Footsy

I once found a note written by my dad. Or at least I thought it was until I realized the piece of paper was almost six hundred miles away from him. So, who wrote it? After a little investigative work, I discovered that my then-teenaged brother Todd had been the author, but the resemblance of the penmanship to my dad’s was remarkable. Is it possible that something odd like penmanship could be genetic? I understand eye color, height and skin tone, but writing? If that event had not occurred, I would still be firmly in the that’s-not-possible camp, but I’m a believer now. It has taken my husband a little longer to get on board with the idea, however. He had to have a conversion experience as well, I guess. And it came in the form of a little girl with foot issues. Not so much the feet themselves, but stuff on the feet themselves. After years of Nick watching me freak out when I try to work in the kitchen but can’t because crumbs or other debris are on the bottoms of my feet (and thinking I was crazy), he gets to see the same pattern repeating itself in Scarlett. She cannot handle kitchen-yuck on her feet for even a second. Which made me think about how unsuited she would probably be to living on a farm like the animals in Margaret Wise Brown’s Big Red Barn. She might not be a farm girl, but she’s definitely my girl.

http://www.amazon.com/Big-Barn-Margaret-Wise-Brown/dp/0694006246

http://books.google.com/books

Clean Sweep

Some people are born with the clean gene--their world is always orderly, neat and organized. These people seem to have an innate ability to keep a constant level of tidiness in their world that borders on hypnotic for me. They can find a paper clip or the warranty information for the printer at a moment’s notice and they use an iron to remove wrinkles from their clothes rather than a spray bottle and the dryer. I know and am related to people like this, but I am not one of them. Much like I missed the sports gene and carry the bat with me to first base, I lost out on the genetics neatness roulette. I know what some of you are thinking: just pick up and put stuff where it belongs. For you there is no biology magic to order, just responsible behavior. But some of you know what I’m talking about and can understand memorizing what is in which strata of the paperwork pile in case you need to find it later. The tidy ones are just born that way, whether they will admit it or not. Tizzie Knowles, author of the book Weekdays, may be one of the organizationally blessed considering how deftly she chronicles the daily tasks and housekeeping chores of her literary family for each day of the week. It does make sense, I’ll give you that. But Scarlett’s not even two and already on the varsity mess-making team. Maybe the gene skips two generations.




http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Weekdays/Tizzie-Knowles/e/9780851226835/?itm=4

http://us.macmillan.com/search/8408640/Tizzie+Knowles