Did you miss The Decider?

We think this could be very handy at work. "I don't know, " we can say, "I'll have to check with The Decider." "Let me get back to you on that -- The Decider's not in today." People would be baffled, and in that moment, we could hang up on them.

If you read here very often, you know that the tension between order and spontaneity is a recurring motif in my life. (And if you think it is mentioned in these pages with tedious frequency, just think how tedious it is for me.)

My natural inclination is toward disorder and spontaneity. Yet I know from experience that order is better.

Yes, it is. A mathematician friend of mine claims that most of the problems in the world would be solved if people just followed the simple rule, "Let all things be done decently and in order."

He may be overstating it a little. But let's face it, unless you have someone seeing to the orderliness of your life, you don't get clean laundry, balanced meals, and renewed car tags.

So yesterday, it being the first day of the month, I was looking at my calendar and seeing yet another stressful month. I must emphasize that we are not talking about "stressful" as in foreclosures, root canals, and court dates. It is stressful as in lots of changes, lots of excitement, and lots of stuff going on. More road trips. Opening a second store. "Eustress," they call it, those who like to make up new words.

And then comes summer. Summer is the busiest time at work, and with two stores and -- so far -- no additional workers, it may be a challenging summer. Summer at work is always hard, chaotic, and tiring.

At home, with the kids out of school and me out of energy a lot of the time, summer is characterized by much higher levels of mess and much lower standards for nutrition. This year, there will be just four of us for the first time -- me and my menfolks, who would be fine with eating pizza from cardboard boxes, in their underwear, in front of the TV. Surrounded by mess

There is nothing like coming home after a really tough day to find your kids lying on the sofa in a welter of snack wrappers, sports equipment, dogs, and old sneakers, playing video games and asking what's for dinner.

We also find that there is a general sinking into lassitude as the temperature climbs into the 90s and above which makes it hard to approach the necessary tasks of living with the same vim and vigor we show in cooler weather.

I have always relied heavily on my girls to help me keep the level of civilization up in the summer. This year there will be no girls.

So I was thinking about how I could make things simpler. And it struck me that having a schedule might help.

I'm not generally much on routine. I figure, if you've been doing something the same way for a while, there's probably a better way to do it. Also, I get bored easily.

But it may be that a Flylady housekeeping routine and a Saving Dinner mealtime routine and official times for the gym and the grocery will allow me to finish the stressful spring and move into the summer with less stress than otherwise.

So the month of May is for getting into the habit of it. I will also go for a minimalist look in the house, putting away as much as possible. By the time school is out, I should have the basic household systems running like a well-oiled machine.

You may laugh if you like. But did you know that the average Italian woman spends 21 hours a week on housework, not counting cooking? For the average American woman, it is four hours a week. It must be that there is a higher level of efficiency operating. Or that the average American household is weltering in mess, sports equipment, and snack food wrappers.

Yesterday, I did the baking,

the laundry,

some knitting, and some sewing.

(These pictures are for universehall, whom I can assure that people asked why I was photographing the laundry.)

No gardening. No building. My house continues to be a mess. The grass is knee high in places, but that is not my job. I also had a little discussion with #1 son, who chose to watch The Simpsons instead of starting the essay he has due today. He explained that this was because we don't reward him for good grades the way his friends' parents do, so he is "not motivated." No work on the mystery contest, either. And, in spite of our being told to think of the Supremes while singing the anthem, the entire choir rejected the excellent choreography I suggested. One of the basses went so far as to threaten to push me out of the choir loft if there was "so much as one boogie."

While knitting, I read Reading Lolita in Tehran. I value my book club, because it leads me to read books I otherwise would not choose to read. In fact, this particular book is one that I particularly didn't want to read.

For one thing, it is about being an English teacher, which I have done, with Iranian women for students, which I have also done, so I figured there might be a "been there, done that" aspect to it. For another, it is set in Iran, a country which is high on my list of Places I Would Never Choose to Visit.

To top it all off, the book begins with an "author's note" saying, in part, that the names have been changed to protect people from "those who read such narratives to discover who's who and who did what to whom, thriving on and filling their own emptiness with others' secrets." And then she tells us how she "teasingly" asked her students which of them would betray her. You find very quickly that the word "teasingly" usually introduces some bit of petty sadism on her part.

So this is not just any Iranian teacher of English Lit, but a paranoid creepy one. Such fun!

However, reading this book is the culmination of a long project in my book club. We have read, or in most cases re-read all the books discussed at length in Reading Lolita. Now, having refreshed our memories over a period of many months, we are reading this book.

This might qualify as a Loony project in some circles, I realize.

And, while it is not exactly a romp of a book, it is quite interesting. Nafisi's comments on the books are insightful, and it is intriguing to note the differences that one's own experience create in literary insight.

The perspective on Iran is interesting, too. These women had lived in a modern country and suddenly found themselves returned to Medieval regulations, and a Medieval level of barbarism in enforcing those regulations.

All the rebellions the girls in this book come up with are things like wearing lipstick, but who knows what we would do in a similar case? They are punished pretty severely all through the book for things that were never even intended as rebellions. Among the current dystopian visions making the rounds is one in which the extreme right wing succeeds in putting an extreme fundamentalist in the White House, where the new Imperial Presidency allows him to impose a theocracy on the United States. This was essentially the experience of these Iranian women. I hope we will never find out how we would behave in such circumstances.

Speaking of looney projects (or not), I am deeply impressed by these seamstresses. While KaliMama and I and the rest of the Sew?IKnit gang are sewing one thing a month, these ladies spent just four months making a carefully-planned wardrobe (at least 11 garments, according to their sewalong rules). Their impetus is an Australian magazine that advocates "sewing with a plan."

I'm particularly impressed because, as you know, knitters don't make plans like this. If you visit the knitting blogs, you will find that people have chosen to knit something because

* someone else made it and it looked cool
* it has a cute name
* they bought yarn on an impulse and need to find a reason for it
* their friends are doing a KAL

This is why knitters end up with things like a snazzy toy nautilus, not a well-planned wardrobe.

To each her own.