Here’s the big reveal, for those of you who came here from Internetland, rather than IRL-ville or Facebooktown.*

Grape=Julie.  I think even the Internet knew that.

Jellyman=Robin.  You can tell whether someone met him during his childhood in Chicago, during his teenage years here, or after he returned here after college by whether they call him “Robbie,” “Rob,” or “Robin.”  Tip: don’t call him Robbie.

Raisin=Riya (Ree-ah).  Robin’s dad is from West Bengal, so we chose an Indian name for her.  I thought it meant “grace,” but now I can’t find the website that told me that.

Orange=Karina.  My family is mostly German, so we chose a German name, although we played with the spelling.  The meaning’s a little iffy — I’ve seen places that say it means “pure,” and some that say “dear little one.”  We just like the way it sounds.

Apple=Benjamin.  We call him Ben.  Again, the meaning of this name wasn’t as significant as the fact that we liked it, and that it sounded good with the family name we gave him for his middle name.

*This feels a little un-big-revealy, since I think most of the people who do arrive here that way are looking for a good fruit salad recipe.  This is sad for two reasons: 1) I hate disappointing people, and 2) It’s fruit salad.  Pick your favorite kinds of fruit, throw ‘em in a bowl with some yogurt or something, and be on your way.

I couldn’t figure out (in the 5 minutes I have to post this) how to embed the quiz.  But please, be so kind as to click here to take it?  It has to do with the very important issue of nicknames.

So, I said I’d do a post about my brother.  And then I had no idea how to do it, because those posts about my parents and in-laws were for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, and I don’t even know if there is a Siblings Day.  Oh, yep.  There is, but I missed it.

Then I heard these ladies on the Manic Mommies podcast.*  They talked a little about birth order, and how to parent each of your different kids.  It reminded me how often my brother and I have fallen into those typical roles.

I’m sure this will blow everybody’s mind, but I’m the oldest.  I’ll pause to let you absorb this.

Don’t get the impression that my brother is a goof-off, though.  On the contrary, he is one of the smartest, funniest, most successful (in all the ways that really matter) people I know.  Among the many things my parents did very well was this: they wouldn’t let us settle too deeply into the stereotypical roles.  I was encouraged to lighten up, take a joke, and put down the book and go outside once in a while.  D was expected to live up to his own potential, and to ignore the dumbass teachers who called him “Julie’s brother.”

And he did.  This is lame, but I am so proud of my baby brother.  He is awesome at his job.  His wife is unbelievably kind, smart, and beautiful.  He’s a new dad, but he’s already incredible at it.  I might be the tiniest bit biased, but my nephew is ridiculously cute.  Unfairly cute.

I don’t get to spend as much time with D as I’d like.  He lives about an hour away, so we mostly see each other at family events.  He’s not a chat-on-the-phone kind of guy, and we’re both pretty busy with our own growing families now.  He still gets my most obscure movie references better than anyone else.  He can make me laugh so hard I spit out whatever I’ve been drinking — usually at him.  You’d think he’d learn.

I miss him.  I tell my kids stories about our childhood all the time.  Like how D once tricked me into turning on the kitchen faucet so I’d be drenched by the sprayer thingy (he’d wrapped a rubber band around it), or how my friend and I made him play dress up with us every day for years.  He was really glad when some boys moved in to the neighborhood.

I hope my kids’ relationships with each other are as rewarding as it’s been for me to have him as a brother.  Love you, D.

*Is Massachusetts an especially funny state?  I’ve never been there, but anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that everyone from the Boston area is hilarious.

A recent Facebook post:

I’m trying to bring what Tim Gunn would call “an editing eye” to my house. I think Tim would be … concerned. [Cups chin thoughtfully in hand, squints over glasses at errant cupboard.]

This is a project I’ve been working on for the last couple of months.  It appears I will be working on it for the next couple of decades.  Damn, we have a lot of junk.

I suppose it’s part of the modern American life.  Otherwise, we wouldn’t have this show, or this store.  I am a little dismayed to be so … common.

In all seriousness, I am dismayed with myself.  I wouldn’t want to go back to my sterile apartment-living days, when everything was in its place all the time.  I would like not to be surprised by the contents of my own closets.  As I go through them, I keep saying things like, “We still have this!?  This was a wedding present!  We haven’t used this even once!”

I talk to myself with a lot of exclamation points.

[Sometimes, I vary it a little by talking to the (absent) Jellyman: "It was your idea to get these cruet things.  But do we ever actually make our own dressing?  No.  And do you have any idea where we should put them?  No.  Hmmph."  Then, he comes home and compliments me on how nice it looks in the kitchen (the man may be a cruet-buying nutcase, but his powers of observation and diplomacy are outstanding).  When I ask whether he still wants to keep the cruets, he has no recollection of ever having insisted on buying them.

Cruet is a funny word.]

Annnnyway.  Organizing.

I finally realized that I was only going to make progress if I cut the job down into the teensiest parts.  So, every Monday I spend an hour or two at it.  I pick a cupboard or closet to focus on, but usually I get through a couple of extra little corners by virtue of making space for things that were “misfiled,” so to speak.

Now, the questions are 1) Will I be able to stick with this project until I’m satisfied with the whole house? 2) Will we be able to keep it that way? and 3) What’s your best advice for getting/staying organized?

Wait!  Don’t leave!  I do need you — I’m just going somewhere with this.  Trust me.

I have an awesome family.  I may have mentioned them a time or two.*  This is, without question, the biggest blessing in my life.  It started the minute I was born — I have always (ALWAYS) been surrounded by caring hands and watchful eyes.  I have never been without a soft place to land, a listening ear, a person who’d be willing to drop everything to come help me.

I haven’t always been grateful for it, to my shame, but it’s always been there.

If there is a drawback to this situation, is it this: that our family can look impenetrable and self-sufficient from the outside?  I have friends, and I love them dearly.  I need them, for insight and laughter and sympathy and just the opportunity to get out of the damn house.  But I don’t call my friends in the middle of the night when Orange needs to go to the ER.  I call my mom.  And if she can’t come (although I can’t think of a time when she didn’t), I’ll proceed on to one of the many back-ups, all of whom are related to me in some way.

My friends have this with each other, a lot of the time — they rely on each other as much or more as on their families.  And I’m not saying I’d trade, because a lot of the time there’s some real hurt in their family relationships that have gotten them to this point, and I’m sorry for it.  I’m just saying, I know how much deeper my bond is with my family because we need each other, and sometimes I’m sorry for the reserve that keeps me from having that deepness with my friends.

*It dismays me to discover that there don’t seem to be any posts devoted to my brother.  So, coming soon: a post that will dismay him, but satisfy me.  I AM the older sister, after all.

In my pre-kid life, I worked with a guy who used to declare a winner at the end of each work day.  His system worked like this: If he had worked really hard that day, the company had gotten its money’s worth from him, and was therefore the winner.  If it had been a light day, he’d been paid the same amount for not as much work, and he won.

I’m not really sure if there was a larger war, or if he was just interested in the daily battles.  My overall impression is that he won most days.

That’s really not my point.

I’ve decided to create my own system.  Because I’m me, mine will necessarily be a lot more complicated than Former Coworker Dude’s.  I’m thinking I’ll give myself points for forward progress, and detract for distractions.

For example, on Tuesday I offered to take the trash cans out to the street because the Jellyman ran out of time before he needed to leave for work.  Wifely solicitude, 2 pts.  I also actually took the trash cans out to the street, so I’m gonna go ahead and award myself an additional 3 pts.  However, I remembered at the last minute that I was supposed to have done so, so I ran outside in my pjs after I had just started to put dinner in the crockpot for that night.  Minus 2 pts.  Although I did remember to turn off the burner under the browning hamburger (um, not that I really need to mention that, because of course I have never forgotten such a thing, leaving my precious babies alone with a lit stove), and I did make it before the garbage truck came, so maybe I’ll give myself back 1.

I’ll add up all the points at the end of the day, and then …

Well, screw it.  Then I’ll declare myself the winner no matter what and reward myself with some chocolate.

It’s happened a couple of times lately.  A friend, a fellow mom, has told me of a choice she’s made, and I’ve responded with silence.

And I know just how she must feel in that moment.  Because if I told you about my decision to vaccinate or not, my decision to work or not (or where to work), and met with silence, I’d assume the worst.  I’d assume you were judging me — that you were absolutely convinced of the wrongness of my choice, and were biting your tongue.

But it’s not that.  So, in case one of those friends did feel that way, and in case they’re reading this, let me say how it really was.*

First, I was afraid that anything I might say might sound judgy despite my intentions.  Even “You have to do what’s best for your family” can come out all wrong.  Um, see footnote.

Second, these amazing, wonderful, intelligent, powerful women are my friends because I‘m in awe of them respect them.  There aren’t many convictions that go bone-deep for me.  I’ve chosen Option A, but if you go with B, I’m gonna rethink my decision.  I might not change my mind, but I definitely will wonder (in silence): she’s smart, did she think of something I missed?

Finally, shamefully, I am protecting my own sorry self.  I am a big, big chicken, terrified of confrontations, unable to keep the defensiveness from creeping into even the mock debates the Jellyman so enjoys.**  Nod and smile, don’t disagree — this is how I get along in the world.  I know it costs me some valuable insight from intelligent friends, but I value the emotional connection of those relationships far too much to risk it for intellectual curiosity.  Unwise, maybe, but who I am.

So, friends, what say you?  Will you accept my promise not to judge you, and just let me listen in on your brilliant reasoning?  Or are you actually going to make me TALK!?

*Action item: I will learn to say things OUT LOUD with some of the clarity that seems to come when I’m writing.  You know, someday.

**Newly married, we had what to him was a discussion about the merits of gift card expiration dates.  In my world, it was proof that he had no respect for my opinions.  Potato, Potahto.***

***He was right.  About the nature of the conversation, not about the gift cards.  I still think he was wrong about that.

#1:  At least twice every day (before “quiet” time and before bedtime), all three kids pick a story for me or the Jellyman to read to them.  Raisin was the last to arrive with her story this afternoon.

“Mom,” she said, “I was the last to get here, so I should get my story first, because the last shall be first and the first shall be last.”

I am pretty sure that’s exactly what Jesus had in mind.  Also, I didn’t teach her that, and I don’t think she’s had that lesson in Sunday School either — at least not recently.  Spooky.

#2:  For his birthday, Apple got a truck book (to add to his collection of All Things Truck).  One of the characters is an ice-cream truck who says “Want to buy an ice cream?  Want to buy an ice cream?  Want to buy an ice cream?” — and nothing else.  So, of course, my children have taken this up as their own refrain.

On the way home from getting some family pictures taken in the cold cold cold today, Orange started it up again: “Want to buy an ice cream?  Want to buy an ice cream?”  You get the idea.

I said, “It’s too cold for ice cream today!”

“Yeah, it should be ‘want to buy hot chocolate!’” Raisin chimed in.

“If there were a hot chocolate truck, that’d be awesome,” I said.

“I have a hot chocolate truck, Mommy, and its name is Hot Love!  Because I sell hot stuff, with lots of love!”

The Jellyman nearly drove off the road.

I was just taking a little trip down Memory Lane, and I read this post.

Isn’t it hilarious, with the “two kids only” and “my second pregnancy is going to be so well-organized” and the “I’m so in control of all this?”

Oh, I was so stupid.

Jellyman: Sarah Palin gave a speech in Hong Kong this week.

Me: Why?  Are we exporting our cheap crap to China now?

I know it was childish, but it felt awfully good.