Going Mobile

I used to long for a room of my own. You know, like Ms. Woolf wrote about, almost one hundred years ago. Lately, I've realized that that dream is totally unattainable (for the foreseeable future, at least). Now, I'd really just settle for a desk of my own. Ooh, no! For a secretary! A secretary of my own! And I'm not talking about a human assistant. No, I'm talking about a super functional piece of furniture in which I could store sundry supplies; one that would boost my productivity and help me stay organized. My mom has a beautiful old secretary--she's had it since I can remember--the nooks and crannies of which I used to love to explore as a small child. A secretary would be perfect for me! Its footprint is small, but its storage capacity is well nigh boundless. And I could use it as a desk! A desk! Oh, what I would give to own a desk again...

I've been fantasizing about office furniture (never mind an actual office!) of late because it's gets a little difficult at times to prepare our homeschool materials sitting on the floor or on our couch. And I've hollowed out a shelf here and the corner of a closet there in which I can store some homeschool stuff, but certain things--like books, my laptop, projects in progress--need to be kept on hand. I'm far too lazy to be continuously pulling stuff out of storage and then stowing it again just a little while later. The layout of our apartment here is a little funky; the kitchen is tiny and the second bedroom is more like a loft, but the bathrooms have a ton of counter space. I'd never really found a use for all that square footage of blue formica before I started homeschooling my son. (If I "put my face on" each morning like some women do, the counters would for sure be laden with foundations and eyeshadows and lipsticks and such. As it is, I've been feeling proud of myself lately because I haven't been forgetting to coat my freckly face in sunscreen everyday.) Now I just stash half-finished projects on the bathroom counters whenever I need to stop sewing or cutting or gluing and start cooking or cleaning or racing Hot Wheels cars around what used to be our kitchen table (before it became Parker's play table). I even keep our new printer on the counter in the upstairs bathroom. There's really no other horizontal surface upon which to place it.

Teachers often half-think about their to-do lists throughout the day; the lesson plans they need to write, the materials they need to prepare for upcoming classes. For the past several weeks, at random moments, I've found myself worrying about a movable alphabet, a crucial component of Montessori classrooms which students use to analyze and form words as they prepare to read and write. I've had some measure of success fabricating homemade Montessori materials, but I knew that creating a functional movable alphabet here at home would be beyond my abilities (or at least beyond my recent energy levels). I could order one, of course, but we've just spent a bundle on fixing cars, buying a laptop and a printer and purchasing Christmas and birthday presents. Our bank account could use a break from debits. I kept thinking about this "Read and Spell" letter game my mom purchased for Parker a year ago. It comes with 86 letter cards, at least two of each letter, the vowels in red and the consonants in blue (including one red, vowel y, and one blue, consonant y). Perfect. The only problem is that the letter cards are all jumbled up in a little box. (Parker could never stand to play the "Read and Spell" letter game for very long because he'd get frustrated trying to find the letters he was looking for.) Movable alphabets should be neatly displayed in a divided box, copies of the same letter placed together, so that the child can easily see (and find) all twenty-six letters of the alphabet. OK, so I had the letters for our movable alphabet, but where would I find a divided box, with at least 26 2"x2" compartments? I searched all over Amazon--craft boxes, tackle boxes, tool boxes, ornament boxes--and even ordered something that I thought might do the trick, but when it arrived the compartments turned out to be too small. Vendors don't describe their products very assiduously, I've discovered. Finally, while we were shopping on St. Thomas last week, I found an almost perfect divided container at Home Depot. It only has 24 compartments, but beggars can't be choosers, right?

Anyway, our new movable alphabet has been sitting around on the bathroom counter upstairs, waiting for me to decide that it's the appropriate time to present it to Parker. I figured he should get through more (if not all) of the phonetic alphabet before he starts to work with the movable alphabet. Probably I should have actually put it away somewhere--and I meant to, I did--because Parker happened upon it and seemed to be totally taken with it. The thing about it being in the bathroom, though, is that Parker kept wanting to work with it right when I was either on my in or on my way out of the shower. Wanting to spell "stupendous" is all fine and good, but I'd rather not help my son sound out a ten-letter word while half-naked. Because of this, I brought the movable alphabet downstairs yesterday morning. I left it on the downstairs bathroom counter, meaning to find a place (more like create a place) to store it, then got distracted and, of course, forgot all about it. I came inside, just before lunchtime, having been working outside, cleaning our deck, then vacuuming out our Jeep, to find Parker spelling "exit" with his pants down around his ankles. Apparently, he'd gone pee and then, seeing the movable alphabet, been so overcome by the urge to spell a word that he couldn't be bothered to pull up his pants. (I pulled up his pants for him, then snapped the below photos.)

"I'm spelling the word exit Mommy!"

Now the last letter.

Exit!

Postscript: The sky yesterday morning was breathtaking. Here are a couple photos I took in between sips of coffee.