the family room

After a series of events of interest only to fellow homeowners and possibly the loyal readers of my blog (that began with icky water and damaged carpets, followed by a leisurely-paced cork floor installation, followed by an unexpected new flow of water into the house, followed by two different gutter guys and much talk of down spouts, followed by completion of the delayed-by-water cork floor, followed by polyurethane and sanding with very fine grained purple paper, followed by furniture moving and rescuing of playthings from the scary cricket-infested basement, followed by many junky toys being hidden away in the recycling bin in the dead of night) the playroom is back.

Joyful noises were heard Saturday morning as the children descended the stairs to find a room that has been mostly off-limits for months miraculously restored. The toys were back!

I love being in this new space. The whole long, slow process has been a lesson in the good and bad of owning a home. What a headache, yes. What dull problems to occupy our minds. But what rewards! The room reminds me of the importance of our environment - how beauty, color, texture, and light inform our emotions. As nearly one-third of our house has opened up again, we were able to move many toys and books from the living room back to the playroom. Everything in its place. (Imagine me sighing with contentment.)

We are going to try calling this the family room now, instead of the playroom. Which is surprising, because I have always been opposed to the very idea of a family room. A house should have one shared room, a living room, with all the books and music and cushy chairs and art on the walls that make both family members and guests feel at home. A place for all to live. Right?

To me, family room suggests a back room featuring a funny smell, plaid-covered couches and scraped-up tables, a big TV, bad lighting. Such rooms have pristine twins: rooms with clean surfaces, lump-free cushions, and nary a pile of old magazines in sight; rooms where a family can put on a good face and entertain. Where exactly I got this nasty idea about family rooms, I'm not sure. There is a whiff about them that calls to mind the suburban values that fall decidedly under the icky column: concern with surfaces, keeping messes hidden away, overconsumption (who the heck needs two living rooms?). I am all for sharing the happy detritus of everyday life - stray crayons, books, neglected mail, piles of kid art - with anyone who comes through the front door. 

In short, I am for public dishevelment. A seemly modicum of domestic chaos that communicates to friends that it is a-okay to put your feet up and pour your own drink. (A note: moderate disorder is different from filth. I do clean, a little. Okay, a very little.)

(Another note: I hope my mother is not cringing as she reads this. I honestly think I formed a deep association between moderate mess and a hospitable house from the way she ran our home growing up. There were many spontaneous visits from friends and there were piles of stuff on the coffee table. I am sure the two are linked. She is the most gracious hostess I know.)

So, remember the icky column? We live in a split level in the suburbs. We have two living rooms! But part of the project of making a life here for ourselves is rehabilitating what it means to live in the suburbs. We love the space the run, to grow a garden, to host many trees. There are good things to be found in this strange new world, and so, it is time to embrace the family room.

The room is floored in warm cork that we picked out together at the surprisingly friendly Lumber Liquidators in Beltsville, MD. Our wonderful neighbor Thomas installed it and painted the walls. We put down a lovely green wool rug handed down to us from one of Mike's generous colleagues. We slid the big red chair out onto the rug, which once served as a smooth leather spaceship for my dad to ride in through his days of cancer treatment. It has a dark spot where his head once rested. I put up the adorable alphabet cards Edith sent for Gabriel's last birthday. The old-fashioned school desk we found in Lancaster sits next to the enormous desk that up until recently lived in Mike's parents' house. And on and on.

This is not a playroom, a place to sequester children (though it can, happily, work that way). This is our family's room. It contains things we chose, things we made, things we inherited and things we were given. It feels like a peaceful place to be together, a place that affirms us in the midst of all the complexity and uncertainty life invariably brings.

I smiled when I saw the forecast this morning: rain! A perfect day to do puzzles and read stories in the family room. Which is exactly what we did.

one happy kid

Well, there are two happy kids, really, but this is a short photo ode to Gabriel, with whom I have spent more one-on-one time over the past three weeks than in the entirety of his life up until Frances' recent departure for the greener pastures of Annapolis Elementary School.

I'm gaga for Gabriel. I feel like I'm falling for the kid anew, so forgive me for reveling in these lovey dovey days and sharing them with you. I have absolutely no perspective - and hence no shame. I hope it isn't too gross (I know, I know - stop the presses! Mama blogger's children are happy and she adores them!).

I have discovered, contrary to my fears, that being a second child is not tantamount to getting the short end of the stick. Having a big sister is pretty neat, and having parents who are more settled in their roles isn't bad either. That said, I do feel like it is finally Gabriel's time to shine in the sun. He gets lots of attention, he has more creative space to express himself without his big sister around to compete with, and he has enough distance from her to inspire wild running across the blacktop, shouting Didi!! Didi!! when she steps down the back steps of her school with the other walkers and car-riders at 3:35.

Greeting Frances today, who is showing Gabriel a sticker her new pal Halligan just gave her.

We usually hang out on the lovely playground adjacent to Frances' school if we get there early. Gabriel giggled crazily, so surprised and happy was he to discover he is able handle the big kid climbing challenges.

Speaking of new competencies...That right there, thank you to Milena, is a real bike with training wheels. He skipped the tricycle.

This is the kind of thing you need a quiet kitchen to accomplish.

Sometimes living in Annapolis isn't bad. This was taken today at the harbor downtown, just a few steps from where we pick up Frances. Gabriel woke up early from his nap and wanted to visit with the ducks before school got out. He told me every docked boat hailed from Delaware.

The yellow September light fits my mood perfectly these days. With a second child, one realizes how fleeting everything can be. Not that the future does not hold new, unforseeable amazements - but I am cherishing this particular moment.

tastes like fall

That's what Mike says about these, one of our very favorite cookies. Inspired by the beauty of the changing season, Gabriel and I made them yesterday. My qualms about not attributing this recipe to its rightful author (I wrote it down many years ago from some forgotten website or magazine) are totally overwhelmed by my wish that you fill your house with the scent of these molasses cookies, and eat lots of them, soon.

3/4 cup softened butter
1 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
1/4 cup unsulfured molasses
2 and 1/4 cups white whole wheat flour, plus a bit more
1 tsp baking soda
1 and 1/2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsps cinnamon  **I use heaping tsps for both spices
raw, coarse sugar for coating

Preheat oven to 375. Grease a baking sheet.

Cream the butter and brown sugar, then add in the eggs and molasses and beat until well-blended.

In a separate bowl, mix together the dry ingredients, then add to the butter mixture. Beat until the dough no longer sticks to the sides of the bowl, adding more flour if you need to.

To form the cookies, roll balls of dough and then flatten them in your hands. Dredge each disc in the raw sugar (it turns out that this is an excellent job for a two year old). Place on the sheet 1 - 2 inches apart, and bake for 6 or 7 minutes. Watch out; don't let them get too brown on the bottom.

fresh eyes

At my children's request, the kid clothesline came out again yesterday. This year, it is situated a little big higher. And both kids now possess the fine motor skills necessary to hang underwear and washcloths and socks up with clothespins, which is very satisfying.


As I knotted the rope to the deck, I remembered a distant post featuring smaller children hanging wet rags out to dry. So I checked, and in so doing, I discovered it has been almost exactly one year since I began this blog. Amelia got me started on September 21, 2009.

Friends! So many of you have traveled the past year with me on Homemade Time, and for this I feel wellsprings of sincere gratitude bubbling up with fresh feeling, tightening my throat. It is no small thing to have friends and family like all of you. Writing to you - and reading your comments - has made mothering richer and sweeter. It has given me a creative place to think through the chaos of the day, and to make meaning from it. Thank you. 

It's been a whole year since Frances and I were reading The Folk of the Faraway Tree, and Dame Washalot inspired us to do some dripping wet wacky laundry of our own. Kind of funny that I just read this article by Cordelia Fine, which launches into a commentary about how bogus our gendered thinking about little kids is with her experiences (as child and parent) reading Enid Blyton. Like Ms. Fine, I do plenty of on-the-spot editing when we hit particularly egregious passages about girls being the weaker sex in our treasured oldey-timey children's classics.

But my elisions are a wee drop in a big bucket filled with all kinds of weird crap - much of which I probably do a fine job of perpetuating without even realizing it. I read a review of Cordelia Fine's book, Delusions of Gender, in the Washington Post last week. I don't feel any desire to read her scrupulous debunkings of pseudo-scientific studies that claim to prove the innate differences between girls and boys. But I'm glad she made the effort. Just reading the review did enough to get me back to thinking about gender more globally.

I felt a little sheepish reading about her book. I too am suckered in by all sorts of biological destiny-style accounts of gender. It lets me off the hook for those shortcomings of mine that seem mapped onto my gender, my persistent femininity. Too accommodating, too afraid to speak up and upset someone, lacking in sufficient personal boundaries, prone to harbor resentments rather than communicate directly about difficult issues. Etc etc. Oh, and I throw like a girl.

So when Science says it's all because of my chromosomes, those things I don't always like in myself become less personal in nature - more my womanly lot in life. An opportunity to relinquish personal responsibility is hard to pass up.

And becoming a parent, especially a parent of both a boy and a girl, has brought countless conversations with countless enlightened feminist types about the surprising "hardwired" nature of gender that we discover as we watch our children grow. Boys and girls are so different. All the preschool mothers agree. I am among them.

Yes, there are differences between most girls I've met and most boys I've met. The terms masculinity and feminity do make sense to me (more on this another day). But when someone comes along and scrambles my habits of perception a bit, I feel called out. I've been seeing through a particular lens that emphasizes certain behaviors and traits and relegates others to the periphery. Oh, there he goes with the trucks again! He's such a boy.

For example - here's some of the pervasive stuff in the big bucket I mentioned earlier - I name every non-human actor on our family stage a boy. I use the male pronoun with every backyard squirrel, stuffed animal, and Dr. Seuss creature. Where's he going? I ask Gabriel about the bird outside our window. What's that little guy doing? Oh, he's looking for worms!

Where are the girl bugs and teddy bears? (We read a book recently featuring a female teddy bear - a sidekick, not even the protagonist! - and honestly, it struck me as kind of weird.)

The only reason I know I blanket the world boy like this is that Frances corrects me when I use the wrong pronoun with her toys. Some are girls and she is truly offended when I slip up; she's like a first-time parent when a stranger gets a newborn's sex wrong. Frances also reminds me that the blood-sucking mosquitoes are mamas looking for blood to feed their babies every time I slap one and triumphantly shout: I GOT HIM!

This disturbs me, the way my language betrays my prejudices.

So tonight, I'm setting an intention: to resist the temptation of categorizing my children. To put up a speed bump at least, so I'm caught up the next time I attribute behaviors to their boyness or girlness. Or to being a typical first or second born child, for that matter. To being such a sensitive person, or a smart person, an athletic person or a bookworm.

What do those things really mean?


What do they have to do with Frances and Gabriel in all their glorious mystery? (Or with me?) It is hard to stand back and let them tell me who they are, to sit with not-knowing and give them that space for expression.

I am not always so good at it. But writing to all of you sure does help me a lot.

a wondrously regular day

You know that feeling, when you are in poorly-lit, faintly depressing grocery store and you have picked the wrong line yet again, and the demoralized checker is operating in a fog, and a slow-moving woman in front of you is sorting through an impossibly fat envelope of coupons, and it seems as if the very effort required to remain standing and upright is more than you can muster? And all those People and Woman's Day magazines whose headlines you are scanning as you begin to teeter (Angelina Jolie has too many kids! Fat free cupcake recipe inside!) make the whole thing surreal and you grip your cart for support and start seriously considering the candy?

This morning with Gabriel at our sunny and cheerful Trader Joe's reversed whatever damage those sorts of shopping trips have done to me over the years. He makes me laugh. We both were feeling giddy and silly, so I indulged all kinds of antics with the little kid-sized grocery cart. I probably crossed a line when I tickled him as our very nice checker unloaded all the frozen berries and cereal and cheese and apples. He shrieked a little too loud in his adorable, unhinged way.

I put him down to pay and when I looked, there he was, cracking himself up with a stray paper bag.

Oh, it was so funny! Where's Gabriel? THERE HE IS!!! Hilarious, I tell you!

And as I was writing this, I looked over to the coffee table and saw a sweet remnant of our evening that I cannot resist showing you:

We learned all about what being a Title 1 school means, and I signed up to volunteer with the PTA, and we got to sit at little tables in the kindergarten classroom and watch Miss Burns use the Smart Board to show us all about field trips and the school library. But mostly I watched Frances sitting on the rug with her new friends, specifically two little boys named Quadir and Anthony. Gabriel joined them, looking right at home. I could not stop grinning as I looked over at Mike.

We're doing this thing. It's happening. We have a kid who writes her name on a blank name tag passed to her at Back To School Night in the elementary school gym. (By the way, doesn't it look fantastic? She has effortlessly captured something in her writing that indie rock boys from my youth attempted to replicate in the hopes of indicating their own authenticity.)

Well. Well well. Friends, I am feeling the flip side of the disorientation Frances endured yesterday morning. I am looking around and feeling grateful, elated, awed by how all this came to be.

How did we get here, anyway? Tonight, while the children sleep and Mike talks Pascal in seminar, it all feels strange and wonderful to me.

homesick for the mouse house

An uncharacteristically quiet mouse with adorable bedhead ran into the kitchen this morning before she was fully awake. Outside, the rain was coming down steadily. The light was gray. She looked bleary and confused under the too-bright flourescent light.

Good morning, I said.
Squeak, she whispered.

I was in the middle of making coffee but turned the heat off the water when I caught sight of her big, red-rimmed eyes.

What is it?

I want to go home, whispered the mouse. Her chin wobbled and tears were gathering and beginning to spill over her lower lashes.

But this is your home, little mouse! I'm your mama mouse!

Tears were slowly and steadily dripping down her cheeks now. She told me she didn't "recognize anything here" and wanted to go to her real home, which was "in a big field, under an old old tree." What was she doing in this strange house?

The pretend mouse story was the gauziest wrapping around a heart of very real, disoriented feelings. You could see right through it. 

I picked her up and took her to the couch, where she tried to burrow into my chest. She told me how she longed to go home, where things are just her size and right for her, and where there are lots of foods she likes to eat. Though we might love her here, "there is much more love" in her real home. I'm not even a person, she told me. And then: what is a person? And what is love? I don't even know! (More tears).

She continued: How do you even know me? You look like a human being, but I'm a mouse. How did I get here?

I told her I had known her and loved her since the day she was born, and every moment since then. Five years!

Frances gathered herself together and looked at me steadily. I live in mouse-years, as you know.

In my mind I heard that haunting, beautiful line from a Neutral Milk Hotel song, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea: can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all.

This empathetic sponge of a mama, emotional amoeba that I am, sat and clutched my little girl on the couch and tried not to cry with her. (Her sensitive brother roamed the house looking for "gifts" which he deposited next to us, asking Didi if she was happy now with each new offering). I wanted to honor her suffering, the truth of what she was tapping, without sending her over the edge.

Her lost little mouse was expressing a primal in-the-world-but-not-of-it realization, an existential shiver that shook her from whisker to tail. To feel oneself a mouse amongst people, to feel onself not quite fitting into the world as it is, to feel one's separateness and yearning for a home where everything is beautiful and these distances between us disappear. A real home, a mouse house. It is a lot for a small person to hold all at once.

Which is why, thankfully, this moment soon slid naturally into more light-hearted mouse family play. How tenderly I felt towards her. How painful growing up can be. How strange it is to be anything at all.

carrot and stick

As Frances explained to every adult whose path she crossed on this brilliant Thursday (every adult who showed a shred of interest in her, that is), today was Rosh Hashanah Day, so there was no school. Instead we spent the breezy morning at Quiet Waters Park. As time wore on the playground filled with more and more children, until suddenly it was packed with chaotic toddlers and crashing too-bigs and Gabriel ran up to me with serious alarm in his eyes, grabbing my pants and explaining: there are too many children here, we have to go NOW!

So we did. Post office, grocery store, baking with Frances during Gabriel's nap, visiting with a neighbor friend, a bit of reading, a bit of drawing, dinner, bath, and there you have it. Sounds like a satisfying day, right? I thought so too. But for my new kindergartener, something was lacking. Where are the organized activities, and what are the rules? Good lord, where is the structure in all this having-a-pleasant-day-at-home business?

The poor girl was driven to such lengths as creating cards with numbers on them directing us to our proper chairs at the dining room table, suggesting new rules for our family (among them today were "no fake laughing allowed" and "no hitting people with chopsticks"), and devising ways she might be helpful and thus earn whatever our equivalent of respect tickets might be. Of course we have no school store in which she could spend her respect tickets. And we have no tickets. But if only we did...!

The kid has never been interested in being 'a good helper' for its own sake (that line of motivation occasionally works beautifully with her brother). But the idea of earning something - of moving ahead on the board game, collecting rewards - suddenly helping is where it's at. Frances has asked if we could have a "system" like the one at school. Think stickers, color-coded, perhaps a chart displayed publicly in the kitchen. The consequences and rewards would be clear and well-defined (time out vs. candy). Tonight she asked if she could do the dishes every night "for the next sixteen years." (Just think of the respect tickets she'll be swimming in by 2026!)

Geez, what have I been missing out on? In a way it seems so concrete, oppressively so, but I suppose a five year old is concrete! This is where I always trip up with Frances; I fall into the mistake of treating her as if she understood things the way I do. As if she had some sophisticated perspective on her own rocky emotions. But she's a kid, one with a wild imagination and a tendency to get stressed out by the unpredictable nature of this world and the people inhabiting it. Adults giveth and taketh away, and sometimes it feels cruelly arbitrary.

No, you cannot watch a video today. Because. Because I said so.

What if I could point to some garish chart on the refrigerator covered in gold stars and sad faces the next time she asked WHY? WHY CAN'T I??? Maybe such overt documentation would help Frances feel more in control and thus more relaxed.

Or maybe spending half an hour drawing pictures like the one above after school serves the same purpose. I hope so, because the truth is I'm too lazy to create and enforce a "system." And frankly, I'm too attached to the power I wield, even though it may feel cruel and arbitrary at times. I want to reserve the freedom to do things simply because they seem like a good idea at the time. 

And how about that picture Frances drew? It is of an imaginary school, not hers, but you can see how powerful these first days have been. The headings in each box are Ball, Music, Homework, Jim (Gym), School Bus, Recess, Line, Rules, and Sharing.

I am fascinated by the ways Frances talks about and illustrates racial differences. Her teacher is black and many of her classmates are too, but she doesn't understand them as belonging to one group. Frances has always understood people as falling somewhere on the lighter brown to darker brown continuum (she herself is "light brown"). She always describes new people in great detail, and has recently talked a lot about one of her new friends who wears her hair in corn rows with beads (how she admires them!). The detail below shows a little girl with blue beads on the ends of her braids, dancing in music class with her teacher.

the real new year

Doesn't it seem more natural to make our new year's resolutions in September? Rosh Hashanah works seasonally. But what exactly about the gray days of January inspires clarity, motivation, renewed dedication to our plans? The new school year is my new year. Give me a hint of cool air on a September morning and that residual fluttering in the belly (that I now feel for my kids heading off to school, rather than myself), and I'm ready to disinfect the cruddy humidifier, fold the basket of laundry that's been sitting in the living room for three days, and make a big slow cooker full of porridge.

Yes! There it is up there, before I cooked it. You see oatmeal, brown rice, barley, red quinoa, red lentils, and wheat berries. Oh boy. I found this recipe online last year and keep tinkering with the ingredients and proportions. However it turns out, it is always absurdly austere. The growing edge of breakfast. I haven't had it in months, but something about this shift in season made me ready, made me crave the stuff. I'm going to need fuel like this for all the resolutions that are bubbling up to the surface these days.

I credit our time in Vermont for the clarity and energy I feel lately, as much as the mercifully temperate days we've enjoyed this weekend. It was just what a vacation should be: an opportunity to remember who I am, and return to regular life with new motivation to become that person. And so I am sloughing off the effects of August's heavy days and the stress of approaching transitions, in favor of the lightness I feel now that the transitions are well and happily under way.

My resolutions are not very exciting, granted, but worth articulating nonetheless. To attend a yoga or pilates class regularly; to make a lot more time for novel-reading; to write more; to be more present to my children (especially now that I have sufficient child care during the week, hooray!); to make time for meditation/prayer at least a few times a week; to not take on more than I can handle - that is, to not forget the primary importance of the previous items on this list because I feel too frantic and busy. (And believe me, I can make busy out of a lazy Sunday afternoon. It starts inside and manifests in playdates I've arranged that I'm ambivalent about, volunteering to help with something I don't have time for, tackling a complicated dinner I've conceived with two hungry whiny kids underfoot. Why, Meagan??)

So. Slowness, care, intention...purging the pursuit of busy. It seems possible because of the new time Annapolis Elementary School and Lucky Duck Daycare have afforded me, and because I feel a fresh commitment to asking for what I need (and likewise, saying no when I need to). 

Of course I will still yell and check email while Frances tells me about her day and try to squeeze in one more errand even though it will make us late. I'll feel resentful instead of asking Mike to help with the dishes (which, when I finally ask, he will happily do). Of course I will. The lady nibbling her nails while she types these words knows about the staying power of bad habits. But maybe I'll do those things a little less. Or at least notice when I do.

Happy new year, friends.

p.s. Just in case you're curious, here are a few practical changes I've made that hopefully will facilitate a more peaceful approach to daily life. I would love to hear about how you approach some of these things and make the time and space you need...

Mike and I scheduled a weekly check-in to talk family business. The hope is that we'll save up all the "did you call so-and-so?" and "the car really needs an oil change" and "where will we spend next summer?" comments that we throw at each other over the course of the week in between everything else going on (thus subtly ratcheting up the stress level).  We've done it once. So far, so good.  

What else? I put a Saturday pilates class on the calendar, and I've been going. I read and/or write during Gabriel's naps, when he's home with me. The adolescent in me has always resisted this kind of "scheduling" (where's the sponaneity and fun in that?) but maybe I'm growing up. A little. I certainly feel awed by the way that structure can set us free (toddlers and adults alike).

chugga chugga cous cous

This is what I did with Gabriel on Tuesday: made some things that go out of construction paper, then borrowed some books about things that go at the library, then read about things that go at home, then motored the paper things that go around the backyard. With his big sister off at kindergarten all day, there isn't much to distract him from the objects of his affection. The power, the mystery, and the satisfying loud noises! The beep beep of a dump truck in reverse! So it was not surprising that the "chugga chugga cous cous" chant developed over curried chick peas and couscous at dinner, nor that Gabriel found it hilarious and worth repeating many many times.  

What does strike me as surprising is the degree to which our children's delight can become our own. A few years ago, I couldn't imagine searching out the highest spot on a playground in order to gaze at the excavators and bulldozers beeping and dumping and pushing in a distant construction site. But with Gabriel, it is sheer pleasure. The joy he takes in such a scene is irresistible. I love what he loves. Why? Because he loves it!

This week has felt absolutely golden. The only shadow is a sadness lurking around in a corner of my heart. I cannot ignore a growing sense of loss over not having had days like this with Frances. I worked full time until she was nearly three, when her brother was born. A Tuesday morning at the playground with the whole morning before us and nothing to do, no groceries to get, no bath to take, no toys to clean up before bed. Just open time and a feeling of quiet possibility. What shall we do together next? 

This is what I did with Gabriel yesterday: dropped him off at the Lucky Duck daycare and went to work in Baltimore.

Gabriel has been begging to go to his school ever since Frances began kindergarten. We had visited a handful of times and he always loved it, but of course I was there too. So I was nervous.

We walked in and Gabriel ran right over to the train table. His enthusiasm was such that the other children followed him and they all began playing together. He did look up at me to give me a hug goodbye, then went straight back to playing.

Well.

I stood around for awhile. Eventually I realized that it was time for me to go. So I did, with tears running down my cheeks. It could not have been better ... but oh! My little one! Warm, thoughtful Lynda, who runs Lucky Duck out of her home, kindly sent me a slide show of pictures titled "Gabriel's First Day" while I was still at work. More tears! Apparently he had an excellent day, playing with bigger kids, napping without a fuss, and being his general sweet self.

I picked him up around 4:30 and as we pulled into the driveway, Frances tore out of the house to meet us. She thrust this card into Gabriel's hands.

It reads: Welcome Mama and GKHB. Hi both of you. Gabriel did you have a good day Papa is working and I was about to (?) my paper but a hopper* (?) upstairs. Love FJHB

There was a fantastic picture of Gabriel with a basketball on the card's front. I knew she'd been working on it ever since she got home from school. I wanted to squeeze them both way too hard.

We are chugga chugga cous cousing right through this time of multiple transitions. I'm not complaining about how easy and wonderful it has been, I swear. But you know me, I couldn't keep barreling down the tracks without stopping to take a breath, feel the feelings a bit, and share them with you.

Thanks for reading, friends. And now, back onto our respective trains...


*Hoppers are the beastly spider crickets that invade our house this time of year.