What would it take to not be completely annoyed by discovering a soaking wet bath towel on the bathroom floor?

The easiest solution would be an overly sentimental declaration of love accompanied by the hug of a sweet-smelling, soft-skinned, cherub faced human at the exact moment of the towel discovery.   Knowing however that this conversion of events is unlikely to happen, one must find other means of coping with this annoyance “in the moment.”

It’s a real question.   Yesterday I found said soaking towel.  My “in the moment” was not filled with grace or peace or happiness.  More like grumble, argh the cherub!, grumble.

I didn’t swear, or really say anything out loud.  But it totally got under my skin.   Mindful of the disproportionate share Mothers do in picking up other people’s messes, I wondered if the responsible children I was charged with raising were learning anything at all.  Perhaps I was enabling.  Perhaps I was raising entitled little brats.  Without even meaning to, my imagination wandered off to sad daughter-in-laws picking up trails of my sons’ clothes. 

No doubt we had covered Towel Etiquette 101.  Wash before you use the towel.  Hang it up when you’re done.  Try not to use Mommy’s towel.  We may have skipped:  Don’t shower with your towel, but I thought this was implied with: Don’t shower with your clothes on.   Apparently not.

I considered pretending I didn’t see it.   I could have chosen not to pick it up, but my blood pressure had already been elevated.  Plus the thought of a stinky towel only upped the ante.  So I did would most of us would do (when the offender was out of the house.)  I picked it up.  I also wrung it out.

As I squeezed (too) hard making puddles in the tub, I asked myself the question I started with.  While not to excuse or fail to correct the towel behavior, I wondered what it would take for me to not react in the same way next time.  I really don’t want to get mad about towels.  I want to save it for the big stuff.

My first thought was very basic.  Show gratitude.  Be grateful that you have a towel and a warm shower.  The shower part's not hard for me to think about having been to Africa.  It’s probably not hard for those of you who overnight camp to think about (not so much me on this one.)  This approach actually works with just about anything that is seeking to annoy you, but it does require practice. Gratitude for sunshine is easy.  Gratitude for towels takes a little more association, but it too is possible.  What if bath towels never existed and a hand towel was as big as it got.

My second thought took it a bit further.  Celebrate the action taken.  I had failed to appreciate that my son had done the thing that was asked of him – take a shower.   Stopping to take a shower when you are 6 years old is hard.  It would be like someone asking you or me to put down our finds at an incredible one-day-only sample sale because it was time to go.  He’d done it willingly, albeit incompletely.  After all it was only two years ago when he screamed having to put his head under the shower head.   It made me think of how easy it is to catch people on what they missed instead of catching the fact that there were trying to do the right thing.  Not to mention the distance these people, especially the annoying ones we love, have come. 

The third thought came later.  After the 6 year old was back in the house and the issue of the towel was raised, I learned something.  The boy-who-took-the-towel into the shower with him wasn’t actually trying to pull my chain (I intellectually knew that part, but it did come back up for brief consideration.)  He was trying to find a wash cloth, but couldn’t.  He didn’t want to call for help, so he did the next best thing he could think of – he used his towel as a washcloth.    Which leads me to that third thought:  Don’t rush to judgment.  We don’t always know what problems people are trying to solve for.  People do dumb things, and not only are those dumb things usually not malicious or personally directed, but they often make more sense when the person is given the opportunity to explain.  There are excuses, but then there are thoughtful misfires.  The latter category is big for 6 year olds, and perhaps ... men.  Did I just throw the entire gender under the bus?  Yes, I think I did.  Misfire ... but thoughtfully done.

The last thought was one that I often have to come back around to as a parent.  Assume a smiggin of personal responsibility.   Had I really ever explained what’s so bad about wet towels? Probably not.   Yes, we all need to follow basic house rules, but it wouldn’t hurt to explain why those rules are there in the first place.   Until you’ve paid for and then encountered a stinky towel, you don’t know what the big fuss is all about.  He too was dealing with incomplete information.  Could I have waited a few hours and let the towel sit there and let natural consequences -- smelly mold, little stocking feet in puddles – take their course?  Sure, but I confess it’s often easier to make problems go away more than it is to clean it up with another person.  That whole "working it out together" takes time and patience.  This is big for  .... okay, for all of us. 

Of course, no test is complete without a re-test.   Right now the 6 year old is eating potato chips without a bowl.  He is being followed by a trail of crumbs.   And so --- I am grateful for potato chips (especially these mustard potato chips) and vacuums.  And guess what – I’m eating them too – without a bowl.

The cook (by guest blogger Colin)

Today’s post is from a guest blogger.  Ten year old Colin wrote this a week or so ago while on a trip to Switzerland.   He temporarily traded in his basketball for woodworking and writing.  A second wind to complete the story never came, and no edits have been made.  “Mediterranean” was spelled correctly, for which I am most impressed. I can't do that consistently.  He was not paid for content. 

I am rummaging around for inspiration for tonight’s dinner, but am being assaulted by the smell of the Med. Sea every time I open the refrigerator.  Unable to make that fish thaw any faster, I must turn towards a cut of meat/veal/pork(?) with a label I cannot read.   

I share this because 1) Colin wanted me to, 2) I love his writing, and 3) having your kid recognize something their parent is good at or passionate about is truly food for the soul.

The cook

Me and my six year old brother have a mom who knows the skill of cooking like no one else. Her name is Kate Ballbach. When I have some of her amazing food it makes me feel so happy and joyful because I want to be a food critic when I grow up and I love food. She is skilled because she makes different meals every night, for example she makes Italian pasta one night and the next night she makes some Mediterranean meal. Every meal is so good because she takes so much pride in her work. My dad always says ‘’ when will you learn how good of a cook your mom is” but I have already learned that, [ not sure if my brother has learned].

​It's 6:25pm and I am now ready to attack that mysterious meat.  I plan to wok it into submission with an over abundance of garlic, ginger, and red chili peppers.   After all, I have some discerning food critics waiting.

Game of Thrones (a confession)

While you've been playing/watching Game of Thrones, I've been busy learning new pool rules.

I have no idea what “Game of Thrones” is.   Literally no idea.  I don’t know if it’s a game, a TV show, a movie or all three.   I see and hear it referenced everywhere, but I simply haven’t engaged at any level.   I refuse to even Google it to see if I’m spelling it correctly.   I’m totally sitting this one out.

I hope it’s the right call.  I made a similar decision with “Homeland” for a while, and when I finally decided to watch Season 1 I was like “What? Why didn’t someone tell me loudly this was so good?”  But by that time, everyone except my friend Patti was done talking about it.   The Homeland Season 2 DVD is now available for pre-order on Amazon, but it will likely be Christmas before I can watch it online over here.   I might as well skip it because I haven’t had the same restraint in Googling spoilers for Season 2 and hearing the overwhelming chorus of meh.   On the bright side, I suppose I’ve saved a little time.

I’m of the age when I open up a “People” magazine and only have about 50% celebrity recognition.  This move to Europe is only going to set me further behind.   I can’t even count on hair salons here to have “People” magazine for my every two month pop culture trivia catch up.  They’re still playing Celine Dion music in hair salons as near as I can tell.  I do however know that Halle Barry is pregnant.   This caught my attention because I know who she is, and that she is in her forties.   You go girl – glad you kicked that sex addict second husband of yours and then that gorgeous but no-good model Gabriel (see I was doing good in earlyish 2000s) – but pregnant at 46?  Hearing that makes me tired, and so happy my husband has taken care of business.  I do know about the band “The Airborne Toxic Event.”  That’s only because I know a couple of really cool high school kids who I stalk for music and have some fortish friends like Jennifer who go and listen to live music and rightly report it on Facebook.

In the advent of unlimited access to so much news, you have to learn to sift.   When I was back home, if I’m being honest, I used to sift out most International News.  Now that I’m in Europe, I find I’m reading more International News and sifting out most US Entertainment News and US News of People Behaving Badly (ie “Ex-Partner at KPMG Under Scrutiny in Insider Trading.) Of course, people still behave badly, really badly, internationally - take Kim Jong-un or Bashar al-Assad for instance – but those stories are getting more of my mind share.    It seems to matter what those guys are up to a little bit more than who was on Letterman last night.  It’s not as if this kind of news wasn’t available before, I’m just choosing a little better. It’s easier for me to recognize how globally interdependent our world is becoming with a border only 50 kilometers away.  Not that I’m doing anything specific with that knowledge,  but it’s nice to fill my mind with other things or nothing at all, and to not feel caught off guard by not knowing about who is Throning who. 

Ok, Lindsay Lohan was on Letterman last night. 

I’m only slightly more disciplined.

Riveting Luxembourg News

If you are wondering why you rarely hear news out of Luxembourg, read on.

I get a daily email from the English edition of the Luxembourg newspaper (wort.lu).  From it I find out about many things going on in Luxembourg.  It's a great resource and it always amuses.  Mostly it's a nice diversion away from the heavier news of our world.  It's like a breath of fresh air - news that isn't contaminated with so much unsavoryness.  It's the kind of paper where it's news if someone brings a pet python into a restaurant.

The paper covers International and local news, like yesterday’s top International headline was “North Korea preparing for fourth nuclear test, says South.”  The what-makes-tops-news-algorithm is correct there.  It was then followed by the top Luxembourg headline of the day:

“147km through Cents Tunnel & drunk - goodbye licence!”  It was at 7am on Sunday morning when police caught a driver speeding through Cents Tunnel at 147km per hour instead of the permitted 90km.

Not to diminish the seriousness of drunk driving, but the fact that someone was fined and his license confiscated for fast (not reckless) driving was the biggest news coming out of Luxembourg.  We also learned yesterday that in Luxembourg, you can receive fines and penalty points on your driver’s license as a drunk cyclist (okay) AND as a drunk pedestrian (?).   That’s right, walking while drunk is an actual offense that goes on your driving record.

Yesterday’s second top Luxembourg headline:

“Bar fight leaves one injured.”  The victim of the bar fight received a bite wound to the arm and a bloody nose. An investigation is ongoing.

Both incidents – I mean top stories -- happened on a Sunday night.   No weapons, just a bloody nose and on ongoing investigation.  I want to know if the aggressor was a woman.  The article was curiously silent as to the use of pronouns.   If it was a dude biting another dude, then maybe that is news.  Whatever the cause, it’s understandable that someone might get testy about having to drink one of two uninspiring Luxembourgish beers (Diekirch and Bofferding) when hundreds of better Belgian beers are a mere few kilometers away.  Just don’t drink and cycle there.

But before we get too down on Luxembourg drinking, the two top headlines were followed by a community headline.  It was a feature on one of Luxembourg's world class sommeliers.  “While Luxembourg's wines may be little known beyond the country's borders, its sommeliers rank among the world's finest boasting among others the world's third top sommelier.”   Alright, not the top – but the THIRD top in a super small country is definitely worth celebrating.   I didn’t plan on splitting hairs, but the story then went on to say that the sommelier was actually a Belgian national.  That factoid was below the fold.  Because as we know, it’s all EU Love until you bring wine into it.  Regardless, the Luxembourg wines ARE good and cheap, and if they were exported – they’d find a broad audience.

Moral of the story: don’t drink on Sundays, or you could be a top headline.  But if you do choose to drink, don’t you dare think about drinking French wine.

A Prayer

My heart has been heavy these last days reading the newspaper and Facebook.  And so, a prayer I wrote: ​

Jesus, we ask you to draw close to those in need, but you are already there.  You were there first, and you’ll be the last to leave.  Help us to hear the hum of your presence.  Give us the courage to reach for you in our struggles, and the struggles of those we love.  Then give us the courage to reach again when we fail or doubt.  Stop us in our tracks when we lunge into people and things in hopes of finding worthiness.  May we believe in our bones that we have been made worthy.  And, that our neighbor is worthy too.  And not just that we are worthy, but that we are a one-of-a kind.   Rally around us as we try to live into our uniqueness.   Obstruct us from trying to water down the person you made us to be.   Awaken our souls to the beauty around us.  And then show us beauty around the edges of the things in the world and our lives that are hard.  Bring those edges into main focus.  Help us leap with joy over the small things.  Quicken us to pass on kindness.   Tune out the things that don’t matter so that as days pass -- and one day our own lives --- we can hear your presence as a roar.

Slack - Switzerland

In the US, the common refrain is “I need a vacation.”  In Europe, that refrain is more like “Which holiday is next week?” What they say about European vacation time and holidays is true.   There are a lot of them.    And to add more green to US envy, Spring Break is always two weeks and falls on Easter.  And everyone gets the exact same two weeks.   What a novel idea.

Thinking it rude to go on holiday while my in laws were in town, we decided to stay put for the first week.  (I happen to like them a lot so it wasn’t really a concession.  Although I do like to keep them on their toes.)   For the second week, we debated between Croatia and Switzerland.    Back home, that debate would have been whether we would drive to Sun Valley via the Interstate or back roads.  And of course, which kid would have to miss school.  Croatia took the lead when we saw 20 Euro roundtrip airfare per person -- meaning our family of four could fly to another country for less than the cost of a single NBA game ticket.  Wowza.  In the end, we decided to save Croatia for another (warmer) time.   So a road trip to Switzerland it was.   It took us only 5 ½ hours to reach our destination – so roughly half the time it takes us to drive from Seattle to Sun Valley.  I think that calls for another Wowza.

Early April is officially slack season in Switzerland (and many ski areas north of the equator).   With warming conditions (except for Luxembourg, Spring 2013, but that’s another blog post about the winter that won’t end in Northern Europe), retreating lowland snow, only a couple of downhill ski runs  stay open, all the epic 5+km sledding hills have closed, and as we discovered – most of the restaurants have shut their kitchens for the season too.  No fondue for you! But, slack or not, Switzerland is not lacking in beauty at any time of the year.  We rented a chalet in the small village of Rossinière in the Alps area of Pays-d'Enhaut.  Sandwiched in between the touristed town of Gruyere (birthplace of the famous stinky cheese) and the ritzy resort of Gstaad where the slogan is “Come up – Slow Down”, this valley could be described as one of the more undiscovered parts of Switzerland.   With sun shining bright for the first two days (a welcome change from Luxembourg, but again more on that later), we chased the snow (which really wasn’t very hard) to find some of the “best sledding hills of all time” in Saanemoser, did an amazing alpine snow shoe hike in Launensee (where we had to turn back after encountering a sheer ice climb), and a couple of Wanderweg walking hikes along gorgeous one lane country roads.  We didn’t have a walking stick, but we should have.  The boys were happy walkers, and we had some memorable conversations that seem only to happen out in the fresh air.

After being out all day, we’d retire back to the 300 year old chalet we rented.  The chalet – appropriately named the “Heidi Chalet” – was 1 km up a mountain road overlooking a lake without a neighbor in sight.  The setting was spectacular.  Being that it was built in the 1700s (!), the entire cabin with attached barn was made of wood and very rustic.  Brett sustained several concussive events with the low ceilings.   Heidi’s husband was clearly not 6’3”.   We were cognizant of the fire hazard that is a wood house and so were very careful about use of the wood stove.   We were however not so careful about checking for wood tongs inside the toaster before using it.  Smelling smoke in a wood house when you should not be smelling smoke is a disturbing event.  And then there was my first ten minutes in the rustic kitchen where the glass top on the gas stove exploded into thousands of tiny pieces.  Oi vey. How was I to know the glass top was only a cover and supposed to be removed before I boiled a pot of water?  Answer: the same way that I should have known to not leave potatoes in a basket on the floor.  Something’s nibbling at my potatoes and my common sense.

But rustic aside, the cabin was comfortable, cozy and the perfect setting to slow down and relax.   We ate well, made (safe) fires, played board games (Ticket to Ride Europe and Spy Alley), explored outside, threw darts, read, and the boys even did a woodworking project.  That’s what can happen when you put the iPad away for a week.  They made a stool – not exactly one a human can sit or stand on, but one that could hold a few pounds (and maybe whatever was eating my floor-stored potatoes.)  If you know Brett, you know that this was a unique experience.  It was also a unique experience having the shower and toilet in two separate rooms, which was accessed through the unheated barn part of the house.   Kind of like an inside outhouse.  Okay… I’m not actually putting rustic aside.   We were warned there was limited water supply – due to an unsealed well filled with rainwater.  Our showers were hot and the water pressure better than 1908 E. Calhoun Street.  Though I would guess with several feet of snow melting, water supply is not an issue during Slack season.   Neither was finding things to do even in a place where most things -- except nature -- were closed.  Maybe I'm a closet camper after all.

The thing about the European’s approach to vacation time is that it gives you more than one opportunity to release tension.  We all need a little more slack – in time, expectations, pace of life.  So for my friends at home who deserve much more slack than I do – those of you who are struggling with illness, parenting alone, difficult relationships, financial hardship, and more – wishing you a Spring Break where you get a break.

 (See all Switzerland photos)

Going Green

If you were to ask me, “What’s a deciduous tree?” I would answer, “Umm, isn’t it a tree that loses its’ leaves for part of the year?” The “umm” being that unfortunate female pause, the question mark being my own shadow of doubt when it comes to any definitive answer about trees.   Botany and I are not tight.   I know a pine from a maple from an aspen and know that I love cherry blossom trees, but that’s about the depth of my knowledge.  I do know that the tree dying a slow death in our backyard is a Japanese Maple.  That’s because my husband has been in mourning over her for years and he can’t manage the emotional strength to pull her root.  She is deciduously dead, but he keeps her around to hang his bird feeders.

Thank goodness you don’t have to be able to identify tree varieties to enjoy a walk in the park.   I read this week in the NY Times about a study out of Scotland that submits that brain fatigue can be eased by a stroll in green space.   Well duh.  The new part of the study however is that it tracked brain wave patterns of people while walking in a number of environments.   The data showed that the brain was aroused, attentive, and frustrated when in busy urban environments.  Though this wasn’t tracked, I’m sure the data would have skyrocketed had their subject been forced to walk in cities with a kinetic 6 year old who lacks general body control.  It then showed that the brain was still engaged, but quieter, while in green spaces.  We’ll assume for the purposes of this study that it was conducted in a park with responsible dog owners, meaning that it was not done here in Luxembourg.

This past week has been my first full week in Luxembourg with the kids not in school.   And with visitors.  And with Brett working.  My visitors (Brett’s parents) are easy, but kids not in school – not so easy.  By the end of the week, I had run through the short list of things I know to do in this town.  That list is even shorter when it’s 20 degrees and still snowing and everyone the kids know has gotten out of dodge for Spring Break.  We went to YoYo (see older post) three times, for example.   My living room was starting to feel like a bustling, urban concrete jungle, although I wouldn’t have expressed it in quite that way.   Hidden in my frustration with not quite knowing what to do next was actually a low level of boredom.   How embarrassing to admit that.  We’ve traveled and done so much since we’ve been here that I was having a hard time adjusting to the slowdown in diet.  The fatigue of constant stimulation.

We decided to spend Thursday in the car exploring the Ardennes region of Luxembourg on our way to visit a well-known castle in Vianden.  It wasn’t a day trip I was necessarily chomping at the bit to do.  I would have been similarly ambivalent about going to Paris or seeing George Clooney in person (I'm imagining I kept all this negative juju to myself), but I willingly went along for the ride.   Brett was taking the day off work after all.  It was a cold, but sunny day, and the drive was gorgeous.   It was along green rolling hills, sloping valleys, small rivers, wooded areas – an extremely varied area that begged for you to be on your bike (if it were not freezing cold.)  By the time we reached the castle, I felt my attitude improving.   I put my gloves on without complaint, and grabbed for the camera with a sense of awe, not duty.  The castle was wonderful, but it was the drive that was invigorating.   Yes, I thought, the greenery had just restored a tiny piece of my soul.  At least the piece that was feeling blah and restless.

My mother-in-law said that when she is surrounded by the natural world, she is reminded that it exists without needing any of our involvement.   It doesn’t have to be fixed.  And so much else in our world does need fixing.   For those who believe in God, creation is also God’s audacious way of reminding us how much he loves us.  That He would create all this beauty for us to enjoy, whether we know it’s specific tree name or not.   And an engaged but quieter mind allows us to stand back and make connections that are harder to make when everything else if rapid firing.   Whoever had a moment of inspiration while walking through Nordstrom, or tending to a relentless scheduled day, or playing the 9th game of Sequence, or even touring another beautiful European city? 

Tomorrow we are driving to a chalet we rented in Switzerland for the week.  So the travel continues, but this time we get some more practice with quiet green spaces – albeit dotted with snow at higher elevations.   And we’ll have a wood stove to come back too to warm up and share our stories.  (The week after next I’ll have to revisit that fatigue of constant stimulation – more work to do there.)

So go out and idle.  Tomorrow is Easter after all.  Give yourself permission to take a walk in the park (or the Alps).  Just please pick up after your dog.