Oh, the Things You'll See!
(Sub-Title: The secret life of the tween)
My daughter is coming back from the beach in a couple days, which means I need to hurry and finish cleaning her room. I have to be done before garbage day so that she won't be able to pick through the stuff I'm tossing. I know the little pack rat pretty nervous about it. She wants a full accounting of what I'm ditching. But guess what? I do this every summer when she's visiting our family in other states, and she has never noticed one single thing that was missing from her room when she got back. Not one.
This year, I mostly focused on her desk. She has approximately a hundred thousand tiny notebooks, each with one or two pages used. She mostly seems to use them to write:
I also got rid of a lot of super balls (just how many does one kid need????), crap from Chuck E. Cheese, random Barbie shoes with no mates, petrified gummy vitamins, lidless markers, and a bunch of other stuff.
I am tempted to repaint the wall that she painted with random girlie stuff. I didn't really want her to paint it to begin with, but I figured it was harmless. A girl needs to express herself, right? Here's the thing, though. She put a boy's name on her wall. In paint. I questioned the wisdom of it at the time. I likened it to a tattoo. "You don't see Daddy's name on me anywhere and I've been with him for 23 years," I told her. A fourth grade romance seemed, at least in my mind, like it probably would not go the distance. It did wither and die after a couple of months, of course. So, she crossed out his name with a Sharpie and taped a paper plate over it. At this point it's probably easier just to build a new wall.
Anyway, things are in pretty good shape at this point. If you need a half-finished craft project, I know where you can find about 78 of them.
My daughter is coming back from the beach in a couple days, which means I need to hurry and finish cleaning her room. I have to be done before garbage day so that she won't be able to pick through the stuff I'm tossing. I know the little pack rat pretty nervous about it. She wants a full accounting of what I'm ditching. But guess what? I do this every summer when she's visiting our family in other states, and she has never noticed one single thing that was missing from her room when she got back. Not one.
This year, I mostly focused on her desk. She has approximately a hundred thousand tiny notebooks, each with one or two pages used. She mostly seems to use them to write:
- Song lyrics
- Complaints about her mother (wait, that's me!)
- Notes about boys that she likes
- Diaryish entries, sometimes with dates
- Short stories
- Business plans for the upcycling store she plans to own someday.
- Sketches of ballgowns
I also got rid of a lot of super balls (just how many does one kid need????), crap from Chuck E. Cheese, random Barbie shoes with no mates, petrified gummy vitamins, lidless markers, and a bunch of other stuff.
I am tempted to repaint the wall that she painted with random girlie stuff. I didn't really want her to paint it to begin with, but I figured it was harmless. A girl needs to express herself, right? Here's the thing, though. She put a boy's name on her wall. In paint. I questioned the wisdom of it at the time. I likened it to a tattoo. "You don't see Daddy's name on me anywhere and I've been with him for 23 years," I told her. A fourth grade romance seemed, at least in my mind, like it probably would not go the distance. It did wither and die after a couple of months, of course. So, she crossed out his name with a Sharpie and taped a paper plate over it. At this point it's probably easier just to build a new wall.
Anyway, things are in pretty good shape at this point. If you need a half-finished craft project, I know where you can find about 78 of them.
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