Or just be annoyed that he doesn’t pick up after himself?

One of the most mysterious and maddening things about my relationship with my husband — together for 22 years, married for 16, through four apartments, three houses, two pets and three kids — is the fact that by the end of every day with him there are baseball hats on the kitchen counter, shoes in the middle of the bedroom floor, and copies of The Economist next to the car keys that weren’t there when I woke up. In brief, he is the man I continue to love, but he continues to create a lot of clutter.

Now, he is not an extreme mess. On a scale of one to ten, I would only put him at a 5. So my struggle is not so much with how messy he is, but with how I deal with it. In all our years together, I keep changing my own personal policy. For a few months I decide that it’s better to, say, pick up his size 12 shoes and move them, if not to his closet, at least to a corner of the room where I won’t run over them as I’m rushing to make my train. After all, it only takes me 20 seconds and then the shoes will stop annoying me.

That works for a while. Then one day I get in a huff — usually while he’s watching tv — and decide that I should not be picking up after him, he is a grown man for heaven’s sakes and if he has time to watch premier league soccer for an hour he certainly has time to pick up his shoes and I’m not going to do it anymore! And won’t everyone in this house be sorry when I’m dead, and there are just shoes all over the place!

Then, of course, you know what happens: he doesn’t pick up his shoes (ever, unless he is about to wear them) in part because the whole conversation about his shoes and my policy with regard to them is happening only in the privacy of my own head. He did not realize that I had decided to pick up his shoes, did not notice me doing it, and certainly didn’t notice when I stopped. Then the cycle begins again: I don’t pick up after him because I’m annoyed, but eventually the mess annoys me more, and then I pick up the shoes until I’m too annoyed to do it anymore.

Thank God I still love him.

And so my question to the masses: do you pick up for the messy people who live with you? Is it better to be annoyed that you do all the picking up, or annoyed that your house is messy and no one cares but you? I know, I know: it’s better not to be annoyed at all. As if!

My Middle child, who is nine and in fourth grade, is a wonderful boy, a very funny kid, an enthusiastic friend, a loyal son, and an incredibly, incredibly picky eater. Not only is he picky, but he’s stubborn, which turns out to be a challenging combination. He has several areas of his life where his stubbornness takes on a laser-like focus: bedtime is one, and eating is the other. I know, I know, it’s the oldest complaint in the book: my kid won’t eat anything but chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese! But my little guy is sharp as a tack and seems to believe that the whole chicken nugget/mac and cheese thing is just so...predictable. If he only ate chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese, at least I could remember what he liked. As it is, what he will and won’t eat seems to make no logical sense. For example:

He will eat shrimp shu mai but he will not eat strawberries.
He will eat kumquats, but not roast chicken.
He will eat a California roll, but not blueberry pancakes.
He will eat smoked oysters (well, he’ll try them), but he will not eat (or try more than once) beets.
He will eat mahi mahi, but he will not eat pork loin.

No doubt this is all part of his lifelong scheme to keep Mom on her toes. (Yes, I have read that figure that it takes a child something like 15 times of trying something before he decides he likes it. In my own very unscientific estimation, that figure is off by about 30.) And lest you think Middle has an extraordinarily sophisticated palate, rest assured that nothing would make him happier than a day where he ate nothing but Honey Nut Cheerios, Fruit Roll Ups, Gatorade and beef jerky. With a few Dots thrown in as a palate cleanser.

I've been thinking lately about my old friend Hope, a onetime soulmate who I spent a lot of time with when I first moved to New York.  She was kind and hilarious and would send me annotated articles from celebrity magazines and I would laugh my head off.  In my mind, everything Hope did was smart and interesting, and she made me feel smarter and more interesting just to know her.

Hope now lives in New Jersey with her husband and three kids and I live in New York with my husband and three kids.  We have all but lost touch except for the occasional Christmas card, and this both saddens and perplexes me.  Saddens because our friendship made all the lights in my small corner of the world shine a little brighter, and perplexes because I wonder if there was something I could have done to work harder to keep our friendship going.

Which brings me to the pie chart of my life.  Another friend, Silvia, introduced me to the idea of making a pie chart of my life and seeing how I would divide everything up.  Right now the pie chart looks something like this:

Husband/kids/house/the domestic sphere:  50%
Job:  40%
Parents/siblings: 2%
Exercise: 3%
Gardening: 2%
Watching funny YouTube videos someone has forwarded to me:  1%
Complaining about the fact that no one in my house ever turns off the tv: 1%
Friends:  1%

Yes, you'll see that friends only take up 1% of my pie chart, which explains quite a few things about my current life.  Will that change once my kids are grown?  Probably.  Should I exercise less and give that 3% to friendships?  But who would want to see me at 6 am?

Anyway, two things:  one, I would recommend Silvia's pie chart exercise to anyone--very enlightening.  Two, is it possible to have friends at 1% and not be a sociopath?

There is simply nothing in my life now that matches the unique pleasure of watching Eldest and Middle play soccer. (Ok, watching The Office comes close). And thank goodness for that, because from now until June, half of our weekends are given over to travel soccer. With a bit of lacrosse thrown in. Oh, and Little League too, but we don't discuss that as I'm still pretending that my husband didn't sign our four-sport son up for it.

Anyway, all the time spent on the soccer sidelines certainly gets you thinking about adult behavior and why we care so much when we're watching our kids play. And whether, for example, it is better to be a hyper-positive coach who gives out patches at the end of each game (tangent: last weekend every time one of his teammates so much as made a good pass, Middle would nearly travel the length of the field to slap his hand. It was weird and someone who is not his mother might even say irritating. After the game I asked him why he kept doing the congratulatory hand-slap, and he said, "Because I want to get a sportsmanship patch!!!". Duh, Mom.), a quiet coach who is careful about handing out praise like Eldest's coach, or the kind of coach one of the parents I know calls "Mr. Yelling Yeller from Yelltown."

You all know The Yeller. He is often a man, he tends not to know much about the game, and he inspires conflicting feelings in the spectators: both aren't-I-a-better-parent/coach/person generally, and boy-do-I-feel-sorry-for-his-players/kid/wife.

But because I was an English major and not a psych major, I just have no tools at my fingertips to understand the pathology of the Yeller. Does he know how loud he is, and what a jerk he looks like? And does it make his kids try harder? Or can they tune it out?

But I digress. I guess what I really wonder -- and this is the topic for a book, not a blog post -- is why do we parents *care* so much?  Why do we get up at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning or stand shivering in the drizzle or yell our heads off or drive all over creation to watch our kids play sports? Is it for them, or for us?

Last weekend was beautiful here in New York and was filled, for my little family, with the sort of varied activities that actually make you feel like you are conducting your life in a way that’s interesting, responsible, and practically overflowing with moments of good parenting. But over the course of the weekend I realized, yet again, that my brain is so full of useless information that the important information I should be remembering instead has no place to land and stick. To wit:

FRIDAY NIGHT
Went for a cookout at the house of our friend Robert, who is the head of emergency medicine at a giant New York City hospital. Robert spends a good part of his year travelling around the world to help the disadvantaged, while I go to my office in midtown and eat candy. (This was underscored when Robert pulled out a bowl of fruit he had bought, pre-cut, at Costco. He sheepishly apologized for not cutting the fruit. “That’s ok,” I said, “you’re saving lives. I don’t save any lives, so I cut fruit.”) There were two women at dinner, also doctors, who were visiting for the month from Montenegro, to study the way we do things at hospitals here.
Unimportant thing I remember: that the little green shoots coming up next to Robert’s patio are lilies of the valley
Important thing I don’t remember: is Montenegro a country? Where is it? Too embarrassed to ask; Husband had to tell me later.

SATURDAY
Spent the day throwing crapola out of our basement and garage, the last bit of collateral damage from the kitchen renovation. Got a Dumpster delivered to the driveway and filled it to the top. Bliss.
Unimportant thing I remember: that the Cross County Parkway is closed from 2 pm to 10 pm because the Pope is in Yonkers
Important thing I don’t remember: what is the Pope’s name? (yes, I was raised a Catholic, which should help me remember but doesn’t seem to)

SATURDAY NIGHT
Went to the neighbors house for dinner to welcome a new couple to our block. Anne, the host, is a phenomenal cook and made a pavlova for dessert, which I have read about but never had and I’ll just say that it was as delicious and wonderful as its name. Drank a bit too much and talked a lot about politics and yet the party remained civil and fun.
Unimportant thing I remember: that our (very nice, very cute) new neighbor must really like heels because both times I’ve met her her heels were at least 3” high
Important thing I don’t remember: when is the Pennsylvania primary? And what big state did Obama win, when it was such a surprise? Iowa? And is Obama really the only one who never wears a flag pin?

SUNDAY
Took the kids and Eldest’s friend Eamon to the Norwalk Aquarium in Norwalk, Connecticut. We were going to go to the Coney Island Aquarium, but in a moment of divine intervention I remembered that the Pope was saying mass at Yankee Stadium, and if we drove in that direction we would be trapped in the car for seven hours. The afternoon at the aquarium was fun, mostly because it started with pizza and because scary-smart Eamon is like your own private tour guide in any kind of museum setting.
Unimportant thing I remember: that Eamon has braces with colored rubber bands
Important thing I don’t remember: what is the difference between a sea lion and a seal? I’ve read this 600 times and still couldn’t tell you.

1) The way she treats waiters
2) The look on her face when she talks about her parents
3) How she reacts when she sees a baby
4) The words she uses to describe her job
5) Whether she holds open the door if you are walking into a building behind her

When I was a kid, I didn't call any adults by their first names. I don't even recall *referring* to any adults by their first names, except for my high school track coach, and that was because her name was weird (Hilda) and she was mean.

Now that I have kids of my own I realize with horror that not only do my boys use adult first names with impunity, but we seem to have no household standards or rules where this subject is concerned.

I think this is how it happened: when they were little, they called our friend Sharene "Sharene" instead of "Mrs. Jones" because "Mrs. Jones" just seemed unwieldy and oddly formal for a very close friend who even changed their diapers from time to time.

But when my boys reached the age of 6 or so, it dawned on me that they thought of all adults on a first-name basis, a point driven home one day when Middle referred to our 60-something next-door neighbor as "Frank." I was mortified; "That's Mr. Cowan to you, pal," I told him. As you can imagine, he looked at me with confusion. And I was confused too. Why did Sharene = Sharene but Frank = Mr. Cowan?

But the incident got me thinking. In my loosey-goosey household (or maybe within my loosey-goosey generation), there is an odd division that I can't quite explain between adults who are called by first name and adults who are Mr. and Mrs. (We have not yet graduated to Ms.). There appears to be some correlation between first-name-calling and familiarity, but it is an etiquette issue wrapped in a mathematical formula that my little brain can't solve.

10 sleepovers + borrowing chili powder in a pinch + 3 diaper changes + a family vacation together = first name adult

Don't know how old all her kids are + her house has a funny smell + she might be from a country where manners are more important, like England = last name adult

Of course, the formulas have many variables. And as for friends who had one last name and then got divorced — don't even get me started.

Can someone please write a book about this?