rockle-riffic - rockin' a glitter mullet wig since at least 1974

Convergence Point

2012-01-29T15:48:00.002-05:00

It's weird walking around campus on my way to class, and not just because I'm an ancient, elderly, crotchety old crone surrounded by nubile little 20-year-olds in their Uggs and their AE hoodies and their bare midriffs even when it's like 9° and their skinny jeans that are so tight that I want to run up to them like some kind of religious evangelical with illustrated pamphlets about the dangers of yeast infections. Because seriously.

No, that's not why things are strange, although my puffy down coat and my sensible shoes and my tendency to dress like my own grandmother are certainly not helping things. Mostly I am finding myself slightly wigged out because I keep running into people I know, people I haven't seen in a long time, and I just don't know who I'm going to run into next.

I picked this particular college for graduate school largely because their M.Ed. program is well-regarded -- my aunt, herself a teacher, is the one who recommended it -- and also in part because it is significantly less expensive than other programs I looked into, and while I may be insane, I am not stupid. Since I had to take out student loans in order to pay for everything, I couldn't really justify the higher price tag for the big deal, big name, big ticket, big city school.

Also: that other program was entirely online, and let's face it, I simply cannot be trusted to maintain my focus for any length of time when I am in such close proximity to LOLcats.

So in addition to quality, cost, and actually being in a classroom, the one other thing that I considered was location. This school is about halfway between my house and my parents', and when I have classes at night, I can get there from work in just about an hour. This is wonderful, because it means that my days don't need to be any longer than they already are. (My night classes go from 6-9 twice a week, so those days are basically 16 hours long, but at least I have time in between work and driving and class to sit down somewhere and have dinner like a civilized person.)

But one of the things I never thought to consider is that going to a local college means that there would be the distinct possibility that other people might be choosing the college for the same reasons. It's close to where I grew up -- which means it's also close to where I used to be on the Y swim team ... which may explain how it turns out that my former swimming coach from 20-some odd years ago is now my academic advisor.

It also makes it close to where a lot of my family lived at one time, and still lives ... which may explain how it turns out that one of my cousins, who I last saw 13 years ago when my husband and I were in marriage preparation class, is also a student there.

Now, it's highly likely that these things are just coincidences. I mean, I didn't grow up in that big a town, or anything. But what are the odds that of all the gin joints in all the world, so to speak, that I would run into two people from past like that within just a few days of each other? Is this place some sort of a convergence point for all the "lost memories" of my past? Who else is there that I might run into?

Wummer

2012-01-26T13:11:00.000-05:00

"Wummer" was the alternate suggestion for "S'Winter" (again, TM Phineas & Ferb), and since these pictures are from the same day, I figured I'd just go with it. As should you, if you know what's good for you.

I still have to finish going through all the pictures from last Saturday when it snowed -- I got as far as picture 92, but I took more than 250 -- but I had homework due for class on Monday. HOMEWORK. That's such a weird concept after 16 years of no homework.

Took this picture with my cell phone, and it's lightly processed (softening filter and then whatever it is that Instagram does), but it's still one of my favorites from the day. I am not a huge fan of snow, but I really love how Shae gets SO EXCITED when it comes.

And as much as I am still undecided on the hot pink snow pants -- because DEAR LORD ARE THEY BRIGHT -- they sure do make for some spectacular snow angels. (Also, you can see a bit of green hood peeking out -- that's from a 15-year old Eagles sweatshirt that's, like, 4th generation inherited, and Shae recently said it was her favorite shirt in the world.)

But this -- THIS is the best part of a snowy weekend day. When you have to get up for work in the morning and you have to deal with traffic snarls and the like, you can't really enjoy a snow day in quite the same way that you can when it's a Saturday and you can wake up gradually and stuff yourselves full of homemade chocolate chip and/or blueberry waffles and crispy bacon and tea and hot cocoa before you go out to shovel and play.

Maybe if it snowed more often on weekends when we don't have to rush around, I could learn to love the snow. (But probably never the hot-pink snow pants.)

S'Winter

2012-01-25T11:22:00.000-05:00

SHUT UP YOU GUYS. I know how much I suck. I am SO BUSY. I knew I would be busy, but I never knew it would be like this. I appreciate my accelerated class schedule because it means that I don't have class every night, but I feel like I haven't slept in four days.

And when I did have a chance to get some sleep on the weekend, I couldn't anyway, because we had to get up and shovel, because it snowed, because it's "s'winter" (TM Phineas & Ferb).

Well, of course, I didn't shovel -- someone has to work the camera -- but I did get up to make bacon and blueberry Belgian waffles and make sure that Shae had enough layers of clothes on.

Because the snow angels aren't going to make themselves, you know.

Not that they won't try. Or something. I don't know, I'm sleep deprived.

Anyway -- S'WINTER! Huzzah! (PS Don't worry, none of that snow is yellow.)

Long Time Gone

2012-01-18T12:57:00.001-05:00

Man, this month has really gotten away from me -- sorry about that. January has been SO CRAZY, you guys. I feel like I've been at work for 100 days in a row, and we're just finally (maybe) getting to the end, but in the meantime I've had, like, half a dozen birthday parties and car issues (insignificant) and grad school starting and medical stuff (which could have been major but turned out to be not) and SWIMMING LESSONS.

Oh, yes, we're at it again.

Shae's first swimming lesson of the year was last Sunday. We couldn't get into a Saturday class because they were all full, and because of my crazy class schedule we didn't want to try for a weeknight class, but it turned out to be for the best because there are only like 5 kids in the class.

We've moved up a level, to "Eel." I don't know any kids that really want to be eels, but whatever, I didn't name the classes. Last year the instructor recommended that Shae repeat Pike B, but she worked really hard on improving her swimming over the summer, and she can do all of the basic requirements for the level, so we went ahead and moved her up.

I didn't bring the big camera with me this time, so these pictures are kind of meh (although, in all honesty, my new iPhone takes some pretty decent pictures that are at least as good as the old original crapcam, provided the light is good and your subject is standing still, which DOES NOT HAPPEN with this kid), but you can clearly see that someone is glad to be back in her natural element.

And it makes me furiously happy to see her being so furiously happy. (Although something MUST be done about THAT HAIR.)

Attack Of The 50-Foot 4-Year-Old

2012-01-11T21:17:00.000-05:00

We start swimming lessons on Sunday, and we spent 20 minutes tonight trying on approximately 538 bathing suits to see what still fits, because it turns out that one of the primary requirements for swimming lessons is a bathing suit. Preferably one that covers all of one's important bits and that does not give one a perma-wedgie.

You would think this would not be excessively difficult, since it was summer just 15 minutes ago, but -- wait, WHAT? Has it really been 15 WEEKS since Shae's put on a bathing suit? REALLY? 15 weeks and two missing teeth ago? DEAR LORD.

(Gratuitous pictures of my kid's missing teeth are gratuitous.)

So. Anyway. It's seems I've gone and overcommitted myself again, what with the OT at work and the new grad student orientation and the classes and the whatever the hell else I have scheduled which I can't even remember what it is any more, so OF COURSE we waited until practically the last minute to make sure we had a bathing suit. We tried on every suit she wore all summer, and -- SPOILER ALERT -- let's just say its a good thing we have a membership to Costco, where they sell swimsuits even at this time of year, because we have maybe 2½ suits that still fit, and at the rate this kid is growing, at least 1½ of them are going to be questionable by the end of the winter, I think. My niece is getting at least half a dozen hand-me-down suits, which will probably not fit her until she's 4 years old, because she? Is a normal-sized child, and not the Jolly Green Giant, like my kid is.

Shae is going to be 5 in less than three months, and by that time, she's going to be fully four feet tall. I'm 37, and I'm only five feet tall when I am wearing shoes with a nice thick sole. She's going to be taller than I am by the time she starts second grade. Maybe sooner, if the way she's been eating lately is any indication. We joke that her tapeworm has a hollow leg, because she just eats so much, but HONESTLY. There don't seem to be enough cheese and fruit snacks in the world to keep her belly full, and every morning I swear to God she's a little bit taller. I can hear her sprouting and spurting in her sleep.

I JUST CAN'T EVEN WITH THIS KID AND HER GROWING.

Nü Mäth

2012-01-05T13:07:00.002-05:00

I’ve been doing some prep work for these standardized tests that I need to take as part of my grad school stuff -- the Praxis Pre-Professional Skills Tests, which are tests that determine whether or not you are smarter than a 5th grader, basically -- and I have to say that I don’t think there is anybody or anything anywhere in the world that is better at making me feel inadequate than the Educational Testing Service.

(BTW, here is the tl;dr version, if you don’t feel like listening to my first-world, white-girl problems: algebra and geometry give me hives.)

Probably it’s ridiculous, but I worry about standardized tests. I’m not entirely sure why, because I’ve always been a decent test-taker. I remember taking the Iowa Tests back in maybe second or third grade, when I was still in Catholic school, and then something else again in 8th grade, maybe, where a Fairly Big Deal was made out of the fact that I was one of the handful of people in my class who got a perfect score in the math portion, and I ended up getting my whole schedule reconfigured because the school wanted to move me up from the pre-algebra class that I was in at the time into a more advanced math class that some of the gifted kids were in, and basically my life was over at that point because I wasn’t in any classes with The Love Of My Life At The Time any more.

(And people wonder why I grew up to be distrustful of Authority.)

To this day, it bemuses me to no end that I’ve always tested better in math than in verbal. I still don’t know why. I am absolutely terrible at math, or at least I’ve always thought so. I can barely balance a checkbook. The only “F” I ever got in a class in my entire life was during my Freshman year at Syracuse, in Probability and Statistics II, which -- OK, yes, technically I might not have done very well on account of missing more than 50% of the classes, but this was during that one college semester when I had my existential crisis and dated three gay guys in a row and started chain-smoking Camel unfiltereds, and anyway, in my own defense I didn’t start skipping classes until well after I started failing them. (Also, the professor for that class was NINE KINDS OF TERRIBLE, and he wore white polyester leisure suits unbuttoned to the navel ALL THE TIME, I kid you not.)

Although, here is what I believe they call “irony”: I kind of use math all day every day since I have an “accounting-related” function at work, and I'm pretty good at it. But I don’t do much that couldn’t also be done by a potty-trained monkey with a basic understanding of Excel and an adding machine. (And actually, I’m not even entirely sure that the monkey would need to be potty-trained.)

I still have never used anything they attempted to teach me in trigonometry, though.

Anyway, when I took the SAT’s in 11th grade, the last standardized test I had to take -- which, by the way, was MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS AGO, if you are playing the home version of our game -- I did fine. Because my brain remembers bullshit that doesn’t matter like SAT scores, I can still tell you that I scored 1340 on my SAT’s (this was back during the Paleolithic period, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and the SAT only had two sections and no essay and a perfect score was 1600) -- 660 verbal, and 680 math. It took me two tries to get my verbal score that high. Back then, and still now, I look at that score and I think, “Wait, what? WHAT?”

Because I absolutely STINK OUT LOUD at algebra and geometry, which if I recall correctly combined to make up about 148% of the math portion of the SAT’s.

And I was reminded about much I stink out loud at algebra and geometry when I took a practice Praxis test last night, where I was staring at these graphics that showed all these shapes floating in space and rectangles with cutouts in them and hypotenuses of equilateral triangles (which don’t even HAVE hypotenuses, I don’t think) (side note: WTF IS A HYPOTENUSE!?) and equations that involved fractions and variables and orders of operations and sometimes things were capitalized and sometimes they were not and there was a lot of ∑ and √ and πr² and DEAR GOD, ISN’T THERE ANYTHING EASIER THAN THIS I COULD BE DOING RIGHT NOW? Like studying ancient Sanskrit from a Latin translation? Anything?

Plus, when I yelled into the other room for help with something that I thought I actually remembered how to do -- yes, it’s cheating, but I wanted to feel like I was at least somewhere in the same state as the ballpark for a few questions that did not involve calculating a tip or determining the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow -- my husband answered back with this bit about how there is no such thing as cross-multiplication unless you’re an angry mathematician, and then he chuckled to himself for, like, two whole minutes.

ENGINEERS ARE NOT FUNNY, YOU GUYS.

So I know that I need to do a WHOLE LOT of reviewing for the math part of this Praxis exam. I guess this weekend I’ll check around in my parents’ garage and see if I still have any of my old Prob & Stats textbooks lying around, but I’m pretty sure that I sold those sumbitches as soon as I retook the class and finally passed. (A-, FTW!) If G has any old college math books, they’re probably for Calculus or Nuclear Fission or something else that’s above my level. My standard reference book, Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, defines “polynomials” and “quadratic equations” and “cosine,” but it still doesn’t tell me what those words MEAN. I need to go back and re-learn how to solve for x, and try to remember what I know about 3-4-5 right triangles.

They’ll have to hold a gun to my head to get me to care about trigonometry, though.

The Changeover

2012-01-04T13:03:00.001-05:00

I’ve been kind of absent from this blog lately for lots of reasons, with the holidays actually being among the least of them, if you can possibly imagine. My apologies for that; this, too, shall pass. But as you know (since I told you myself), I’m going back to school –- not in the Rodney-Dangerfield-film sense, but in the “holy-crap-I-am-actually-going-through-with-this-and-becoming-a-broke-ass-graduate-student-just-like-I-always-threatened-to-do” sort of way.

I made the decision in mid-November, when a whole bunch of Stuff That Shall Not Be Named happened (nothing of consequence to anyone but me, don’t worry; I just can’t talk about it in any detail), and since then I’ve been buried under a mountain of all sorts of paperwork: applications, drafts of essays, letters of recommendation, financial aid forms, calendars, textbook order sheets, standardized test prep workbooks, lists of supplies and materials and equipment and paperwork and forms and clearances I will need.

Two weeks from today -- January 18, 2012 -- mark the date on your calendars, people, because it may be important someday, or at least be a day that may live in infamy forever -- I start my first college class in 16 years.

DEAR GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE?

The timing of these Voldemortian matters (because they Shall Not Be Named, get it? Haha, I crack myself up with my own genius sometimes) was such that, when everything went down, I quickly made a plan -- “I’m going to get my sorry ass back to school” -- and then I just went ahead and executed. It was around Thanksgiving when I hatched this scheme, and I had deadlines to meet, very tight deadlines that did not allow me a chance to second-guess myself. Applications were due by the first week of December, so I had to get right on it. Go go go! -- shoot first, apologize later.

This is somewhat unlike me -- I am not really the sort of person who wakes up in the morning and says to herself, “Self, let’s DO THIS THANG.” But in truth, looking at it now, I wanted to meet those December deadlines because I did not want to give myself a chance to chicken out. I've been thinking about going back to school to become a teacher for the last 16 years. But the stuff that happened? It scared me. And I dealt with that fear the way I often do: by coming up with an “exit strategy" on the fly, by the seat of my pants.

And what I found myself saying was, “I can change my mind later if I want to, but right now I really need to get this paperwork to Admissions or nothing will happen.”

Which is totally the truth, of course. I often get “analysis paralysis” -- when I stop to think about what I am doing, to consider all the possibilities and all the potential outcomes, come up with a list of pros and cons and maybes, I tend to get myself caught in this internal feedback loop where I keep “and another thing!”-ing myself into being unable to commit. I used to think I was being rational, reasonable, and thorough when I did this, but really, it’s more like playing devil’s advocate with myself over and over again endlessly, until all of the sudden it’s ten minutes before a major project is due and I haven’t started it yet because I haven’t been able to settle on a font.

You think I am exaggerating here, but I assure you: not really.

So this is kind of a HUGE step for me, getting myself involved in something from which I did not allow myself an “out.” I mean, yes, there is always an “out” -- I can just stop taking classes -- but it’s possible that this might be the first time in my adult life that I have turned a Plan-B situation into a Should-Have-Been-Plan-A-All-Along situation. It’s not like I don’t want to get my Master’s in Education and become a high school English teacher; it’s what I’ve wanted to do for basically my whole life. When I picture myself 25 or 30 years down the road, when it’s time to retire and spend my dottering old age doing whatever it is that dottering old retirees to, I picture myself playing bridge and mahjongg and watching “The Price is Right” with other former schoolteachers.

And if I expect to be hanging out with “other former schoolteachers,” then I guess I better get on the stick and become a teacher in the first place, right? So here we are.

DEAR GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE?

I’ve starting making my own dreams come true, is what I’ve done.

2011: A Look Back In Bemusement

2011-12-31T09:42:00.061-05:00

Hi there! Today is New Year's Eve and I'm out celebrating or filling out even more grad school paperwork or attempting to take a nap or possibly all of the above all at the same time, because that's just how I roll these days, so for your consideration, allow me to continue a tradition and present for you my self-selected Best-Of-2011 collection. (Hey, if you want to nominate a favorite, then you leave me a comment, capisce?)

January: Worrywart
February: Bury My Heart In Hohman, Indiana
March: Reply Hazy, Try Again
April: In Which The Writing Major Gets Indignant
May: Wack-a-doodle-doo
June: Rapunzel (A Love Letter, Of Sorts)
July: Challenge: An Exercise In Self-Acceptance
August: Five Stages and Worth A Thousand Words (those two are my best posts of the year, and I think some of my best writing ever)
September: Obliviously On She Sails
October: Compulsive
November: Crap On A Cracker
December: Pretty Little Liars

And not that you asked, but my four favorite pictures from the whole year are these (in no particular order):

Happy New Year, everybody!

Book Review: "The Magic Room" by Jeffrey Zaslow

2011-12-28T20:00:00.000-05:00

I have a daughter, an adorable girl who will hopefully grow into a stunning woman, and one day her father and I might have to buy her a wedding dress. And when that day comes, I hope my daughter will get to stand on a pedestal in a place like Becker's Bridal, in place like the one Jeffrey Zaslow details in The Magic Room.

I hope that she will be like one of the brides that Zaslow describes, with a lovely or heartbreaking but ultimately interesting story of how she became the woman she will be, peering at the precipice of a new life with her future partner, maybe naïve or maybe wordly, maybe in the first blush of young adulthood or maybe well-established, but definitely hopeful and happy.

I hope that she will be helped by a woman like Shelley Becker Mueller, or her mother, or her grandmother, or her daughter, women who appreciate that every bride and every wedding is precious, and that every woman is perhaps at her most beautiful in her wedding dress, as she beams or weeps or both in the company of the memories of all the brides who have walked the aisle before her, carrying the hopes of all the brides who will come after.

I really enjoyed The Magic Room and have already recommended it to other parents of daughters that I know. My only caveat is that I found the subtitle ("A Story About The Love We Wish For Our Daughters") and the Introduction to be a bit misleading. The opening pages are quite personal and lyrical and almost had me in tears in places, but the rest is much more journalistic and objective. I would have liked a bit more introspection and perspective from the author -- what did he get out of his experience of writing this book, of spending so much time with these women and their families? But all in all, I found this to be a very satisfying read.

We're reading and discussing The Magic Room at BlogHer Book Club this month -- won't you join us?

= = = = =

Disclosure: I was provided with a copy of The Magic Room and was compensated for this review, but these opinions are entirely my own.

Good Riddance

2011-12-27T18:52:00.000-05:00

I don't know about you, but I am just about ready for this damn year to be over. 2011 hasn't been the worst year ever, but it's not been one of our best, either, and I'm so looking forward to turning the page and starting anew.

I mean, really: this year we had a leaky roof, we had to bail water out of the basement no fewer than 835 times, we had vacatus interruptus when my husband had to come home during Hurricane Irene to make sure the house didn't float away, the Kardashian-Humphries marriage turned out to be a sham (although that one was not much of a surprise), I've been suffering from outdoor mold allergies pretty much constantly since August since it hasn't been dry enough or cold enough for long enough for whatever I am sensitive to die off, the Post Office went practically bankrupt, my kid lost her first tooth, Mondo was totally robbed on his season of Project Runway, there has been all kinds of tomfoolery and shenanigans at work, and my grandfather passed away.

It hasn't been all bad, of course -- just off the top of my head I can think of our trip to Disneyland and getting into graduate school as banner moments, not to mention all the time I get to spend eating my niece and nephew's little faces -- but this has definitely been one of those years where it seems like there was a lot more on the negative side of the scale than there was on the positive.

So during this last week of the year, when I should be making resolutions that I already know I'm not going to keep anyway, instead I am asking for suggestions: what do you do to clear the air and get rid of all the bad mojo going into a new year? Burn some sage? Change your bed linens? Pop Xanaxes like Tic-Tacs? Drink tequila buy the bucketful? Switch to decaf? What? What can I do to say good riddance to 2011 and welcome 2012 with open arms?

Help me, Internet Kenobi. You're my only hope.

Three Minutes

2011-12-26T16:39:00.000-05:00

Man, Christmas is the longest damn day of the year, isn't it? And yet there isn't enough time to do everything and see everybody and eat all the things, especially when it comes to cherry cordial flavored M&M's, amirite? AND YET. We're going to be cleaning up shreds of wrapping paper for like the next week and a half, at least, and that's just the stuff we know about. (We do have cats, you know, and God only knows what they did with all that balled-up paper. Oy vey.)

But I'll be darned if the longest damn day of the year isn't one of the best, though.

Pretty Little Liars

2011-12-20T21:42:00.000-05:00

I never told you the story about how we ended up with this year's Christmas card picture. Probably because it involved bribery, subterfuge, jerry-rigging, and outright lying. And also, I barely got away with it, so it definitely wasn't one of my proudest moments as a parent.

I tried to learn from last year's photo shoot. I really did. I made a mental list of all the things that drove me nuts last year -- the not sitting still, the general unpreparedness, the chaos. More than half an hour before I started taking pictures of my actual kid, I rearranged some furniture beforehand, switched some ornaments around, took pictures of just the tree, tested angles and lines and foci and lighting.

Except, I lost a part to my tripod, so I had to try to do all those things with the camera balanced on a precarious configuration of boxes, toy bins, shoes, and keys. It worked out about as well as can be expected. Well, better, I suppose, since I managed to avoid both breaking the camera and setting anything on fire.

When it finally came time to sit Shae down to take the actual pictures, I had everything ready. The chair was in place, I had all the props -- all one of them -- ready to go, and I had my Big Fat Lie all set up.

"Shae, I want to take pictures of the Christmas tree, and I need you to sit in this chair so I can test the light, okay?" And here is the true Christmas Miracle of the season: SHE ACTUALLY BOUGHT IT. She sat in that chair and moved when I asked her to and posed like a pro for 293 FRAMES before she caught on, and by that point we had it narrowed down to four possible photos.

I gave G the final vote, and as you can see, we went with the fourth picture above. All in all, I am very happy with how our cards turned out this year. And if you're not already on the list and you want one, send me an email or DM me on Twitter and I'll get one out to you, too.

Happy Holidays, yo. Sparkle and shine, and all that.

Abandonment Issues

2011-12-19T22:03:00.000-05:00

Oh, hey, I still have a blog! And despite all evidence to the contrary, I didn't run off and join the circus or anything! Even though I kind of want to! Because there has been a lot of stuff going on! Like finding Christmas presents from last year! And wrapping them! Because other ones went missing! And then there was all that paperwork for graduate school! And calendars to finish! And then nervous breakdowns about finishing calendars and getting grad school paperwork in! And holiday card to make and print and mail! And parties! And more parties! And not enough tequila! And possibly running out of exclamation points!

It hasn't been all bad, just extremely busy. As things tend to be at this time of year.

And somewhere in there when I wasn't paying attention, my niece turned a year old, which just shouldn't be allowed. Babies should be babied forever because I said so. If she's a year older already, then so am I, and I don't think I can take getting much older because DAMN. I am tired.

Makayla's party was a lot of fun, though, even though I am starting to suspect that this kid might possibly not actually be related to me, because she basically wanted NO PART of her birthday cake, not even the adorable little smash cake.

She just wanted to prance around in her pretty little princess dress, although I can't say I blame her, because that dress was gorgeous. But I wanted to get the "money shot," the perfect picture of her tiny little delicious one-year-old first birthday cake-face.

207 shots later, I got something I could work with. Happy birthday, kiddo!

Suddenly, A BLOG

2011-12-09T19:50:00.000-05:00

Yeah, yeah, it's been a week. Whatever. We've been busy. Doing what? Well ...

This, for one thing. Getting our picture taken with Santa. That takes up almost a whole half hour of a Saturday afternoon, sometimes. And this, also.

Because, you know, posing in front of the mall Santaland decorations takes up a whole 'nother maybe two minutes and ten seconds. Plus there was this.

Which was, incidentally, accompanied by a visit to both a visit to the urgent care center and a follow-up visit to the pediatrician because someone -- and I am not naming names here, but perhaps it might have been Shae -- got sick again. And also this happened.

Yeah, I know you don't really care about pictures that don't involve my kid, but I put that arrangement together and I am very proud of it. Shut up. Oh, and!

We found a Christmas dress. This outfit also features a pair of killer black suede knee-high boots that look make Shae look really awesome and also VERY MUCH LIKE A GROWN UP OH MY GOD MAKE IT STOP. Although watching her attempt to figure out how to work fingerless gloves -- and what the point of them is -- was highly comical.

Oh, and there was also that whole thing about apply and then actually getting into graduate school, because I have gone completely around the bend.

So, yeah, we've been busy.

Happy Birthday To My Sister

2011-12-02T21:36:00.000-05:00

We have a little message for you:

And some CAKEFACE! pictures, because of course we had a cupcake in your honor:

Hope your day was great. The cupcake sure was.

Haul Out The Holly

2011-11-30T15:04:00.000-05:00

Our tree, she is UP, you guys.

There she is in her original, unadorned splendor: about 7½ feet of fine Fraser fir. She smells divine. I love Fraser firs the best of all because they smell piney and citrus-y and they are really good about holding on to their needles.

This year we used two strands of plain white lights and two strands of clear globe lights. I'm pretty sure all our lights will need to be replaced for next year, because they're all starting to unravel. If anyone has a line on frosted and/or pearl globe lights, let me know. I love me some globe lights.

We let Shae put the star on the top of the tree this year. I'm pretty sure that by this time next year, she'll be able to do it without even needing a stepstool. I really wish they would stop putting Miracle-Gro in all the food at school. Maybe pizza really IS a vegetable.

O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree, how lovely are your branches! (G says that in the original German, the words to "O Tannenbaum" translate to "how lovely are your needles," but we don't listen to him.)

We have more ornaments on the tree this year than we did last year, but we went with the same color scheme: bright aqua, lime green, hot pink, sparkly purple, gold, silver, and white, with a couple of random clears and bronzes, and that one blue sweater ornament up there near the top. We only got four new decorations this year (two aqua butterflies, a pink-and-purple fish, and my new favorite.)

Sparkleduck, ladies and gents. Isn't she lovely? Isn't she WONDERFUL? This is probably the best dollar I ever spent at Target on Christmas ornaments in the last two weeks. Shae and G did most of the decorating while I stood around and freaked out because my Martha Stewart Complex got aggravated by all the straight lines and color-non-randomization, but Sparkleduck is all me. (Oh, and yes, we hid the Hula Pickle, but I can't tell you where because I am not sure if Shae knows how to work the Internet. But TRUST ME.)

Nine Things I Was Thankful For On Thanksgiving

2011-11-29T14:55:00.000-05:00

1. Turkey hats.

2. Babies in turkey hats.

3. The last of the summer flowers.

4. Painted concrete ducks.

5. Uncle Quack's piano.

6. Joyful noises.

7. The young and the young at heart.

8. Titanic.

9. EVERYTHING.

Catching Fire

2011-11-28T20:32:00.000-05:00

So. There was a bonfire on Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, just like there is every year.

This year's was slightly sad, at least at the beginning, because it rained for like an entire week beforehand, so all the wood and all the ground and everything were wet and muddy and basically difficult to set on fire.

But we had a good time anyway, even if we only stuck around for like 10 minutes and barely managed to get any good pictures at all.

The operative word in that last sentence being "barely."

Because the ones we got? Pretty alright, if you ask me.

Sunday Supper

2011-11-27T16:30:00.000-05:00

Olive oil
Three carrots
Three ribs of celery
Small onion
Some boneless skinless chicken thighs
Chicken broth
Diced tomatoes
Fresh thyme
Fresh rosemary
Fresh sage
Kosher salt
Fresh-ground pepper
Balsamic vinegar
Hot buttered baguette

BLISS.

Very Short Movie Review: "The Muppets"

2011-11-26T19:35:00.001-05:00

Click for FB page

We're kind of having a lazy weekend, what with it just being Thanksgiving and all that turkey still digesting and all. We were supposed to go get our Christmas tree today but we never got around to it; it's on the agenda for tomorrow. If we get around to it.

What we did do was go to the movies. We saw "The Muppets" because OF COURSE we did. We loved it. At least, I did. It is nice to see movies that don't rely on fancy CGI and special effects, with scripts that are cute and clever without being twee and precious.

Kermit, Piggy, Animal and the gang were spot-on; Jason Segel, Amy Adams, and Chris Cooper were perfect; the cameos were exactly as awesome as you expect Muppet movie cameos to be. Loved the blend of old and new songs. Overall, I think everything was done with just the right amount of winking at the audience.

If you love the Muppets -- and I imagine you do, since I love the Muppets, and you and I love all the same things, right? -- then you'll like this movie. This is, in my opinion, exactly the right way to reboot a franchise. Highly enjoyable. 8/10.

Bittersweet Birthday

2011-11-25T08:32:00.000-05:00

Today is my grandmother's birthday.

It would also have been my grandfather's birthday, and my grandfather was older than my grandmother, so today is literally the first birthday my grandmother has ever had without my grandfather.

And yesterday would have been their anniversary.

I can't imagine what it must be like to know that it's your first wedding anniversary and your first shared birthday after your husband of many years has passed. To have to celebrate those things on and around Thanksgiving, a holiday that is all about family, and to get through that without the one person who was your family for so long ... I just can't imagine.

Yesterday on our way to Thanksgiving dinner, Shae saw a "shooting star" -- really a contrail, but anyway -- and she said, "Mommy, make a wish." And I did.

I wished for my grandmother to have a happy birthday. And I really hope she can. And I really hope that everyone else remembers that today is her birthday, too.

Today We Give Thanks

2011-11-24T16:40:00.000-05:00

I don't know what anybody else is giving thanks for this year, but I'm giving thanks for good examples.

This year would have been my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary.

Today would have been their 60th wedding anniversary.

My grandparents set an example without even trying to, of how to be and stay married.

And today, as I celebrate Thanksgiving with my family, their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, I am thanful for their good example.

Wordless Wednesday: Wishies For A Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-23T13:43:00.000-05:00

Bonus Link

Feed The Tree

2011-11-22T20:24:00.000-05:00

We also climbed some trees while we were at the park.

Shae claims she doesn't "know how" to climb a tree, but she does just fine, I think.

We also found a funky old stump to play with.

And an old log to use for a balance-beam-slash-jungle-gym.

I suppose it goes without saying that we love the park.

Feeding The Spirit Animals

2011-11-21T15:18:00.001-05:00

Unrelated story: I was in a gray mood this morning, so I thought that listening to Christmas music might help. It didn't, and I also learned that in the song "Do They Know It's Christmas?" at the part at the end where they're all singing the chorus, everybody is singing "Feed the wooooorld!" when all this time -- 20+ YEARS! -- I thought they were just singing "We know, oooooooooh!" I feel like an irredeemable idiot (assuming that I am not already, in fact, an irredeemable idiot).

= = = = =

While we were out enjoying the warmish weather yesterday and discovering that Shae's spirit animal is the wood duck, we did in fact take some time out to feed the ducks.

There were SWARMS of them, and for the first time in as long as I can remember, we fed many different species actual ducks without any interference from Canada geese. Those things are NASTY.

In case you were wondering, the Chef's Selection for the day was stale heel ends of whole-wheat bread and crushed up stale ice cream cones. They really seemed to like it. Not sure if these ducks are particularly hungry or what -- they seemed like they were all a good size to me.

Notice the large bite mark out of the corner of this piece of bread. That is there because someone wanted to make sure that "everything is OK" before we fed it to the ducks. We've gone out in the past with stale cereal and didn't get a lot of takers.

This duck whistle from Wawa amuses me. The ducks seemed unfazed, but Shae really believes that she was communicating with them. A regular Dr. Doolittle, that one.

As you can see, feeding the ducks in exhausting. And highly meditative.

Aix Sponsa

2011-11-20T20:16:00.000-05:00

According to Wikipedia, "[t]he wood duck or Carolina duck (Aix sponsa) is a species of duck found in North America. It is one of the most colourful of North American waterfowl."

This kind of duck is one of my favorites, because it reminds me an awful lot of my daughter. It is stunningly beautiful, with distinctive plumage and pretty eyes, just like Shae.

Since they're ducks, they're excellent swimmers, and I noticed today that they tend to be partial to bread and stale ice cream comes -- not unlike Shae on both counts.

They also have great big ol' sass-mouths. So, you know, my kid is apparently not just part mermaid and part goldfish, but also part wood duck, too.

Grocery Stores And Other Scary Places

2011-11-19T21:18:00.000-05:00

Since Thanksgiving is coming up and we're going to just about get familied-out next week, we decided to stay home for the weekend and get some stuff done around the house -- mostly straightening up the living room so that we'll be able to get our tree next weekend, as per our tradition. But also, because we kind of can't justifiably live on Chinese take-out and pizza for the next week because we are civilized, dammit, we also had to go to the grocery store.

Um, have you been to the grocery store on the Saturday before Thanksgiving? It's a horrifying place. I can't believe I am saying this, but it might actually be scarier at the supermarket on the Saturday before Thanksgiving than it is at the mall on Black Friday. Because -- and, again, I can't believe I am saying this, but -- the mall appears to be equipped to actually let you buy things.

I mean, yes, we did manage to buy things. Your standard staples: milk, cereal, bread, peanut butter, stuff to make chicken pot pie in the crock pot, frozen mini chocolate eclairs. I also got a 21-pound turkey which is now taking up half of the bottom shelf of my refrigerator, which is ironic because I'm not even going to be cooking it, but it was free with my shopper's card points, so what do I care? I'll eat squished up bread.

But navigating the grocery store on a busy weekend is pretty rough. Our supermarket tends to be crowded on a normal weekend anyway but MY GOD, between the giant stacks of corn cans and stuffing boxes and fancy displays made up of sweet potatoes as big as my head and enormous bags of marshmallows, it's hard to see around corners. The aisles all seem tight and everybody is in a hurry and there is something in the air that causes multiple nuclear meltdowns near the yogurt bunkers.

Oh and hey, I was also with my kid, who seems to be stuck firmly in "naughty" gear, with no amount of threatening to call Santa helping. AT ALL.

Then again, on the upside: I have that giant free turkey in my fridge.

Thoughts About My TiVo

2011-11-18T20:55:00.000-05:00

1. I wish every TV show had Joshua Jackson in it.

2. It looks like Kirk Acevedo is in every TV show.

3. Stephen Root makes an excellent crazy person.

4. The best insane genius anywhere every is John Noble.

5. Seriously, why doesn't every TV show have Joshua Jackson in it?

It's Not You, It's Me

2011-11-17T20:35:00.000-05:00

It's been a really bad day and I don't really want to talk about it just yet, so as a token of my appreciation for your patience I offer the following additional pictures of my kid with balloons.

And thank you for your support.

Wordless Wednesday: Balloons Make Me Happy

2011-11-16T20:17:00.000-05:00

Bonus Link

Tasty Tuesday

2011-11-15T19:08:00.000-05:00

Let's say you're all running late one Tuesday night because your husband got stuck in an endless meeting and you had to stop at the CVS on your way home from work to pick up yours fancy prescription toothpaste, so you collectively decide to forage for your dinner and he's having a bowl of cereal and the kid is having two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but you don't really want either of those things, so you find some mini hash brown patties in the freezer, and while they're baking you poke around in the fridge and find some quasi-questionable cherry tomatoes, so you cut those in half and throw them in a small skillet with the tiniest bit of flavored oil and seasoned salt and you toss them around and kind of pan roast them, and then maybe while those are cooking you take about ⅓ of a cup of southwest-flavored egg substitute and one egg and you scramble them together with some chives and a couple of tablespoons of reduced-fat Mexican-style cheese and about two ounces of cut-up turkey lunch meat, and then you take the tomatoes out of the pan and cook that whole egg mess up until it's nice and scrambly and just the way you like it, and you put the egg stuff on a pan and you put those tomatoes on top and you take the hash browns out of the oven and om nom nom and do you know what you have then?

You have one hell of a delicious dinner, is what you have.

Chew On This

2011-11-14T18:58:00.000-05:00

I have bruxism. And apparently it is way worse than I thought.

I just got back from the dentist, and basically I am going to be spending a lot of time in her office over the next six months to a year or so. From grinding my teeth plus overzealous brushing plus drinking soda by the bucketful, I have basically worn almost all the enamel off almost all my teeth. The only tooth in my entire head that appears to be fundamentally unaffected is the one that isn't even "factory equipment" any more -- it's the tooth that had the root canal and now has a crown.

I'm pretty sure this is nothing to be embarrassed about -- this isn't like the last time I went to a new dentist's office, when it had been more than 5 years since my last cleaning. Then I ended up having to have my bottom two wisdom teeth pulled, and I needed a gum debridement, which was maybe the most awful thing ever, mostly because for weeks afterward I needed to use this awful special mouthwash that tasted like black licorice and made everything taste funny.

I am not kidding when I say that black licorice is NOT a good flavor for mouthwash.

I guess I am going to have to have a bunch of teeth bonded, two cavities filled, and eventually I will have the other two wisdom teeth extracted, because basically they aren't doing anything except making it harder for me to keep the rest of my molars. I'll need to change the way I drink my soda -- smaller volumes, use a straw, only at mealtimes -- and then I will need to swish with a flouride rinse immediately afterwards. I have to get prescription toothpaste, too, which is something I didn't even know existed. Oh, and my new toothbrush? Is the same size as the toothbrush my kid uses.

I will say this about the new dentist: she is quite wonderful. She is the same dentist who takes care of Shae, and she is practically an old pro at the office, even though she's only been there twice. I am a complete wuss when it comes to dental work. I know it needs to be done, and I actually think that poor dental hygiene is one of the unforgivable sins, but there is something about getting needles in my mouth that I will never be 100% comfortable with.

I understand that this office also uses nitrous oxide, so maybe I will be okay.

Five Things I Am Curious About

2011-11-13T14:48:00.000-05:00

1. We have all of the Shrek movies, all three of the original Star Wars triology movies, the first four Harry Potter movies, and all of the Toy Story movies -- why does my kid always want to start with the sequels, and never the first movie in any of the series?

2. Why is it colder inside my house than it is outside?

3. If onion rings are so delicious -- likewise for the Bloomin' Onion and other equivalent appetizer things -- and if green bean casserole is so damned tasty, why is it that French's french fried onions straight out of the bag are so vile?

4. Is there any smell in the universe more powerful that the peculiar aroma of microwave popcorn?

5. How am I going to resist eating the crispy skin off this rotisserie chicken until dinnertime?

2011-11-12T11:50:00.007-05:00

We're all wearing blue today. Even Shae, who doesn't even know why the rest of us are. Because we don't really know what else to do. We've made a donation, but we really don't know what else to do.

Heavy Machinery

2011-11-11T14:26:00.000-05:00

CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT! RAWR!

Okay, yes, technically this is a foundation. Whatever. Shut up. The reason why this foundation even exists right now is because of CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT! RAWR! (I love the little sign that says "OUTSIDE," and I wonder what would happen if, say, some wiseass blogger who was possibly illegally trespassing at a construction site might have removed that sign and put it, say, inside the foundation. What would happen? Not that I, personally, know anybody who might do such a thing.)

There was a bulldozer at this particular construction site -- the new spec home being built on the lot next to the home of the Hello Kitty party girl -- but Shae didn't want to pose for pictures in front of that. She was much more interested in the backhoe.

Not that I blame her. You can't climb into the giant shovel part of a bulldozer because a bulldozer doesn't have a giant shovel part. Duh. (At least I think that is the difference. I thought the bulldozer was actually a backhoe, and that the backhoe was a front-end loader. You know, because the giant shovel part LOADS from the FRONT END?)

Now I am wondering what it is that I asked my husband to buy me when he took me out for dinner for my 21st birthday and we went to Red Robin and I drank an entire birdbath margarita all by myself and got so drunk that I had to lie down in the booth for a little while just to make the room stop spinning and then on the way home we passed some heavy machinery and I basically begged and cried until he promised to buy me a backhoe but what if I really secretly wanted a bulldozer all this time and maybe it means we NEVER EVEN REALLY GOT MARRIED oh my God MIND BLOWN.

Anyway: CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT! RAWR!

Riding In Cars with Boys

2011-11-10T13:38:00.000-05:00

My husband's going to have his hands full when Shae gets old enough to drive, because she really loves riding in cars with boys.

Especially, apparently, boys with dinosaur hats, or mohawks, or whatever.

Of course, who among us does not greatly enjoy just stomping the snot out of the gas pedal?

Looks like her new little boyfriend enjoyed the joyride, too (sunglasses added to protect the innocent).

At least, I think that's enjoyment and not sheer, abject terror.

Meanwhile, you might be wondering what I will be doing while my husband is dealing with our daughter riding in cars with boys.

I'll be in the nuthouse, with all the nuts and the squirrels, where I belong.

Inside The Actor's Studio

2011-11-09T14:15:00.001-05:00

It's probably a good thing that I got out of the theater when I did. Let's ignore for a minute that I lack the necessary talent and ambition to make it as an actor, and also the necessary temperament -- what I really worry about is that I never would have been able to handle the heartbreak of falling hopelessly, helplessly, head-over-heels into (mostly unrequited) love with all of my co-stars.

(Okay, "co-stars" might be a bit of an over-exaggeration, since I was always just a member of the supporting cast, but still.)

Let me provide you with the examples, lest you think I am joking.

Seventh grade, "The Hobbit" -- I played a dwarf (either Dwalin or Balin, I can never remember which), and developed a terrible crush on the guy who played Gollum. He was in my 6th period study hall, and we would pass notes via a mutual friend, and repeatedly make plans to meet up for pizza on Friday nights after our high school's football games. After the third broken "date" because my parents determined that 12 years old was probably too young for me to be dating boys, he stopped passing notes, and I ended up spending three weeks in complete tears.
Eighth grade, "South Pacific" -- I was a chorus girl, and I feel hard for the guys who played Stewpot, Emile, and Luther Billis. The first two crushes never amounted to much (primarily because they both already had hot 9th-grade girlfriends who allegedly "put out"), but on the cast trip to NYC that spring, I got drunk or high or whatever off of an entire canister of Binaca breath spray and spent the entire bus ride home French-kissing Luther Billis. We "dated" for a month or so, before I realized that (1) he was kind of gross and (2) the smell of Polo kind of makes me want to throw up, and he used to practically swim in that stuff. Not sure which of these facts occurred to me first.
Ninth grade, "Li'l Abner" -- I played one of the Dogpatch Wives, and I had crushes on both of the guys who played my Dogpatch Husbands (yes, both the "Before" and the "After" Yokumberry tonic versions), and they both basically thought I was a ridiculous fool who kept following them around with puppy dog eyes, humming stupid love songs all the time. Not a lot of 9th-graders were listening to Anita Baker, after all. At this point someone probably should have had me committed or at least staged an intervention, but I'm pretty sure that all my friends thought I was the most spectacularly, hilariously dumb person who ever lived.
Tenth grade, "Annie Get your Gun" -- Another turn as a chorus girl, and crushes on two of the gayest human beings who have ever lived. Both of them dropped numerous hints and yet were astounded to discover that I could not get a clue. Thus begins my storied history of gay ex-boyfriends (even though, technically, neither of these guys were ever my actual boyfriend).
Eleventh grade, "Our Town" -- Oh sweet Jesus. I played Rebecca Gibbs, and I fell in love with the guy who played George (my brother, in the show), and this crush remains legendary for spawning one of the most transparently obvious "anonymously submitted" sonnets in the history of Mrs. Trimble's 4th period British Literature class. This poem is SO BAD, you guys, and I have Facebook friends out there who can vouch for it. I don't know why nobody stuffed me in my own locker for the remainder of my junior and senior years in high school.

What? You actually want to read this terrible, awful, treacly, disgustingly amateur sonnet, this love poem that I wrote to a boy who basically thought I was the biggest nuisance in the history of ever? Are you sure? Well, okay, but don't say I didn't warn you. You might want to have an airsickness bag or similar device handy, because I am telling you -- this is so junior-year-of-high-school-English-class-unrequited-love poem.

The moonlight dances on the windowsill,
The wind echoes your name against the glass.
It's January now, but I think still
Of scenes we shared, performed November past.
Distinctly I remember, in the play,
You were my brother George -- sixteen, in love.
"I love money," I was supposed to say,
But no one knew it was you that I thought of.
And as upon the ladder we both stood,
You gave a line that I thought quite ironic;
Manipulate the facts as best I could,
The word for us will always be "platonic."
As far as I'm concerned, well now I know.
"There's only room for one at this window."

I mean, honestly, could you just die, or what? That right there is some of the worst poetry in the history of the written word, is it not? And yet I somehow figured that by writing this down and handing it in for a class assignment and having someone read it out loud that perhaps, just maybe, it would get back to him and he would have no choice but to fall instantly, desperately in love with me. What a goofbucket I was back then.

In retrospect, I really should have learned to deploy The Wonder Twins (i.e., my boobs) sooner in my dating career. Although considering the number of gay ex-boyfriends I have, I'm not sure it would have mattered much anyway.

Twelfth grade, "The Sting" -- I played two parts in this show, one of which was a cop or an FBI agent or something whom our director decided to play like some kind of femme fatale, and there is quite a story here that ultimately ends up with my husband, and since we are now literally 20 years after the fact, I can say at least that this particular (and particularly devastating, eventually) crush began with a comically misguided attempt to get a date to a Christmas dance that everyone else was going to, a whole lot of double-entendres, a black trench coat, fishnet stockings, a really spectacular push-up bra from Victoria's Secret that I wish I still fit into because it really was something, and a slew of high school students running around backstage in their underwear because we pretty much completely lacked adult supervision.
Freshman year in college, "West Side Story" -- I was Anybodys, and I fell in "little love" with Tony and "BIG LOVE" with Baby John, and I don't even think I told my parents this but there was a period of about a month where I was seriously considering converting to Judaism because Baby John's father was a rabbi and I was willing to do whatever I needed to because I really thought I was going to marry that boy, so you can imagine how much it destroyed me to walk in on him kissing another girl who already WAS Jewish.

Wow. That was longer than I expected it to be. The good news is that right after "West Side Story" I decided that I didn't really want to be an actor any more, just a person who dated actors, and not too long after that (but, sadly, after a non-zero number of gay ex-boyfriends) I met my husband, so it worked out pretty well for me.

(And that's what you missed when last night's "Glee" made me remember all this crap in the first place.)

Hello Kitty Party!

2011-11-08T17:02:00.001-05:00

I admit, I don't know always know the first damn thing about raising a little girl -- I mean, COME ON, have you met me? I am much more capable of having conversations about baseball statistics than I am about Barbie dolls, and I couldn't begin to tell you what the heck a "Lalaloopsy" is supposed to be even if you held a gun to my head, but I could probably tell you who the last ten Super Bowl MVP's were* -- but let me tell you a little not-so-secret: I love Hello Kitty. Because believe it or not, I am human, and I have absolutely no defense against the awesome super powers of the Sanrio Corporation.

We went to a friend's birthday party over the weekend, and we knew going in that it was a Hello Kitty party, and I wore some pink, at least. Okay, technically it was a pink-and-blue turtleneck, but there was definitely some pink going on. And, yes, I stood in front of the cake and took about a dozen pictures, because LOOK AT THAT THING. It's adorable. No, it didn't have a light-up Hello Kitty figurine, but still. (It was also -- wait for it -- delicious.)

The birthday girl has an entire Hello Kitty ROOM. I am jealous. So is Shae, I think, although she didn't really say anything. I could sort of see in her expressions that she wonders why some people get to have Hello Kitty rooms while she has a room that features a non-zero number of monkeys, several stuffed dinosaurs, and a giant plush polar bear that we use as a sort of beanbag chair even though it has sprung a leak and all the stuffing and little beady things are coming out, but she is polite enough to not mention it. (She does have both fairy princess AND cupcake sheets, though, so maybe she figures it all comes out in the wash.)

WANT. Shut up. I totally want that handbag. That handbag is the bee's knees and the cat's pajamas and all other sorts of idioms. It rocks, and I won't lie. In this regard, I am jealous of a three-year-old. But I am holding out hope that Santa will bring me the Swarovski version.

* Not that you asked, but since 2000, in order**: Kurt Warner; Ray Lewis; Tom Brady; Dexter Jackson; Tom Brady again; Deion Branch; Hines Ward and NOT Jerome Bettis; Peyton Manning; Eli Manning; Santonio Holmes and STILL NOT Jerome Bettis although he was retired at that point but that is no excuse to not go back and give it to him retroactively because COME ON; Drew Brees; and Aaron Rodgers. Also, that is TWELVE Super Bowl MVP's, so NEENER NEENER.

** Know who never won a Super Bowl MVP award***, even though the whole world just WILL.NOT.SHUT.UP. about him? Brett Favre.

*** But who really deserved one? Jerome Bettis. We miss you, Bus!

Super Hero Girl

2011-11-07T15:22:00.000-05:00

We've been watching A LOT of "The Power Puff Girls" in our house, so it was only a matter of time before we started wearing our blankie like a cape.

Okay, sometimes we look a little cult-y, but then again, this is a kid who calls my niece her "sister-cousin" and my nephew her "brother-cousin," so.

Still, it's a great thing to watch her tap into her inner super powers and go careering around the house, pretending to fly.

And she understands that with great power comes great responsibility, so there's that, too.

And honestly, she's already MY hero half the time, so she might as well be someone else's, too, even if that someone else is just herself.

Serenity Sunday #4

2011-11-06T08:33:00.000-05:00

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I present to you the most divalicious calf in the history of livestock.

I think she's a Jersey cow, and she lives at the farm where the pumpkin patch is. She gives excellent side-eye, doesn't she? She wanted absolutely nothing to do with the cups of corn feed that they sold at the petting zoo, but she was eating grass and weeds by the handful. Also, she has attitude to spare. She's probably called "Elsie Borden" or somesuch, but I think she deserves a fawncier name, so I shall call her "Little Miss Lady Elsinor Louise 'Buttercup' Bordenton-Smythe."

Needless to say, she makes me want to have a cow in the backyard. We've got plenty of grass.

PS - Why won't my kid look at the camera like that?

Punkin Chunkin

2011-11-05T19:07:00.000-04:00

Oh, hey, it's Punkin Chunkin weekend, so what better way to celebrate than by FINALLY putting up pictures from our trip to the pumpkin patch?

If you happen to be keeping score at home, this excursion happened two weeks ago, before the snow. But you know what I always say: non-linear storytelling KICKS ASS.

There were not a whole lot of pumpkins left when we got to the patch, what with the Great Pumpkin Shortage of 2011 going on and all, but we did manage to find a nice one.

Now there are a grand total of four pumpkins on my dining room table, three real and one artifical of mysterious provenance, and it looks like we're running a halfway house for wayward and/or homeless squashes. My life is ... interesting.

Crap on a Cracker

2011-11-04T12:10:00.000-04:00

I have SO MANY COOKBOOKS, you guys. SO MANY. Even though I only cook like five things and they almost all involve cream of mushroom soup. Seriously, I must have hundreds of cookbooks, enough to open a store that sold nothing but cookbooks and I'd still be able to be open for years, because honestly: it's like they've found all the nice warm spots in my house to hide away and breed, like escaped hamsters.

The reason I discovered this is that I was looking for something new and exciting to make for our annual department Turkey Day Potluck, which is coming up in a few weeks. For the last couple of years I have made my famous (infamous?) pumpkin dip, which is perfectly delicious and totally fine and whatever, but I've been trying to branch out a little bit, and I thought it might be fun to try something else for a change.

I'm not entirely sure what I thought I was thinking of -- maybe a homemade cranberry sauce? Or some kind of bread pudding? Perhaps a vegetable side dish in the crock pot, green bean or broccoli casserole maybe? Something to reactivate my lately-dormant Martha Stewart complex. The kind of stuff that I should definitely have been able to find in one of those cookbooks I have lying around.

My initial line of investigation went something like this: Thanksgiving is a holiday that is all about memory and tradition, right? And tradition means old-fashioned, vintage-y recipes that have been passed down through generations of home cooks, doesn't it? So if I'm looking for something like that, something that somebody else's grandmother might have made, where do I look? I look in one of these ancient and elderly cookbooks that I "inherited" from my aunts or my mother-in-law, don't I?

That's where I started, hoping to find something classic and comforting and totally holiday-appropriate and possibly even impressive, because vintage home cooking is the new haute cuisine. Right? So the other night, at dinner, I paged through an cookbook that used to be my mother-in-law's, perhaps even her mother's. I couldn't find a copyright date in this particular edition, but judging from the design of the kitchens and the clothes the people are wearing in the pictures, I would guess that this one is from somewhere between 1965 and 1975.

Should have been ripe for finding charming little old dishes like grandma used to make, right? Instead what I found were some of the most horribly, face-meltingly, stupefyingly bad "recipes" that I ever did see in my whole entire life. I am not talking about stuff that uses weird ingredients like rutabaga and sauerbraten and something called "No. 2 cans" of tomato soup, although there was plenty of that.

There was also a lot of ... whatever the hell that thing is, up there. In the cookbook, that monstrosity, that absolute affront to all that is good and holy in this world, that hot mess is called "Perfection Salad," and it is made with unflavored gelatin, sugar, salt, water, vinegar, lemon juice, shredded cabbage, celery, green pepper, and pimiento.

Or, in other words: SHREDDED VEGETABLES IN JELLO GARNISHED WITH OLIVES AND THINGS THAT LOOK LIKE OILED BABY FINGERS WHAT THE CRAP IS THAT I JUST CAN'T EVEN.

Now, look, I know that this was a different time in our history. I've watched a few episodes of "Mad Men." But come on now. Did anybody actually cook like this? Did anybody actually eat this stuff? Really? If this is what my grandparents' generation fed to my parents' generation in the 1960s, then it's no wonder that everybody did drugs in the 1970s. Who would look at that picture and say, "You know what? This gelatinous ring of disgustitude really IS just right for a buffet! Let have a dinner party and invite all my friends just so I can serve this!"

Probably the same person who would serve THIS mess. "Tasty Tenderloin-Noodle Casserole." Those meat-like chunks in the picture are supposed to be slices of pork tenderloin that have been browned in "hot fat." To me, they look like some kind of meatball, or potted meat product, or possibly wads of tree trunk -- or worse. The chunks are combined with "noodles" (I guess any old kind?), chopped green peppers and pimiento, and a "blue-cheese sauce" that is seriously the grossest thing that I have ever heard of. And I LOVE blue cheeses.

Here are some common things in this cookbook that I just don't understand: Pimiento. Monosodium glutamate. Unflavored gelatin. "Shredded process cheese" of unspecified flavor profile. "Luncheon meat," which I think means Spam or something? Recipes for "Mexican" and "Italian" food where the only spices called for are salt, pepper, and parsley.

These are two sample real recipes for "Appetizer Juices": (1) 2 parts chilled tomato juice and 1 part sauerkraut juice, stirred, served over crushed ice in cocktail glasses, and (2) heated vegetable-juice cocktail with 1 teaspoon butter stirred in. BUTTERED V8. Save me.

This is called "Rainbow Snowball Cake" and it's made from whipped vanilla ice cream, three kinds of sherbet rolled into balls and frozen on a "cooky" sheet, and apparently eleventeen different kinds of artificial colorings. I am getting hives just looking at it. That dessert is, like, 25% red dye #40.

Scary-sounding foods: Dried-beef Log. Prune Spice Cake. Baked Prune Whip. Glorified Rice, which is a dessert. Cottage Pudding. Baked-bean Sandwiches. Toasted Cheese Loaf. Liver Loaf. Chicken-fried Heart. Also, this cookbook contains a section on setting the table, including how to create "lovely and delightful centerpieces," one of which is basically -- no, it is exactly -- made by putting daisies in a saucepan.

Three things about this here thing, and then I need to go throw up and then take a nap: (1) My grandmother's nails totally looked like that, same shape and color and everything, until about 1997, and (2) that white thing is a so-called "pudding" made from unflavored gelatin, coconut flakes, and whipped cream, which is pretty much everything that is wrong with America, right there, and (3) WHY ARE THEY POURING BLOOD OVER THIS POOR THING? MAKE IT STOP.

Still want to see more, for whatever reason? You can check out The Gallery of Regrettable Food, and then maybe you should go seek professional help.

Book Review: "Theodora" by Stella Duffy

2011-11-03T13:26:00.002-04:00

Sometimes I get really excited about a book because it has an interesting picture and an exciting quote on the cover. The cover of Theodora: Actress, Empress, Whore by Stella Duffy falls into exactly that category – the cover art features the back of a nude woman and the pull-quote from The Guardian (London)'s review reads, "There is no end of show business, court intrigue, and exotic sex."

Well, then.

I am sad to report that this quote is wrong on every level. The main character in the novel, Theodora, is an actress from sixth-century Constantinople, and in a way she sort of remains in "show business" throughout the book, but she leaves the theater proper early in the story. There is some "court intrigue" when Theodora becomes a Christian convert and is used to foster a relationship with Justinian, the man-who-would-be-Emperor. And there is only "exotic sex" if you consider a pre-adolescent girl being sold into forced prostitution by virtually every adult in her life, including her own mother, to be exotic. (I personally don’t, but then again, I read a lot of romance novels.)

But, I am happy to say, the cover of this novel is refreshingly misleading. There is nudity, and quite a lot more liberal use of the F-word than I expected. But while this is a book about someone who was, in fact, an actress, an empress, and a whore – Theodora is so many other things. She is strong and smart, a survivor of unfathomable abuses, yet always self-aware, self-confident, self-reliant, self-sufficient, and never a victim. The things she ends up with at the end of the novel are well and truly earned, and by the end of this book, I felt like Theodora truly deserved them.

And she'd definitely have some killer stories to tell about her journey.

We'll be discussing Theodora over at BlogHer Book Club this month -- if you're interested, why don't you join us?

Disclaimer: This was a paid review for BlogHer Book Club, but the opinions expressed are entirely my own.

The Ice-and-Snowman Cometh

2011-11-02T12:45:00.001-04:00

Yeah, yeah, you're all sick to death of hearing about SNOWTOBER! or whatever the hell we arrogant self-centered Mid-Atlanticans are calling the pre-Halloween snow that's already pretty much melted away by now anyway, but I still have PICTURES to post, gosh darn it.

The kid is all, "Whatever, Momzo, you loonball. Have I told you how much you suck because you didn't get me boots yet and you're making me tromp out here to stand in front of the neighbor's jack-o'-lantern in galoshes and a hand-me-down jacket from God-knows-where with a busted zipper?"

And then she's like, "Wait, WHAT? Hot chocolate with marshmallow fluff and whipped cream and a Hershey's syrup drizzle? Why didn't you say that in the first damn place?"

But, yeah, we got snow over the weekend. Not much, maybe an inch and a half in total, and if you promise not to tell anyone that I ever confessed to this, then I'll go so far as to admit that it was possibly kind of maybe a little bit pretty, once we were done with the doctors' appointments in the morning and we could spend the rest of the day in the house in our pajamas with the heat cranked up.

The four-year-old -- "Mother, I am four and a HALF, which means I am ALMOST FIVE, please get it right!" -- of course thought the snow was the Coolest. Thing. EVER! as children her age are wont to do.

Until I ever-so-helpfully reminded her that, um, yeah, but if you guys know so much about women, how come you're here at like the Gas 'n' Sip on a Saturday night completely alone drinking beers with no women anywhere?

Wait. Wrong movie.

But it was kind of exciting, I guess, now that it's in the rearview mirror. Here's hoping that early snow means that it will be sunny and 60°F on Christmas.

Acrostic Free Verse

2011-11-01T11:02:00.002-04:00

Makayla.

My niece is so
Adorable and her
Knees are delicious
And she makes me want to
Yodel or something goofy
Like that because she? Is
Absolutely delectable, like a little cheese ball.

Makayla.

Happy Halloween, Or Whatever

2011-10-31T13:43:00.000-04:00

Yeah. We were SUPPOSED to go trick-or-treating at the mall with my sister and the delightful, delicious, de-lovely Miss Makayla over the weekend, but we never made it, because it snowed on Saturday. You might have heard something about it on the news or on the Internet. It was almost as bad as when the earthquake hit.

Fortunately, I had the accidental foresight to get the girls together for a little photo shoot last weekend. You know, "just in case."

I didn't think it was going to be "just in case" of SEVERAL INCHES OF SNOW IN OCTOBER, but, you know. "Just in case."

Turned out to be one of the better examples of "just in case" in recent memory that I can think of. I wish I had applied that thinking to other things, because my kid couldn't really go out to play during the first snow of the season because I didn't buy her snow boots yet. Nobody thinks to buy boots "just in case" in OCTOBER. Nobody in the civilized world needs snow boots in October.

Tonight we're going to attempt some actual trick-or-treating, because now I feel really bad. Last week's trick-or-treat adventure was a bust, what with the rain and all, so I guess we're going to go out and make nice with the neighbors.

Anyway ... Happy Halloween from Hello Kitty and the World's Cutest Ladybug. If you're going out for candy tonight, make sure you pack your snow boots ... "just in case."

Hello Kitty Has Super Powers, Doesn't She?

2011-10-28T11:09:00.000-04:00

So. We went trick-or-treating last night with friends and it was cold and rainy and we're all going to have the plague by the end of the weekend, no doubt, especially because it's supposed to snow this weekend.

Yes, you read that right: it is supposed to SNOW this weekend. BEFORE Halloween. In PENNSYLVANIA. And not just flurries, either -- they're calling for up to 6" around where I live and work, with more possible in other areas.

WHAT IS THIS I JUST CAN'T EVEN.

So while I try to find a store that still has milk and bread and eggs and bananas -- you know, blizzard foods -- before I go to Shae's Halloween Parade at school this afternoon, I hope you can enjoy some more pictures of what is turning out to be one of the most enjoyable and simultaneously girliest Halloween costumes that I have ever seen.

She knows she's adorable. We really are going to have our hands full, aren't we?

"Hey guys, watch this!"

How is it possible for this kid to still be this tall even while she's bent in half? Does not compute.

Great Pumpkin Presents

2011-10-25T12:57:00.000-04:00

Because I love buying treats for the adorable little moppets in my life, we gave my niece Makayla a little present this weekend and we said that it was from The Great Pumpkin. (BTW: Hi, Joey! Your birthday gift is going in the mail tomorrow!)

She had absolutely ZERO idea what to do with it. Clearly it wasn't food, so she just sort of looked at it for a while until Shae stepped in to "help." (Ha.) I don't remember what age kids are when they first start to love tearing into wrapping paper, but evidently it is sometime after 10 months. Maybe closer to two? (Which means next Christmas, 2012, will be a RIOT.)

What Makayla did love? Was watching Shae rip the ever-living snot out of the tissue paper and undo the curling ribbon holding the package together. (I didn't use tape on this one, because somewhere back in the lizard part of my brain, I got the idea that tape was "bad for babies." Why I thought a four-foot string of shiny ribbon would be okay is beyond me. I am admittedly not the brightest crayon in the box.)

And of course -- and I say this as an almost 40-something -- whipping tissue paper around the room is a practically overwhelming amount of fun. I still like to do it, I am not going to lie: tossing around balls of crumpled-up gift wrap is one of my favorite sources of holiday amusement. (Largely because we have easily entertained cats, but still.)

Everybody loves tissue paper and presents from The Great Pumpkin. YAY!

DailyBuzz Moms 9x9: DIY Kids' Hello Kitty Costume

2011-10-22T22:31:00.001-04:00

I love Halloween, and I love costumes, and I got really super excited when Shae started talking about what she wanted to be for Halloween because, let's face it, I love living vicariously through her. Her Dorothy and Pirate Princess costumes? Total dreams come true for me. You better believe that if I could pull off twirly skirts and glitter shoes and pigtails right now at my age, I absolutely would.

Anyway. SPOILER ALERT: Hello Kitty wasn't Shae's first choice of costume. She wanted to be, among other things, Sleeping Beauty, Belle, Ariel, Tiana (at which point I sensed a theme a-brewing), a ladybug, a white cat, a black cat, a "ballerina witch cat," and our pet cat Hallie. In other words, she's four and she doesn't know what she wants, which is why she has parents. So I made an editorial decision and decided to buy her a Hello Kitty costume.

Here are my two major problems with the pre-made Hello Kitty costumes I saw in the store: (1) they were really, really trashy-looking (by which I mean "inappropriate," not cheap) and also (2) they want HOW MUCH? For THAT? That she'll only wear ONCE? Are they INSANE?

So -- another SPOILER ALERT -- I decided then and there that I was going to make my own Hello Kitty costume for her. Except, well ... I can't sew. Or draw. And I'm not particularly clever, really. But I am a human Garanimal, and I know how to take a couple of regular pieces and throw them together into something that sort of works. Also, by using regular pieces, I knew we'd be able to get our money's worth, because she'd be able to wear every single item in the costume many times, because they're all regular pieces. And it wouldn't end up costing much more than a pre-made (possibly less, because you might already have some pieces at home).

Without (much more) further ado, here is how I made -- more like "built," really, but still -- my own DIY Hello Kitty costume, in just ten easy steps, entirely out of stuff in the girls' department of our local discount department store (in this case Target, except where noted):

1. Start with one mostly-willing little girl in her great-grandmother's kitchen. (I recommend having bribes handy for this. We used candy because that always works with this one.)

2. Replace grotty sweatpants with new sparkle tights and shorts (model's own).

3. Add sparkle leg warmers. (Deploy bribes at this point if necessary.) NOTE: If desired, replace tights, shorts, and leg warmers with a pair of leggings (which I totally could have done but I didn't think of that first).

4. Add white tutu underlayer (model's own, re-used from 2009 and 2010 costumes).

5. Replace existing T-shirt with layered-look Hello Kitty tee. (Model will probably ask for water at this point, because it's taken about seven whole minutes to get to this point, and model is very impatient. If you indulge the model you might get some unexpected but totally appropriate sass in the remaining photos.)

6. Add pink tutu overlayer, held up with a hair clip or rubber band because the one you bought is accidentally a size too large. NOTE: You can use just one tutu, or any skirt that matches, really. (We were originally going to go with just the pink, but Shae remembered that we had the white one in the dress-up drawer, and who am I to discourage her from contributing to the creative process?)

7. Root around in your sister's purse for an eyeliner pencil because you forgot yours. Draw cat whiskers on cheeks. Add glitter spray to child's hair (optional, and not used at this time because, again, I forgot it).

8. Add shoes. Sequined shoes completely optional, but highly recommended, if this model is to be trusted.

9. Finish with cat-ear headband with Hello Kitty's signature bow added or, if you are glue-gun impaired (as I am), use a pair of Hello Kitty earmuffs.

10. ENJOY.

By my calculations, the total cost for this costume (including shoes) was about $45, which was more than what the pre-made Hello Kitty costume cost, but EVERY SINGLE PIECE of this costume will be re-used. (The shoes were the most expensive single item in this configuration, and I could have gotten away with regular old shoes, except my kid has giant canoe feet and needed a new pair anyway. Honestly, tall girls ...) Shae has already declared the T-shirt to be her "new favorite," she wants to sleep in the tutus (they'll be going in the dress-up drawer for future use if I can't figure out a way to turn them into a skirt for myself because, let's face it, it's pretty rad), and I basically had to hide the shoes to keep her from wearing them out before trick-or-treat.

Yeah, this one is a total winner.

=====

Disclosure: I received compensation to thank me for my participating in the DailyBuzz Mom’s Halloween Costume 9×9, but my opinions are completely my own

Compulsive

2011-10-18T13:38:00.000-04:00

I count.

I don't mean that in the sense of "I matter," but in the sense of actual mathematics: I count. One, two, three. Things. Items. Steps. Calories. Breaths. Cigarettes. Paper clips. M&M's.

I am a counter. A person who counts. Counts all the things.

I don't know when it started. My best guess is that the counting of things is an offshoot of my habit of counting to ten -- there it is again, the counting -- when I find myself getting overwhelmed, angry, frustrated. Previous therapists have suggested this as a coping strategy, a way to get my head straight, a method of stopping myself from doing or saying things that I know I should not.

Sometimes it works, the counting to ten, and sometimes it doesn't.

I guess when the counting to ten stopped working regularly, because my stress and anxiety levels got to be too much for little life-hacks to be able to handle, I started counting other things. I fixate on things that are insignificant but repeatable. Scientific method: How many steps to the bathroom? How many squirts of hand soap? How many ice cubes? How many packs of Post-It Notes? How many hours between meals?

I catch myself, sometimes, when I am in the middle of counting things. Why? I ask myself. Why are you doing this? What does it matter? What are you trying to do here? How is this helping? When I catch myself doing these things, doing these weird things, doing these crazy things, I stop myself, deliberately change the environment. Move papers around. Put the paper clips in a different slot of a different drawer. Use the ladies' room in another department. Make a cup of tea. Grab a handful of candy.

I do other things then, too. I only eat M&M's two at a time, one candy on each side of my mouth, and I won't eat two of the same color at the same time. I can't. I won't. I will arrange them all in front of me, in pairs, a red with a green and a blue with a yellow and a yellow with a brown and a red with a blue and a blue with a green. If there are extras, an uneven number, or too many of one color to split them all up without making a mismatched pair, I leave the stragglers, the troublemakers, in a paper cup at my desk and I save them for the next time.

I know that this behavior is abnormal, irregular, unhealthy. Most people don't observe and analyze everything around them before utilizing these same things. Most of the people I know don't observe or analyze hardly anything.

I have a new therapist now, because I need one. I am losing my mind, losing myself, losing track of all the things I have been counting, losing track of all the things that still need to be counted. I cannot count all the things. I'm not sure that I even want to. It's just something I do, now. Count all the things. Why? To control all the things, because there are other, bigger, much bigger things that I cannot control.

I am anal-retentive. A classic Type A personality. Detail-oriented and deadline-oriented to the nth degree. Relentlessly perfectionist, even as I know that there is no possible way that any one person could ever achieve what I unreasonably expect myself to achieve. There are not enough hours in the day, so I do what I can to take every single minute, every second, every nanomoment, and make it count.

I can't do it by myself, and nobody expects me to. But still I fixate. "If you want to get something done right, do it yourself." I know I can do it right, so I expect that I will always do it right, all the time. It's up to me to save and protect the world, or at least the little slice for which I am responsible. I am a control freak. I am obsessive-compulsive. And the rest of the world is anything but.

So I count. Count all the things.

Surprise Cake Face

2011-10-14T13:28:00.001-04:00

You guys, these pictures are SO DAMN OLD (taken on 10/1) that I had forgotten I even had them.

October 1st was Shae's half-birthday. Yeah, I know we're grasping at straws, but it's been a while since we had a birthday - the last one was G's birthday, way back on August 28th. So we let Shae pick out a cupcake so we could have a little "party." There were all kinds of cupcakes decorated with footballs and baseballs and Phillies logos - remember, this was way back at the beginning of the playoffs, when we still had high-cherry-pie-in-the-sky-hopes - and even a couple that looked like the Phillie Phanatic.

But she picked out this one, a Halloween-decorated number, with purple icing and a ghost-shaped Peep and a little decorative pick that said "Boo" on it, which she didn't even noticed because OMG YOU GUYS PURPLE ICING AND A GIANT PIECE OF CANDY WHOOOOOOO! The "Boo" pick was my favorite part, because we still call her Boo at home (after Boo from Monsters Inc. and also Boo-Boo Kitty from Laverne & Shirley. I AM OLD SHUT UP GET OFF MY LAWN.)

Yes, she is kissing the Peep that she is about to stuff into her mouth. This kid has a very bizarre romantic relationship with her food. Whatever. My sister once wanted to marry a Brussels sprout or a broccoli, I can't remember which, so it's not like messed-up relationships with food are unheard of in my family. (Now that I think about it, my sister was around this age at the time that she fell in love with a vegetable, so maybe it's just preschoolers, and not something hereditary.)

Anyway: Happy Friday! And Happy Surprise Cake Face Day!

PS - Purple cupcake frosting? DOES NOT COME OUT OF ANYTHING.

Wordless Wednesday: Blow, Gabriel, Blow (with bonus pic of the Face of Pure Troublemaking)

2011-10-12T15:04:00.000-04:00

Bonus Link

Legends of the Fall

2011-10-11T21:32:00.000-04:00

YOU GUYS! Let's pretend we like autumn! (The season autumn, and not my COUSIN Autumn, whom I love with all my heart and soul, and I'm not just saying that because her sister would totally kick my ass. Autumn-the-Person rocks. Autumn-the-season sucks. Carry on.)

There are things ABOUT the fall that I love -- when the leaves change color and turn those lovely shades of pink and bronze and gold, being able to turn off the air conditioner but not having to immediately turn on the heat, Halloween candy.

And I like making soups and stews and roasts and casseroles in the crock pot and the oven, and busting out the bread machine, and spending Sundays in a house that smells so delicious that I sometimes consider gnawing on some of the old lead paint.

But I DON'T like when it starts to get cold and damp and wet and windy and all the leaves start to fall off the trees and they turn to mulch right there on the grass and the branches are all naked and sad and creepy.

And, yes, my kid gets no end of amusement playing outside when the weather changes, when you can tolerate the fresh air for more than 15 seconds without dissolving into a sweat puddle on the ground where you stand.

And also, she loves dressing up in her costume and going door-to-door with her little trick-or-treat bag, so naïve that she fails to notice that I have been secretly hiding the mini Twix bars in my pocket for the last half hour.

By the way, you guys, if she ever finds out about the Twix bars, you're all out of the will. And it won't work, anyway, because then I'll just start stealing the Kit-Kats and the Milky Way minatures, too, and you'll have to live with the guilt.

Sliding Into Home

2011-10-10T13:53:00.000-04:00

This past weekend was gorgeous, or so they tell me -- I didn't really notice because I was stuck in the house with some kind of plague or whatever. Damned sinuses. So here are some more pictures of my kid from two weekends ago, when her "Flyin' Hawaiian" shirt was still a sign of hope and expectation.

She might not quite be able to work the swings yet, but we have no noticeable issues with the sliding board, except that this particular one is all plastic and seems to attract static electricity from other solar systems.

I love that, even after all these years (because, you know, she's 517 years old, God could I be any more melodramatic? [DON'T ANSWER THAT]), going down a sliding board still makes her so happy.

Still diggin' the teeter-totter, too. Not that I blame her for this one, really. Aside from the merry-go-round, which seems to have been removed from every single playground in the world, pretty much, the teeter-totter is one of my favorite rides.

See that Dora watch? It's about three hours slow -- or nine hours fast -- and the date is completely wrong, and if you ask Shae what time it is, she usually says something like "Time for a snack!" No dummy, that one.

This is the closest we've gotten to cake face in a while. Haven't been many birthdays lately.

Swinging for the Fences

2011-10-07T15:18:00.000-04:00

One of the most unintentionally hilarious things that I have ever seen in my entire life happened over the weekend, when my kid was trying to teach herself how to work a "big kid swing."

I know I am a bad parent for being unable to control the laughter, but jumping Jeebus on a pogo stick, watching her try to work out the physics of the thing with her little body was just ... oh my God.

She sat there for like half an hour, saying over and over again, "Head back, head front, legs back, legs front," trying to move herself in time with her new mantra and getting nowhere.

I know, I know, it's not actually funny, but oh my lands, to watch her try to figure this out, practically throwing all 45 pounds of herself up and down in the swing, but not actually moving anywhere.

Guess you just had to be there. I'm glad that I was.

Les Bicyclettes de Belsize

2011-10-05T13:17:00.000-04:00

Oh, hey, remember when we were on vacation and the kids spent, like, a day and a half riding their bikes around the garage of the beach house?

Yeah, that doesn't happen so much any more. Ever since we got home, Shae has been extemely bike-adverse, and nobody really knows why. All she'll tell us is that she doesn't want to ride her bike. Her bike that last year she couldn't wait to visit.

It kind of reminds me of some of those old Calvin and Hobbes cartoons, where Calvin was afraid to ride his bike because he was convinced that his bike was trying to kill him. She is suddenly very skittish about the whole ordeal, and there is a lot of fussing and fighting.

I totally don't understand it all. I mean, yes, once I learned how to drive a car I stopped riding my bike completely, but when I was a kid I couldn't wait to have a bike. One of the greatest days of my childhood was the day we moved into the neighborhood where my parents still live, where I could ride my pinky Huffy 10-speed to my grandparents' house. Maybe the only day of my extremely misspent youth that was comparable to that was the day I actually got my pink Huffy 10-speed.

But right now it's a struggle to get Shae to ride. She'll beg my mom to bring the bike down from her house, and she'll spend all day with her helmet on, but she'll only ride the bike for, like, ten minutes in my grandparents' driveway, and then she pitches a fit and kicks the bike over, and that's the end of that. Five hundred kids could ride by on their bikes, but Shae wants nothing to do with it. It's really weird.

Kids these days. Humph.

HEY YOU GUYS

2011-10-04T15:08:00.000-04:00

Shaezie here, pinch hitting for my mom, who is a total slacker. (Do you like how I said "pinch hitting" there, on account of it being baseball playoff time and all? Hahaha, I am SO FUNNY, you guys. Go Steelers!!!1!eleven!)

You'd probably never guess it because the weather's been so dis-GUST-ing outside (yes, that's exactly how I say that word, shut up you guys and stop picking on me!), but we've actually been kind of busy lately. These Flyin' Hawaiian shirts aren't going to wear themselves, you know.

I've been, like, running around all over the world and making my parents crazy and growing out of my pants all the time. Look at me! I'm all legs and arms and pointy elbows like a praying mantis with grasshopper legs. Boing boing boing! Good thing Christmas is coming, right?

Also I have a new hobby: growing my hair. Isn't it AWESOME? Except it really hurts when my mom has to comb my hair. She says I'm "tender-headed," but really I just like to complain about everything when she makes me get out of bed at 6:15 for school. It's still dark out, then, you guys!

My mom says this picture should be captioned: "Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?" I don't know what she's talking about, but that's a pretty great song. I like to listen to it when we're playing "Dance Your Pants Off" at home.

This is me, running around in Lauren's backyard with a bungee cord. Why? I am four years old, and I don't need a reason to be a goober. (Mommy says that picture is totally unaltered, by the way, and that you should "click to embiggen." I think it makes me look like I'm a super-fast runner ZOOOOOOOOOOOM!)

Anyway, that's all for now, you guys. My mom will be back tomorrow with some more of her boring stuff.

Five Things About Last Night's "Glee" (S3E2)

2011-09-28T13:41:00.000-04:00

Sorry it's been so long, but you guys: SO BUSY, and yet so boring at the same time. So let's talk about last night's "Glee" since everybody else is, OK?

#1. West Side Story is one of my favorite musicals ever, and watching the audition process took me back to a place I never, ever thought I'd want to go again: my freshman year of college. I absolutely hated college (most of it, anyway, definitely major chunks of those four years that weren't spent in a classroom), but one of the few things that I actually enjoyed was being a part of the inaugural company of the First Year Players at Syracuse University. We did West Side Story that year, and I played Anybodys, and it was seriously one of the best times I ever had in my life. Even if you include my falling desperately, helplessly in love with two different cast members and having my heart broken many times over because of it. West Side Story is so much fun to do and I am so glad I had the chance to be in that show - the 1961 movie version with Natalie Wood and Rita Moreno remains, to this day, one of my favorite films.

#2. I hope I am not the only person who mentions this on the Internet or in real life today, but even if you used color-blind casting for the William McKinley High School production, there is no way on God's green Earth that Mercedes could ever play Maria. Sure, she has the vocal chops for it, but she is just not the Maria type. And it's not just because she is the "big girl" or the "black girl" - she is just not THAT girl. I'm not entirely certain that Rachel is quite right for the part, either. If I were casting the show using students from WMHS New Directions, Maria would be played by Tina. Kurt would be absolutely THE most fabulous Riff ever, Mike would be Chino, Puck would be Bernardo, Finn would be one of the Jets (one of the ones in the back who doesn't do much dancing), Quinn and Brittany would be Graziela and Velma. In this scenario, Mercedes would be best cast as Anita, although she would have tough competition from Santana. Blaine, of course, would be Tony. I don't know what to do with Rachel, exactly - she's almost too much for West Side Story. She's really more of a Desiree Armfeldt from A Little Night Music (the part that was recently played on Broadway by Catherine Zeta-Jones).

#3. Oh, that whole adoption thing? Makes me think about things that I'm not entirely sure I want to think about. I wonder sometimes if Shae's biological mother ever wants to see her - if she even remembers that Shae exists. And I worry what would happen if that were the case. Knowing what I know about Shae's birth mom, I don't think it's likely that she'll ever want to make contact, but ... what if? Imagine I am Shelby Corcoran in this scenario - am I in any position to make demands? Can I say, "I won't let you see this person that you gave birth to unless you meet my standards of dress/behavior/lifestyle/sobriety"? Certainly I want to prevent my daughter from being exposed to the kinds of things I know she was exposed to as an infant (i.e., REALLY BAD STUFF, let's leave it at that). Our adoption is closed, and right now I don't have any particular interest in letting Shae's biological parents be a part of our lives, for better or for worse. Maybe I am overprotective or overly possessive or living in denial. All of these things are possible, maybe even probable. I shouldn't have to think about this stuff after watching a silly TV show with lots of singing and dancing in it.

#4. "Somewhere" and "Something's Coming" are my two favorite songs from West Side Story, full stop. I could listen to Lea Michele, Idina Menzel, and Darren Criss sing those songs all day, every day, for the rest of my life, and I would die happy. I do wonder if "Glee" is ever going to do the "Tonight Quintet," and if so, how and when, and whether everything is going to tie back to anything happening in the story arcs for the actual characters, and whether they'll switch up any of the voice parts, or whatever. (I can't find a good video of the song to show it in context from the musical, but go watch the movie version - I can't recommend it enough, and you'll know this song when you see it.)

#5. There were supposed to be five things on this list but I ran out of things, so HOORAY FOR "GLEE!" Or not, if you hate "Glee." I won't judge. I hate the Kardashians and the Real Housewives, so it's not like I don't have my own problems.

Obliviously On She Sails

2011-09-22T21:40:00.000-04:00

The first day of fall came and went without mention in our house. We didn't try to balance an egg on its end on a table or celebrate the equinox by dancing naked in a field with other hippies or anything. It was just, for us, another day among all the other days of the year, another day of work and school and leftovers and television shows, albeit one with a higher allergen and irritant count than might be considered completely comfortable.

One of the unintended consequences of taking our vacation over Labor Day, during the very last unofficial week of the summer, is that once it was over, there really wasn't much left to look forward to. We missed all the picnics and parties, all the pools are closed for the season, and since Shae still has another year of pre-school, we didn't really have any back-to-school or ready-for-kindergarten shopping to do. It occurs to me that September might possibly be the saddest, slowest month of the year.

Early fall can be so off-putting, especially this year, when we haven't had an Indian summer, and all signs point to none coming. It started raining here at the beginning of August and it almost hasn't stopped for six weeks, the temperatures gradually but consistently dropping, ever-so-slowly so that you didn't realize it, until one morning you start needing a jacket in the morning and you never really stop. Everything is changing to shades of yellows and browns that will fade to grays and whites before we know it.

That's partly why I waited as long as I could stand it before I posted this one last picture from vacation, one of my very favorites, a veritable oasis of life and air and light and color among the leaves that are already falling and the grass that is already growing dormant and the claustrophobia that is already starting to close in on me, as the seasons change and the weather changes and everything changes, like it or not, and so it goes.

And obliviously on she sails.

Eaters Gonna Eat: White Bean Chili

2011-09-20T12:59:00.000-04:00

Normally I put the foodie stuff over on my emergency backup blog but this stuff is SO GOOD that I'm sharing it here with all of you because I love you. No, wait: I was hiding under your porch because I love you. I don't really know why I'm sharing this recipe. Maybe because it's rainy and damp and icky outside and I think you all need to spice up your lives? I dunno. Just make it and eat it, and then eat some more, because I said so. You can trust me, I'm from the Internet.

WHITE BEAN CHILI
Based on Paula Deen's recipe

4 tablespoons (½ stick) butter
2 cans (4½ ounces each) chopped green chiles
1 pound ground chicken or turkey
1 tablespoon minced garlic
¾ cup diced onion
2 cans (15 ounces each) navy beans
1 can (15 ounces) cannellini beans
5 cups chicken stock
1½ teaspoons ground cumin
½ teaspoon cumin seeds
1 tablespoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons ground black pepper
1 teaspoon white pepper
¼ teaspoon chili powder
2 pinches red pepper flakes
½ bunch parsley leaves, chopped
1 can (11 ounces) white shoepeg corn

In a large pot, melt butter over medium heat. Drain chiles and set aside. Add ground meat, garlic, onion, and chiles to pot and sauté for 8-10 minutes or until meat is completely cooked through and vegetables are softened, stirring occasionally.
Meanwhile, drain and rinse beans. When meat mixture is browned, add beans and chicken stock to pot and increase heat to high. Bring to a boil. Add remaining ingredients. Reduce heat to medium and cook for another 1-1½ hours, stirring occasionally, or until desired consistency is reached.
Drain corn. Stir into chili and allow to heat through for about 5 minutes. Serve immediately, or properly cool for crock pot reheating.

NOTES -- I made this with ground turkey, because I couldn't find ground chicken. The recipe calls for cilantro instead of parsley but I was in a hurry at the store yesterday and grabbed the wrong thing. I like it this way so that's how I'll make it in the future. You can use half the can of corn if you don't like a lot of corn in your chili, but I do; you can also substitute yellow corn, or even Mexicorn or a can of the black-bean-and-corn blend if you want to add some color. I made it last night and then reheated it in the crock pot this morning (1½ hours on low and then switched to "Keep Warm" setting).

My regular chili has more of a subtle heat to it; this is spicy right up front, but not too hot (because I won't eat it if it is). You can omit the chili powder and reduce the amount of cumin if you don't like it to be hot at all. A plop of sour cream and a sprinkle of cheese on top when you serve can also help cut the heat. Let me know if you like it!

Divalicious

2011-09-19T18:53:00.000-04:00

These pictures need basically no commentary, so I'm just going to go ahead and throw them up for you to enjoy (although because this is my blog and I never shut up, I will have a few little things to say at the end).

That scarf is by Michael Kors. MICHAEL M-F'ING JUDGE ON M-F'ING PROJECT RUNWAY M-F'ING KORS. And that kid is ROCKIN' it like the superest supermodel ever. Naomi Campbell, watch your back, because Gladys Leibowitz rides again, people.

I Don't Know How They Do It (Or What "It" Is, Exactly)

2011-09-16T12:25:00.000-04:00

These were supposed to go up yesterday - sorry. We had technical difficulties at home (i.e., the power inexplicably went out and I couldn't get the pictures uploaded sooner). Now if you could only tell me what is happening in some of these pictures, I would owe you a great debt.

File under: My kid is weird and plays with random things she finds on the beach.

HELLO TO YOU TOO!

Kids in buckets are hysterically funny, full stop.

So this horse walks into a bar, and the bartender says, "Why the long face?"

It is apparently never too soon for wee ones to learn the "bish, PLEASE" face.

He is up to something, but I can't remember what.

Whoa, dude, SERIOUSLY?

Fetching, just fetching.

Got milk? (I have never seen an actual milk moustache in the wild before.)

Joey didn't really like the ocean much (it was really rough anyway), but he LOVED playing in the sand.

Now SHE, on the other hand ...

One day on the trip -- I think it was Tuesday but it could have been Wednesday, I don't remember -- we had a lot of rain and the kids needed to be entertained, so we got out the bikes and they literally, yes LITERALLY, rode in circles around the garage for HOURS. It was probably one of the better nights we had, honestly, because they just did loops and figure 8's until the pretty much keeled over.

Makayla even got in on the action -- my parents took turns pushing her around in the stroller, following the other kids, like the smallest, strangest, most adorable parade you've ever seen in your life.

Haldaman Family Portraits, 2011

2011-09-14T15:04:00.000-04:00

When we go on vacation, we always try to get a picture of the whole family, having fun together (or at least pretending to). We managed to get a shoot in on Sunday night, before some of the boys had to go home for work.

You can see that we tried to match everybody within the "family groups" -- my youngest sister and her gang in white, my middle sister and her peeps in blue, my posse in green, and my parents in pink. Except my mom didn't have a pink shirt, so she's the outlier. Which is pretty much typical for her, anyway. (In a good way, always.)

We also did a semi-formal shoot on Thursday night with just my parents and the kids, everyone in white. It was a just a touch overcast and very humid that night, so the combination of the elements plus the lighting plus my general ineptitude made for slightly gauzy photos, but I like them. If I actually knew what I was doing, these pictures would have been amazing. (Also: not sure if you can tell, but my nephew is wearing a tiny little guayabera shirt with monkeys embroidered on it. ZOMG MONKEYS! Little boys' clothes are SO CUTE. Why oh why don't they make anything that cute in my size? Although I'd never rock it quite as hard as he does, the handsome little devil.)

I also got this picture of my parents on one of the balconies of the house, which is one of the best pictures that has been taken of my parents in the last 30-some-odd years. Are they not among the cutest parents ever? I hope my husband and I are that adorable after we've been married for almost 40 years.

Some other sub-family pictures that came out great. (I don't know where the nice photo of my little family is, but whatever, it isn't as lovely as these are, anyway.)

Totally gratuitous, but COME ON. Work it out, Miss Divalette! I miss when Shae was smaller and less attitudinal and she would sit still and pose for pictures for me. Experience leads me to suspect that Makayla won't do this for much longer, so we all took as many pictures of her as we could. Plus: hello, she's gorgeous. (I think this looks like a catalog picture. Baby sold separately.)

Caption for this one: Girls' Club, Class of 2011.

And all of the "biological" Haldamans, on the last day of vacation, which was also the nicest, weather-wise. Because of course it was.

Tomorrow: OUTTAKES! The silly photos are always the best. (A quick sample, via Instagram.)

I'm On A Boat

2011-09-13T14:40:00.000-04:00

While we were on vacation we took advantage of a Groupon -- no, my capacity for cheapitude does not extend to vacations (in fact, I think there is NO BETTER TIME to be thrifty than when you are on vacation, if only to awe the world with your mad shipping ninja skills) -- and we all went for a whale watch. (OK, "marine mammal watch," technically.)

Yes: all of us. All eleven of us -- thirteen, if you count the camera and the contraband stroller as one person each, as I do -- drove an hour and a half south on the Garden State Parkway, each way, to take a three-hour boat tour. On an overcast, windy day, with a hurricane just over a week past, another tropical storm looming just off the coast, and three more weather situations brewing.

And it was AMAZING.

The kids loved being on the top deck of the ship, just hanging their heads and arms over the side of the railings, feeling the wind in their faces. We honestly could have driven around in a big circle for three hours and they wouldn't have cared.

But. BUT!

Dolphins. Tons of f'ing dolphins.

Now for all I know, these are the same four or five dolphins in every single picture, and I don't even care. (The captain said there were about 35 in total; I don't know.) They were RIGHT THERE. I could have leapt off the side of the boat and ridden on the back of one off into the sunset. (I didn't, but only because I was afraid would misjudge the jump and fatally rack myself on one of the lower decks, and of all the undignified ways that there are for me to get myself killed, "impaled on the oar of an emergency dinghy" is not really near the top of the list.)

(Also, if I got the camera wet on my way to a watery grave, my husband would never have forgiven me.)

Trying to maintain one's composure and act like a civilized human being when there are ZOMG REAL LIVE MOTHERTRUCKING DOLPHINS RIGHT OVER THERE SQUEE! is exhausting, yo. Plus I think I might possibly have gotten whiplash or something, because the water was REALLY rough -- we didn't see any whales because we couldn't get out as far as the boat normally goes because of all the storms and whatnot -- but at the time I didn't even notice because I was so busy checking "see live dolphins up close in the wild" off my bucket list.

See? Good times.

Children and Other Wildlife

2011-09-12T14:19:00.002-04:00

So. We survived vacation. It rained and there were a lot of late nights and early mornings and entirely more bug bites that I ever thought were possible -- obviously, it's been a while since I went camping -- but we survived. Not just survived, but thrived, really, except for that one time when I got that killer pain in my neck-and-back, and a couple of stubbed toes, and a pedicure that didn't even last a week, and some rough surf, and someone drank all my Malibu (and it wasn't me), and possibly someone else consumed quite a lot more Oreos than might perhaps be considered seemly (and maybe it was me that time). Still. Isn't that why they call it a "vacation"?

We hung out by the (heated) (private) (in-ground) (wonderful) pool.

And we frolicked on the (gorgeous) (mostly private) (mostly deserted) (almost eerily quiet) beach.

And we dug around with heavy construction equipment on the dunes, which is generally considered off-limits, but not here.

AND THERE WERE DOLPHINS, which I will show you tomorrow. (For more pictures in the meantime, although sadly none of marine mammals, you can check out my Tumblr-slash-Instagram-photo-dump.)

All in all, I can't complain.

Book Review: "Slow Love" by Dominique Browning

2011-09-08T11:57:00.000-04:00

I'm on vacation this week, and every spare moment has been spent in a book. What I've been reading between wine coolers is Slow Love: How I Lost My Job, Put On My Pajamas, and Found Happiness by Dominique Browning, a memoir about the author at midlife, working through the abrupt changes that lead her out of her corporate office in Manhattan and into her pajamas in Rhode Island.

Much of the book is about the author's working through a long-term relationship with a legally-separated-but-not-divorced man, whom she eventually realizes is ambivalent about their romance. If you could even call it that; I don't think it's particularly romantic to spend more than a few months working things out with someone who repeatedly asked why it mattered that he remained married to his wife.

Ultimately, it felt to me like that relationship ambivalence bled into the pages of the book. It is beautifully written, almost lyrical, but behind the pretty words there is a strange lack of emotion. Every time I felt Brown had turned a corner and was getting to the point where she would finally find happiness, she reeled herself back and only seemed to find a grudging, almost unappreciated acceptance that I found frustratingly disappointing.

We'll be discussing Slow Love over at Blog Her Book Club this month -- if you're interested, why don't you join us? I'll be there as soon as I get back from vacation.

Grab Bag: Happy Birthday From The 2000 Phillies

2011-09-01T20:41:00.002-04:00

This post is part of a sort of "blog hop" series that hope to contribute to semi-regularly -- The Grab Bag: Writing Prompts for Bogged-Down Bloggers. Of course, I don't normally have trouble coming up with something to write about as long as I have pictures, but when I don't ... well, that's the trouble. So I am really excited about having some kind of starting point, at least, for not-necessarily-kid-related blog posts, since I'm all out of pictures for the week (and anyway, I'm kind of getting tired of using them as a crutch {which of course I just originally typed as "crotch" because OF COURSE I DID, durr}). The "theme" for Week 1 is "Memorable Birthdays" (paraphrased, of course -- more details at the link). Feel free to join in, if you want; add a link to your post in the comments over on Dancing Lemur's blog, and then browse everyone else's contributions as they come aboard.

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We're not really birthday people in my family. I mean, we have birthdays, because everybody has birthdays, but we've never really been the sort to throw giant parties just because we could. We'd have family and a few friends over for cake and ice cream, and of course we got cards and gifts and flowers and special dinners and stuff, but birthdays have pretty much usually been low-key affairs.

When I graduated from college and got a full-time job, I started making a habit of taking a vacation day for my birthday. I mean really, who wants to get up at the ass-crack of dawn so they can go into a cube farm and forcibly socialize with people they don't like very much on their birthday, when they'd rather being doing literally anything else, including laundry? Not me.

The year I turned 26, my parents wanted to do something extra-special for my birthday, so they treated my husband and me to an afternoon Phillies game. The weather was gorgeous, as luckily it often is in this part of the country in early May, and that early in the baseball season, even the Vet was lovely. It was a businesspersons' special, an early afternoon game, so I basically got to spend the entire day with my three favorite people in the world (my husband and my parents, plus my sister and a couple of her friends from Princeton). My name appeared on the Phan-a-vision in giant letters, and I freaked out slightly because the entire City of Philadelphia saw how old I was, and I got a free cap, and an entire baseball stadium sang "Happy Birthday" to me and I got confetti thrown in my hair by total strangers.

It was, in a word, amazing.

Yogurt. Yum. (Yes, Really.)

2011-08-30T21:50:00.003-04:00

I wrote this post while participating in a blog tour conducted by Clever Girls on behalf of Dannon. I have been compensated for my time commitment to the program but my opinions are my own.

For more information and recipe ideas, visit www.oikosyogurt.com or www.Facebook.com/oikos. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.

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We eat a lot of yogurt in our house. Ever since we discovered the insane awesomeness that is Greek yogurt last year, we have been eating a really lot of yogurt. When we were making our post-earthquake-hurricane-preparedness arrangements last week, one of our biggest worries was what we would do if lost our electricity for an extended period of time, because we have a whole drawer full of yogurts in the fridge, and every one of them are our Preciouses, and would we be able to eat them all before they went yucky, and would we have to fight over who got which flavors? Because let me tell you something right now: I will THROW DOWN for the black cherry yogurts. I don't care if I have to cut my husband off at the knees -- DO NOT come between me and my yogurt.

Oikos® is not our usual brand of yogurt, but we got a chance to try it for this project. I compared nutrition information with our usual brand and saw all the stuff I was hoping to see: Dannon® Oikos® plain and fruit on the bottom contains 0% fat (the Dannon® Oikos® traditional blended varieties contains about 3% fat). Both are an excellent source of protein, twice that of most regular lowfat yogurts. I also saw that Dannon® Oikos® 0% fat berry flavors (blueberry and strawberry, my husband's favorites) beat our usual brand 2-1 in a taste test. INNNNNteresting. Kind of made this taste-test experiment a no-brainer.

And I am not going to lie to you: I have also been wanting to try Oikos® because I want to encourage any and all endeavors that put John Stamos on my television screen. (I can't help myself -- I remain a sucker for Blackie Parrish. Don't you judge me.) MOAR STAMOS PLZ KTHX!

Ahem. Anyway. I made one of my favorite breakfast treats, a fruit-and-granola yogurt parfait, with Oikos® yogurt this morning ...

... by mixing one package (5.3 oz.) of Oikos® 0% fat vanilla yogurt, ¼ cup of my favorite granola cereal, and ½ cup of frozen mixed berries. (You could of course use fresh fruit but I am trying to clean out the freezer before we go to the beach.) It was just as delicious as I had hoped -- maybe even more so than it usually is, because I think this vanilla yogurt was just a bit sweeter than our usual brand, and I was totally in the mood for a little extra sweetness this morning. My only complaint is that this particular package of yogurt was not at all as creamy as Greek yogurt usually is; in fact, my yogurt was totally runny. I think this was a one-off issue, though, and I'll be sampling it again to confirm. (My husband's blueberry yogurt was perfectly fine and tasty -- just my cup of vanilla had the problem.) In spite of the texture problem with this one serving, though, it was totally delicious, just the right amount of vanilla flavor and sweetness. I did end up getting quite a nice "chunky smoothie" out of it, oxymoronicishness of that phrase be darned.

So, in short: Dannon® Oikos®. Greek yogurt. Really tasty. (Even without a free poster of John Stamos with every purchase. Although even my cheapo-depot husband couldn't argue with the added value in THAT.)

After The Rain

2011-08-29T14:00:00.000-04:00

It's so nice outside right now that it's hard to believe that just 24 hours ago, we were at the tail end of a hurricane. We are mostly okay in my neck of the woods -- we had some water in the basement, but we were expecting to, and we never lost power so we were able to stay on top of it as much as we could. Some of my co-workers who live near me still have power outages, as well as a whole mess of people closer to the city and near the shore (plus many people south of here), but if there is an upside to mass power outages, it is that this is happening when it isn't too terribly hot or too terribly cold, and the outages appear to be -- around here, anyway -- more of an inconvenience than anything. I have not heard of too many people who had to deal with massive amounts of water and power outages, although I'm sure their stories are floating around somewhere.

The other thing that has been so shocking to me is the speed at which the waters rose, and the speed at which they also appear to be receding. Yesterday we went to the park down the road around lunchtime, when the rain had mostly stopped except for a few short showers here and there. In the time that it took us to walk around the park, between the playground area and the parking lot at the far end, we watched a car get covered in water that had overflowed the flooded creek. The whole process took maybe 20-30 minutes, and at the end there was so much water covering the park that you couldn't even tell it was a park any more -- and this morning, when I drove by on my way into work, you couldn't even tell there had ever been flooding, except for all the barricades and police tape that are still up to keep people out of harm's way.

We did manage to get a few pictures of "familiar" landmarks while the flooding was still in progress, so you can see how bad it really got. I've linked back to previous blog posts so you can see the truly amazing differences.

This is the creek bank where Shae was wading just last Tuesday, after the earthquake. You can't tell it's a creek bank, of course, but that's sort of the point.

We often cross this bridge when we go for walks in the park. This picture wasn't even taken when the water was at its highest point; on our way back home from the other side of the park, the water was so high that you could not see daylight between the bridge and the water.

Normally we're on the park side of these trees when we feed the ducks -- this was taken from the street side, where there was actual dry land at this point. I can't even tell which trees are my beloved white birches.

These are the baseball fields where we like to run around and blow bubbles. I'm not good at distances, but I would guess that the bleachers are normally at least a quarter of a mile from the creek banks. I have no idea how deep the water actually was anywhere, but this is not very far from the parking lot where the car got swallowed up by water, so I am guessing it was pretty deep.

Even the poor playground was completely under water -- not the slides and the swings, but the ground. Of course Shae still wanted to give everything a try, make sure it still worked, but for a change we decided to be responsible parents and give a big HELL TO THE NO to that particular idea.

Happy Birthday To My Hero

2011-08-28T13:53:00.000-04:00

Today is my husband's birthday. He's 36. He'll probably get mad at me for saying that, but too bad. He wants to lie about his age, he can get his own damn blog.

Last night he stayed up until 4:00 am bailing water out of the basement so I didn't have to, because he is awesome that way. This video has nothing to do with anything, but it's cute. Just like he is.

Happy birthday, babe. I love you.

Ten at 20

2011-08-27T11:00:00.030-04:00

On this day, twenty years ago, I was a week away from becoming a high school senior. Seventeen years old, with all the naïve and undeveloped and insufferable swagger that comes with being that age. I knew everything there was to know about everything at that point, figured it all out myself, and anybody who disagreed with me was flat-out wrong and stupid, and I told them so every chance I got.

(Hey, I never said I changed much in the last 20 years; I was just younger then. No less loud, no less opinionated, only a little less likely to be uncompromising in my beliefs, no more patient, and significantly more likely to be wearing tattered cut-offs and ripped fishnets and red jelly shoes. The biggest differences now are (1) that I know that I don't actually know everything, I just act like I do, and (2) in the last two decades I have learned how to call people stupid in about eight different languages.)

I was in the choir and I was a band groupie and I occasionally hung out with other fledgling "artists" and "writers," and by association I ended up listening to a lot of different kinds of music. My favorite records tended to be punk and post-punk and new wave and American college radio: the Clash, the Ramones, the Cure, the Smiths, Elvis Costello, R.E.M. – lots and lots of R.E.M., especially Document – Concrete Blonde.

(Most people, to this day, probably do not know about my secret hidden obsession with New Kids on the Block, and once this is over we're all going to pretend that this never happened, but I still hold a very special place in my heart for Joey McIntrye, and I still get weak in the knees if I ever hear "Please Don’t Go Girl" or "Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time)." I truly believe that in another life, he and I were meant to be together. SHUT UP.)

My parents, I'm sure, thought it was just so much noise, but I'm sure that's what their parents thought about their music, back in the day. The only difference between their generation and mine, I'm pretty sure, was that my grandparents were probably pretty certain that John Lennon and Paul McCartney were not secretly transvestites, as I'm sure my parents wondered about Robert Smith. As did I, from time to time, let's be honest.

I can't remember what class I was in the first time I heard chatter at school about this new band that had just put out a record. It wasn't one of my musical friends, who were all going through a simultaneous fixation with Queen to the point where we listened to A Night at the Opera every day at lunch time for almost an entire school year. It was a VERY LONG TIME before I was able to listen to Queen again without immediately wanting to find Jon Conahan and punch him in the face.

No, this was somebody else, another student who was not my friend, just someone I knew, who would now mostly like be called an "early adopter." The CD got passed around among a cluster of boys who were all listening to the same stuff at the time – "arena rock," U2 and INXS and AC/DC. This was something new, a kind of music coming out of Seattle, and nobody was really sure whether they liked it or not. I remember catching a glimpse of the cover, kind of bright pink, which I thought was weird, and some muttering about lyrics: "I think this one song is about suicide."

My interest was piqued, that was for sure, but not necessarily in a good way at the time. Whatever the equivalent of "girl, please" was in 1991, I no doubt was thinking it: that one song is about suicide? You need to listen to some different music if you think one song about suicide is a big deal. Love is suicide. Life is suicide. Here, listen to this record and read some Sylvia Plath and then we'll talk. Pass the black eyeliner.

Six months later, maybe more, I finally heard songs from the record for myself. Yet again, I cannot remember where I was or who I was with. I seem to recall being in a car, and having just broken up with a boy, and probably I was sneaking a cigarette as I wept into my Mountain Dew. It was night, I know that much, and I think it was cold. What I do remember for certain is the sound of my entire worldview shifting without a clutch.

It sounded like righteous anger, and fear, and boredom, and loneliness. Like grunts, and groans, and testosterone, and overcast skies. Like torn jeans, and boots, and flannel. Like someone railing against the entire world, guttural growls against the messed up shit that was all around us, everywhere. Like loud guitars, and live drums, and masculine wailing. Like I had finally found someone who actually understood me, after an entire lifetime of listening to music about people who were themselves misunderstood.

It sounded like Pearl Jam's Ten, first released twenty years ago today, and still one of my top ten favorite albums of this lifetime.

Rock You Like A Hurricane

2011-08-26T15:28:00.000-04:00

Well. I've been so busy ordering my husband to stock up on hurricane preparedness supplies -- batteries, tuna fish, bottled water, beer -- that I almost forgot to post today. And that would be a shame, because these might be the last swimming pool pictures of the summer.

I'm not sure yet when my grandmother is closing her pool - we might be able to get in an extra day at the end of our vacation.

I was hoping to get a whole lot of pictures at the pool of the beach house starting in EIGHT DAYS WHOO!, but right now we're just worrying whether the beach house will still be there come Monday. Fingers and toes crossed.

(And if you're out there somewhere, battening down the hatches in preparation for Hurricane Goodnight, Irene, Goddamit - may you be safe and mostly dry and in good company, or at least in good spirits, or at least IMBIBING good spirits. I recommend this recipe for -- wait for it -- a Hurricane.)

Workin' At The Car Wash

2011-08-25T14:33:00.000-04:00

I can't explain what possessed my kid to wash a car in a tutu and a craft foam pilgrim hat.

I can't explain about 99.8% of the stuff she does, really, because it's been a really long time since I was four years old.

And in any case, I'm 100% certain that when I was her age, I was not even in the same universe of awesome as this kid.

I am just glad that she does what she does and lets me take pictures of it for the Internets.

Aren't you glad, too, Internets?

Oh and by the way, she managed to do such an excellent job washing her Pop-pop's car that she also got asked to wash Aunt Shelley's car.

But everybody knows that this kind of awesome is a one-time deal.

I Feel The Earth Move

2011-08-24T13:20:00.000-04:00

So, you might have heard we had an earthquake yesterday. Everyone's fine and nothing's broken, as far as I can tell, and I got to check an item off my bucket list. It is probably not normal to have "experience an earthquake first-hand" on one's bucket list, but when have I ever been known to do anything "normal?" It's been awhile, as far as I can tell.

This is the last week of "summer camp" at Shae's school -- their regular curriculum starts Monday, including Spanish lessons, which are new this school year and which I am way more excited about than Shae is -- and it was supposed to be a Water Play Day, but it was postponed until the afternoon because it was cool in the morning, and then it got cancelled after the earthquake, and she was majorly bummed about it because it was supposed to be the last water day of the summer. So I took pity on her poor soul -- seriously, a depressed 4-year-old is the saddest thing ever -- and we stopped at the water park on the way home.

Before Shae would go under the sprinklers, though, she said she wanted to show me "something cool," and she proceeded to drag me all over the world until we got down to the creek, which she kind of wanted to swim in, except she was afraid of getting eaten by alligators. And since God knows what kinds of gross things live in that creek, I let her think that alligators were the reason why we couldn't go swimming there.

We spent almost an hour at the water park, longer than I expected to, but there was nobody else around, and she was having such a good time that I just couldn't resist. Perhaps my brain got knocked around in my skull during the quake, or maybe I was just feeling indulgent. Who knows? She had fun, that's what matters, and I think we managed to make up for missing wacky water play with her friends at school.

Although there is something sort of sad about being the only kid at the playground in the late afternoon when the sun is still up and the summer is waning. Not that she minded much -- she had the whole place to herself. If I had known there was going to be an earthquake, I would have packed my own suit and played around with her.

I would never have looked as cute with the Hello Kitty hooded towel on, though.

All photos taken with my iPhone using Retro Camera (also available for Android).

The Kids Are Alright

2011-08-23T13:09:00.000-04:00

The only time I ever feel guilty about only having one child is when everyone gets together and hilarity ensues. (I'm not really sure I could handle more than one, anyway.)

Look! It's a kindle of kitties! Er, kiddies. (Don't ask me what exactly is going on there, though. We were trying to get everyone to sit still and pose nice for a group picture, but ... well, have you met my child? She's the ringleader of this feral band of adorable moppets.)

Evidently they were practicing somersaults at some point. Or maybe training for their future careers as acrobats in the circus. Well, Shae would be an acrobat, and Joey would be a professional cleaner-upper-after, because he likes to clean. My kid just likes making a mess, and eating artificially-cheese-flavored salty snack foods.

See? I am not the only one who wants to eat the baby's face.

This is SO how we roll in my familial unit. Nothing ever makes sense, and I wouldn't want it any other way.

LOLKids

2011-08-22T15:00:00.000-04:00

I love funny pictures of cats, but funny pictures of kids are even better. Here is a preview of the sort of comedy and foolishness you can expect to see when we all go on vacation together.

Joey, wearing my mother's lanyard and keys around his neck, looking for all the world like a tiny little lifeguard.

My kid, in goggles, because that is how she rolls.

Joey, in goggles, doing his very best Michael Phelps impression.

Makayla, at 8 months, showing off how she has already mastered the "BISHPLZ" face.

I have no stinkin' idea what this face is, and I'm pretty sure I don't WANT to know, either.

A miniature Abercrombie model, or perhaps J. Crew. (I included this picture because it reminds me of this one from Easter 2010.)

Sand Traps

2011-08-19T14:52:00.000-04:00

Round-up of beach pictures.

I love - LOVE! - this picture, but am very disappointed that I cut off the top of Shae's head. Apparently I really committed to playing the part of my mother - a lot of the pictures from my youth are of partially headless people, and I seem to recall my mother often being on camera duty.

This was taken no more than 10 minutes into the day. Makayla got the idea of a day at the beach pretty quickly - loll around in the sand and shove stuff into your mouth. Usually it's frozen grapes or cheese curls, but I suppose sand toys work fine too. Lather, rinse, repeat, then take a nap.

Apparently two of the finer points of modern sand castle construction involve dumping water on ... I'm not sure what, exactly ... and getting yourself covered with a fine coating of sand that is invisible until your mother offloads the pictures. I'm not sure why. I am usually the beach-towel wrangler and don't get involved in land wars in Asia or manual labor.

Makayla is all, "I MUNNA EACHOO!" And I can't really blame her for thinking that this is an appropriate way to have a conversation with other humanoids, honestly, because every time I hold her I tell her I want to eat her face. Also: totally adorable baby is totally adorable.

This picture is just here because it is cool. (The handsome young man on the right is my cousin Greg. Shae wore his ass out, much like he and his brother used to wear my sisters' and my asses out when we took family trips to the beach when he was her age. The circle of life, n'at.)

"Okay, if I can't EACHOO!, then can I maybe just LEEKYOO! a little bit? Pretty please? Would you deny this face anything it demands? Really? You would? Hmm. Fine, then. I will just have a hysterically comical diaper explosion in the car on the way home, then. That'll teach you, bwahaHAHAHA!" (Funny how they learn the evil laugh so early, innit?)

An actual jellyfish, and not a whole bunch of gross salps this time! Whoo hoo! When we were kids, finding jellyfish corpses that washed up on the beach were like finding the Holy Grail, because you could torture your siblings with them, or cut them up into pieces to use as "crystal" decorations on your sand castles. (I usually went with Option A. And that's my sister's foot, not mine.)

This is my very favorite picture from the whole day - I love how in this picture you can see exactly how much my sister and her daughter look alike. The shape of their foreheads, eyes, noses, mouths, chin - all identical. And their eyes are EXACTLY the same color. And they are both SO HAPPY to be at the beach, just like Shae and I always are.

Good times, good times.

Beach Blanket Bingo

2011-08-18T15:26:00.000-04:00

Long before my grandfather passed, literally weeks prior, my sister and I made plans to go to the beach with the kids for a day while she was on vacation for a week. Our pre-scheduled day turned out to be the day before the funeral.

I don't know about you, but I think the only day better than any random nice day to go to the beach is the day before one of the worst days of your life. So we went through with our plans, got up super-early, left before first light, and spent the day chasing seagulls in the sand.

We also played in the surf for a really long time and learned that it is really hard to set up a beach umbrella plus a sun tent when there are no big dudes or engineers around, as there often are when we go to the beach (as my husband is a big dude, and he and my other sister are both engineers).

Thank goodness for my cousin Greg and his lovely girlfriend Taylor, who actually is an engineer-in-training, and who met us at the beach later in the morning. Taylor made quick work of the tent, and because we had additional "adult" supervision (more like "addled" supervision, as my high school French teacher might have said), I was able to sit in my chair and play the part of my mother, chain-smoking and reading my trashy romance novel while the kids ate fistfuls of sand and built "sand castles" by basically dumping water on themselves. (I don't know either; my husband is the engineer, remember?)

What -- you don't take a big bathtub-sized plastic bucket with you to the beach, too, so the kids can sit there and look at it? My kid wouldn't use it for anything because she didn't want to "get it dirty." (It's from the dollar store or some such -- it has already suffered worse indignities, no doubt.)

But, as we always do, we had a great time, and now I am really, really stoked for vacation, in just 16 more days. (WHOO!) Maybe exponentially so more, now that I know there is a White Castle nearby. (Half an hour or so, BUT STILL. White Castle. COME ON. Large quantities of tiny cheeseburgers RULE.)

(Also: more pics tomorrow, including some of my niece, who remains the most adorable niece in the whole wide world and just gets cuter all the time.)

Wordless Wednesday: a blue true dream of sky

2011-08-17T09:55:00.000-04:00

Bonus Link

Musikfest

2011-08-16T12:50:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday night last week, my sister and her husband and I took the kids to Musikfest, a local festival that is as much about arts and crafts and food and getting the hell out of the house into the fresh air once in a while, for the love of all that is sweet and buttery, as much as it is about music. It's been going on since 1984, and I always have a great time, although I admit I don't get to go as often as I'd like, because it gets bigger every year, and that means it gets more crowded, and I kind of hate people.

But I do like foods on sticks, and I love it when food on sticks makes my kid make funny Popeye faces that are so adorable that I have to post the picture twice, and more than even that, I love a good polka, and more than even THAT, I love it when my kid starts dancing in the middle of the path because she hears polka music. I can't help it -- my father's side of the family is part Slovak, and we KNOW how to polka. My grandmother polkaed at my wedding. It was amazing.

But mostly it was nice to get out for a little, to check everything out, like the stand in one of the platzes that sold really adorable purses out of candy wrappers (I KNOW!), to see new faces, to try something different, like the Kenyan food that I had for dinner -- some kind of chicken masala wrap that was terribly messy but pretty much divine. I will be talking about that sandwich for WEEKS.

Got to spend some time with two of the three cutest moppets in the world.

And I tried some fancy new tricks with my camera, which maybe didn't work out the way I had hoped, but which are still kind of interesting. (Don't ask me what I did, though, because I can't remember. The important part is: Shae had fun.)

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da

2011-08-15T13:56:00.000-04:00

Now that all that other sad stuff is over with -- well, all over but the random crying jags and the self-medication with the occasional caramel-dipped shortbread cookie that actually tastes more like butterscotch, if you want to be completely honest, not that I am complaining, because I really think there ought to be more butterscotch-based cuisine in the world -- it's time to get back to our regularly-scheduled recounting of events that happened to my kid way the hell back more than a week ago, which is practically a lifetime in preschooler years. I mean, she probably doesn't even remember this stuff any more -- which is of course precisely why I take 958 squidillionty pictures of everything that happens ever day forever and ever, amen.

So Shae's friend from school had a birthday party, and there was a sprinkler with a spinning head that you could jump over, and it was pretty much determined to be The Greatest Thing Ever for like ten minutes until someone got the brilliant idea to start throwing water balloons at each other's heads.

That went as well as could be expected. Nobody lost an eye, thankfully, primarily because small children do not have (1) especially strong throwing arms or (2) particularly good aim, both of which significantly improved the odds in favor of not having to call the paramedics to remove little rubber bits from tiny eyeballs.

Oh, and there were also frozen Dora bars that I think were made of sherbet or something, with gumball eyes. They were kind of gross and messy and of course they were a huge hit with the kids. Although Shae was disappointed because the boys got Spider-Man pops, which were equally disgusting, with the added bonus of being bright blue and red and shaped like a superhero instead of "some dumb girl." It's like she's not even my child or something -- oh, wait.

Looks like someone is proud of her gift-wrapping skills. It IS my very favorite part of Christmas, after all, and it's fair to say that WE NEED A LITTLE CHRISTMAS, RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE, every day all the time all year 'round.

And, yes, there was cake. This particular cake was very pretty and I really love the flower work here. This cake was almost too pretty to eat.

But only almost.

Pictures of Pickles

2011-08-12T10:03:00.000-04:00

My grandfather's funeral is today, and I just can't even, so here are some pictures of my kid eating a pickle on a stick from when we went to Musikfest the other night.

You try and have a good weekend. I'll be drinking myself blind. See you on the flip side, hopefully.

(PS: This is not denial. This is strictly avoidance. I know the difference. I just wish I didn't have to.)

Worth A Thousand Words

2011-08-09T14:03:00.000-04:00

I have a million memories of my grandfather. He's the person who taught me how to read a stock prospectus and a racing form. He bankrolled my first trip to an Atlantic City casino, although I doubt he was aware of it at the time. He and my grandmother used to take me out to dinner at the Palmer Dairy Bar when it was still around. He was with me the first time I remember eating fried clams, and I think it's because he liked soft-boiled eggs and strawberry shortcake and rice pudding and peaches in cream -- actual peaches, sliced up in a bowl, with actual cream poured on top -- because he liked these things, I used to eat them when I visited my grandparents as a kid, and they still take me back to my youth when I eat them today.

What I don't have are many pictures of me and my grandfather together.

I think that having a digital camera throws into stark relief how really different his generation and mine are. Were. Whatever. To me, it is no big deal to take 300 pictures in a single afternoon, but back in the day, when everything was on actual film and developing cost money that we didn't always have, pictures seemed like more of a luxury. There are pictures of us together somewhere, no doubt, probably in my mother's attic and closets somewhere, but it took me hours of the last few days to find only a fraction of the quantity of photos of the two of us that I was able to find of him and my daughter together in only a few minutes.

And the weird part is: most of the pictures that I can actually find are things I don't really remember.

Maybe the best picture I can find of us is a picture of him dancing with me at a wedding. I can provide context -- it was the wedding of a good friend of the family, the sister of one of my aunt's ex-boyfriends who also happened to live up the street from me until I was 11 years old, and I was one of the bridesmaids, and I can't remember the exact year, but you can tell from my hairdo that was most definitely during the Bon Jovi era, probably right before I starting dying my hair with Kool-Aid and listening to The Cure, and the happy couple twirled around the dance floor for the first time as man and wife to "I'll Always Love You" by Taylor Dayne, and afterwards I repurposed that pink dress, shortened the hem to tea-length and then wore it when I went to the "Prince & Princess" dance in 9th grade with my first really big heartbreaking crush who ended up spending the evening trying to get one of my classmates-slash-arch-nemeses to make out with him in the corridor by the lockers, so I guess the wedding must have been in 1988 or early 1989, when I was 13 or 14 -- but I cannot remember one thing about being in that wedding, except that there were like eleventeen people in the bridal party and my sisters were junior bridesmaids and the reception was at the Elks Lodge and the bride and groom are now divorced for about 10 years.

For sure, I don't remember this moment when I danced with my grandfather, when we were both smiling and happy and clearly having a good time, and more than anything in this world right now, I wish I could.

There are pictures on my hard drive of my grandfather dancing with one of my sisters at my wedding, and with my other sister at her own wedding, and I swear that I can close my eyes and remember every single thing about those times, even though I am not even 100% positive that I was even actually there when the pictures were taken -- I can hear the music and tinkling flatware and smell the food and wafts of perfume and feel the love and laughter in the reception halls, but I just cannot remember ever dancing with my grandfather like this, standing close and letting him hold me, just being near him.

And I would give anything, absolutely anything, if I could.

Already I have forgotten how handsome my grandfather once was, so tan from being outside all summer long, tending his gladioluses and strawberries, skimming and vacuuming the pool, playing cards and having the occasional beer, drinking ice water from my great-grandmother's tin tumblers and eating tomatoes fresh off the vine like they were apples. Almost a mythic creature, a well-aged classical hero with his shimmering silver hair and his strikingly blue eyes and the birthmark on his temple shaped like a heart. He spent most of his last two years in that damned chair in his living room, watching baseball or Notre Dame football or cable news, his health and his strength and his color slowly waning, leaching out of him into the ether somewhere. He was not himself at the end, not the Poppy that I will always see when I close my eyes and think about summertime and slot machines and strawberry shortcake.

Dear God, I miss him so, and I will lay awake nights for the rest of my life trying to remember all those moments that have not been captured in pictures.

Five Stages

2011-08-08T11:13:00.000-04:00

First: thanks to everyone for all your kind words, tweets, and comments over the last few days. I can't tell you how much you all mean to me. And I am not being sarcastic or anything right now -- I am honest-to-God serious. Thanks for being nice people.

=====

I'm still processing my feelings about my grandfather's death, so this post will be all over the place. Probably I should apologize, but I won't. I'm not sorry about it -- I'm not really anything. I was hoping to have something deeply profound to say by now, but I'm a 20-year veteran of different kinds of therapy, so I know that all this stuff happens in its own time and whatever. I am also intimately familiar with the Kübler-Ross model and can report that I've skipped over denial and have gotten to acceptance already, but I seem to be having trouble with the stages in between -- for whatever reasons, I keep rapidly cycling through anger and bargaining with longer stops on depression.

This is perfectly normal, of course, and I am aware of what's happening and can sort of let everybody know what's going on, but I am finding myself in some trouble during those periods of depression: namely, I am running out of Oreos and dill pickle potato chips and Klondike bars. Fortunately the new Costco up the road opens up at the end of the week, just in time for the funeral, so I can stock up on comfort foods.

What is surprising me most, I think, are those swings back to anger. There are very specific reasons why I feel angry right now, reasons that I won't go into right now (or maybe ever) because my family does not deserve to have hurt feelings right now to go along with their broken hearts, and also because I know, logically, that my anger is selfish and potentially self-damaging. Anger usually is, of course; it is also, in this particular case, at least, pointless and fruitless. I just need to keep reminding myself what the best therapist I ever had told me a long time ago: anger comes from pain. Pain, when left unchecked and untreated, becomes anger. I know I need to let it go. But that's always the tricky part, isn't it?

So for now I am doing what we all are right now, which is holding it together the best that I can. My grandfather's passing was not unexpected, but what has surprised me is how unprepared I was for it, even though I thought I was ready. I made my peace some time ago with the fact that each visit with him might be the last, and yet I still feel blindsided by the one that actually was. For the last few months there has been a general sense of foreboding, that we all knew the end was near, but I almost feel that in the deepest lizard parts of my brain I was half expecting him to outlive us all, somehow. It was a ridiculous notion, but hope that you didn't know you had manifests itself in strange ways and in stranger places and at the strangest times.

=====

My daughter, surprisingly or not, has been my greatest source of comfort in the past few days. She is only four, so her relationship with her great-grandfather has been short-lived and not as fraught with personal baggage as my relationship with her great-grandfather was. He was her Poppy Mousie, and he was almost always in that chair, and he gave her candy even when Mommy said no, and snuck her tastes of birthday cake frosting even before we had the candles in, and watched horse races and baseball games with her. He loved her, and she loved him, and there is nothing else that needs to be said about that relationship because that's all there was to it. An old man and a little girl who loved each other.

We told her that Poppy Mousie died and we asked her if she knows what that means. At first she said, "He is up in the clouds and now Owen will take care of him." Later, she added, "It just means we aren't going to see him any more, but he'll still be there."

She's so smart, that one. Just like her great-grandfather.

=====

When I got the news very late Thursday night or very early Friday morning, I'm not sure which, I rolled over in bed and pretended to go back to sleep. I went numb for a while, and I didn't want my husband to worry more than I know he already does. He is worried about me but he doesn't want to ask how I am feeling, not because he doesn't want to know, but because after 17 years together he knows well enough that there is little he will be able to do. I laugh and cry and rant and scream in public, my heart bleeding on my sleeve, but most of the actual work of coping is done privately, inside my own head and my own heart, and nobody can really make me better but me. He can help, be a strong shoulder to cry on and an open ear for listening, but he cannot fix me. I married him in part because I know that he knows this.

What I didn't tell him was that I was actually awake, lying there in the dark, listening to him breathing next to me and my daughter snoring in the next room and the air conditioner running in the window, and I was trying to remember: what were the last words that I had with my grandfather? I can't remember the last thing he said to me. But I very distinctly recall what I said to him the last time I saw him, two Saturdays ago, just five days before he passed away. He was asleep in his chair.

"I don't want to kiss you goodbye, because you're sleeping now and you look so tired, but I love you."

I can live with that.

=====

"I think: He and I have been talking ever since I learned how. A million words. All of them final, now. I don't need to make him give me any more, like souvenirs. I think: Let me not define his death on my terms." -- Dave Barry

Goodbye

2011-08-05T09:02:00.002-04:00

Bye, Pop.

That's all I have for now. Sorry.

A Day (Plus A Week) Late

2011-08-04T13:23:00.001-04:00

Last Wednesday, July 27th, was my brother-in-law's birthday. No, the other brother-in-law. I was supposed to get a cake for him the weekend before last, because I wanted to be able to post pictures on his actual birthday, but if you've been having the same kind of crazy-ass summer that I've been having, then you'll understand why it seems like absolutely diddly-squat is getting done on time.

But we did get a cake for him last weekend, and I was planning to put up pictures yesterday in honor of the first week-a-versary of his 29th birthday (I think he said he is 29; I don't even remember any more because I am having a pretty awful case of old-lady-brain lately, and I'm lucky I can even remember which kid is mine at the preschool most of the time), but see above paragraph re: the special insanity that is my life, and be glad that I remembered to put up pictures in the same calendar year.

And also be glad that we managed to avoid burning down my grandparents' house, because it was windy that day, and yet we insisted on having candles, and do you have any idea how flammable most of the small-child-related crap my sisters and I have to lug around all the time is? Thank God the pool was right there, in case we needed to put out any frosting and/or hair fires.

Why, yes, of course I took pictures of my kid eating the cake. What are you, new?

Everybody got into the cake-eating action, even the baby, and even though I believe birthday cake is technically verboten for babies before their first birthday, I personally endorse letting kids have at least a taste of cake every once in a while, because otherwise how do you know if they're going to like it? How am I supposed to form a loving, lasting relationship with someone who does not adore baked goods as I do, I ask you?

Oh, wait: that whole child-of-my-sister thing. Whatever, pedant.

Makayla had frosting put on her nose for pictures - I did that, even though I not-so-secretly actually want to pose her with a Marlboro and a Zippo and recreate the bestest picture in all the history of the lands and the seas and the Internets - and so of course SOMEBODY ELSE needed to do the same thing. Shae is generally very good with other kids, especially with my niece and nephew (she calls them her "sister-cousin" and her "brother-cousin," respectively, which is just so many kinds of adorable that there aren't even words, even though if you think about it long enough you start pondering "sister-wives" and then things go down a rabbit hole from which there might possibly be no escape save from going outside or something, getting some fresh air for a little while, not that I encourage that sort of behavior, because it's just entirely too wholesome), but even though she usually flatly refuses to look at the camera when I am trying to take pictures of her, if she notices that I am pointing the camera at anyone else, she tends to become a bit of a show-off, as older siblings and cousins are wont to do. (I myself was guilty of this from 1977 through approximately 1990, inclusive.)

And of course when I end up getting a picture like this one out of it, I can't exactly start discouraging that sort of behavior, now can I?, or else ... well, I will no longer get pictures like this one. Which would be a damned shame, because this is one of the best pictures of her that I've taken all summer. I am particularly fond of the lighting here, and the way her hair just is.

Anyway ... happy birthday to my brother-in-law, a week and day after your birthday. Better late than never, though, right? (And hey: I remembered that orange is one of your favorite colors and picked out this cake instead of the one with pink balloons, so I think I ended up doing alright. If you disagree, be polite and lie about it, okay?)

Obsolescence

2011-08-02T20:01:00.000-04:00

So now this is happening.

Now she's wearing her goggles and diving for rocks and it's only a matter of time before she heads off to Australia to go snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef and she'll meet a hot blonde surfer-lifeguard-diveguide who plays beach volleyball and who has a motorcycle and tattoos and piercings in weird places and she isn't going to need me any more.

Le sigh.

Head Over Heels

2011-08-01T14:12:00.000-04:00

Because teaching herself how to swim without any sort of PFD's in one summer was not challenge enough, Shae has set her sights on something new: learning how to do a backflip off the swimout at my grandparents' pool.

I mean, you can't really tell that they're backflips, not even when you're in the pool with her, but she does manage to at least get herself wholly upside-down, anyway, which is something. You can see her feet sticking up out of the water in the last picture there.

She's also working on front flips, which she is not quite as good at yet, but we're getting there. Again, she can at least get herself upside down, and then she sort of twists and ... well, it's interesting to watch, anyway. I'm afraid she's going to skip swim team all together and go straight for diving.

Let Them Eat Those Little Whaddaya-Call-'Em Italian Cookies

2011-07-29T12:59:00.001-04:00

It's Friday, y'all! Whoo hoo! Let's wrap this week up and then commence with the heavy drinking, shall we? It's what all the cool kids are doing.

Do they still have those alligator wrestlers in Florida? The Seminole ones? I wonder if they ever recruit from out of state, because I think we may have a live one here. Assuming that Seminole alligator wrestlers ever wrestle polyvinyl pool toys, of course. Everybody's got to start somewhere, don't they?

Caption this. No, I mean it: caption this. Because I got nothin'. I'm pretty sure that's some kind of preschool primal-growl-roar-scream thing going on, maybe even a barbaric yawp, but from the right angle ("right" being "correct" or "proper" here, and not the geometric 90°) it looks like it could also possibly be a yawn. Maybe. If you've been drinking enough (or maybe if you have not been drinking enough).

Oh hey, how did this little bit of delightfully delectable deliciousness get in there? Om nom NOM! Look at those CHEEKS! Look at those ARMS! Look at those ADORABLE LITTLE TEEFERS! Also: she has my mother's eyes, and the same missing upper lip that the rest of the women in my family have. This one is definitely related.

As promised (and expected, at this point, because there ALWAYS has to be a picture of my kid eating something on this blog every week or else I feel like a complete and utter failure as a human being): those little whaadya-call-'em Italian cookies. They probably have a fawncey-sounding name that ends in "i" or "o" or possibly "ei" or "ie." Cookie, maybe.

BONUS! Juice box hero. Have a great weekend.

Rah-Rah-Sis-Boom-Bah

2011-07-28T14:04:00.000-04:00

For two years when I was in junior high -- 7th and 8th grades, maybe, or possibly 8th and 9th grades -- I was a cheerleader. There are probably incriminating photos somewhere, but I won't admit to having any in my personal possession. At any rate, when I was cheering, it wasn't a sport like it is now, with all the aerial acrobatics and dance routines and international competitions on ESPN; I was just your garden-variety cheerleader on the sidelines at a Pop Warner game on a Sunday, with the pom-poms and the megaphone and the pleated skirt and the saddle shoes. Boy, could I rock a pair of saddle shoes (and I still do, occasionally, when the spirit moves me).

I wasn't particularly gymnastically inclined: I could do one- and two-handed cartwheels and round offs, back bends, a small variety of basic jumps, and splits in both directions, but my repertoire was decidedly limited compared to what some of the other girls on the squad could do. My primary skill-set included crisp arm moves, excellent spirit fingers, the ability to project my voice without actually shouting due to years of choral training -- and, since I was a swimmer and therefore one of the "studier" girls on the team, I was always, without fail, one of the spotters for any stunts or, more likely, one of the corners of any mounts that we would do for our halftime routines.

My kid, the Flying Wallenda? If she becomes a cheerleader, she's going to be that girl at the top of every pyramid, the one who does double back flips and otherwise spins through the air like a top while she twirls over the 50-yard line, 20 feet in the air, with sparklers in each hand and possibly another one between her teeth.

And it's going to be AWESOME.

Wordless Wednesday: Jump

2011-07-27T13:39:00.000-04:00

Bonus Link

I Spy With My Little Eye

2011-07-26T12:53:00.000-04:00

Despite all evidence to the contrary, we don't spend the entire weekend in the pool. Most of it, yes -- the vast majority, even -- but sometimes we do find alternative ways to amuse ourselves. Even in the 100°F-plus heat.

Someone got Shae a pair of these Sunny Patch binoculars for her birthday (there is also a boys' version). I don't know why we haven't gotten them out already, or how she even found them in the 80 bajillion metric tons of toys in our living room -- don't ask, you don't want to know -- but apparently she's been learning about binoculars while she's been on "safari" at school or something, because she knew exactly what to do with them.

She headed up into the cornfields behind my grandparents' house and tried to see what sorts of trouble she could get herself into. She didn't see much, but she enjoyed being allowed to run wild in the high grass and the soybean rows. At least, I think they're soybeans -- I'm honestly not sure. Maybe it's alfalfa? I know it's not corn this year (that, I can identify), and I'm pretty sure the farmer practices nitrogen-fixing crop rotation. Anyway, she didn't see much back there except dried corn husks from previous summers, but I came literally face-to-face with several locusts. Make a note: it really HURTS when a locust flies into your face repeatedly.

She also smelled my grandparents' butterfly bush ("it doesn't smell like anything"), which really puts mine to shame. Theirs isn't as tall as mine -- the one in our yard is about 12 feet high, no joke -- but it's much bushier, and it has tons of purple flowers. I love my butterfly bush, but it am partial to the purple-flowered ones, and I especially love the rainbow ones, which I have never actually seen in the wild, but they always look so pretty in the nursery catalogs.

Off The Deep End

2011-07-25T12:53:00.000-04:00

Still trying to figure out how to make movies. Well, not make them, exactly -- that's basically "point and shoot and let iMovie sort it out" -- but, you know. I can't always edit my clips to be the right length to go with music I have in iTunes because (1) I don't always get much footage because (2) I am trying to keep my kid from accidentally or intentionally setting things on fire and also (3) if I did that, some members of the peanut gallery might complain when, say, birthday movies are over five minutes long.

Also: sometimes when I am filming, I am doing something "not typical," such as treading water in the deep end of the pool where it is 8½ feet deep while my kid repeatedly, constantly jumps directly at my face for like 5 minutes and I am trying to keep both her and myownself from drowning. Plus, my grandparents' pool has this vacuum that makes these sort of weird helicopter-esque noises that always get picked up by the camera and makes it sound like I have secretly replaced the actual soundtrack with something from The Terminator.

All of this is to say that I have replaced the original backing track from this film with generic "swimming pool" noises that came with the editing software. Nobody needs to hear the Vacuum-Copter, or me trying to direct my kid while she is happily diving into the deep end, sans floaties, showing off for her mama, who is ever so proud of her because COME ON. Apple, tree, falling, etc.

I don't think I will ever get tired of watching this kid being eleventy kinds of awesome. EVER.

Challenge: An Exercise in Self-Acceptance

2011-07-21T18:38:00.000-04:00

Shae has been saying things lately that upset me: "I wish I had long blonde hair like Rapunzel." "I wish I were beautiful like Belle." "I wish I could sing like Ariel." "My feet are too big." "I don't want to get old and mean and ugly." "I wish I were perfect like ..."

She has no idea how perfect she already is.

As a feminist, but mostly as a human being who has a working brain, I have an intense dislike for princess culture. We watch Disney movies in our house, because I love the music and the art, but I do worry about the examples that your typical princess movies are setting for my daughter. I don't like the way that physical beauty and passivity are prized characteristics in those women. I understand that they are products of another time, but I don't understand why Snow White and Cinderella are such paragons of feminine virtue.

The world needs more princesses like Leia, is what I am saying.

So to set a good example for her, to encourage her to love all the things about herself that I so admire -- her spunk, her smarts, her take-no-nonsense attitude. And to be a good role model, I need to take ownership of my attitude about myself. Be the change I want to see, and all that. I am following the lead of my online friend and back-haver-in-a-parking-lot-slap-fight, Chibi Jeebs, and accepting this challenge.

Part One: "Think about how your best friend would compliment your best features. I want you to think of five great things about your body. FIVE. And no Christmas-tree ornaments/negative riders on this. Five 100% HONEST, POSITIVE things you love about yourself."

1. I have big, bright, clear, pretty blue eyes that look good in glasses.
2. My hair is healthy and shiny, and I love the color (people pay good money for this color).
3. I love the way I tan gradually, the freckles slowly expanding into one another, like a chocolate chip cookie.
4. My bosoms: They're real, and they're spectacular.
5. I love my laugh lines, because I have earned every one of them.

Part One-A: Extra credit. Five non-physical traits that I love about myself.

1. I am one of the smartest people I know.
2. I am a good singer, and even if I am not, I still love singing and do it every chance I get.
3. I am funny -- I make others laugh, but I crack myself up regularly.
4. I will fight to the death anyone who gets in the way of my family/friends and their happiness.
5. I take commitments seriously, and nobody can make me feel worse about breaking a promise than I make myself feel.

Part Two: "I want you to pick 5 NON PHYSICAL things you can change about yourself (like, read 1 more chapter of a book per day, or take an extra 10 minutes in the shower) to feel better about yourself."

1. Get pedicures regularly. My daughter doesn't want to have "old feet" -- i.e., cracked dry heels and trashy polish -- and neither do I. I resolve to start budgeting $10 from every paycheck so I can get a spa pedicure once every 2 months.
2. Drink more water. I've been trying to drink lots of water, but I don't really like it when it's "plain," so I don't drink as much as I should. I'm going to try to remember to buy limes or lemons or oranges -- maybe even cucumbers -- to cut up and put in my water. I might even buy myself a pretty, fancy glass.
3. Go to bed earlier. I don't need enough sleep, and I am grumpy and irritable and I don't like it. I need to set a firm bedtime and stick to it. Period.
4. Relax. Take a few minutes a few times a day -- a few minutes every hour, if I need to -- to take deep breaths, stretch, stop thinking about whatever and unwind. I am very tightly coiled, generally speaking, and I need to stop that.
5. Make a to-do list, and stick to it. Determine what I need to do, adjust as necessary, and weed out the stuff that can be delegated or rescheduled. (Focusing my energy and efforts better will also help me relax.)

So, who else is in?

Up Up And Away

2011-07-20T13:20:00.000-04:00

Not sure if I mentioned it or not, but I got a new computer for my birthday (an iMac) and I haven't yet figured out how to make good movies yet -- well, not that I ever did, really, but I had finally managed to learn how to work Windows Movie Maker just before we got the Flip camera, and that came with its own Magic Movie software (see example movie here) which doesn't run on the Mac, either because of Operator Malfunction or because it just doesn't, and while I think that iMovie is pretty easy to figure out eventually, I still haven't mastered it yet.

SO. ANYWAY.

Here is a movie of my kid doing her favorite thing in the world right this second -- or perhaps it is more precise to say, she is having her favorite thing in the world right this second being done to her. (That sounds potentially questionable, but it isn't, I swear.)

(Sometimes music seems like a weird choice, but it just somehow fits, you know? Timing of splashes is totally coincidental, because as I might have mentioned, I haven't figured out how to make proper edits yet.)

See You Later Alligator

2011-07-19T13:30:00.001-04:00

Return of the Great Polyvinyl Alligator (who never, technically, went away, but it's been awhile since he was featured as a Special Guest Star on the ol' blog-a-vision).

Now, I will be the first person to tell you that THE ABSOLUTE LAST THING that Shae needs is a Partner in Crime, but you know what? My extended family is a more-than-moderate amount of awesome, so as is generally the case, I don't mind. The other adorable moppet in this photo is my (second) cousin AJ's kid, Akira, who is ALSO known as AJ, which certainly makes things interesting at family gatherings. Akira is "Hanna Banana"'s big brother.

I am pretty sure that my kid wore this bathing suit the last time Mr. Gator made an appearance. I am also pretty sure that this swimsuit was more of a two-piece and less of an actual bikini last time. +1 for skinny kids not growing out of their suits too fast, but a big -1 for little girls who grow up all long and leggy like dahlias. (Which is a net zero, I suppose, although her father might argue otherwise, even though he is also coming to terms with the Overwhelming Bikini-ness of Modern Times, but he and I both draw the line at padded bikini tops for our preschooler, because down that path lies Crazytown.)

I believe we are now getting to the point in the summer where I hope ever-so-wistfully that it never ends, because nothing pleases me more than offloading 200-plus pictures from my camera every weekend, and they're all filled with miles and miles of my daughter's dazzling white smiles.

Let Them Eat ... Watermelon

2011-07-15T13:51:00.001-04:00

We didn't eat any cake or cupcakes this week because I am an absolutely terrible parent, but hopefully these photos of my kid eating some particularly juicy watermelon will satisfy your craving for the pictures of my kid eating stuff that have unexpectedly and inexplicably become the trademark of this here blog-a-roonie.

Like her mama, she gnaws off every teeny bit of pink that she can find on the rind. Can't waste one little taste of that delicious, delicious melon. It's kind of inspiring.

She's not really offering to share, you know. She's just showing you how she chews right down to the white part, like I taught her. She's no dummy -- the best part is the sweet stuff right next to the bitter rind. I'm so proud of her.

You're welcome. Have a nice weekend, you guys!