Be a Good Little Monkey and TRY TO STAY OUT OF MISCHIEF

Things I thought I would never type into my Googler:

Brussel Sprout Recipes
White frothy bugs on strawberries
Remove Crayon from Computer Screen

Look, we don't have much of value in our house. When guilt presses about 'having too much stuff' we play the house-burning game: "So the house burns down while we're gone. So what? What do we really lose?" I think of our family heirloom quilts, our photos maybe, and perhaps all the dried herbs, spices, and freezer full of apple treats I've slaved over for the winter. Maybe our good pots and my Wustoff knife. Our TV is super dinky; our books can be replaced; our furniture has mostly been collected at the side of the road or from thrift stores (ditto for our clothes--not from the roadside, but from Goodwill!).

The only things we have doled out a good amount of money for (as far as our standards go) is our blue Subaru and my computer, and maybe our used piano. You may remember that Merry covered our blue Subaru's hood with scratches fairly recently, pretending it was a team of Laura Ingall's horses. That left the used piano and the computer.

This morning Martin jumped out of bed at 4:30 in the morning in order to accompany his group of freshmen to DC's Holocaust museum. It's a long day, and he won't return until near midnight tonight. This left me in a bit of a bind since the girls have been ill lately and my night class falls tonight. My first plans for childcare fell through and so I finagled things so one of my students will take the first hour and I'll arrive late, after putting the little one to bed and receiving good friend Sally to sit with the girls.

There is one problem about the little ones. Merry is a dream child despite small bouts with eye-rolling. Elspeth is a real joy, but she is half monkey. Truly; I kid you not. I assume this monkey gene comes from my side of the family.

Yesterday we were spending a relatively quiet sick day at home when we heard great crashes from the piano. Martin said, "We've got a little Stravinsky on our hands!"

"I prefer a little Chopin," I countered, and then I went in to enjoy the sweet spectacle of my smallest child flexing her little fingers on our upright Yamaha. What I found was Elspeth, grasping the top of the piano and trouncing with her little feet up and down the old black and whites.

We took precautions, such as closing the key cover, but Elspeth is not to be so easily deterred. This morning I turned my head from writing comments on an essay to find that she had climbed the piano like a flight of stairs and was practically perched on the tippy top, where she knocked off the African drum and what-not on top.

Please note I include only her wildest escapades. There are many, many others not listed here that keeps me on my hands and knees not in prayer but in tidy-up.

I scrapped my comments for that moment and proceeded to a much-needed shower. Now, I do not often indulge myself in showers, a fact that my friends probably mourn. Many days finding me gritting my teeth, swiping my hair into a braid, and continuing as before. But today was a shower day, and I really needed one.

It was a lovely bathe, and Elspeth was curiously quiet and content the entire duration. Which leads me to this:

"When children stand quiet, they have done some ill" (George Herbert: Jacula Prudentum).

Hair wrapped in towel, I found my little monkey-child kneeling on my desk, crayon and pen clamped in tight fists, employing my LCD computer screen as an easel.

I need go no further except to advise that if you have a good little monkey who is alas, often very curious, the best remedy for a scribbled computer screen is to buff it, very slowly and patiently, and doubtlessly with a great deal of fear and trembling, with a soft cloth.

If you do not have any little monkeys, think, then, of all you miss, poor soul. How DO you employ time when there are no small daily disasters? I pity you, truly. Borrow my little Elspeth at some point and see the light of a truly exciting existence.