’ve had with other women. I’m hoping that, for those who need to hear it, it’ll provide your daily dose of liberation. Surviving as a woman is all about daily liberation, isn’t it? I feel like every morning I have to liberate myself from my own expectations — or from what I imagine others expect from me: those expectations that I’m going to be a perfectly calm and loving wife and mother who completes numerous educational crafts with my children, maintains a perfectly neat house, prepares delicious meals (always with home-baked bread), plants gardens, and stays fit and fashionable. Sound familiar?

As you may know, an important part of this blog for me is that it’s an exercise in honesty. I’ve confessed that I hate housework, that I’m not a gourmet cook, and that I’m a very imperfect person. You’d think there wasn’t much else to confess, wouldn’t you? (I mean, apart from things that would bring the Vermont State Troopers knocking on my door.) How much lower can you get than being an imperfect, messy person who can’t cook?

Well, there is something else; one of the hardest things I’ve ever confessed: I HAVE HELP.

That’s right; my life might be more of a rusty clunker than a well-oiled machine, but I don’t do it alone. We have two amazing sets of grandparents, and between them there are grandparents visiting us almost monthly. The minute they walk in the door, I throw the kids and a household “To-Do” list at them, and spend the next week in the coffee shop. During the school year, my two oldest girls were in preschool three FULL DAYS a week (I consider this “help” more than “education”). All summer long, we’ve had a wonderful high school girl who bikes to our house two mornings a week and plays with my older girls so that I can focus on the baby and various chores. AND we have a lovely woman who cleans the house twice a month.

I owe thanks to many of you for our house cleaner. Last fall I wrote a post renouncing my passive-aggressive attitude towards housework, having gained the perspective that MY HOUSE IS NOT ALIVE. And multiple readers responded along the lines of: “That’s a nice insight, but you should consider having someone come help out with the housework once in a while. I do.”

I was shocked. It had never occurred to me that so many other women — some of them working, some of them stay-at-home, none of them fabulously wealthy — might actually hire cleaners. So, a short time later, when a local friend confessed that her “little secret” was a wonderful cleaning woman, I took it as a sign from the universe and asked for the cleaning woman’s contact information.

This led me to question: Why, for so many women, is this kind of help considered a “little secret?!?” Why do we have so much trouble admitting to each other that we need or receive help? Why are we still burdened by the expectation that we need to do everything, and that outside help is a sign of weakness or incompetence?!?

I’m announcing our cleaning woman on the internet, but this isn’t information that I’d normally disclose to anyone with whom I wasn’t extremely comfortable. I feel a little embarrassed about it. Why? Well, I tend to think of cleaning women as belonging to the world of the rich and famous: luxuries employed by mothers whom I’ve heard dismissed by the phrase: “Of course, she has TONS of help.” (That phrase is never, ever meant as a compliment).

And another thing: I’m a stay-at-home mom. My JOB is to care for my family and home. What on earth is wrong with me that, with all the hours in the day, I can’t manage to keep my own house clean without outside assistance?

In short: What justifies the luxury of a cleaning woman in a household with a stay-at-home mom and the income from one assistant professor’s salary?

The best answer I have is: My Sanity. COULD I do all of the Superwoman things I feel that I should be doing — care for four kids and a puppy, love my husband, make delicious home-cooked meals every night, maintain flawless gardens, sew all of our clothes, decorate the house with my own hand-made crafts, carve out some daily time for reading and writing and exercise, and take charge of all the cleaning? I probably could, but I’d be a mess. Sooner or later I’d burn out, and the whole house of cards would come down on all of us.

Instead, we have a cleaning woman twice a month, and she’s been a lifesaver. We initially hired her because the physical act of housecleaning became difficult for me during late pregnancy, but we’re keeping her on post-baby. Having her come twice a month is nice, too, because I still feel like I’m responsible for maintaining the house on those weeks when she doesn’t come (although often I’m lazy and let things slide). Her help has taken just enough off of my plate so that I feel a little more sane, a little more able to focus on enjoying my family and making time for the things that recharge my batteries.

Don’t get me wrong: a cleaning lady IS a luxury. I know that hiring help doesn’t fit in everyone’s budget. We’re certainly not super-wealthy; we’ve prioritized this by sacrificing some other things.

But really, I’m talking about something larger than cleaning ladies, or budgets. I’m talking about GETTING RID OF THE IDEA THAT WE SHOULDN’T NEED HELP. Because obviously help isn’t just something that you pay for: It comes free, too, when we take up friends and family members on their offers to watch our kids for a while, to bring over a meal, to run an errand.

I’m trying to avoid the over-used quote that “It takes a village to raise a child.” But that’s essentially what I’m saying. The longer I do parenthood, the more convinced I am that WE WERE NEVER MEANT TO DO THIS ALONE. For centuries, before post-secondary education and changes in industry and infrastructure made it possible for people to leave their hometowns, most people stayed close to family. You might even raise your own family in the house where you were born, surrounded by parents and siblings and extended family who could help with the chores, or at least hold the baby for five minutes.

That might sound like a mixed blessing, and I’m sure it was. But now most of us have to build our own support structures when it comes to caring for a home and a family, asking for or hiring help that used to be a given. So, where did we get the idea that to be a parent (especially a mom), one needs to be a Lone Ranger? Why are we guilty about getting help? Why are we afraid to admit to others that we NEED help?

I’m going on record: I need help. I get help. And I’m getting better at accepting help without worrying that I’m unworthy or lazy or incompetent.

After all, even the Lone Ranger had Tonto.

I Hate Housework, Two

Earlier this year, I published a post on this blog (“I Hate Housework, Too”), in which I confessed my tormented ambivalence towards housework: Having grown up in a spotless house, I have high standards for cleanliness, but I hate the actual effort needed to reach those standards. I admitted that my own house suffers from “creeping kids’ stuff,” which I handle through a combination of breaking the cleaning into manageable pieces, and shrugging off any oversights with the “I have three kids” excuse.

While I was writing that piece, and for about five minute afterwards, I felt great. I felt like I’d finally found equilibrium when it came to the state of my house.

And then, because this is real life, I went right back to stressing about housework. In fact, my husband will tell you that housework is almost always the straw that breaks my mental health — and with it, the overall mental health of our family. I can handle the kids screaming and the dog barking, but if I feel like the house is spinning out of my control, I start to become unhinged. “I need some degree of neatness in order to think!” I’ll wail to my husband, who will in turn catch my stress, and so on, until the whole family is entangled in my stress cycle.

Of course, with three young children and now a DOG, the house is constantly spinning out of my control, and any effort I put into wrestling it into a state of basic neatness is undone minutes later. HOWEVER, just the other day I had a revelation that I think may change my perspective for good. It came to me, oddly enough, while washing the dishes. Here it is:

MY HOUSE IS NOT ALIVE.

That seems like an obvious statement, and it is. But to expand a bit: I am surrounded by living things that, at this moment, depend on me for their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual growth. My house is not one of them. My house has no chance of ever going out into the world and making a positive difference. No matter how I care for it, my house is slowly breaking down, and will continue to do so until the day (decades hence, I hope) when some young, investment-banking couple from Manhattan will arrive to gut the place and install granite counter-tops and jacuzzi tubs.

My house is not going to attend my funeral and eulogize me for the amount of care I gave it. And while we’re on the subject, have you EVER been to a funeral at which it was said of the deceased, “She was so CLEAN!”?

No, my house is not alive. But my daughters, and my husband, and my dog, and my family, and my friends, and mySELF, they are alive. Am I prioritizing my time and energy and mental health accordingly?

It my be that I’m alone in this war with myself over the state of my house, this pointless battle to maintain a baseline of cleanliness. But in case I’m not alone, perhaps this thought will help you, too: your living space is not going to feel hurt if you neglect it a little. The living beings who surround you, they’re another story.

Here’s hoping that you and I can let ourselves off the hook for good this time!

…but ALSO…

And the posts just keep on coming! Here’s my latest over at On the Willows, about some life lessons I’ve learned from home improvement. Click here to read.

If You Buy a House in Vermont…Redux

My second column for The Addison Independent is up! It’s a version of something I wrote about previously on this blog, but now completely remastered and updated to include new home improvements! Click here to read it.

And Now for a Brief Poultry Update….

I’m sure you’ve all been asking yourselves, How are Grace, Simba, and Hermione doing? You’ve been desperately hoping each time you click on a Pickle Patch post that I’ll include some news about our chickens. And each time, I’ve let you down.

Until today, my friends.

Grace, Simba, and Hermione are thriving. Every day they look less like cute, fuzzy little chicks, and more like full-grown chickens. I can’t imagine that any other animal illustrates the concept of adolescence better than chickens: for several weeks, they had yellow, downy fuzz on their necks and heads, but feathers down below: half chick, half chicken. Throw in some pimples and a squeaky “cluck,” and you’ve got the universal 13-year-old.

After about 4 weeks in a large plastic bin under a heat lamp in our garage (the very impressive, chicken-raising term for this setup: “The Brooder”), they were large enough to move out to the chicken coop in our yard. And, I’m proud to say, they have survived! I honestly feel a greater sense of accomplishment about keeping these chickens alive outside than I did about keeping our newborn children alive. As clueless as first-time parents are, at least we’re the same species as our children; when it came to chickens Erick and I had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what we were doing. We ended up ordering the chicken coop from Wal-Mart (yes, Wal-Mart sells chicken coops; who knew?), and Erick and his father constructed a rudimentary fence from metal posts and chicken wire. This probably won’t be our final set-up; it’s too flimsy to withstand predators and Vermont winters for long. But until Erick gets around to his winter project of building a chicken coop by hand in our basement (which he claims he’s “getting excited about;” who knew?), it’ll do.

Of course, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. First we had to resolve the tiny little issue of whether we were allowed to keep chickens in our neighborhood at all. Our kind neighbors, neither of whom minded us keeping chickens, both mentioned in passing that we should know that there was some sort of “Neighborhood Covenant” forbidding the keeping of farm animals. Huh?!? In Vermont?!? But we wanted to be good neighbors; I didn’t relish the idea of trying to keep chickens secret. We hadn’t been told of any “Neighborhood Covenant” when we bought the house, but there was a reference to it in our Deed. Good girl that I am, I went over to the Town Clerk’s office and pulled up the Covenant. It does exist, it does forbid the keeping of “anything other than domestic animals,” (and sets strict limits on what color you can stain your house), AND…it expired the year we moved in! So our chickens are legal. (And now we’re now planning to paint our house purple and start grazing cows on the lawn).

The first day the chickens were out in the coop was pretty harrowing. I was like a new mother, checking her baby obsessively in the bassinet; I kept peeking in the coop, to make sure that they were eating and drinking and alive. Our coop has a fenced-in “grazing” area on the bottom, and a ramp leading “upstairs” to the roost and nesting box. By nightfall, I noticed that our chickens were still hanging out in the downstairs grazing area, which made me a little nervous; safer for them to be up in the roost, protected from predators. Something wasn’t right. By about 10 PM, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I threw boots and a coat on over my pajamas, strapped on a headlamp (since it was pitch dark outside), and tromped out to the coop with Erick wearily following along behind. It was like a scene from every zany “clueless people raising animals” comedy ever made.

There were the chickens, cuddled up and sleeping in the grazing area. We picked them up (thankfully sleepy chickens are much easier to get a handle on than wide-awake chickens) and moved them up to the nesting area. That was all it took; “OH, there’s an UPSTAIRS?” you could see their little chicken brains clicking.

Moral of the story? Chickens: not so smart.

And now for the bad news: It looks like we have one rooster. This isn’t exactly bad news, since in my darkest moments I imagined that somehow we’d end up with three roosters, and that all our efforts on behalf of these chickens would be for naught; we’d be left with an empty chicken coop and no eggs. And I’m still not entirely sure, since supposedly you can’t really tell which chickens are hens and which are roosters until about the fourth or fifth month, when the roosters will start to crow. But all I can say is that one of our chickens has a huge, bright red comb on top of its head, and the other two don’t. I’m calling it: Rooster.

Thankfully, our girls have enough experience with other roosters to agree that we don’t want to keep a rooster. “That one’s a rooster,” they’re already telling their friends. “We’re going to give it away…or EAT it.” And no, we have no idea which girl’s chicken turned out to be the rooster, because really, these chickens are impossible to tell apart. But Fiona keeps insisting that she’s sure the rooster is Campbell’s (Simba).

A hard, heartless bunch, these Gong girls.

Backyard-igans

We have a pretty magical backyard. But “magical” can always be made “magical-er,” right? So, when Nana and Boom came up for a recent visit, we started in on some backyard improvement projects.

I can’t believe I just typed the phrase “backyard improvement projects.”

BUT, making our backyard a little more magical made sense, for a couple of reasons. Both of those reasons, of course, center around our kids.

REASON #1: Now that it’s summer again, much of my time is spent outside trying to keep the woods a respectful distance from our house. Note that I didn’t say “spare time,” or “free time,” because that kind of time doesn’t exist for me right now. Having a few added entertainment options in the yard to amuse our girls buys me some time. Two minutes of additional distraction for them = two minutes of additional productivity for me.

REASON #2: I could care less about keeping up with the Joneses, but the truth is that our yard is fairly boring as yards go around here. The other night, we went to dinner at a house that featured — just in the yard itself — chickens, baby goats, a tire swing, a trampoline, and a canoe rigged up as a pirate ship. I’d say that’s about typical in these parts. Our yard, as of springtime, had rocks and a little empty shed as its only attractions. Clearly, if I wanted my children to stay at home, I needed to up the ante just a little.

And it didn’t take much.

BACKYARD IMPROVEMENT, PHASE 1: The Quarry

Our girls call it “The Quarry,” which I take as a sign that they’re becoming true New Englanders. (Central Vermont, like much of northern New England, is dotted with quarries both active and defunct). But really, it’s a gravel pit. Thanks to Boom, we have a more upscale version: a gravel BOX. These are pretty popular around here; gravel is more durable than sand when it comes to withstanding the rain and snow that we get in large amounts, it’s cheaper, and it also doesn’t so easily get lodged in the kids’ clothes and tracked all over the house. Here’s what it took to create our gravel box:

4 – 2″ x 8″ x 6′ spruce boards (for the sides)

1 – 2″x 6″x 8′ spruce board (for the bench/seats — this is just if you’re being fancy)

9 – 60 lb. bags of small marble chips

Assorted shovels, rakes, buckets, and dump trucks

Nana and Boom clearing and leveling the ground for the gravel box.

That’s it! Years’ worth of entertainment for under $100.

BACKYARD IMPROVEMENT, PHASE 2: The Hammock

My parents gave me a hammock for Mother’s Day, and it’s a HUGE hit with all three Gong girls. My dad strung it up between two trees in the same corner of the yard as the shed and The Quarry, so when the girls need a break from frenzied digging or games of fairy princess, they lounge in the hammock. They have snacks in the hammock, read in the hammock, snuggle in the hammock. It’s been a great addition. (The hardest part of the installation was digging out the rocks from the ground underneath the hammock, so that a tumble doesn’t immediately result in paralysis).

BACKYARD IMPROVEMENT, PHASE 3: Aesthetics for Adults

A couple of new things in our yard have nothing to do with the girls. The first is a beautiful birdhouse that my dad built and hung on a tree facing our sunroom windows.

The second is a new flowerbed along the side of the house. When we moved here a year ago, the previous owners left us a decaying woodpile that stretched half the length of the side yard, and a major project last summer was moving any use-able wood to a better spot. This left a big, bare spot. And, while I tend to have more of a “let it go native” and “who gets to decide what’s a weed, anyway?” approach to gardening, this seemed like a spot that was just crying out for beautification.

Enter our friends Matt and Nicolle, whose son goes to preschool with Fiona. When Nicolle put out a notice on Facebook that she was looking to give away some extra plants from her garden, I jumped. And thankfully, it worked out so that Nicolle and Matt could drop off the plants while my parents were visiting, since my parents know waaaaay more about gardening than I ever will. Here’s the scene when Matt and Nicolle arrived with the plants:

-me, in dirty gardening clothes

-my parents, also in dirty gardening clothes

-6 kids running around like maniacs (our 3 girls, their two friends, and Matt and Nicolle’s son)

-1 dog (Brinkley)

-and, at one point, 2 neighbors (Brinkley’s owners)

Here’s who was NOT there: Erick, who was out in San Francisco for a wedding, sleeping in and grabbing brunch with high school friends. (Did I mention this was Mother’s Day weekend? I should get some mileage out of that for a while….)

ANYWAY, given that scenario, you’ll understand why I was not 100% fully in the moment when Matt and Nicolle arrived (I was more like 300% in the moment), which is why it was surprising and incredibly helpful and just all around amazing when they not only dropped off the plants, but started putting the plants in the ground for us! Over the course of about two hours, Matt, Nicolle, and my parents created this lovely little garden. I think I contributed about half a hole to the project.

People are really lovely, especially Matt and Nicolle. THANK YOU, MATT AND NICOLLE!

And THANK YOU, NANA AND BOOM!

AND, THANK YOU, GRANDMOMMY AND GRANDDADDY, who just wrapped up a two-week visit during which they helped us with our most recent backyard improvement projects: stacking 4 cords of wood in our new woodshed and getting our backyard chicken coop into place. (Uncle Wesley helped stack wood, too, during the week he was here: THANK YOU, UNCLE WESLEY!)

Four cords of neatly stacked wood in our new woodshed (beautifully constructed by our friend Cris).

Erick securing the fence around our chicken coop.

We’re enjoying our beautiful and FUN backyard. And it’s even more beautiful because, when we look at it, we are really seeing the beautiful people who helped create it.

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there, but especially to my Dad (Boom), my Father-in-Law (Granddaddy), and my husband (Erick): Three men who have the difficult lot of often being surrounded by talkative, emotional females, and handle it with aplomb. We love you!

The Jumping Couch

We chose not to know the gender of any of our babies before they were born, because surprises are fun. Then, about three weeks before Fiona’s birth, I had a pregnancy massage. Towards the end, the masseuse asked if I wanted her to “read the baby’s energy” to predict whether it was a boy or girl. (Remember, this was in Berkeley). Sure, what the heck, I thought. Based on the amount of rock ‘n roll that was happening in utero, Erick and I expected (for admittedly stereotypical reasons) that the baby would be a boy. Based on the way I was carrying the baby — all in front — everybody else predicted it would be a boy, too. Unsolicited opinions were flying my way daily; what was the harm in one more?

The masseuse held her hands above my stomach and concentrated very, very hard.

“Huh,” she said, “I think it’s a girl, but I’m also getting a lot of boy energy.”

And there you have it. To this day, I can’t think of a better way of describing all three of our daughters than “Girls with boy energy.”

Which leads me to the problem of the jumping.

Like most kids, our daughters like to jump. And, presumably because they have “boy energy,” they like to jump A LOT. Get them near any bouncy house or trampoline, and they’re happy for upwards of an hour. Unfortunately, all that our house has to offer are beds and couches.

I know some moms who have very strict rules about their big-ticket possessions: there are couches in their houses that the kids can’t even sit on, entire rooms that are off-limits, cars that can’t be eaten in, etc. etc. I am not that kind of mom, and even if I wanted to be, it’s too late — it would be like announcing one morning that from now on, we’re all going to be speaking Greek. The bottom line is: I just don’t care that much about stuff. It’s only stuff, subject to entropy like everything else. I don’t want our kids to care too much about stuff, either, and I want them to feel cozy and comfortable in their own home. But my bottom line is actually a fine line to walk: even if you don’t care much about stuff, there’s still a basic level of care or maintenance required for your stuff — otherwise it gets trashed quickly and you end up having to buy more stuff.

Getting our girls to understand that fine line has been a challenge.

Here’s how it is: I let the girls jump on their beds. They’re not allowed to jump on my bed, because it’s my bed and I said so. But I figure that in their own room, they deserve a measure of autonomy. So far, nobody’s gotten hurt, and the beds (cheap Ikea deals) have held up. But that’s because they don’t really want to jump on their beds; they want to jump on the couch.

In all honesty, it’s couches since we moved to Vermont, which still seems crazy to me. When Erick and I got married, his boss gave us the brown suede couch that had been in Erick’s office. Or, not so much “gave” as “begged us to take it,” since the thing was covered with drool stains from all the naps Erick took on it. And that was our couch, in our New York City apartment and all three of our Berkeley homes. We’ve all recuperated on it when we were sick, I napped on it when I was pregnant and exhausted, and Erick and I both took turns sleeping on it while holding newborn Fiona when she was fussy and couldn’t settle down. It’s been a great couch for almost a decade. And, when we lived in Berkeley, in a 900-square-foot bungalow with no yard, I wasn’t too strict about not jumping on it.

Our original couch. (I think the dark spot on the right is from repeated rubbing by Erick’s head during his many naps).

Then we moved to Vermont, where, in addition to a living room, we also have a sun room — a whole other family space that needed furniture. Our old couch ended up in the living room, and I ordered a slip-covered sofa and loveseat from Ikea for the sun room. I used the move to attempt to hit “reset” on our jumping policy: their beds were still okay, but there was to be no jumping on the couches in our new home. After all, we now had plenty of space to run, jump, and play.

It hasn’t worked. Every day I have to tell our girls to stop jumping on one of the couches. They’re getting older and smarter, so they’re starting to use semantics to try and get around the rules: “I wasn’t jumping, Mommy, I was diving/dancing/walking/practicing my cartwheels.” It reminds me of when we had a cat (pre-kids) who would always jump up on the dining room table. We tried everything to make her stop, and finally resorted to getting a “Scat Mat” — a plastic mat that delivers a little electric shock to the paws. Needless to say, she didn’t like the Scat Mat at all, but did it stop her from jumping on the table? No, it did not; she just jumped on the table and carefully walked around the mat.

There is a point, of sorts, to this post, and I’m coming to it now. Probably due to a combination of years of Erick’s naps, scratching by our former cat, jumping by our daughters, and neglect by me, our good old living room couch started to die earlier this year. It started as a teeny-tiny hole, which became a bigger hole, which suddenly became three large, gaping holes spilling white fuzz. Even Erick admitted that it was time for a new couch.

Given the amount of wear-and-tear that our furniture takes in a day, it didn’t make sense to get anything too fine to replace our old couch. So, based on a quick calculation of what would be cheap but durable, look nice but withstand three kids, and simplest for me (a combination of easy to find, quality assured, and delivered to my door), we settled on a basic light brown slip-covered couch from Pottery Barn. It arrived last month, and it looks great.

The ridiculous thing is that we now have three couches in our house — four if you count the loveseat. (Which is probably what I deserve after years of trying to keep life simple and downsized, and for probably judging people who live in big houses and own a lot of stuff just a little too harshly). This plethora of couches might just be the solution to our jumping problem, however. (Aside: Does anybody else out there have trouble using the word “plethora” without hearing El Guapo from The Three Amigos: “What ees a plethora?” Anybody?!? Besides my dad, I mean?)

So, here’s the plan: the old couch, the one with the holes in it, will be moved up to the rec room the next time we have family or friends visiting (family or friends who haven’t already broken multiple bones helping us with house projects, that is), where it will become “The Jumping Couch.” All other couches in the house, especially the new couch, are “No Jumping Allowed” couches. This has been clearly explained to the girls, who seem to understand. Fiona even proclaimed that the new couch was “too hard for jumping — you’d break your head on it!”

I hope this works, or else I’m going to start researching child-sized Scat Mats.

New Additions

Here’s a hypothetical situation for you:

Let’s say that, for a couple of years, you’d been considering raising a few chickens. This started back when you lived in California, where the backyard chicken craze was really taking off. But between three kids and no yard at all, it didn’t seem like a possibility. Then — hypothetically, of course — you moved to a small town in Vermont where everyone, it seemed, was raising chickens (among other things). You still had the three kids, but a much bigger yard. Chickens seemed like more of a possibility, albeit a remote one.

And then, right at the end of your first year in Vermont, when things with the kids and the house and the yard seemed to be getting under control, your daughter’s preschool class obtained an incubator full of eggs for hatching. Back when you were in preschool, your class hatched eggs, too, but you never really considered what happened to the chicks after they’d hatched and been cooed over by the class. No doubt they were driven out to the country somewhere. But NOW, YOU live in the country, so here’s what happens at your daughter’s preschool: Near the end of the 21-day incubation period, a sign-up sheet appears on a large poster, decorated by your daughter’s class with adorable chick pictures, which says, “HELP US FIND GOOD HOMES FOR OUR CHICKS!” The pick-up day is in one week.

Well, what would you do?!?

Here’s what I did: Called my husband, of course. Called him at his office, where he was busy fielding panicked undergraduates (whose entire lives apparently hung on their final grades in Introductory Statistics), when he wasn’t researching how to rid the world of poverty and disease.

“Free chicks,” I said.

“Um, okay, I guess so,” he replied.

And so I signed us up for three chicks. (Three, of course: one per girl).

Here’s what I did next: Rushed to the library to check out all the books I could find about raising chickens. The week in between signing up for the chicks and picking them up felt kind of like preparing for the arrival of three newborn babies…in seven days. We read, we looked online, we talked to our real live friends who raise chickens, we dragged the girls around to Agway and the Paris Farmers Union. Many times, we thought — and said — “What have we gotten ourselves into?” And Erick helpfully pointed out that my original declaration of “Free chicks!” was not, in fact accurate; that we’d fallen prey to the classic pet-store scam of giving away free goldfish, because the fish aren’t the expensive part.

But the girls had already picked names for their chicks. There was no going back.

So, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to our newest additions, the other three Gong Girls: Grace, Simba, and Hermione:

They are currently living in a box under a heat lamp in our garage, while we scramble to build a backyard chicken coop in less than a month. (Helpers welcome!)

Our hope is to have three laying hens who will provide us with fresh eggs, eat the ticks in our yard, and somehow manage to survive the owls, hawks, foxes, skunks, possums, raccoons, weasels, dogs, and small children that our backyard has to offer. The problem is, it’s too early to tell if they’re hens or roosters, so please cross your fingers that they really do turn out to be the three Gong Girls.

“What if one — or more than one — turns out to be a rooster?” I asked one of our chicken-savvy friends.

“That,” she said, “is what you call ‘dinner.'”

If You Buy A House in Vermont (PART 2 of 2)

There’s a popular children’s book called “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.” The premise is: if you give a mouse a cookie, chances are he’s going to want a glass of milk to go with it…and before long, offering that mouse one simple cookie has resulted in some sort of complicated scenario. Our girls happen to love this book (and all the other books in the series, which follow the same premise), and it’s always struck me as offering a fairly realistic view of life. We make one “simple” choice which touches off a series of events, and life is changed forever. So here, with apologies to “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie,” is what I’ve learned after 6 months regarding…

IF YOU BUY A HOUSE IN VERMONT

If you buy a house in Vermont, chances are you’re going to want a house that offers an “authentic” Vermont experience. What passes as “authentic” may differ slightly from person to person, but generally follows the words spoken by a local realtor to some friends of ours: “You don’t move to Vermont to live in a suburban subdivision.”

You will look at 11 houses during a 3-day period in March (having taken the red-eye from San Francisco accompanied by your 5-week-old daughter), and will select a beautiful house in the woods. A house surrounded by trees, with views of the Green Mountains, but from which you can still see neighbors’ houses when the leaves are off the trees. Compared to almost every other house you’ve seen, this house is definitively not a “fixer-upper.” You can picture your children running freely through its rooms and climbing on the rocks that line the yard. You will never, ever need more house than this. You may even, in your sleep-deprived state, refer to this house as your “dream house.”

If you buy a house in the woods in Vermont, chances are that on your first or second night you will hear bumps in the night. Bumps and scratching the pitter-patter of little feet that don’t happen to belong to your daughters. You will find mice droppings everywhere, and wonder why you’re surprised since you do, in fact, live in the woods. (The real woods, not a suburban subdivision that happens to feature trees). Nonetheless, you will deem it prudent to call a pest-control expert.

Bumps in the night not provided by this child...

...or this child. (NOTE: These past 3 pictures were unnecessary but were put here to appease the grandparents, since there will not be many photos of the girls in this post. Also, they're a lot cuter than the actual mice).

The pest-control expert will mention your roof, which is quaintly covered by aging cedar shingles. Mossy, 22-year-old cedar shingles that were given the okay by the inspector but which you did expect to replace… in 5 years or so. Apparently, rodents fail to see any distinction between your roof and a tree.

If you buy a house with cedar shingles in the woods in Vermont, chances are you will also begin to notice signs of past leaks. Signs that you’d failed to notice when you fell in love with your “dream house,” like the water stains on the ceiling. You deem it prudent to call in some roofers for their opinion. Over the course of several months, 6 different roofers will tell you that your roof needs to be replaced immediately, before winter sets in.

The contractor you ultimately hire to replace your roof will find 4 mice nests, one red squirrel nest, and a family of bats living over the garage. Which does explain the bumps in the night.

He will also point out that your house needs a complete exterior paint job in the spring.

The new roof! With a little view of the failing exterior paint.

If you buy a house in the woods in Vermont, chances are you will not be close enough to town to have access to municipal water or sewer. This means that you will have a septic tank under your yard, the functionality of which will keep your husband awake nights. You will get your water from a well dug 150 feet beneath your yard, operated by an electric pump. You will lose electricity for 12 hours during the first summer thunderstorm, and quickly realize that no electricity means no water. No water, with 5 people in the house, 3 of whom are young children, is not a good thing. You hear stories from the neighbors of losing electricity for over a week. During the winter, with subzero temperatures and possibly hazardous road conditions, this could be dangerous. You also hear the hum of your neighbors’ generators. You wonder why the previous owners never got a generator.

You deem it prudent to buy a generator.

If you buy a house in Vermont, chances are it will soon enough begin to get cold outside. You will want to heat your house. Because you are in rural/small town Vermont, natural gas is not an option; they don’t run the pipes through here. Your heat is called “forced hot water,” which runs off of fuel oil. Once a month, a big fuel truck pulls into your driveway and runs a pump to fill up the fuel tank in your basement. It costs $1,000 to fill the entire tank; to keep the inside temperature at 61 degrees requires half a tank per month. You do the math.

After a couple months of nauseating fuel bills, you begin to notice the smoke from your neighbors’ wood stoves. You and your husband talk to the friends and colleagues who heat their homes with wood stoves, which turns out to be just about everyone you know. When questioned, these people get a maniacal gleam in their eyes and speak about their wood stoves with the type of love usually reserved for spouses or children. Emotion aside, they all mention how wood stoves allow them to completely turn off or at least significantly reduce their dependence on fuel.

You wonder why the previous owners never got a wood stove.

You deem it prudent to buy a wood stove.

Admittedly, the wood stove is a great addition to the family. Your daughters love the wood stove instantly, name it “Woody,” and spend many hours doing things like this:

You husband feels very manly now that his duties have expanded to include the daily lighting of fires and the hauling and stacking of wood. BUT…

If you buy a wood stove for your house in Vermont, chances are you’re going to need some wood to go with it. About 3-4 cords worth…. (The total wood pictured below is 1 cord’s worth).

And that, my friends, is how your “dream house” in Vermont can become:

In case this post seems overly negative, I want to clarify that we DO love our house and are grateful for it every single day. It’s kind of like a kid; you don’t ever love changing stinky diapers, but you don’t love your kids less because you have to change their diapers — and some might argue that you love them more. Well, that’s how it is with the house, too. Or perhaps more basically, we’ve put a lot of stinkin’ work into this place, so there’s no way we’re leaving anytime soon!

Progress…

…on a couple of fronts at our house this week.

OPERATION: NEW ROOF

Today we can see the front of our house for the first time in 2 weeks! The scaffolding and tarps that have covered it while the roofers tore off and reinstalled the roof on the front portion came down, and here is how our new roof looks thus far:

It’s about 1/3 finished, so we’re bracing for another 2+ weeks of overhead pounding. But we’re thrilled with both the look and the fact that it’ll keep us dry all winter. Here’s a look at the new vs. old roof. As Fiona said this morning, “Daddy, why isn’t there grass growing out of the new roof?” ‘Nuff said.