I love the BBC’s ‘The Life Laundry’. I watch it every week. It probably helps that there is nothing else on TV at the same time except football and I don’t want to start watching football. After all, during the big games, some one has to watch the kids, and as the mother, I’m where the buck stops.

I suppose that I like the show so much because I, too, am a pack rat. Do you know that The Life Laundry also seems to categorize pack rats ? I seem to fall under the heading of ‘ The Sentimental Pack Rat’. I keep my past in bits and pieces in boxes up in our attic.

I have the little lederhousen wallet that I used when I was 8, including a small slip of yellowing paper with my address and telephone number on it, should I ever have gotten lost. I have my Girl Scout sash, with badges going up and down both sides, the T-shirt that Chi Phi gave me during my first year of college and all of my notes for my M.A. thesis, including copies of the drawings for every single sherd that we dug up during the first season. Until a few months ago, I had every single possession that my Mother owned on the day of her death, including Kleenex which had sat rumpled up for 20 years inside her coat pockets.

And my brother is the same way. He has Grateful Dead T-shirts from the ’70′s, his first G.I.Joe and most likely the can from the first beer that he ever drank. We are kindred souls.

Sometimes I wonder why some people are pack rats and others are not. I sometimes wonder if the way that my brother and I grew up has anything to do with it.

In a valiant attempt to protect their children from America’s turbulent 60′s, my parents chose exile. They took assignment after assignment in far off, foreign countries, flitting about for a year here, 2 years there, no doubt telling themselves how quickly children adapt to change. I didn’t live in America for any great amount of time until I was 15, and being prepared to get into a ‘good’ college.

It was a few years later, at that very same ‘good’ college, when I began to question my slobby, messy tendencies. My mind was wandering one day as I sat in an English Class on Henry James, a lecture on ‘The Aspern Papers’. As the Professor droned on, I found myself imagining the Venetian home in which the elderly American woman lived, surrounded by furniture and bibelots collected during the centuries by a family not her own. Her possessions were all in trunks, bits and pieces of paper, recording her past. At the time, she struck me as the quintessential expatriate. It was then that I began to wonder if my collection of mementos was a replacement for the ancestral family home. Or at least for some house, some place that we had always lived in.

Can you imagine what ‘The Life Laundry’ would do with her trunks of memories ( ‘Do you really need to hold on to these ancient letters from a man long dead ? Don’t you think it’s time for a clean start?’)? Can you imagine what they would do with mine ? ( ‘ You saved all of his letters…and his as well ? Maybe the stamps from Rhodesia will bring something in at the boot sale, don’t you agree? And this American flag from your Step-Grandfather’s coffin…?’)

I can’t bring myself to believe that my boxes of bits and pieces are junk, dead weight holding me back, preventing me from soaring into a bright , new life. I sometimes think that if I had always been in one place and could look out of a window and see a playground from my youth, a school I once attended, the home of the boy next door, I wouldn’t need all of these mementos. But I didn’t and I do.

I could never throw away the two pictures of Sgt. Rock that I have, the lone one of Carl, the washable noteboard which hung on my door freshman year, the messages from Bridget and Lauren and Lois still clear and legible.

I am, I fear , incorrigible in my ways and shall never invite ‘The Life Laundry’ to my home. I might not be able to resist the desire to break some little fingers caught pawing my past.

note : I actually wrote this with Lost in Transit in mind, but I hesitated about sending it in as I don’t know how many ‘ second generation’ lost people there are and then today,a piece went up there talking about the freedom the lack of possessions gives one.

So I put it here instead, being constitutionally unable to toss anything out.

The Father wants his own computer. Oh, he hasn’t exactly come out and said that, no, he’s beaten around the bush, hemmed-and hawed about it for weeks. But what it boils down to is that he wants his own computer.

I can understand that. To be honest, I’m not very generous with my computer. If you come to my home, walk in the door, receive your bath towels, I’m not going to ask you ‘ Do you need to use the computer ?’ . Unless I’ve hooked up The Boy’s Internet connection first. In fact, odds are most likely that I would ask if one needed to sleep with my partner before I’d let someone else clomp around in my computer.

One course that The Father took was to suggest that I get a new computer and then the domino effect would go through the family computers, leaving The Father- I believe- with The Boyu’s. But I like my computer. I like my big, clunky screen and I love my three- count them, three- hard disks. I don’t want a new computer. I just want mine fixed ( you know, it hasn’t quite been the same since…).

Now, one reason The Father would like his own computer is to play at the BMW site, with a sortof make-your-own-BMW thing ( it’s the car configurator). He loves that. He’s always calling me in to look at the car he has made. Isn’t it lovely ? Yes, dear, it’s lovely.

The other is that he would like to look at risque pictures. Now, I’m not one of those people who believes that this activity is going to turn my mild-mannered partner of over 20 years into Ted Bundy. I just don’t want him doing it on my computer. It took me weeks and weeks to clear out all of the bugs and worms his journey into that world left on my computer. I didn’t rant and rave about it, didn’t say that he couldn’t use my computer ever again. I simply implied that he had brought my computer to the brink of death. No, I can’t do that bit of work for you, my computer is still feeling a bit ‘off’.

My suggestion has been that he buy himself a lap-top. For some reason, he is totally against this idea. I’ve explained to him that we can hook it up to the wireless network, and then he can play with his own little lap-top anywhere he wants. I even offered to clean it up for him after every use. And then, when he is finished looking at whatever he wants to look at, we can simply close the machine and tuck it into a cupboard. We have tons of cupboards.

But he persisted. No lap-top, no, he wants a full blown computer, a clunky thing that takes up space, that is always there. And so last night I was forced to be cruel and tell him the truth. I don’t want another computer in my little-room-of-my-own.

I still want to pretend that this is indeed my room.

Fortunately, things have calmed down here, back to the usual vacation lethargy. When The Boy started ping-ponging off of the walls yesterday shortly after lunch, I imagined a very grim four days ahead of me. I started feeling very funky and very sorry for myself and the offspring.

But just after I had made the kids their dinner, The Father turned up unexpectedly. He canceled his meeting and instead sat and played chest ( chess) with The Boy and told me that his parents had invited the children to come and visit them, in pairs, throughout the week. Instead of a death march, the vacation took on a more peaceful note.

This morning as I was clearing up the kitchen, I looked out of the window and saw Mr.Jo entering the yard, followed shortly thereafter by The Father. They had brought me two couches to look over. Brother 3 was getting rid of them and knew that we wanted some furniture for the kids’ ‘playroom’ and so offered them to us. I told The Father it didn’t matter what they looked like- after all, one of my hidden talents is the ability to recover furniture ( when I’m inspired into any activity, of course, which is rare these days) and so he and Mr.Jo huffed and puffed them up to the third floor.

Of course, I had fresh coffee waiting for them when they were done, and as we sipped our coffee we discussed the back veranda we want him to build. While I don’t miss Jo in the least, it was like the old days, with him going on about burning a layer of lime to set the tiles in preparation for a new layer.

After they had left, I got the kids dressed and tidied up to go into town to have new passport photos taken. Not for passports but for our season tickets to the Efteling. It’s been a very long time since I took all three kids into town and we truly filled up every store we went to. We had a fine time getting the pictures taken- mine was not as bad as the photo taken last summer for my US passport, but still had an aura of Bride-of-Frankenstein about it. But the kids’ came out nice.

During normal school weeks, Tuesday is our killer day, but during a vacation, well, at least there is something to do : The Boy has football training in a few hours and The Girl horse riding.

All in all, much better than yesterday, when I spent the day oh-woe-is-me-ing to the walls.

But Win’s idea of us renting a farmhouse together somewhere in France during these vacations certainly has become very attractive.

Approximately 1 hour ago, The Boy came to me and said that he was bored.

It’s going to be a long week.

Win and I sat on the kitchen floor talking until 7.30 this morning.

It was that sort of weekend.

I have actually spent the day doing all of those things that- technically speaking- I’m supposed to do but never do. Yes, I was a whirlwind of domesticity, cooking and cleaning , rather startling The Baby with my unusual behavior. I even went so far as to seriously contemplate scrubbing ( as in on-my-hands-and-knees) the kitchen floor, but decided to rearrange my blogroll instead.

I put Eurotrash, Lost in Transit and The Limerick Contest there on top, because I enjoyed/ enjoy taking part in them.

Win arrives tomorrow. I have 32 limes in the house. 4 limes = a half a cup of juice.

Margaritas ala Rob : 3 parts Tequila, 2 parts Cointreau, 2 parts lime.

As Kim does, the day I cook, we are having Tacos. There isn’t a Taco Bell in miles. Perhaps in countries.

There is no frame of reference.

In the past, Juf Nora has always asked me ‘Are you coming ?’, and I always picked up on the fact that there was an option and said ‘No’. This time though, with The Baby, she didn’t phrase the question in quite the same manner : ‘ What time will you be here ?’ she asked me. And, being the namby-pamby sort of person that I am, I replied ‘ Uh, what time should I be here ?’. And so of all three children, I only attended The Baby’s last day at nursery school. Now I know what I have missed.

For a half an hour I sat on a little, teensy chair, my knees somewhere around my ears, with a cheery, isn’t-this-fun-aren’t-you-all-cute smile on my face while 8 children with running noses ( wonder how Baby missed catching that one) sang songs that I didn’t know, played ‘postman’ and then serenaded Baby with various musical instruments.

Goodbye, Bay-Bee ! Goodbye ! Baby enjoyed it all very much, though she was a little sad at the thought of not seeing Nora again. And so I said to her, sincerely, as I said to The Boy and The Girl when they left nursery school, that we could always come to visit.

Then the last of the hundreds of kilometers I have walked, taking her back and forth to her school in the next village. And finally, I parked her buggy over in the corner, behind my quilting frame and I’m never, ever going to push that nasty thing again.

So help me God.

When the children and I stepped out of the house this morning, we couldn’t help but notice that our stoop was surrounded by a good dozen of those orange and white traffic cones. Looking to our left, we could see that all of the bricks there had been reset and looking to our right, we saw the man who resets and maintains all of the brick sidewalks and cobblestone streets in town pulling out the bricks on that side of the door. I said good morning to him, noticing that he had a new earring , and took our bevy of rather bewildered children off to school.

It’s like that in our town : I never know when I look out of a window ( for the large tree in our yard belongs to the city, as well as a small portion of the wall which surrounds our garden) or step out of the door, if some hulking- but pleasant- stranger will be there. And our stoop belongs to the town as well.

At least three times a year, a bit of a screed will appear in our local paper, telling those of us with stoops that we must not place potted plants or wooden benches on our stoops. It pollutes the view, we are told, and- we are reminded- the stoops belong to the city, they are not a part of our property.

And that is just fine with me. In ticking off the division of duties within our household, The Father and I have butted our heads a few times. One unresolved allocation of labor is who polishes the children’s shoes : in my family, my father always did it, in The Fathers family his mother always did it. Our children have remarkably scruffy shoes.

Another point of contention was the stoop :The Fatherr felt that I should thoroughly clean it once a week- but never on Sunday. I could never quite bring myself to take the stiff-bristled broom out of it’s webby shroud and sweep off the stoop every week. Or weed it, unless there was a danger of fatal injuries.

And so the city’s screeds came to my rescue : you know Father, it’s not our stoop, it belongs to the city, let them maintain it. And sure enough, once I began neglecting our stoop, the city stepped in and began tending it. They come by with a blow torch 2, 3 times a year and fry off the weeds, the man in the little yellow truck tidies up the bits of refuse the tourists and their dogs leave and in short, the city maintains their stoop very well.

I don’t mind not being able to place potted plants or rustic benches on the stoop at all. But it is nearly 10, and I suppose I should bring him a cup of coffee.

It’s that sort of town.

Someone I know is in London right now. Having just chunneled in from Paris, they are looking for the equivalent of the oh-so-charming , small, oh-so-french place to go and have dinner.

I myself suggested that they hit an Indian place, that’s what we always do. But I must admit, I am wondering what the London version of their Paris experience would be. You know, something that a ‘native’ would go to for dinner. Dare I say it ? Something..authentic. ( Here I must add that I must know a poor sort of native : they all go for Indian).

And with RyanAir having such stinking low fares, I’m wishing that The Fathers business schedule would allow us a long weekend…away.

Feel free to guess where.