In our latest 9 Thumbs episode, writer and sex-podcaster Sharideth Smith joins us to discuss books, listening to books, listening to authors read their own books, and reading books aloud, as well as the funny ways Americans disagree over words and pronunciation. We threw in one food item and a photographer, but mostly… we like words.  Want to check out anything we liked on this episode? Visit our blog for links.

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Image Credit Rob Stennett. View from his backyard of the wildfire.

It’s weird. The eastern sky lit up on fire last night. The wildfire dosen’t rip through like a tornado or hurricane or tsunami. No one is dead. Most people have time to stand in the middle of their houses and ask themselves–what should I take with me? What matters?

Sometimes you have hours, days to think about this.

The fire is zero percent contained. Every morning you wake up hoping the good guys are starting to win. It doesn’t happen. The fire keeps crawling slowly, lazily, gobbling up another house, consuming a piece of the Colorado forest like a glutton. It’s made its way to the south edge of Denver.

I look at a map of places nearby; neighbors who I’ve never thought about. Only now I wonder what they’re thinking as they pack their homes and call a friend and asking a favor to sleep on a couch. They leave knowing their lives are safe. Their homes are in jeopardy.

All we can do is wait. And wait. Wait.

My friend Rob Stennett is an author, director, and cohost on the 9 Thumbs podcast we record (almost) each week. He lives in Colorado Springs, where a wildfire rages, 0% contained, very close to his home. He wrote this today, and allowed me to share it with all of you.

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We survived our first week of Life Skills Bootcamp. The expectations this week were simple: make your bed and pick everything up off the floor by 9am or you lose a dollar. Here’s the highlights, and a few low lights too. (Not sure what this is? Start here.)

How I’m Doing

I keep telling myself that making my bed is easy. Doesn’t take more than 10 seconds, max. And my room looks better when the bed is made. But the sad truth is that I keep needing this pep talk. I may as well admit it: I don’t want to make my bed. Maybe it’s a persistent rebellion against four years of room checks and mandatory bed-making in college, but I relish the freedom to leave the bed unmade. So this whole me being the room-inspector bit is ironic and amusing.

I’ve uncovered an inner hard-ass I didn’t know I had. Well, I did know it, but I’ve been too distracted and lazy to come down hard the way I’ve needed to. I’m really hoping that all the hard work up front will pay off soon so that our summer goes fairly smoothly.

Successes

The kids are doing an incredible job making their beds and keeping their rooms picked up. Even the youngest, who sleeps on the top bunk, has worked at it. The first day, he stripped the sheets off his bed because he thought “make the bed” meant “change the sheets,” bless his heart. He has a tougher time pulling his blankets up because he’s small and on the top bunk. He also tends to forget, well, everything, but the incentive of losing a dollar sends him tearing down the hall to his room every morning to make sure everything passes inspection. (His big brother’s reminders don’t hurt either.)

The kids saw for themselves what a difference small efforts every day make when Saturday morning dawned (well, technically a few hours after dawn, but whatever). Every Saturday, we do a big clean-up of the house, and I have them vacuum their bedrooms. Usually they have to spend at least an hour cleaning up and getting everything off the floor so they can get a vacuum cleaner into their rooms. But this week, their normal morning routine was all it took to prep for vacuuming! They all commented on how great it was to be done with their Saturday chores so quickly.

I’ve asked them to pitch in on other things this past week too. I have two reasons – one, making beds and picking up rooms is fast and easy and not asking much of them; two, I need help; and actually I have three reasons, I’m working on their attitudes. No surprise – two of the three kids are the opposite of thrilled about “all this work.”

Challenges

We’ve had some big confrontations over little things. Most notable were folding a basket of laundry and setting the table. The kids are still getting used to the new me who no longer tolerates the arguing and negotiating they normally engage in. And with the new expectations have come a veritable storm of complaints. One of my kids went to bed without dinner this past week when I told him to set the table, repeated the request three times (argh!), and explained that the consequence for not setting the table would be missing dinner. When he responded, “Ask me nicely,” I bit back a swear and sent him to his room without dinner. (Side note: nothing makes me want to swear more than my kids complaining to me, arguing with me, and sassing me. Wow. It’s like a sailor in my inner monologue!)

Another child insisted that they couldn’t fold any laundry bigger than their own, and copped an attitude when I explained that they were about to learn. I had planned to fold the basket of clothes with this kid, demonstrating how to deal with their dad’s t-shirts and other large items. But when the complaining persisted, I stepped back and said, “All right, you can fold the entire basket by yourself.” Instead of shutting up, the complaining worsened, so I took away all that kid’s screen time for 24 hours.

That was especially stellar timing, since that night was movie night. The other kids enjoyed pizza and a movie, while this one spent the evening alone in his/her bedroom. But get this: when we checked in later, he/she had used the time to clean up the entire bedroom, sorting through an entire bookcase to remove books that were in bad shape or that the kids had outgrown. The books to keep were shelved neatly. Amazing.

All of the kids have been sent out to the back yard with grocery bags to fill with weeds or yard waste after sassing or complaining or arguing. In fact, I’m running out of yard waste. Fortunately, we have a dog who keeps the yard stocked with poo. So guess what they’ll be picking up this week?!?!

MidCourse Corrections

I keep forgetting to get singles for their containers (they started the 3-week unit with $21 each, and they lose a dollar each day their room fails inspection). Part of that is I was waiting to be paid. Part of it is that I’m just forgetful.  I’m getting the dollars today.

When I showed the Bootcamp plan to Scott, he loved it. But he immediately added a mini-lesson on how to handle toothpaste. The kids’ bathroom always looks as if a toothpaste murder took place, and their toothpaste tubes? We have no idea how they get toothpaste past the giant hardened ball of paste hanging off the end and onto their toothbrushes.

Planning Ahead

I bought The America’s Test Kitchen Quick Family Cookbook this week. It is full of easy meals (all prepared in 45 minutes or less). I like it because it has photos, both of the step-by-step preparation and of the final product. The older two kids have both flipped through it, looking for meals they want to prepare on their days to cook. The oldest boy has select three shrimp recipes, and the girl has selected some delicious-sounding salads and wraps. The boy won’t let on, but I can tell that behind his Eeyore face, he’s excited about choosing recipes (he has always enjoyed cooking shows and convincing me to try the latest Rachel Ray recipe).

One-liners

“I don’t need to know how to do laundry. My WIFE will do it for me.”  [WRONG answer, kid.]

“I’m TIRED of doing ALL the work.” [Let's talk about how much work I do vs what I'm asking you to do.]

“You’re going too hard on people” [Just wait til you get a real boss.]

“This is going too far.” [Ha. HAH. HAHAHAHAH!]

“I’m bored.” [Time for chores!]

How’s your summer going? Got any tips for dealing with complaints?

I'd love to know what you think about Dispatches from Life Skills Bootcamp – Week One. Will you leave a comment?

The Mooneys’ first child, a boy named Eliot (I mean, seriously – their son is Eliot, our daughter is Elli?!?!?), was born with Trisomy 18, a diagnosis that, as the doctors put it, is “not viable for life.” Eliot wasn’t supposed to survive the birth, but he did, for 99 days. Matt wrote about their experience in the just-released book “A Story Unfinished: 99 Days with Eliot” and I have to tell you – the parallels between our stories are uncanny.

They invited me to write a post for their book launch, and I was honored to accept. Here’s a short excerpt from my post.

My memory of the next eight years is fuzzy. When conversations turn to events or movies or the like from the decade of the 2000s, I rarely know or recall them. I can count on my fingers the number of times I slept through the night, especially after 2004, when Elli developed a seizure disorder right after we learned we were expecting a third child. In 2007, our fourth child was born with a serious medical condition of his own. I was past my capacity, in over my head, desperately trying to care for one child in a wheelchair who couldn’t walk or talk, two able-bodied children, and a newborn who needed two major surgeries his first year of life. I lived terrified that my sleep deprivation and chronic fatigue would cause me to forget something really important, and the consequences would be devastating.

Head over to The Atypical Life to read the rest of my Story Unfinished.

(Psst. Don’t forget to order your copy of their book!)

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My oldest found my bootcamp plan posted on the refrigerator yesterday. He expressed his displeasure at “All This Work” and even more dismay when I told him I’d posted the plan on the internet and other people were doing it too. I can’t blame him though – I’m not exactly excited about All This Work either. I woke up exhausted this morning after spending all day in the garden yesterday, and the last thing I wanted to do was make my bed. Sometimes I think that leaving my bed unmade leaves the option open for me to slip back into it for a little nap later. Making the bed makes me a little sad because it discourages napping (even though I only ever nap on Sunday afternoons!). And hey, writing this out and seeing it in print sounds really pitiful. Forget I said anything.

I’m guessing that you’re like me and you want the real story. Here’s how the first day went.

I spent much of the day yesterday reminding people to put things away that they got out: milk, orange juice, bread, cereal, bottles of bubbles, lemons. But they argued about it with me less. And when the youngest expressed his complaints in dramatic sighs when I told him to put his toys in the basement, I told him that if he did that again, I’d send him outside to fill a grocery bag with the spikey balls that fall from one of our trees. (Whew, that was a long sentence!) He quit sighing immediately (though I suspect he’ll be out there collecting yet this week).

In the positive column, my daughter followed me downstairs, helped me sort laundry, and began learning how to run the washer and dryer. She sliced lemons and made from-scratch real lemonade on her own. My oldest son started ripping down the shredded cover of our outdoor playset on his own initiative. I handed him a screwdriver and asked him to give that a try. The cover was held down by screws and washers, which had been tightened by Scott, so I told my son to let me know if the screws were too tight. He never once said, “I can’t do that.” Less than 2o minutes later, he had removed all the screws, taken down the cover, and thrown it in the trash, all by himself. I wasn’t even outside coaching him! He even knew to keep  the hardware together and bring it in to save in case we buy a new cover. And I dropped the kids off at a local amusement park with two high school girls I’ve hired to watch them for me this summer. I’ve never let them go without a parent accompanying, so this was a huge step of my own towards encouraging their independence.

Which leads me to a major revelation: this project is as much about me stepped back, letting go, and giving them the opportunity to try and fail and try again as it is about teaching them life skills. My prediction is that our biggest challenges will be twofold: all of us dealing with bad attitudes and laziness, and me getting over my desire to get everything done the most efficient way possible so that they can have the time to learn.

Are you attempting the Life Skills Bootcamp in any way, shape, or form? How is it going? 

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