When I was a kid some relatives owned a red velvet couch. The story of the couch went something like this: it was commissioned for a San Francisco house of prostitution, after finishing its run there, the hippies passed it around Haight ashbury. Finally it ended up in Cotati, California in the possession of my earnestly Catholic aunt and uncle.

Man, I loved that couch. It was soft and beautiful and full of history. I wish I owned it today. Of course I’d have it steam cleaned, deep cleaned, and re-cleaned, but as a kid it never occurred to me it could be dirty. When I was young that couch was our rainy day fun. We cousins would drag it to the bottom of the stairs where we took polite turns jumping onto it from the highest step we dared.

I remembered the red velvet couch the other day when our boys were playing leap frog in the living room with our furniture. “You’re going to break something,” I said not in the mildest voice since I put no confidence in our assembly line Ashley sofa. It’s pretty, but not built for bouncing. Had I known all those years ago I would someday raise seven children of my own, five of them rowdy boys, I’d have requested the red velvet couch for my inheritance. I know it was built to last in boisterous places.

Long ago, (back when I drank wine in the evenings to take the edge off of parenting), I decided I would raise my children with the red velvet couch mentality: A house was for living, especially living it up on rainy days. My kids would make forts under the dining room table during storms, pile pillows at the bottom of the stairs for jumping, and switch off all the lights and close the doors to turn the hall into a haunted house (we cousins used to do this at my grandparents’ place). After 22 years of raising children, I no longer go for haunted halls, but I still want our kids to grow up having fun, so lately, I’ve been reminding myself we are in the process of living in our home not showcasing it for carpet kickers. I love that term “carpet kickers” my brother in real estate explained this to me, “Carpet kickers just want to see the house. They have no intention of buying it.”

This is what I tell myself when our house is wild and wooly and the boys and I don’t look much better. We’ve paid for the place and we’re living here instead of carpet-kicking. The other morning a friend stopped by unexpectedly. She caught me wet-haired without my makeup, Cruz without his clothes (we’re potty-training and Cruz likes to run out the front door every five minutes to pee on the lawn so I’ve found it easier to leave him naked right now), and the house undressed as well. I’d returned home from the farmers’ market at ten p.m. the night before and was still trying to work up the mustard the following morning to set myself, the kids, and the house in order. When my friend arrived I welcomed her into the train wreck and told her and my pride to sit awhile and shoot the breeze. I did warn her to watch where she stepped, and when she used the bathroom to wipe the seat first. I probably should have warned her about the frogs as well. How they climb through our bathroom screen somehow and then hop around the house.

Really, what’s so wrong with cute little froggies kicking the carpet? The boys love chasing the frogs inside the house, apparently it’s so much more fun than discovering frogs outside where frogs belong.

Truthfully, I like a neat house without frogs. A messy, froggie house makes me feel like a failure. But yesterday my daughter showed me a little sign in a store that read: “We’re making memories not messes.” I’ve been meditating on this~ memories not messes ~ and I like it.