Same Old Shannon

There's a Hole in the Blogosphere Tonight

2012-02-08T13:43:00.000-06:00

There's a hole in the world tonight.
There's a cloud of fear and sorrow.
There's a hole in the world tonight.
Don't let there be a hole in the world tomorrow.
--The Eagles, "Hole in the World"

The blogosphere lost a very special presence Monday when Susan Niebur, author of the blog Toddler Planet, ended her five-year battle with cancer.

People battling cancer are always described as brave or courageous, and rightfully so. But with Susan ... I don't know, it's like those words don't do her bravery and courage justice. It's like you would need to invent a whole new word to describe this woman's character during her fight.

This in spite of the fact that she seemed to have been dealt a pretty rotten deck. Months after her second child was born, in the prime of her life and career, Susan was diagnosed with Inflammatory Breast Cancer, a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer that presents without a lump.

The grueling and often barbaric cancer treatments followed, and then Susan was unbelievably diagnosed with another, unrelated, cancer. In all, she survived four cancers and, eventually, a full-body metastasis of the cancers. And still, in spite of it all, every single blog post she wrote remained full of hope. Everything was "for now" or "temporary." Yet somehow her blog posts were tinged with realism, an admission that she did let her mind veer over to the dark side now and then.

Bravery, optimism, realism, honesty, courage, and kindness ... all of these things made up the full package that was Susan, and earned her a legion of devoted online followers.

I was one of those followers, checking in on Susan's status since she was diagnosed 5 years ago. I never knew her personally; the closest I came was spotting her from afar at BlogHer Chicago in 2010.

But yet she touched my life. Not just through her own blog posts, but with the following comment on my most serious blog post, the one about my battle with depression:

Susan also tweeted a link to that post, putting me in touch with many other kindred spirits among her many followers.

And I just ... I couldn't believe that here was somebody going through trials that were thousands of times worse than my own, reaching out and supporting me. I don't think I could have been that selfless.

But that was Susan. And that was how Susan made a difference in so many people's lives, friends and strangers alike. She made a difference in so many ways: by raising awareness of her awful cancer, spurring research and donations, by helping us all understand that we must count the many blessings in our everyday lives, and by showing us what a truly awesome and upstanding human being looks like.

Everything we say when somebody dies seems empty and trite and also true. The reminder of our own mortality does make us appreciate today more. I do snuggle my boy extra close, forgive him a little more easily, because I know that's what Susan would want me to do.

All the while my heart breaks for two little boys who can no longer snuggle with their mother, for a grieving husband who has to raise those two boys on his own. It isn't fair. It doesn't make any sense. I know that about death, I really do, and yet I still want to believe I can find the why.

It sickens me to think that I hesitated to write this post today because I felt like it was too late. She died two days ago, and that's an eternity on the Internet. Except, the real world of life and death isn't like the Internet. Grief lasts far, far longer than the 24-hour news cycle.

And I also want Susan's legacy to last far, far longer.

Because the reality is, there will still be a hole in the world tomorrow. But there will also be the memory of a woman who not only did a tremendous amount to further the cause of cancer research, but also who stood as a reminder to all of us that there was once a woman who walked this earth who set such a great example that we should all strive to be like her in our own lives.

Rest in peace seems like too trite a conclusion here. So I will just say Thank you, Susan.

Some Thoughts on Food, Stuff, and Self-Gratification

2012-02-06T20:17:00.000-06:00

Are you master of your domain?

This post is 100% G-rated, I promise. I'm really talking about ways to reward oneself, and, I swear, it never veers into that topic. I just couldn't resist that intriguing title and the Seinfeld tie-in.

So, as you know, all this year I've been talking about The Year of Less Consumption. I don't feel comfortable with my tendency to just buy and buy stuff, when I have a house full of stuff already.

Except, this week I ran up against and obstacle in The Year of Less Consumption. Specifically, I questioned whether it was better to reward myself with new stuff, rather than with food.

See, last Monday, for approximately the 548th time, I recommitted to Weight Watchers. Back to the weigh-in booth, where I didn't lose any weight. Back to the meeting, where everybody else seems to have it better figured out than I do. Back to hearing everybody else's weight-loss celebrations, whereas I never get to have any celebrations of my own. I was trapped in a cycle of healthy behaviors at the beginning of the week, followed by unhealthy behaviors of far greater magnitude at the end of the week. Good-bad. Down-up. Back-forth.

And then the leader said something that really stuck with me. I don't know why I'd never heard the leader mention this before, but she talked about how the time that she really stuck with Weight Watchers, her third go-round, she just said, This is it, no more messing around, no more up and down and back and forth. And she put her nose to the grindstone and lost 70 pounds in 6 months. (I should also note that she looks very thin now, so it's not like it's one of those cases where somebody goes from like 500 pounds to 430, which is good and all, but not that helpful for the rest of us.)

I don't know why that story stuck with me, but I thought, I want to be like that. It's time to be like that.

I'm not positive I can be as disciplined as the leader was. She mentioned that she never went anywhere without a container of lettuce, and that she brought her own food to every holiday and gathering. That seems a little extreme.

But I do know that if I want to get serious, I need to do whatever I can to avoid overeating. And sometimes there will be Food vs. Willpower situations that aren't going to be pretty.

Last Wednesday night was one of those situations. I don't know why, but Wednesday is always the day when the dieting starts to unravel for me.

And, predictably, Wednesday night the little voices in my head were talking about what kind of food I would binge on after Nathan went to bed.

But damn if I was gonna let food win that night. So instead I drowned out those voices with thoughts of fun stuff I could buy online.

It worked. I didn't binge. I didn't end up buying anything either, because quite honestly I was too weak from hunger to fire up my laptop.

Then Thursday, there was another standoff in my head between Food and Dieting, and another incident where Stuff came in as the impartial mediator. That time I decided to go shopping on Friday at some actual stores.

First I went to an estate sale, which made me feel all good and Year of Less Consumption-y.

And then I didn't even buy everything I wanted from the estate sale. I just took pictures of stuff I liked. For example, they had this old-school textbook from 1879, back when you only had one textbook for every subject. Being sort of employed in the textbook industry, I was intrigued by it:

Also it seems like one of those old books where you open it up and discover a spell that leads you to an understanding of your family's true identity.

Oh and I took a picture of this cat painting, because I sort of liked it, but not enough to shell out $2 to own it:

But enough photography, it was time to start acquiring material possessions! Second-hand, of course. Of course.

This estate sale had a lot of cool antiques, and glassware, and antique glassware. I bought 5 old bottles and arranged flowers in them:

Illustrating that you always learn something new from an estate sale, I learned that Chicago was once home to a lot of bottle-making plants. The bottles were probably shipped up to nearby Milwaukee breweries, where Laverne and Shirley could put their gloves on them and then wave at them.

I bought two neat-o blue Mason jars, because the blogs and Pinterest are always using Mason jars for stuff. Nathan used one jar to mix a potion that included my morning coffee, and I arranged flowers in the other one, alongside this other random blue container I got:

Oh, and I got a milk bottle from an old dairy. And I don't mean to brag, but I got it for $5, and the exact same bottle was going for $7.75 on ebay. Such a steal!

On the right is my tulipiere, which I got last year from a quaint little glassware boutique called Amazon.com.

The whole lot of them:

Look how fun and spring-y!

I also got this random turquoise-colored metal bucket, which I don't know what I'm going to use for, so right now it's Pooh's bathtub:

So far, I hadn't done any real damage in the stuff-acquisition department. I did make a rule that second-hand goods were preferred in The Year of Less Consumption, and even those flowers were mostly recycled from last week (except the tulips). Plus I love to arrange flowers, so I was giving myself an experience, which was also a Year of Less Consumption principle.

But then I went to JC Penney and bought $146 worth brand-new stuff just for the hell of it. I was just grabbing at things to buy in order to fuel my disturbing shopping high. Ooh, earrings! Oh, that necklace is so cute, I must have it! And I can always use another pink cardigan!

Later we went to Costco and I bought myself a purple cardigan.

So, Friday was mostly a big fat Year of Less Consumption FAIL.

Except, in the course of my shopping spree, the strangest thing happened: I lost my desire to reward myself with food. It's like all of my self-gratification needs were met by the shopping, so I no longer needed the high that came from eating.

My dieting resolve lasted until Sunday night, when I felt it weakening again. So, what did I do? I went and ordered a new pair of shoes and several new pens online!

Phew, gratified. Also poorer. But, the shopping-as-a-substitute-for-eating plan worked: I stayed On Plan the whole week, and I lost 5 whole pounds!

Except, I gotta slow down the shopping, or else I'm going to need to take out a small loan to get to my goal weight. For now, though, I think I need the instant gratification of material goods to replace the instant gratification of eating. I know a lot of people can delay gratification and promise themselves, say, a new pair of shoes for every 10 pounds lost, but right now I need something a little more immediate. Maybe as I start to lose, the weight loss will be motivation in and of itself, and/or maybe after awhile I'll want to stick with the diet just because I don't want to break my streak. In those cases, I won't need to shop all the time. But right now, I need to shop for stuff.

Which means I've solved one problem (rewarding myself with food), but created two new problems (consuming a lot of material goods, spending too much money). I know there are alternatives and solutions here. But I don't want to talk about solutions right now. Right now I just want to talk about the situation.

Well, I Wouldn't Have Predicted That

2012-02-02T16:52:00.000-06:00

I've always wanted to be one of those people who likes to exercise. You know, like those people who would actually choose to spend their free time doing something exercise-based?

Me, I can definitely see the point of exercise. Sometimes exercise is like taking Advil: You know you need to do it because your body feels bad, and doing it will make you feel better.

And sometimes I don't even exercise because I feel the physical need to; I exercise to erase the guilt of not exercising.

But, whatever the reason for exercise, I would never call exercise fun. I don't see exercise as something recreational, I see it as something that takes up my free time.

(Side note: This would mean I was completely lying when I made that magazine collage entitled "Exercise is Fun!" for my sixth-grade health class. Also, the first time I made it, I spelled Exercise wrong.)

Okay, bottom line: I don't really enjoy exercise. Even the more "fun" classes like Zumba feel like a chore to me.

Still, something is changing about my attitude toward exercise, much as I hate to admit it.

See, later this month I'm participating in my gym's annual indoor triathlon. I did it last year, and, despite the fact that it has the word triathlon in it, it's kind of not a big deal. You swim for 10 minutes, ride a stationary bike for 20 minutes, and then run/walk on a treadmill for 15 minutes. I think most people could probably survive 45 minutes on exercise equipment, so it's not really about the triumph of finishing like an outdoor triathlon.

So, I figured the only satisfaction would be in beating my performance from last year. I don't actually have any recollection of what my total distance was last year, but I was pretty lame and out of shape, so it can't be all that hard to do better this year. I signed up for the training class at the gym, which meets every Saturday morning for six weeks.

Let me say, I was pleasantly surprised by the instructor and my classmates. I expected a class of elite athletes, and an instructor who gives homework assignments like "run 5 miles every day, followed by a 10-mile bike ride." But the classmates are sort of in average shape, and the homework assignments are really short and do-able, and kind of the stuff I would have been doing at the gym anyway.

What is different, though, is that we're supposed to do a combo workout each time we go to the gym, something like bike-run, run-swim, etc. And it turns out, the endorphins are like 8 times better when you do a combination of exercises.

Now, well, it's not like I would say I like to exercise, but I am seeing a whole new benefit. I've always relied on exercise as a big part of my mental health maintenance, but I've never actually found that it makes me legitimately happy like it has been lately.

Will I become somebody who wants to exercise? Who knows?

And speaking of exercise, I want to take this opportunity to promote my friend Adele's new blog, Adele On Wheels. Like me, Adele is a reluctant exerciser, but she has made a commitment to fitness in 2012. Her blog is highly relatable, well-written, and always features an appearance from her cat. Check it out!

The Social Networks

2012-02-01T18:23:00.000-06:00

I have a very low tolerance level for clutter. I find my mood can be drastically improved by decluttering areas of my home. I don't even like virtual clutter, like too many icons on my computer desktop, old emails in my inbox, or too many unwatched programs on my DVR.

As a side note, one that isn't relevant to my point here, my husband has a different level of clutter tolerance. He believes a room is clean if you wipe down the horizontal surfaces and vacuum, even when there are still huge piles of stuff in that room. He absolutely doesn't understand my thing with the DVR ("it's not taking up any extra room in the house"). My solution, when it comes to our differing opinions on actual, physical clutter, is to define certain rooms of my home as my "circles of sanity," which are my most frequently-visited rooms, and to attempt to keep those rooms as clutter-free as possible. Bill can do whatever he wants with the non-circles-of-sanity rooms, like his office and the basement.

But I digress. My point here was that I was really intrigued the other day when I read something online (I forget where) about how to eliminate clutter from your life. Not only did this article validate my feelings on e-clutter, but it also mentioned that social media can clutter up your life.

And it's like, yes, YES, that is so true. That explains why I don't like Twitter, because to me Twitter is like the wadded-up Target receipt of social media. That is, you really don't need it. It's all ads and cryptic messages and general stuff I don't care about.

And let me say, I obviously have a pretty high tolerance for online oversharing, or I wouldn't write this blog, nor would I update my Facebook status (which I do a few times a week). I even do the occasional Foursquare check-in, so I'm not averse to frequent online updates.

But I do feel like social networking, even on sites I like such as Facebook, is insidiously creeping into our everyday lives too much now. It used to be that Facebook was a fun diversion that you could check a few times a day at work or while doing boring chores. Now we have Facebook on our phones, and we are checking in, sending photos, or updating statuses everywhere we go. We're getting emails or notifications (you know, the little red number next to the world in the top left-hand corner) all day long, and we have to stop what we're doing to put in the next word in this dialogue.

And yes, I know, you don't have to play the Facebook game. But, let's face it, at a certain point, you have to keep up. That's the way the world works.

Pinterest, on the other hand, is so new that it doesn't have little fingers poking into all aspects of your life. That's why I like Pinterest. It's there when you want to take a quick break to browse, but it's not on every device you own, urging you at all points in your life to give it some attention.

I'm sure that will change, though. People are talking about how to use Pinterest to promote your business, so it will soon become annoying and commercialized like Facebook and Twitter. And people are making more and more use of Facebook to share their pins, so ... insidious fingers.

Let me say one more thing about Facebook, specifically the Facebook "like" button. Please stop misusing this button, people.

The Facebook "like" button is only for situations where you might actually comment on somebody's status or photo with the phrase I like this or some equivalent sentiment. Examples of Facebook statuses where it's okay to use the "like" button:

I have lost 15 pounds!
I found my lost retainer!
I'm going to Hawaii!

Statuses like these are what the "like" button was invented for. It would be so pointlessly redundant for every single person to say the same "That's awesome!" or "Great job!" over and over again, so you just click "like."

I suppose you can also use the "like" button for statements you agree with (e.g. "Nice weather we're having!") or statements you find funny. But do not use the "like" button inappropriately in response to questions (liking "Who's going to see Titanic in 3-D?" does not answer the person's question), nor in response to any status that has a partially negative component ("My sister has cancer, but they caught it early").

In summary, please use social networking responsibly. And by "responsibly," I mean, "in a way I deem appropriate."

Year of Less Consumption: Report #2

2012-01-31T17:49:00.001-06:00

Slipping

It turns out that in the wintertime I crave two things: carbohydrates and unnecessary purchases. Nothing brightens a dull winter day like a trip to Target to pick up some miscellaneous items like clothing, accessories, or household decorations.

I gave into temptation the other day when Bill and I went to Target without Nathan. It seemed like a special occasion because we were alone, and I felt like buying something to commemorate the occasion. I can talk a big game about less consumption, but I still crave that high that comes from new acquisitions (and carbs).

That day I bought:

Some pajama bottoms: They are so fun and bright and winter-fighting! I swore I would not buy pajamas, since I'm getting by just fine with my old standard pants and free giveaway t-shirts, and it's not like anybody ever sees them, but it's just ... I just ... I get so sick of the usual pajama bottoms over and over and over again. It's not even like I change my general pajama wardrobe seasonally like I do with my daytime clothes (Nathan's term); I just wear the same pajamas year-round.
Two pairs of socks: Again, fun and bright! And my other socks were mostly getting thin and/or holey, so I guess it was okay to buy more. Each pair was on sale for $1.50, too.
Pens: They're PaperMate InkJoy, which promises to make writing "effortless." I imagine the Great American Novel will just pour out of me, now that writing is so effortless, and then I can easily justify the purchase of a $5 pack of pens. But seriously, I swore I wouldn't buy pens anymore. I have plenty of pens, both ones I paid for and ones I got free. But, as you know, I'm a bit picky about my pen choices, and all the ones I had were irritating to me. You can't be making grocery lists and conducting other important business with irritating pens, right?

A few days later, I gave into my shoe urge and bought myself some knock-off Toms at Payless. (They're the Airwalk kind that also gives a pair of shoes to a third-world country whenever you buy a pair.)

Then, while at the grocery store, I bought these flowers:

Aaand ... these flowers:

And it's not like I'm saying that any of this constitutes extravagance. It's just that I'm disturbed by this strong urge I have to still buy stuff. I truly didn't need any of the above-mentioned items. A real minimalist would have been able to find 6 other ways to use something she already had before buying new stuff.

I know, I know, these things take time.

Meanwhile, I'm going strong in the reusable department. I'm rocking the cloth napkins, and I'm getting more and more comfortable with dishtowels as a substitute for paper towels (in most situations). I have been saving the paper sleeves from Starbucks cups, and I saved the plastic sheaths that the flowers came in. Also, I am almost exclusively using cloth shopping bags, even at non-grocery stores, which I still find a tiny bit embarrassing. Leia says pish-posh:

The Kitchen Manager

2012-01-29T10:44:00.000-06:00

If I was kind of rich and could afford to hire one household helper, I think it would be a Kitchen Manager. I'm not sure if that's a real job, but I'd make it one.

I see a necessity for this position because I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time just managing the details of my kitchen. And I'm not suggesting that I'm super organized in there or anything. My spice rack isn't alphabetized, nor are my canned goods--the only thing in my kitchen that's alphabetized is the contact list in my cell phone. I don't routinely go in and purge expired foods. I think there are containers of baby food in my pantry that expired in 2008.

No, what I'm saying is that I find it incredibly time-consuming just to ensure that, at a very basic level, we all have food to eat, clean dishes on which to eat it, clean cookware in which to cook it, a clear horizontal surface on which to place it, and a vaguely sanitized eating environment.

Here is what I think would be in the Kitchen Manager's job description:

Basic Decluttering: Throw away/recycle random food, mail, containers, and garbage left on kitchen counter and/or table; Put toys, socks, coats, and any other non-kitchen items back where they belong
Grocery Procurement: Plan meals, make grocery lists, scour store ads, clip coupons, go to the grocery store, carry in groceries, put away groceries, throw out expired food items in fridge to make room for new groceries
Food preparation: Cut up fruits and vegetables and put in containers for easy access; Prepare all meals; Be on call for all food-related requests (e.g. snacks, drinks, random husband request for pie)
Dishwashing: Load all dishes in dishwasher; Hand-wash items that don't fit in dishwasher; Unload dishwasher; Keep counter/sink clear of dirty dishes
Administrative Help: Since the kitchen is the catch-all location for all important mail and paperwork, the Kitchen Manager needs to perform some light administrative assistant duties: File paperwork according to priority and bring it to the attention of the employer; Make a note of important dates on Google calendar; Put important papers up on fridge or bulletin board
Basic Everyday Maintenance: Take out trash; Wipe down all counters/table; Sweep 3x a week
Deep Cleaning: Once a week: Wash floor on hands and knees; Clean inside of microwave; Clean sink

Now, I fully acknowledge that as a stay-at-home mom, it would be unnecessary for me to hire household help. In this hypothetical, I imagine that if I were wealthy enough to hire a Kitchen Manager, I'd have come into money via some form of lucrative employment, which would take up enough time that it would necessitate outsourcing some household duties. Or else I would have won the lottery, in which case most of my time would be spent attempting to prevent my life from becoming a total train wreck, if the TV show The Lottery Changed My Life is at all accurate.

However, I will say, back in the confines of real, non-hypothetical life, that I am frustrated by how much time I spend just keeping my kitchen in a barely-decent state. Often I find that by the time I get through my daily kitchen work, I have run out of time/energy/motivation to do any other household chores. And a few times a week I find myself overwhelmed to a nearly debilitating level by how unfit my kitchen has become in just a matter of hours.

So, as soon as I come into money, I will be hiring a Kitchen Manager. Know anybody qualified?

Nathan Appreciation Week

2012-01-28T21:47:00.000-06:00

This is Nathan:

He is exactly 4 years and 11 months old, weighs 40 pounds, and is 45 inches tall.

And recently it occurred to me that this tiny little person is the human embodiment of the following major issues in my own life:

An all-consuming, unconditional love for him, which comes with the resulting all-consuming fear of any danger ever befalling him.
Coming into my life and changing everything, from big things like my career and relationships to little things like the type of restaurants I go to.
Expectations that he will always behave perfectly, demonstrate good manners, and perform well academically, because failure to do so would reflect poorly on me as a mother.
Pressures to feel him the right foods, not expose him to certain chemicals, and not poison him with too much screen-based media.
A constant questioning of my worth and abilities as a mother, and as a human being overall.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that these issues are ever overtly articulated in our household. It's not as though I say, "Good morning Nathan, what would you like to do today? I know what I'm NOT going to be doing: going to a paying job, because I found it impossible to juggle full-time work with motherhood. So instead I'll be sitting here all day, judging my worth to society based on your behavior. Do you want waffles or toast for breakfast?"

Still, I think too often I fail to see him as a simple kid, rather than the embodiment of all the choices I have ever made in my life, past, present, and future. Like, the other day when he got in trouble at school, I immediately blamed myself. I thought of how much of a failure I was with discipline and sleep schedules and nutrition. I remembered back to my days as a teacher, and recalled that I sucked at discipline then, too. Geez, I have pretty much sucked at every job I've ever had, I thought.

Now, clearly I have some major issues when it comes to being overly critical of myself. But those are my issues, and I shouldn't transfer/project/whatever them onto my child. He is just a little boy, a boy who misbehaves sometimes because he is a child, and human.

So, in an attempt to slightly lessen the number of complexes I'm giving my child, I declared this past week Nathan Appreciation Week.

It is important to note that, while I did want Nathan Appreciation Week to have an overall positive connotation, appreciation isn't always exactly synonymous with liking. I mean, don't get me wrong, of course I like the kid, I mean geez. But I don't like dealing with him 100% of the time, and Nathan Appreciation Week was not about getting to a point where I like dealing with him 100% of the time. After all, there are many things I appreciate that I don't always like: Weight Watchers, spin classes, exercise in general, modern household appliances, antidepressants--just to name a few.

So while part of Nathan Appreciation Week was about showing the boy some love, part of it was just taking some time to slow down and figure out what makes him tick. (I mean, I did that to the best of my abilities. Nobody can figure out why kids do what they do some of the time.)

Oh and also, I didn't tell him about Nathan Appreciation Week, because I figured he would misconstrue the concept of appreciation and throw it back in my face when, say, I was telling him he couldn't stay up later to play a video game. I didn't even tell Bill about Nathan Appreciation Week, or anybody else until now.

A key feature of the week was that I made Nathan a simple little smiley face/sad face chart to take to school so he could get a daily behavior report from his teachers. Each day the teachers had to circle either a smiley face or sad face for two categories: Self-Control and Following Directions. The chart included associated Threats and Bribes (I mean, Consequences and Incentives): a single sad face meant time out and a TV ban for that day, and an entire week of smiley faces meant he would earn a super cool Imaginext dinosaur toy.

Well, the boy's school behavior was stellar all week. And I told him next week he could work toward an Imaginext ninja toy, but after that we have to put away the big guns because I can't afford to be bribing my kid to the tune of $40 a week.

Anyway, I think maybe getting a lot of positive reinforcement about his school behavior put him in an overall good mood at home. I also figured out that his negative school behavior seemed to be tied to sleeping in our bed at night. I usually let him fall asleep in our bed (although this week he went to bed on his own in his own room two whole times), and sometimes I am too tired myself to move him to his own bed and I just let him sleep with us. The family bed is trouble for all involved parties. I think we all get woken up several times a night, and while the adults can kind of keep it under control despite tiredness the next day, Nathan is much grouchier. I have not definitively proven the correlation between sleeping in our bed and negative behavior the following day, but I will say that the only night he slept in our bed was Wednesday, and Thursday was the only day he was completely intolerable to be around.

See, these observations are all part of appreciating him.

I've also observed that what he really wants me to do, more than anything, is pay attention to him. I do think the amount of attention we give our children is yet another one of those tricky balance issues: You want to show you love them, but you want them to be independent, too. Kids should learn to entertain themselves! Oh, but they grow up so fast; spend as much time with them as you can! If you don't read to him/interact with him/do some early academic development activities with him, he won't keep up with his peers on standardized tests! OMG I just want to drink my coffee and look at Facebook in peace!

Anyway, as I said, he really just wants me to play with him. I, on the other hand, consider myself a good mother if I arrange all kinds of fun activities/outings for him. While he's not opposed to fun activities/outings, he really just wants me to stay home and play with him.

So, on Sunday while he was at his class, I bought a book called Science in the Kitchen. (Shannon Ford Rule of Parenting #1: It's always good to throw money at the problem.) Then on Monday after preschool, we did a few experiments from the book. We learned that you can make oil and water mix by putting dishwashing soap in it. (Seriously, I never knew that.)

Then he mixed a bunch of other stuff together and made a big fat mess. But (*clenches teeth*) that's okay because we had fun, and it's all about appreciating him and his interests, right? RIGHT?

Now, there's only so much at-home time I can stand, so I decided to make Tuesday our outing day. At this point I think one "big ticket outing" (term I made up) per week is about what we can handle, and Tuesdays are our emptiest days.

This past Tuesday's outing was to somewhere we'd never been before, an indoor playground called Little Monkey Bizness. The place had always looked interesting to me, but I had shied away from it because it's about 30 minutes away. Instead, I have been choosing closer indoor play destinations, like McDonald's and mall playgrounds. But you should only eat McDonald's occasionally, and the mall usually involves excess spending. Plus, really, Little Monkey Bizness was only about 5 minutes more driving time than the good mall, and when you factor in parking it's probably about a wash.

Also Little Monkey Bizness was really low-key for me (parents can just sit in the coffee bar area and take advantage of free Wi-Fi), the parking was super convenient, and the place was clean and wholesome and didn't involve greasy food and/or the deforestation of the rainforest. Also I consider $6.50 (normally $7.50 but I had a coupon) a really good deal for 3 hours of solid, energy-burning playtime.

Here are some photos:

I think in this one, the boy actually does look like a caged monkey.

This one cracked me up because he was playing with some other kids and yelled, "Get him! He's the one you're after!" I have no idea what media-based entity he learned that from.

Also, the place had an art room. Most of the drawings on that paper are stencil-based.

Wednesday Nathan was buoyed by another good report from school, and then we just hung out and did errands and went to the gym.

As I said, Thursday was a rough day. As I also said, I think maybe he was grouchy because of a rough night's sleep in our bed the previous night. But I also wonder if maybe Thursdays are just rough in general, like because he's just starting to feel the strain of the week. Whatever the reason, I made the decision that Nathan was not suitable to attend library drop-in story hour, although we did have to slog through the rest of the day going to the gym and to Nathan's not-optional-because-it's-too-expensive science class.

Again, sometimes liking and appreciating do not overlap.

On Friday I went to Nathan's preschool to help with their cooking project. We had a little talk in advance about how Just because your mom is there, doesn't mean you can start acting all weird.

Here is what I "appreciated" about Nathan at school:

He does not like any activity that involves singing or accompanying hand motions.
He likes to chime in a lot and say "That's not real!" (about events in songs or stories).
He likes to play alone mostly, but flits in and out of groups during recess, the same as all the other kids.

The "cooking" project of the day was hot chocolate.

With candy cane, cookies, and Hershey's Kiss on the side. SUGAR!

After school it was time to go to Target and purchase the hard-earned Behavior Chart Dinosaur. We also got to take advantage of the tiny warm-up in weather and go to the park. Then I made two pies, and Nathan helped me make a tiny individual cherry one just for him.

I should also note that it was on Friday when I realized that I, personally, was starting to lose it. I was so tired of meeting Nathan's near-constant needs that I felt like if I heard the word Mom (stretched out so it's a whiny five syllables: "Mo-o-o-aww-umh"), I was gonna punch a hole through the wall.

And then on Saturday we went to family swim at the gym! I consider family swim to be a near-perfect winter activity. It burns off a lot of energy. It's super exciting to children. It's close-by and doesn't involve any sort of major production. It's free with the price of my gym membership. And the post-swim shower substitutes for a bath that day!

Also, I think maybe family swim might be the perfect combination of the fun outing I want and the constant maternal attention Nathan wants. I have to pay attention to him the whole time, what with him being in water and all.

The hyper-vigilance required for pool-based activities makes it hard to take pictures, but I quickly snapped a couple right at the beginning when nobody else was there and the lifeguard could focus on Nathan.

All in all, I think Nathan Appreciation Week was a really positive experience. It was really good to step back and observe him, and to realize that, when I detatch him from my issues, he's really just being a kid. Every little thing he does, good or bad, may not be as high-stakes as I make it out to be. He's just being a kid.

I realize now that when I was a teacher, I had a hard time accepting kids' misbehavior as kids just being kids, too. Every kid who misbehaved was another poor reflection on me, and was likely to get me in trouble with the parents and/or the principal, not to mention a major setback in my efforts to get them to perform well on The Test. I wasn't conditioned to see kids as just being kids, with individual moods and personality quirks. I needed them to behave, all of them, at all times.

I'd like to think that now that I'm a parent and I'm just responsible for one child, I'd be able to step back and get to know that child more on an individual level. And while of course I do think I know that kid pretty well, I still think there's a lot of pressure to get every kid to meet the same benchmarks and milestones at the same time.

And it would be fun to say I'm going to go all rogue and ignore societal expectations, to just say my kid will get there when he gets there, but I also believe we have to conform to the norms and expectations of the particular place and time in which we live. If the local public school system says he should be meeting Benchmarks X, Y, and Z at such-and-such a point in time, I will worry if and when he is not.

Still, I do think it's important to take a step back sometimes and re-examine the way I think. It's good to slow down and observe, and appreciate, my kid. I'll never be able to observe him completely objectively, but I think Nathan Appreciation Week helped me curtail my subjectivity at least to the point that every reaction I have to his behavior is not filtered through all my own weird emotional issues. And I think that small step is something to appreciate.

Let's Be Honest

2012-01-28T09:38:00.000-06:00

The second I clicked Publish Post on my last post, I immediately began to feel uneasy. I had shared specific details about Nathan's behavioral issues, and about the teachers' comments, and about my concerns.

I agonized over Do I really want this on the Internet? for all of three minutes before I knew I had to go back and revise the post to prevent an entire afternoon of further negative feelings.

I don't know what it was that made me uncomfortable. I've always prided myself on being 100% honest, because I believe that it is only through honesty that we can help each other feel less alone. Was it not the whole I understand, me too, I'm not the only one phenomenon that made mom blogs such a revolution in the first place? Isn't it a complete violation of unofficial mom blog principles to cover up the negative stuff and present an online image of a perfect life?

And yet, as mom blogs have come of age, a huge number of bloggers have questioned the ethics of oversharing with the Internet. Is this the online record I want to leave for my child? How will my child feel if he finds out I didn't always like being a parent? What will people think of me as a parent if I admit to some of these parental shortcomings?

These are obviously important questions, ones that bloggers have asked a thousand times over in their respective posts, and ones that I have asked myself. Certainly there is a danger in oversharing on the Internet.

But, is there also danger in undersharing? Do mom bloggers do other moms a disservice when they aren't completely honest about the realities of their lives?

And it seems like, just based on my gut feeling here, most of the mom blogs out there now consist of glossy accounts of glowing family memories, attempts to hide the realities of everyday life with a pretty veneer. Mom blogs have become less of a diary and more of a scrapbook.

Which, look, I GET. We're now aware that anything we put on the Internet is permanent, and nobody wants her family's permanent record to be a bunch of stories about tantrums and messy houses. Further, there are a whole slew of topics we can't discuss because they might offend people we know in real life--friends, relatives, spouses, coworkers, and, as they get older, children themselves. And there are some Big Issues that people understandably don't want online, issues like divorce or serious medical problems. Plus some of your day-to-day frustrations are sort of too boring to post online anyway.

In the end, what are you left with to blog about? Fun Photos of My Family Outings, and Cute Things My Kid Said. And even though you know your life isn't perfect, your online record certainly makes it look that way.

This issue of a public versus private face certainly isn't a new one--obviously people have been hiding parts of their lives from the public since the beginning of time--but I think it is becoming a more serious concern as more and more of our interactions are online, and as we have such increased access to the inner-workings of other people's lives. Between Facebook, blogs, and all the other social networks, we have this false perception that we have complete access to the inner-workings of everybody's lives, and don't their lives look a lot better than ours? And so it's not surprising that a recent study found a correlation between number of hours spent on Facebook and negative feelings about one's own life.

Now, I should remind you of what you learned in that introductory social science class in college: Correlation does not imply causation. It could be that people who spend more time online are just sadder and lonelier to begin with. Still, I think everybody, regardless of overall emotional state, is getting more a much larger quotient of human interaction online, and we tend to falsely perceive that we now have complete access to the inner-workings of other people's lives.

But, of course, we don't. We're all putting up a front. And it can be harder to remember that with mom blogs, perhaps because they started out as such a tell-all, completely honest medium. Even the names of mom blogs suggest that they're giving it to you straight, names like Terrible Mommy or The Dark Side of Motherhood, which suggest both an honesty and a flawed humanity. (Note: To the best of my knowledge, those names are fictional. I didn't want to use the names of real blogs because I didn't want to suggest that I had a problem with any particular blog.)

But, as previously discussed, there are many reasons why we can't tell the whole story. Still, I think we owe it to one another to be honest when we can. Like so many other issues in life, the issue of oversharing versus undersharing is one where we have the difficult task of striking a perfect balance. And that fine line between the two is one we will always struggle to walk.

Here I Am

2012-01-22T11:18:00.001-06:00

Yesterday my brother informed me that people have been asking when I was going to write another blog post. Now, by people, I'm sure he meant himself and maybe two other relatives. It's not the like the whole world is crying out for more Same Old Shannon.

But nonetheless, I have been absent. And I feel kind of bad about that.

I don't have a good reason for my lack of posts, other than just that I can't seem to fall into a good groove of post frequency now that I'm not shooting for a post every single day.

Or I find myself wanting, or needing, to write a post about a serious topic, something like Depression or Failed Motherhood. But that's in the heat of emotions, and when the strong feelings dissipate, I think about writing the post anyway and I'm just not feeling it.

So maybe I need an easy gateway post to get me back into the swing of things. How about some random updates? Good?

Well, it's the third week of January, and we've been busy with a bevy of activities that I signed us up for in an attempt to combat Winter Madness (term from 30 Rock).

First up each week is a class I signed Nathan up for, which I'm embarrassed to admit is through a place called The Center for Gifted. I feel obnoxious suggesting that my kid is such a genius that he belongs in such a place. I have no idea if the child is gifted. Sometimes he shows some intelligence, but then at other times I have to think back to his in utero ultrasound to remember that he does, in fact, have a brain in his head.

But anyway, the classes at The Center for Gifted sounded sort of cool. For Nathan's age there is Science Spies, which he is totally into, and then he also has to take the partner class, Tales From Around the World. (They go together, surprisingly, because the teachers coordinate to create lessons where the math/science activities tie in to fairy tales. This session they're focusing on different variations of The Gingerbread Man.) The other thing is that the classes for older kids sound super cool, like Lego Robotics and Experiments with Toys, and once you've gotten your teacher recommendation (umm, yeah), you're part of the Center for life and don't have to go through the application process (which I'm making sound way more serious/daunting than it actually was) ever again.

We've had one week with The Center for Gifted, and so far I love it. They're all super positive there, and I thought they did a good job creating fun, challenging lessons.

But also! The Center for Gifted holds its classes at various rented elementary schools, and our closest one is almost 30 minutes away. It would be a waste to drive home in between the drop-off and pick-up, which means that every Sunday afternoon I have two full hours to sit at a nearby Starbucks with my two BFFs, Kindle and Laptop. (Also, side note: The people at The Center for Gifted actually sent an informational email suggesting that you might want to research coffee shops, libraries, and restaurants near the school so you'd have a place to go during the classes. I guess they don't think the parents are gifted enough themselves to have thought of this brilliant suggestion.)

Except! The Center for Gifted runs parent seminars during some of the sessions, and you're "strongly encouraged to attend." I feel kind of guilty not going, but these seminars are really cutting into my Starbucks time. Also, and I feel even guiltier admitting this, but I just can't deal with any more parenting "suggestions" at the moment. I'm really trying to focus on Nathan's behavior, and since that's not what any of the seminars is about, it seems like too much other stuff to stress out about when it comes to my parenting. Also I figure some of the tips will be aimed toward older kids anyway. And, on the one hand, I paid all this money for the classes, and I should take advantage of whatever extra help comes my way as part of the package. But, on the other hand, I paid these people a lot of money, and I can do whatever the hell I want.

So that's Sunday. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday Nathan goes to his preschool, which is Not Going Well. I don't want to get into it, but Nathan's been acting up at school, I feel bad about my parenting, I think I'm a failure, this is all my fault, blah blah blah Shame Spiral.

We're going to try to combat the whole thing with a simple daily behavior report from Nathan's teachers, along with the good old parenting classics, Threats and Bribes. But honestly I just feel so troubled about all this, and powerless, and, of course, responsible. I want to be one of those moms who just thinks everything her kid does is awesome, and everything she does is awesome, and can't stop bragging about how much her kid loves school and loves learning and is so smart and all that. And instead I just end up feeling like a daily failure.

Whew, that got dark for a minute.

I'm wondering if part of the problem is that Nathan is too over-involved, because we also have him in story hour at the library and in a little class at this local place called World of Enrichment. Throw in our normal weekly activities like the gym and errands, plus a few special things like playdates, birthday parties, or day trips, and he is probably getting too tired and over-stimulated. But, on the other hand, it's the dead of winter, and we don't need a bunch of boring days stuck at home doing nothing, either. Again I find myself struggling to find the right balance.

As for my own personal activities, I'm working on training for the gym's indoor triathlon. This year I decided to take the training class, which meets every Saturday morning at the unreasonable hour of 7:00 a.m. I was pleased to find out that the other participants in the class weren't triathlon superstars, though, and are just regular people with their own fitness strengths and weaknesses. I'm the only person in the class who is sucky at running and okay at swimming, which I'm going to tell myself is an asset. Because, the thing is, I am probably more familiar with running than these other people are with swimming. After all, nobody ever has to swim to catch a bus.

Oh, and I hate to brag about myself, but since I've spent the better part of this post beating myself up, I think it's okay if I mention that I am the Women's 30-35 swimming record-holder for the gym's indoor triathlon, based on my performance at last year's triathlon.

Anyway, the triathlon training teacher gives us three totally reasonable "homework" workouts you're supposed to do throughout the week, and I'm still meeting with Trainer Jill, so that about sums up my life on the Fitness Front. The workouts make me totally hungry, and I make irresponsible food choices, so I am not doing so well on the Weight Watchers Front.

On the Professional Front, such as it is, I made my first foray into professional acting. I got paid to star as the mom of a depressed teenager for a psychology training video. In the final scene (spoiler alert!) I reveal that I'm also depressed, which was actually harder to pull off than you might think. But it was totally fun being in that video, and it made me look forward to acting again this spring in the community theater production of Jack and the Beanstalk. (I mean, assuming they cast me after the audition. Which they generally do automatically if you're over the age of 15.)

Also this week I am going to get paid to participate in a market research study about kitchen products.

Bill and I spent my hard-earned money on a fancy dinner out last night with our friends, and on the accompanying babysitter. It was so fun to be going out on Saturday night like the cool people do, and to sit through a dinner that lasted more than 30 minutes.

And I'm reading a YA book called Divergent, which is another book about a dystopian futuristic society. But the difference with this one is that it takes place in a run-down version of Chicago, whereupon Navy Pier is boarded up and abandoned. Which is something I wish would happen with Navy Pier in the present day.

That reminds me of somebody who hates Navy Pier a lot, my friend Katie! Remember how Katie and I call each other "G" or "G-Money"? So ... we made up a theme for our mutual birthday celebration next week ... Macaroni and G's! (Hidden side theme: wine.)

So that's what's going on in my life. Kind of a mixed bag, a lot of ups and downs. Also known as January. Also known as Life.

Year of Less Consumption: Report #1

2012-01-15T15:57:00.000-06:00

I have no idea how frequently I'll be posting these updates, and I'm sorry if they aren't that interesting. I just think putting updates on the Internet will help hold me accountable to my reduced-consumption goals, and maybe (?) some other people can get some ideas, too. And I'll try to put pictures in to break up the monotony here.

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So far I think Year of Less Consumption is going pretty well. I'm still sticking with it 15 days into the year, which is pretty good by New Year's Resolution standards.

Let me break this update up by the Year of Less Consumption Guiding Principles.

Principle 1: Choose reusable over disposable whenever reasonable and/or tolerable.

Well, first off, I am learning there are many practices that are more reasonable/tolerable than I previously thought. For example, I had previously shied away from any practice that generated additional laundry, such as using cloth napkins, dishtowels/rags instead of paper towels, or a cloth bag for my sweaty gym clothes. But it turns out that, since I'm already doing a large load of laundry every single day anyway, it's not that big of a deal to throw in a few flimsy cloth napkins.

I'd also like to say that a surprising BFF in my quest for reusable-ness has been the dishwasher. It turns out you can use the dishwasher to wash a lot of stuff that you might otherwise consider disgusting enough to throw out. For example, I disinfected our travel toothbrushes and their travel toothbrush containers so they would be ready for another trip. I ran a gloppy hand soap dispenser through the dishwasher on the top rack so it would be clean enough to refill instead of replace. And I've washed all manner of commercial food containers (plastic containers for yogurt, sour cream, and lunch meat; various jars) to use as storage for leftovers, which has also helped me cut back on Ziploc bag usage.

I've also established a plastic storage container for different little odds and ends that I can use for gift wrapping. This is a picture of my first gift wrapped with items from the gift wrap box:

The bag is a paper bag they put wine bottles in at Target. The string is DIY baker's twine made using this tutorial, although I could only find nylon thread so it came out ugly. I made the Angry Birds gift tag by cutting up the birthday party invitation, and I punched the tiny hole with a hole-punch I bought secondhand at an estate sale. Also, as part of my commitment to emphasize experiences over material goods, the gift itself is a McDonald's gift card. (It was for a 5-year-old.) It wasn't the most cutely-wrapped gift at the party, but damn if that thing didn't pack an eco-friendly power punch!

Principle 2: Consumable goods are not restricted, but choice of product should emphasize frugality and eco-friendliness.

I don't really have that much to say about this one, since it pretty much just covers stuff I was already doing before. So, yes, we have continued to buy food and toiletries, and we have tried to buy the big container over several smaller ones, as well as to buy stuff using coupons and/or on sale. Boring.

Principle 3: Second-hand is preferred.

So, it turns out that, despite all my talk about less consumption, I still have a really strong desire to buy stuff. I don't want to make an attempt to totally squelch that desire because, as I've said before, I much prefer rewarding myself with stuff over rewarding myself with food. But, keeping in mind the Second-hand is preferred principle, I have decided to reward myself with second-hand stuff whenever possible.

Enter ... estate sales! I get weekly emails about estate sales in my area. Most of them start on Fridays, which is good because Nathan now goes to school on Fridays, and so I have some time to myself.

The fun thing about shopping at estate sales is that you get an interesting experience in addition to some fun acquisitions. Like, first of all, the thrill of the hunt is always fun, and it's also fun to score some great deals, but I also find that estate sales are like little miniature museums.

Like, this past Friday I went to two estate sales, and I found interesting relics at both. At the first one I found two little books of old Disney World attraction tickets, leftover from the era where you needed a separate ticket for each ride, rather than the all-inclusive general admission tickets they have been selling since approximately 1983. Also they had a little booklet called "Souvenir of Our Wedding," which was a little fill-in keepsake with the bride/groom's names, the date, and location. What I found curious about that (other than the fact that nobody in the family wanted it) was that it was filled out in pencil. Was a person's wedding not occasion enough to use ink? Did they only use pencil when they figured the marriage wouldn't last?

That house also had a copy of every Christmas card the family sent out since the 1960s, carefully labeled with the year, and a box of letters dating back to the 1950s.

The second house had some old toys, and I learned that Barbie's little sister Skipper had a friend named Scooter in the 1960s.

Want to see what I bought?

This purse, which I call my "old lady purse" and actually smells like old lady perfume inside:

This gorgeous, never-been-used embroidered tablecloth, which had an old-ish looking price tag of $75 that was pinned on with a straight pin (I'd say it was from the mid-80s if I had to guess) and I got in a set with matching napkins for $4.

The flowers were birthday gifts from Nathan (left) and Bill (right).

Close-up of the detail:

Like I said, the tablecloth came with matching napkins, pictured here with the assortment of other napkins I picked up between the two estate sales:

Again, it's an eco-friendly power punch, because not only do cloth napkins constitute reusable goods, but I got them secondhand! The light pink linen ones need to be ironed, but, well, I think we all know I'm not going to do that.

Also, the second estate sale was a goldmine for the Department 56 Snow Village miniatures that my mom collects.

I got her an ice cream parlor:

An airport:

And a Christmas Cadillac:

I don't even collect these things, but damn if that isn't the cutest thing I ever saw.

(Also, in the interests of accuracy, I should note that I went back on Saturday for half-price day at the estate sale and scored her an awesome miniature streetcar that runs on a track, still sealed in the package. Again, I don't even collect these things, but that score was really exciting for me.)

I don't know how I feel about going to estate sales and acquiring more belongings that I really don't need, because I kind of feel like I'm not exactly in the spirit of Year of Less Consumption. But I did say secondhand was okay, and technically I'm not contributing anything extra to a landfill, or to the air pollution/unfair labor practices from the manufacture of these products.

Principle 4: Emphasize experiences over material goods.

I have already talked about our experience at Discover the Dinosaurs, as well as my experience getting purple hair. Another experience we had was ice skating:

Which. Nathan. Hated. He wall-surfed around 1.5 times, screaming and crying almost the whole time. Note the look of mild terror on his face in this picture, and how his reflection somehow looks ten times more terrified. Oh well, I didn't say all of our experiences had to be good experiences. And at least he enjoyed drinking hot chocolate after the "skating."

Given our limited success with ice skating, I didn't hold out high hopes for our second winter recreational activity, sledding. But the boy LOVED IT.

The final Year of Less Consumption Guiding Principle, All of the above should be followed according to individual comfort level, is kind of too boring to discuss. You don't really care about the ever-evolving list of activities with which I am comfortable. Also, I don't really want to get into this topic because I will end up ragging on some members of my household, who don't really seem to be all that comfortable with any of this stuff.

So I guess that's it for now.

Purple Streak

2012-01-12T18:12:00.000-06:00

It's my birthday.

Thirty-four, for those who were wondering.

This being the Year of Less Consumption, I decided to get a non-material birthday present for myself: A streak of purple in my hair!

Here's a close-up I took with my cell phone in my car, right after I got the streak:

In the top photo, my hair has some weird stuff going on, because I had just been out frolicking in something else I got for my birthday: An awesome snowstorm!

I've made it clear that I love a good snow, in the proper time and place. And I think January is the proper time and place for a beautiful snowfall. I was able to enjoy a gorgeous, peaceful snow falling steadily throughout my birthday.

But back to the purple streak. It's not on the top layer of hair, it's underneath, and so far not one person has commented on it. No problem, though, because the streak is for me! I think it's a metaphor for my overall self. And I know everybody's sick of the whole "this is a metaphor for life" thing, but it's my birthday, so please indulge me.

See, I think, on the outside, I'm just your standard boring Midwest Suburban Housewife, just doing laundry and making dinner and complaining about the monotony of life along with all the other suburban housewives at the park. But then, if you look a little closer ... bam! ... I have a subtle streak of something interesting. I write what I like to think of as an occasionally humorous blog, I act in plays, and I push myself to train for athletic events for which I am not at all qualified. It is those little interesting tidbits that constitute the purple streak in the otherwise fairly dull brown haircut of my life.

So that got me thinking: Why not do more to bring out my inner purple streak? Now, again, in case this wasn't totally obvious already, let me be clear that I am talking about the metaphorical purple streak; I'm not gonna go all Katy Perry and make my whole head techni-colored. But, I mean, why not emphasize my inner purple streak? I'm not suggesting I'll spend more time on recreational hobbies, I'm just saying that why not focus on making the good things I do a bigger part of how I view life and myself as a whole?

And you know, I wanted to come up with a silly rhyming or alliterative theme to go with my birthday, the way I did with Thirty-Three: The Place to Be. But the only word that kept popping in my head as a rhyme for thirty-four was more, and every dumb slogan containing more sounded grossly suggestive.

So, instead of rhyming, my slogan for 34 is going to be Embrace Your Inner Purple Streak. To celebrate, I got decked out in purple:

And then we shoveled the driveway:

After shoveling, we played for a little while outside. Now, I don't use the word precious very often, but, I mean COME ON:

Snow angel action shot!

And here's what my purple self looks like after 90 minutes in a snowstorm:

The other thing I'm getting for my birthday is the return of 30 Rock! It was really nice of Tina Fey to get me that birthday gift, don't you think?

So, in honor of my birthday and 30 Rock, I'll end with a 30 Rock quote from Jack Donaghy:

"My mouth tastes like purple."

Something's Gotta Give

2012-01-10T17:38:00.000-06:00

I'm reading a book called Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half, written by a couple who has been dubbed by Good Morning America as "America's Cheapest Family."

I'm only one chapter in, but I can already tell that, like most how-to/self-help books, this one is a combination of:

(a) Ideas that are totally obvious, which you have thought of and are already doing. ("Plan out meals and then make a grocery list of items you need.")
(b) Ideas that you could never realistically implement. ("Only go to the grocery store once a month.")
(c) Ideas that you could actually use, at least in some adapted form. ("Make a list of everything you have before planning meals, to give you an idea of what to make." ed note: I mean, I probably wouldn't inventory the entire spice rack, but I think it makes sense to remind myself of what's in the back of the freezer.)

But my point is not to summarize or review this book, at least not at this time. My point is to discuss an over-arching concern I have as I go through this book, a concern which I think is becoming a metaphor for other life situations as well:

Something's gotta give.

See, as I go through this book, I realize that America's Cheapest Family is not at all similar to my own family. ACF has 5 children, which seem to range in age from about 13 to 26. (All seem to be living at home, which presents a fairly obvious money-saving measure: Kick the twenty-somethings out.) Nobody seems to be picky in the slightest. (There is a section about how to handle picky eaters, but in the example he states that two of his children at first did not like grapefruit. That's your picky eater? Dude, nobody likes grapefruit.) As with most big families, the parents present a this is what I'm making, take it or leave it attitude. And there don't seem to be any real specific dietary concerns. I mean, they do serve a balanced diet (as in, they aren't advocating ramen or mac 'n cheese just because they're the cheapest things you can eat), but their meal plans aren't guided by anybody's specific dietary restrictions like weight loss, vegetarian, gluten-free, organic, low-fat, or low-cholesterol.

In my family, on the other hand, I'm on Weight Watchers, Bill is somewhat picky and emphasizes low cholesterol, and Nathan doesn't really like anything. Additionally, we don't have the kind of whole-family buy-in that ACF has: The commitment to everybody being available/willing to eat whatever is provided three meals a day, every single day. Sometimes unforeseen situations arise that derail our well-laid plans for a home-cooked meal, and we end up eating take-out. And those situations often involve good, wholesome reasons, reasons like work or exhausted from the gym or stayed too long at the library.

The point is, flexibility and convenience sometimes need to be the priorities. And, as I said, in our family, dietary concerns are priorities. And there is still definitely room to implement cost-cutting measures and still achieve these priorities, but not always. Because, sometimes, something's gotta give.

I will list just one example here: pre-cut green beans in a bag. I'm pretty sure that any Frugalista worth her (half-price, bought-with-double-coupons) salt would never buy pre-cut vegetables. Pre-cut vegetables cost about twice as much as the ones you have to wash and cut yourself. But, if you're a member of a family where green beans meet everybody's dietary needs, and are one of the three vegetables everybody likes, aren't you going to do everything it takes to make sure green beans get used and served, rather than rotting in the bottom of the fridge because you are too lazy/tired to prepare them?

Because, sometimes, something's gotta give.

So, although I will continue to read the book and look for suggestions that apply to my own life, I want to be mindful of the fact that I don't want to sacrifice nutrition for the sake of monetary savings.

The odd thing is that I got the book as a Kindle e-book from the library, which was a format that I decided would probably be a casualty of my "something's gotta give" attitude. See, in a year where I'm trying to use less and eat less, reading an e-book is the perfect non-edible, non-consuming reward for myself. For obvious reasons related to ease and convenience, I prefer the Kindle format to a hard copy of a book. Last year I committed to getting my e-books from the library, for financial reasons. However, the library e-book system is incredibly limited and frustrating, and if I relied on it solely for my reading material, I'd be without a book to read a lot of the time. And since reading is an easy, wholesome, enjoyable activity that fits in with my other priorities about not consuming material goods or excess food, I decided that I just couldn't worry about the whole buying books issue, because something's gotta give.

Now, here's where the whole something's gotta give thing applies to the rest of my life. See, yesterday, I was lying around reading the grocery savings book, and a crushing, all-consuming guilt washed over me. I'm such a loser, lying around reading in the middle of the day. I should be doing something meaningful with my time.

That was at about 2:30 in the afternoon, after a morning that had been kind of a downer for me. After getting Nathan out the door to his new M/W/F preschool class (same school, different days), I went to Weight Watchers. I expected a big loss, and I had only lost 0.4 lb. That set off a chain of self-loathing, which couldn't be cured by the endorphins from a run/walk on the treadmill at the gym after Weight Watchers. Then, after a quick tear through Target to get some groceries, I picked up Nathan, made lunch, blah, blah, blah. All that I was staring down for the afternoon was a bunch of household chores, and I couldn't see the point. And after that, there would be the not-at-all-gratifying chore of cooking for my picky family ... and then Nathan's bedtime, which is going worse than ever.

Now, I realize all of these situations are what the Internets might call first-world problems or white people problems, or non-problems. But I was in a big funk over them, and feeling guilty about my lack of productivity, and generally just in a big fat ball of bad. Then it occurred to me that:

1. I was exhausted because I was training for a triathlon.
2. I had restricted myself from any sort of activity where I would be eating or purchasing material goods, which are noble goals.
3. Cleaning and doing laundry and putting up with my picky eaters doesn't exactly make me a saint, but I should recognize that it constitutes a fair amount of effort.

The point is, I think when you're trying to juggle health goals and environmental goals and monetary goals, and find leisure activities that you can do despite all these goals and while caring for a family, reading is an obvious choice, and I shouldn't feel guilty about it. Because something's gotta give.

Now, what I'd really like to give up is the all-consuming guilt about how little I feel I contribute to society. But for now, maybe I'll focus on giving up the guilt about reading in the middle of the day. Baby steps.

We Discovered the Dinosaurs!

2012-01-08T19:47:00.000-06:00

As part of the Year of Less Consumption final Guiding Principle, Emphasize experiences over material goods, I took my boy on a fun adventure yesterday to see a traveling show called Discover the Dinosaurs.

During the 45-minute drive to Discover the Dinosaurs, I gave Nathan a talk about Emphasizing experiences over material goods, which went something like:

Me: Okay, before we go, I want to tell you that we can spend money to do fun things, but we aren't going to buy a toy, Okay? Because we just had Christmas, and you got a lot of toys, and we don't need any more, Okay? We only have one earth, and too much stuff is bad for our earth, and we won't have anywhere to live if we destroy the earth owning too many things, Okay?

Nathan: Stop saying 'Okay.'

Okay, so we got there, and we paid $13 for our parking experience, and then another $25 for our tickets to the dinosaur experience. And we were off on our Jurassic Journey:

The base ticket price got you in to see several animatronic dinosaur displays, like this one that my kid just looks thrilled about:

Some of the displays were interactive. Kids love pushing buttons:

After approximately 5 minutes of button-pushing and admiring things that were included with our ticket price, Nathan spotted a bouncy castle! He had to go there!

The bouncy castle required an additional fee!

And it was one of those things where the "additional fee" attractions could only be paid for with tickets, which had to be purchased at a separate booth, in the hopes that using this other currency would distract people from how much the attractions actually cost, seeing as none of us could possibly perform the complicated calculations required to figure out, If tickets cost $2 each, and this ride costs 3 tickets, the actual monetary cost of the attraction is ... Well, hell if I know, Who am I, Albert Freakin' Einstein?

Also, the line for the bouncy castle was 45 minutes long. But I just joined the line of other overwhelmed, overstimulated kids and defeated parents, because it's winter in Chicago and what are you gonna do?

My kid in the bouncy castle:

Next we forked over another 3 tickets to do a "panning for gems" activity. Even though anybody who grew up in California ("The Golden State") knows from the 4th grade unit on the Gold Rush that this device is actually not a pan but a sluice box:

We saw these guys for no additional fee:

Next, it was off to the mines:

Now, when you have just forked over $6 so your kid can put on a plastic hard hat sprayed with generic Lysol, enter a box with a vinyl curtain made to look like a mine, and pull 10 cents worth of polished rocks out of stucco holes, you realize you have abandoned all the ideals of your pre-parenting life, whatever those ideals were.

Next Nathan and some other children made a stunning discovery of a nearly-intact dinosaur skeleton:

This was a photo op where you could climb inside the dinosaur's mouth. We waited in a 10-minute line for this photo op, but when we got up there Nathan said he was too afraid to go inside the mouth. So he stood next to it:

We used our last 3 tickets to ride the T-Rex, which I think was a highlight:

Here's the video version:

The next few shots were taken at the little playground where you could sit on cartoon-y dinosaurs:

Then we touched some dinosaur heads and whatnot:

Nathan sitting on velociraptor, made the famous in Jurassic Park:

I made him take a picture in front of my favorite dinosaur, the stegosaurus:

And a parting shot with the T-Rex:

All jokes about overpriced-ness aside, it was a fun day and a nice change of pace for a winter afternoon. Nathan cooperated with the Emphasize experiences over material goods principle like a champ, and didn't even ask for a toy from one of the many booths and stands set up to sell material goods. And so, even though I was $65 poorer at the end of the day, I left feeling proud that Year of Less Consumption was off to a roaring start.

Let's Delve Into 2012, or, You Say You Want a Resolution

2012-01-03T12:57:00.000-06:00

Source

Happy New Year, everyone!

I've said it before, I'll say it again: I just love New Year's. Not only is it great to make a fresh start, but it's just nice to enjoy the simplicity after the insanity of Christmas.

And so, here we are. Two thousand twelve. Or twenty-twelve. I'm not sure how I'm saying it this year.

Either way, I like the number 12. My birthday is on the 12th, 12 was my brother's water polo number, and I just like even numbers. The number 12 is such a great even number, too, because it can be divided up many ways. So many equal groups. So much fairness. So, I feel good about 2012. I say, It's gonna be a great year.

Except, What if it isn't? popped into my head on New Year's Eve. So many of the past years have been great to me, what if I'm due for a terrible tragedy to befall me? Then I recall what Betty, my least-favorite of the Crazy Camp counselors, used to say: People with depression are always waiting for the other shoe to drop. She also told me that I have an obsession with fairness, which is why I tend to think those who have lived a fortunate life (like me) are eventually going to get their due and have a tragedy befall them. (Grating though she was, she had a point about the fairness thing. I mean, I just wrote an entire paragraph analyzing the fairness of numbers.)

So, obviously I'm being ridiculous and letting the darker part of my mind get the better of me. I am feeling optimistic about 2012, even if it is just the antidepressants talking.

Now, my feelings about new years having been explored, let's move on to resolutions.

I will briefly discuss three small resolutions I have made, and then one big one.

The three small ones:

Get back into Weight Watchers. I know, I make this one every fucking new year's. This year I'm focusing on getting myself off white starches as much as possible, because people claim you stop craving them eventually. I'm also focusing on I can do this today, because when I think about the uphill battle that is weight loss, I just get so overwhelmed and want to quit. One day at a time is a strategy that works for AA, and it can work for me, too.
Train for the indoor triathlon at my gym, which is February 25. I signed up for the official training program, which meets at the ungodly hour of 7 a.m. on Saturdays and will undoubtedly include a bunch of fitness types who will make me feel like an even bigger fatass. The training starts January 14, and I don't know if it will include some sort of "homework" workouts you're supposed to do during the week, but for now I'm just trying to get back into swimming and teach my fat self to run for 15 minutes straight. Oh, and go to Spin to train for the bike portion.
Use my credit card less. This isn't about debt, it's more of a mental thing. Let me explain. I have paid my entire credit card bill every single month since I got a credit card. I think credit cards are convenient, and I think if you use them right they can work to your advantage, e.g. by giving you airline miles or cash back or whatever. (My particular one is a Target Visa, which gives me 5% off all Target purchases and then gives me an additional one-day 5% off every time I get x number of points.) However, despite the convenience and payoffs of credit cards, I hate getting the big-ass bill every month. I'm fully aware of the fact that everything on that bill is stuff I would have bought anyway, I just hate seeing it all added up on one statement. I don't like the "pay later" aspect of it all. So, this year I'm going to try to use my debit card or cash more, so I can pay now instead of pay later.

Now, the big resolution is my family's plan to make 2012 The Year of Less Consumption.

See, recently I watched a movie on a website called The Story of Stuff Project. The movie is kind of long (or at least, I think 20 minutes is long by online video standards), but the bottom line is this: We cannot create an infinite amount of goods with a finite amount of resources. The movie also reminds us of what we already know: The goods we get for ridiculously cheap come at the expense of people working for unfair wages in unsatisfactory working conditions in other countries.

Now, like all movies, this one has a bias. One could easily argue pro-consumption as well, because obviously a lot of people--people in America--depend on income from the retail industry for their livelihoods. And it would be impossible to give up consumption altogether, at least here in the mainstream real world.

But what ultimately brought me over to the side of less consumption was cleaning out my closets in December. I realized that, like most households, we have a lot of stuff.

And, like most people, we like acquiring stuff. Buying new things always comes with a small, temporary high. Although I have always advocated that high over the high that comes from eating, it's time to go back and use some of the stuff we already have instead of getting more stuff.

It's also time to start choosing reusable over disposable, because we only have one planet. I've never been a crunchy, hippie type--in fact, I've often chosen ease and convenience over eco-friendliness--but even I can see that it's time to just stop throwing so much away.

Now, my family and I live in the real world, so it would be impossible to give up buying new things altogether. We need clothes and shoes to wear. And sometimes unforeseen situations that necessitate unforeseen purchases arise, making it impossible to make any hard-and-fast rules about consuming less.

But we have established some Guiding Principles for The Year of Less Consumption:

Choose reusable over disposable whenever reasonable and/or tolerable. Now, reasonable and tolerable are obviously subjective terms that vary from person to person. But, for example, reusable grocery bags and water bottles are tolerable, reusable toilet paper and tampons are not tolerable (in my opinion). Reasonable is a little more situation-specific, like maybe it might be more reasonable to use disposable products when going on a picnic at the park, for example.
Consumable goods are not restricted, but choice of product should emphasize frugality and eco-friendliness. For example, choose the big hand soap refill that uses less plastic than the individual hand soap pumpers.
Second-hand is preferred. Now, I am 100% okay with hand-me-down clothes for Nathan. I know the people who used them and I know they're clean. Plus, second-hand clothes are sort of the norm for kids, who grow out of things quickly. On the other hand, I'm not as cool with second-hand clothes for myself, and neither is Bill. So, since that's outside of our comfort zone, that's something we can maybe revisit later. But I think we can do a better job of buying second-hand when it comes to hard, easily sanitizable items that haven't come into contact with strangers' private areas, such as dishes or toys.
Emphasize experiences over material goods. While of course I hope that saving money is a positive by-product of the Year of Less Consumption, it's not the main goal. Which is to say that I'm not opposed to spending some money, I just want to change how we spend it. When it comes to disposable income, I'd like to spend our money on non-tangible experiences instead of more stuff. Stuff like movies, museums, trips, restaurants, and other attractions are where I want to put my money this year. And that goes for gifts as well as for ourselves.
All of the above should be followed according to individual comfort level. Bill and I discussed specific behaviors we could each change for the Year of Less Consumption. As I said, neither of us is going to use cloth toilet paper, and we're not currently all that okay with buying pants that strangers have worn. However, I have agreed to start using cloth napkins and dish towels instead of paper towels. Bill has agreed to bring his own bags into Target and to take a reusable water bottle to work every day. The bottom line, if you try to change too much too fast, or to do things you aren't comfortable with, you will be in for a big fat FAIL.

So, those are my resolutions. Happy 2012 to all!

It's the Little Things

2011-12-31T00:00:00.004-06:00

On the last day of the year, it's natural to reflect back on the year behind us.

Two-thousand eleven. What to say?

Well, I'm sorry to do this, but in order to assess the past year, I have to go back and put it in context among the past decade.

See, the thing is, pretty much every single year of the 2000s, I experienced some major life-changing event. Such as:

2000: Graduated from college, and within 48 hours I had moved back in with my parents and started attending a teaching credential program. Started 3-year long-distance relationship when Bill went to law school in Chicago and I stayed in California.
2001: Did my student teaching, finished my credential, got a job teaching 5th grade. On the second day of school, 9/11 happened.
2002: Finished a really emotionally gut-wrenching first year of teaching, changed grades to teaching 2/3 multi-age the following September.
2003: Moved out of my parents' house and lived alone for the first time. Got engaged.
2004: Got married, moved across country.
2005: Began the year with a really bad teaching job, quit that and changed careers to be an editor in the educational publishing field.
2006: Got pregnant.
2007: Had a baby, switched to working part-time, bought our first home.
2008: Experienced episode of major depression, switched to full-time at work, finally quit to be a stay-at-home mom.

By 2009, I needed things to slow down. And they did. I remember at the end of 2009, I reflected on what a great year it had been, not because of the exciting things that happened, but because of the things that didn't.

In 2010, though, things began to feel stagnant. I began to think I needed something big to happen again. Have another baby! Go back to work! Make it big as a blogger!

And yet, none of that felt right. Every possible life path felt wrong.

I didn't get it right until 2011, when I realized that the answer lay not in giant leaps, but in baby steps.

So the best way I can sum up 2011 is to say that it was the year of baby steps.

I didn't go back to work full-time, but I did do some freelance work and found out I loved it. I didn't make it big as a blogger, but I did make money off my blog for the first time. I got a lot of free stuff, had some great bloggy experiences, attended my first BlogHer, made some great friends, and built up my readership.

I learned how much I love participating in community theater. I completed an indoor triathlon. I went on vacation by myself.

It was a lot of little, but really great, experiences.

As for 2012, who knows? I like to make resolutions like everybody else, but those are about specific behaviors, not about the bigger plan or theme or picture.

As always, the new year is a blank slate. See you there.

2011 Penultimate Post

2011-12-30T21:00:00.045-06:00

Looks Like We Didn't Make It

I mean I didn't make it. To 365 posts, that is. This will be Post #343 for 2011, and I do have one in the pipeline for the last day of the year, a sort of reflective, summing up sort of thing. So that's a total of 344 posts for 2011.

21 posts short.

If only I had another 3 weeks in the year ... well, I'd probably still come up short. It's hard to post every single day.

I also said I would make it to Babble's Top 50 Mom Blogs of 2011. And even though they upped it to the Top 100 Mom Blogs, I still didn't make the list. (I mean duh, that was a long shot to begin with, but still, it's great to aim high.)

BUT in 2011 I actually met and/or Facebook friended some of the people on the list, and some of them actually read my blog. So I guess that's sort of like saying, "You know, Jennifer Aniston knows I exist," which is kind of a lame thing to get excited about, but I like to think it means I'm moving up in the world.

As further evidence of my improved status as a blogger, I will note that this year I got invited to several really fun company blogger events, and got some cool free stuff for myself and my readers.

Also, I met a lot of great new friends. And I became more aware of who I am, as a blogger and as a person, and why I write this blog in the first place. I do it because I like it. I like to write, and I like to share my writing, which means I also like all of you for your willingness to let me share it with you.

So, in conclusion, although I didn't achieve my ridiculous goals, I did achieve so much more. And isn't that how it always is, you ending up finding something you weren't even looking for in the first place?

The Beach in December

2011-12-30T20:52:00.000-06:00

We were busy yesterday taking in the finer sights of Orange County.

We went to a super cool park:

Sat on a turtle:

Performed some "obstacles":

Rode a carousel:

And decorated a cupcake with blue frosting, gummi worms, and Starburst:

So by the time we got done with all that, we barely had an hour to go to our favorite place, the beach!

It was not what you'd call the ideal beach day. The fog had rolled in, and the weather was cool.

But I just like to hear the waves crashing, and Nathan just likes to dig in the sand, so it was fine.

Did you know I used to live close enough to the beach in college that I could hear the waves crashing when I went to sleep? Did you know I didn't appreciate that opportunity enough?

I just love the beach. I have found the following to be true about the beach:

1) All food tastes better when eaten on the beach.
2) All books are better when read on the beach.
3) All photos taken on the beach are automatically awesome. (Exception: Photos featuring me in my bathing suit.)

Well, we didn't have any food or books, and luckily it wasn't really bathing suit weather, so I was able to take the following awesome pictures:

I don't know why, but I like to take pictures of our feet on the beach. I guess because I like to have some part of myself or somebody I know in the picture to prove we were there.

Perhaps because I used to go to the beach to reflect during my brooding college years, going to the beach always makes me all weirdly philosophical. The ocean is so big and powerful, so perfect and beautiful.

No doubt Nathan was also pondering life's deeper questions:

And even though it doesn't include any body parts belonging to myself or my family, I took this picture to help me remember the moment:

2011 Favorites: Books, Movies, Television

2011-12-29T21:24:00.000-06:00

Books

I don't think 2011 was my best reading year. First of all, I only read 31 books, which was significantly lower than my 2010 total of 43. I think I had less time to read because I spent my free time blogging, writing scripts, and working on my freelance projects. I realize that no one of those activities took up all that much time, but they kind of tended to absorb those pockets of time where I would have previously picked up a book.

But in addition to, or perhaps because of, the small quantity of books I read, I just didn't think I read a lot of books of great quality this year.

Still, there were some gems, and I have determined a favorite:

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh is the story of a young woman who ages out of the foster system, and is able to eke out an existence through her own floral business. The book deals with the Language of Flowers, a secret code used in the Victorian era to convey messages through the exchange of specific flowers. Obviously this book appealed to me because of my interest in flower-arranging, but I also thought it was an interesting, well-written story.

Favorite book runners-up:

The Sisters by Nancy Jensen: Two BFF sisters become estranged after a misunderstanding. One of those books that follows different characters through many decades.
If I Stay and Where She Went by Gayle Forman: This is a two-part YA series about a young girl who is the sole survivor of a car accident that kills the rest of her family. The characterization is just wonderful.
Bossypants by Tina Fey: As everybody knows, this is Tina Fey's humorous memoir. It perfectly blends interesting peeks into the world of celebrity with humorous Everyday Jane sort of observations.
Left Neglected by Lisa Genova: A harried have-it-all working mother is forced to re-examine her priorities after a head injury leaves her with a condition where she can't perceive the left side of anything.

Movies

I saw more movies in the theater this year than I did the previous 3 years combined. I saw two with Nathan: Cars 2 and The Muppets. I loved The Muppets so, so much, it's like I never wanted it to end. Cars 2 was sort of a drag for me, and I thought the plot was weirdly complicated, but it appealed to young children's love of watching cars race around. I will say I loved the purple car, Holly, and she was so cute that I considered buying a toy version of her just for myself.

Bill and I saw two movies, and they were both superhero films. I didn't really like Thor. Vikings just aren't my thing, and I didn't think the lead character was at all good-looking. X-Men: Beginnings, on the other hand, was jam-packed with hot actors, and had an interesting storyline.

I Don't Know How She Does It was sort of a meh chick-flick that I saw with my friends. I enjoyed going out with my friends and eating movie snacks, but the movie itself was just so-so.

Oh, and we saw Tin Tin with my parents yesterday. Loved the campy 30s feel to it, and loved the dog. Mostly enjoyable, although a bit too long.

I'm declaring my favorite seen-in-the-theater film of 2011 to be:

The Help, which I saw with Katie in August. Not a surprising choice, since The Help was my favorite book of 2009. I got the DVD for Christmas.

Television

I only watched the following shows regularly in 2011:

Community: Joel McHale's hotness makes the show worth watching, but it's getting super weird, and I'm not at all devastated that the show has been put on hiatus.
Parks and Recreation: Solidly funny, not my all-time favorite but still consistently good.
Modern Family: This show gets better and better as they get a bigger budget/win more awards. What I like is that each character is quirky, but never over-the-top.
30 Rock: Always awesome, always the best, except I missed it this fall during Tina Fey's (obviously well-deserved) maternity leave. Looking forward to the season premiere on my birthday.
The Daily Show: Every episode is clever and hilarious. And I am willing to admit I'm one of those people who gets most of my news from Jon Stewart.

As a final note, I know many people might include Music as a category on a post like this, but I don't consider myself interested and/or hip enough to write about music.

My Best Posts of 2011, According to Me

2011-12-29T13:10:00.000-06:00

The Serious

January 10: Mom Blog: A post attempting to sum up my thoughts on motherhood.
January 20: Let's Go on With the Show: The very moment I realized how much I loved performing in community theater, because it gave me an identity outside of motherhood. Chosen for this list because I cried cathartic tears the entire time I typed the post.
March 15: Crazy Camp, 3 Years Later: This is by far the most-read, most-commented about post I've ever written. It's a look back on the three years since my time in an outpatient mental health program for depression.
June 29: The One Thing I'm Not Worried About: I'm including this one on my list because I think it sums up my views on education.
August 6: On Being a Writer vs. a Blogger vs. a Schlub: My inaugural trip to the BlogHer conference inspired me to write this post that violates the number 1 rule of blogging: Do not blog about blogging.
September 11: September 11, 2011: Well, my mom called this Sept. 11 post my best ever.
September 25: Crazy Camp, The Reunion: This was seriously one of the most poignant moments of the year for me, when I ran into a woman from my depression program and realized that we were both doing okay.

The Funny

January 3: I'm Supposed to Be Doing Something Else Right Now: A post about shoes, procrastination, musicals, and WWII rationing. Also the post where I coin the word blorphine.
January 19: And In the Formal Wear Competition: My pathetic attempts to come up with a formal outfit to wear for a show I was in. Includes my hypothetical red carpet interview with Ryan Seacrest.
June 16: Fun at Rummage Sales: People seemed to like this post where I wrote about a 60s-era cookbook I bought at a rummage sale.
October 22: Shannon Saves Series: I Made My Own Effing Soap: Just another DIY project gone wrong.
November 5: Losing Pinterest: Katie said this post was the funniest one I've ever written. It's about some of my absurd antics attempting to make stuff I saw on Pinterest.
November 7: Hot New Children's Toy: A Box of Garbage: My revelation that trash is actually the greatest treasure, when you're four years old.
December 9: 14 Days of Festivity: Day 6: People seemed to take pleasure in my craft FAIL.

Various Christmas Celebrations

2011-12-28T20:43:00.000-06:00

Before I begin, a note to my family and friends: I love you all. If you or your child(ren) do not appear on my blog, it is not because I don't love you. Either I can't post your picture because it violates my policy against posting pictures of other people's children (and in some cases it's hard and/or weird to edit a kid out), or maybe the one picture I have of you is blurry. Or maybe I didn't get a picture of you because I was distracted. Whatever the reason, do not interpret your absence on my blog as a personal slight.

Now, onto Christmas.

When I left off, it was December 24 and we'd just had a celebration with Bill's extended family.

My sister-in-law Venessa and I had a nice Mexican lunch on the 24th, as part of our pact to have experiences together instead of exchanging material goods.

Then on the evening of the 24th, we went out to dinner with my mother-in-law. I forget what the place was called, but they had old-fashioned furniture there for decor, and they had the BEST roll-top desk. If I didn't live in Illinois, I would probably offer to buy it off of them (except I'm not really the kind of person who does that anyway).

We went to church on Christmas Eve at my in-laws' church.

Nathan left some cookies for Santa, as well as a carrot for his reindeer. Santa wrote a thank-you note:

And Santa also filled everybody's stockings:

One of the more talked-about stocking stuffers were these laser lights that you put on your fingers:

Here's Nathan with his magnetic Cars set:

Now, at this point, Christmas took a bit of a turn. Bill's family had been passing around a stomach virus, and right after opening stockings Bill announced he had been felled by the bug. So I had to drive us to my mom's house, then Bill spent the rest of the day in bed.

Meanwhile, Nathan and family friend John opened up their traditional British holiday crackers, which always contain paper crowns:

Another guest at my mom's Christmas dinner was my grandma's lifelong friend Liz. Grandma and Liz met in kindergarten, were born 11 days apart, and are still BFFs at age 89. Sweet, right?

This is my brother Tyler, his wife Kasumi, and their baby girl Syndey (obscured by an ornament per my photo policy regarding children):

I scored a major win on the gift I got my stepdad, a t-shirt depicting his favorite You Tube video:

This is my stepdad and my grandpa on the day after Christmas. My family traditionally goes out to breakfast to celebrate my grandparents' anniversary, which is December 26.

They have been married 69 years. They are cute:

Later on the 26th, we drove south to my dad and stepmom's house. We always do the celebration with them after Christmas. This year we did it on the 27th.

One of Nathan's gifts at that celebration was the Wack-a-Mole game. Here are Nathan and my stepmom whacking various moles:

This is my brother Brian and sister-in-law Laurin, looking festive. Their baby Sam is sleeping in the stroller on the left:

My dad and stepmom brought them back a ukelele from their recent travels in Tahiti:

And that's all I have for now.

West Coast Trip Week 1 Highlight Reel

2011-12-24T12:24:00.000-06:00

Awhile back my blog friend Melissa pinned a quote to Pinterest that has been on my mind ever since:

This quote sums up perfectly what I think a lot of us struggle with when our only glimpses of other people's lives come through Facebook or blogs or the annual Christmas letter. In those contexts, everybody's lives look perfect. In contrast, our own lives in the harsh, cluttered reality of day-to-day existence, pale in comparison.

I mention the quote in this post because I want to make it clear that what follows is my highlight reel. We've been in California for about a week now, and I haven't blogged a thing about it, so naturally it only makes sense to catch up with a quick summary, highlight reel kind of post.

Make no mistake, there have been plenty of outtakes. Nathan has had approximately 75 meltdowns, most of them related to us having the audacity to make him eat a meal. Furthermore, I have lost my shit multiple times over the over-commercialization of the holidays, the futility of buying gifts, the hassles of travel, airport security, etc., etc., etc.

But this post is not about all that. This post is the highlight reel.

Of course, the first part of the trip was the flight. I will say that, truthfully, that flight is going on my own personal highlight reel, because there was not one single glitch. The lines were long at every stage of the airport, but we made it through with perfect timing. I brought our own lunches from home to eat at the gate, as opposed to my usual waiting in another long line at the airport McDonald's. I was also really pleased to see that the airport had installed water bottle refill stations, so we were properly hydrated.

Once on the plane, Nathan entertained himself by reading the safety information card, making him the only passenger on the flight to actually do so:

I don't know why, but he has a sort of morbid fascination with the picture of the people evacuating on the wing after a water landing.

The plane had Wi-Fi for $5, so I bought it for the iPad, which allowed me to purchase the hugely popular app "Where's My Water?" for Nathan mid-flight. The other awesome thing about the Wi-Fi was that the home screen had a countdown to the landing. This countdown eliminated the guesswork of trying to calculate how much more time was left in the flight, taking into account time changes and whatnot. Somehow knowing exactly how much longer you have makes the flight go by faster.

Despite several interruptions to solve tricky levels of Where's My Water?, I was able to read 5% of this really awesome new Stephen King novel, 11/22/63. I'm not a huge Stephen King fan because I'm easily spooked, but this book is about time travel, and the Kennedys, which are two of my interests.

The flight landed early, we got our one suitcase quickly, and my mom and stepdad picked us up at LAX.

The next day we went here:

Here's Nathan beginning the day at Disneyland, filled with childlike wonder:

Jungle Cruise:

The Pooh ride:

We saw real reindeer:

Nathan's favorite ride, the Buzz Lightyear one:

He also liked the Casey Jones circus train (modeled after the one in Dumbo), which I liked because my kid rode in a cage:

A highlight for all of us was It's a Small World decorated for the holidays. Here are my mom and stepdad in front of the ride's exterior:

Nathan on the ride:

Nathan with an appropriate expression when we got stuck on It's a Small World:

The following two days, we hung out with my brother Tyler, sister-in-law Kasumi, and baby niece Sydney. I have no pictures of it because I'm kind of bad about taking pictures of everyday life, but I promise to take pictures of that branch of the family during the actual Christmas celebration.

On Thursday my mom and stepdad drove us to the high desert to hang out with my in-laws. Nathan has spent hours and hours playing cooperatively with his cousins (I'm serious), with minimal conflict.

That branch of the family decided to do a Christmas Eve Eve celebration on December 23, which is also the Seinfeldian holiday of Festivus.

Because Festivus is about the frustration with the commercialism and pressure of other December holidays, the relatives decided to forgo a gift exchange and do a cookie exchange instead. This is my mother-in-law Diana and nephew Johnny (obscured per my photo policy regarding children) in front of the initial cookie spread:

Food close-ups!

This is my mother-in-law Diana and her sister Connie, looking festive:

I like this ornament they have, which is made to look like a postcard featuring the holiday tree at Marshall Field's department store in 1953:

They have the Christmas pickle ornament, which is supposed to be based on a German custom (whoever finds the pickle on the tree gets an extra gift), but which a quick Google search revealed may be a completely fabricated backstory.

The pickle in context:

And what Festivus celebration would be complete without the Feats of Strength? In this case the Feats of Strength was a game of soccer keep-away, Nathan and his cousin William (not pictured) against older cousin Johnny (obscured with Rudolph graphic). At one point two neighbor dogs joined in the game, and William said, "All right, we have a dog on our team!"

Those wooden posts holiday up fledgling trees are the closest thing we had to the Festivus aluminum pole. Also, Nathan is wearing his pajamas in this, making it a questionable entry for the highlight reel.

Now it's Christmas Eve, and tonight we're going to my in-laws' church. Tomorrow we do the gifts with the in-laws and then head back to my mom's house for her extended family celebration. On the 26th we're going to my dad and stepmom's house for a belated holiday celebration with them. So, look for more highlight reels to come.

And, for all who celebrate such things, have a very Merry Christmas!

14 Days of Festivity: Day 14

2011-12-20T18:43:00.000-06:00

Wrapping It Up

I spent Thursday (14 days of Festivity: Day 14) and Friday (Unofficial Festive Day 15) wrapping all the gifts in my possession, which was maybe about a third of the gifts we were giving. (Another third will be transported in Bill's suitcase, and airport security dictates that gifts not be wrapped. The final third of the gifts were ordered online and shipped directly out to my mom's house in California.)

Let me start with what I feel is my most exciting wrapping. I got the idea to make boxes out of board game boards from a Pinterest pin that Melisa pinned recently. It was the perfect idea to wrap the gift for the "green elephant" exchange my mom/stepdad's family is having. Green elephant is sort of like white elephant, in that you bring something that you already have, but there's less emphasis on giving something hilariously tacky. Also you are encouraged to wrap the gift in an eco-friendly way.

I figured that since my husband has tons of board games, he could possibly part with one old one to be recycled into a gift box. I was incorrect in that assumption, and he sent me over to the Salvation Army to purchase used board games specifically to be cut up for the box-making project. So when I went to the Salvation Army to drop off some of Nathan's old toys, I then parked and went into the store to acquire more stuff.

Luckily they had the original Trivial Pursuit, which I should point out that we also own, along with several other updated editions that I find more enjoyable to play than the version with questions from 1983, but which Bill insists upon keeping because apparently someday there will be some situation where we're all just sitting around dying to play a 30-year-old trivia game.

I also got a backgammon game, which is pleasantly 70s retro.

Then I found what I really wanted: Old-school Candy Land. The set had a board and five cards, and no game pieces for the players to march around the board. But I just wanted the board, so I was happy to pay $1.00 for it. Which just goes to show you, no matter what crap you're donating to charity, there's always somebody who wants it. But usually that somebody isn't me.

I put my green elephant gift in a box made of Candy Land, then made gift boxes for specific people's gifts out of Trivial Pursuit and backgammon:

I wrapped our second green elephant gift in a paper grocery bag, which I embellished with a strip of scrapbook paper and a felt decoration reused from a box of chocolates:

The third green elephant wrapping was another Pinterest find, a gift bag made from a newspaper. I made a tag out of a cut-up Christmas card from Trainer Jill, which is two kittens in a Santa hat, but sort of looks more like a chicken drumstick:

So I wrapped those and a bunch of other packages, and I packed them all up to ship to California in advance of my visit. Let's keep in mind this was a third of the gifts we purchased, and this was in a year where we made concerted efforts to cut back. How does this happen?

Also, orange Duck-brand duct tape is the best.

14 Days of Festivity: Day 13

2011-12-20T16:00:00.000-06:00

Library Holiday Lego Club

Clearly I'm way behind on this series, so I'm going to skip my usual sparkling commentary and just briefly say that:

Nathan really likes Legos.
The library was having a free Holiday Lego Club event.
It was indoors and involved Legos that were slightly different from the ones we had at home.
Sold.

The Lego event had a Santa:

Nathan chose a giant rubber spider from Santa's Sack of Leftover Summer Reading Club Trinkets, which was different from and yet surprisingly like approximately 100 small junk items that I had just regifted to the Salvation Army and/or a landfill.

Here's Nathan building some sort of structure:

Here's my creation, which is the only type of creation I ever build out of Legos, which is a house:

I just love the pink Legos. I don't remember those from when I was a kid.

More of Nathan's creation:

After completing the house, I painstakingly assembled a Lego Santa. I was so proud of my Lego Santa that I intended to take a picture of it, but a kid who was a little overzealous about the clean-up (not, obviously, my own kid) took my Lego Santa and broke it apart before I could photograph it. So, here's a picture of the Lego Santa I attempted to pattern my Lego Santa out of:

I guess it's all good, though, because my Lego Santa had a disproportionately large head.

14 Days of Festivity: Day 12

2011-12-16T10:25:00.000-06:00

Santa Hat Party Mix

The purpose of this post is twofold:

1. To share with you another Pinterest-based project that I ~~botched~~ made.
2. To remind you to get a holiday gift for your child(ren)'s teacher(s).

So, yes, the Santa Hat Party Mix. I pinned this project on Pinterest months ago. Then some time later I pinned another version of it, with the note that "This version is way cuter."

It turned out they were the exact same version, from the same exact website. I am dumb.

The deal on the Santa Hat Party Mix, as you can see in more detail on the original recipe, is that you make little Santa hats by dipping Bugles into red candy melts. You then re-dip the bottom part in the red melts to get white nonpareils to stick on the bottom to make the white fur part. You dip each a third time to add a white marshmallow puff at the top.

You have to dip each fucking Bugle three separate times.

Somehow this seemed like a great idea!

Now onto the part about how you should get holiday gifts for teachers. Teachers are performing a service for you, like babysitters or cleaning people. You might argue that the difference is that teachers are not directly employed by you, that they are paid by an outside agency. And my rebuttal to that is, they aren't bloody paid nearly enough.

When I was a teacher, the pressures from all directions were nearly unbearable. You were expected to get an entire class of students, with needs as diverse as learning disabilities to the autism spectrum to gifted to English-language learners, to perform at grade level on The Test. There was pressure from the administrators, the school district, and the community as a whole. You had to try to please the parents of 30+ different kids. And you had to do it all while maintaining a positive, disciplined learning environment for a bunch of children.

Teachers deserve a gift.

This year I have seen many, many blog posts and Facebook polls about what teachers really want, and the most common answer is: GIFT CARDS. Some parents report giving actual cash, which is always appreciated, but, I don't know, I guess I just feel a little weird about. So I give gift cards. My policy in the past, which I will probably continue in the future, is to give a Starbucks gift card at Christmas and a Target gift card at the end of the year.

Let me pause and say that I absolutely get that times are tough, and that these days any one kid can have many teachers. So if you can't afford to spend a lot on a gift card, that's fine. Starbucks is definitely a place where you don't need a gift card in an expensive denomination to have a fun time. And if you can't afford any gift at all, please just write a nice note to the teacher. Just do something to acknowledge the teacher and let him/her know that he/she is appreciated.

Now, back to the gifts I get my own personal kid's teachers. As I said, I get gift cards. As I have also said in the past, I like to attach my gift cards to something a little bit heavier, so that they don't get lost.

So I figured the Santa Hat Party Mix would be a great little add-on to go with the Starbucks gift cards.

I didn't take pictures of the step-by-step process of making the Santa Hat Party Mix, because the original recipe includes sufficient pictures, and also because my camera was temporarily misplaced at the time.

But if you could see the pictures of me making the party mix, you might see:

Me with red sticky fingers getting mad at the whole gloppy process. (This was partially due to the fact that I forgot to buy shortening, which apparently thins out the candy melts and makes them easier to work with.)
Nathan sitting nearby playing with the iPad, and asking me to help him with something that I couldn't help with because of my red sticky fingers.
Me giving up after the nonpareil stage and deciding to forgo the marshmallow puff ball stage, and to just throw the marshmallows in separately.
Nathan taking off all his clothes and putting on his pajamas.
Me texting Trainer Jill to cancel our session for that afternoon, because I was just so frazzled by my red gloppy project and my messy kitchen and my kid without appropriate clothes.
Trainer Jill replying back that I was a "weenie."
The comparatively easy step of making the entire non-Santa-hat portion of the party mix, which just required me to dump a bunch of stuff in a pot and stir melted white chocolate into it.

I don't know if the dipped Bugles ended up looking like Santa hats or not, but they look red and festive.

And the mix is delicious. It reminds me of something my Grandma Arlene used to make. She would come visit us every year from Pennsylvania, and she'd bring along some kind of white-coated snack mix. When I asked her what the coating was, she'd say, "White coating ... from the Amish store."

So, I was never able to replicate her recipe because I have no idea what "white coating" is, nor do I live near an Amish store. But I thought this Santa Hat Party Mix with the white chocolate was similar to Grandma Arlene's recipe.

As you can see, I put the snack mix in Mason jars and attached the cute little Starbucks gift card pillow boxes to the jars with ribbon. I made the jars for Nathan's two teachers, as well as for his babysitter Danielle. I think the whole thing came out cute, but next year I'm just filling jars with some type of store-bought treat.

Also, I think the snack mix would be good for other occasions with just straight-up, non-dipped Bugles (the salted caramel kind). Then it would be a very easy thing to make for a party.

14 Days of Festivity: Day 11

2011-12-14T18:36:00.000-06:00

Working From Home

I think, for the most part, I stay on top of responsibilities. Sure, I've forgotten to pay a bill a few times in my life, and sometimes I'm running to Target to buy a birthday present on the way to the party. But usually I like to take care of things as far in advance as I can possibly remember to.

Christmas shopping is the exception to this rule. I always procrastinate on my Christmas shopping.

One reason for this procrastination is that the holiday season stresses me out, and I don't want to prolong the holiday season by beginning my shopping in, say, September. I realize this practice makes no sense, because my holiday season would probably be less stressful if I began my shopping earlier, but nonetheless I like to keep the stress contained within the month of December.

But also, I need the pressure of last-minute shopping. See, early in the season, when I have the luxury of time, I'm always second-guessing myself when it comes to the selection of a particular person's gift. Like, Hmm, those earrings would be a really cute gift for Suzie. But ... I don't know, maybe I'll find something better. I'll keep looking.

But at the last minute, there's no time to keep looking. You see a thing you like, you throw it in the cart. Bam. Christmas is done. No second-guessing.

Now, for me, the last minute isn't exactly the last last minute, because I have to find a way to get all my gifts out to California before Christmas. I accomplish this transport in one of two ways: (1) Buying the gift out here and shipping it to one or more of my relatives' houses in advance of my arrival, or (2) Ordering the gift online and having it shipped to one or more of my relatives' houses. As online shopping becomes more convenient, I'm doing more and more of the latter.

So, my last minute started this past Saturday. And then on Monday, which was 14 Days of Festivity: Day 11, I ordered a whole bunch more stuff.

Between that ordering, soccer, and a toy purge, I didn't have time to take Nathan out and do something festive. Well, I did offer to take him to see Arthur Christmas, but we got into a battle regarding his refusal to eat lunch, and I said we couldn't go.

So, in the spirit of online shopping and doing it all from home, I just decided that Day 11 would be the day I sat at home and thought about Christmas, and then wrote about it.

I have two things to say.

One, I am happy to report that this is the first year that I don't feel stressed out about traveling with Nathan. He's easily kept occupied by the iPad, or movies, or some sort of coloring/activity book, so I'm not feeling like I'm going to be tense the entire flight. Additionally, he's finally able to sit in the backless booster seat in the car, so we don't have to lug a big old carseat everywhere we go, nor do we have to install the carseat using that !@#$@% LATCH system in every single new car we ride in during our travels (including the taxi to the airport).

That whole thing about stress-free travel with Nathan having been said, I have now jinxed myself and it will be the biggest nightmare flight with him ever, worse than the Christmas when he was still a lap child and Bill and I got our shirts covered with the meat-flavored baby food.

On a slightly more negative note, what's the deal with the Elf on the Shelf? When did this become a thing? All of the sudden I'm seeing blog posts about the Elf, Elf tweets, tips for Elf ideas, funny outtakes about the Elf ... and it's like, how did this whole thing start without being on my radar at all? I mean, I guess I saw it at Target, but I just thought it was an ugly marketing gimmick and I ignored it. Now it turns out this is supposed to be some kind of family tradition I'm supposed to perpetuate?

For anybody else who's clueless like me, the deal, according to the official Elf on the Shelf website, is that each family gets an individual elf spy to come and watch how the children in the house behave. You have to give your elf a name and register it online (a tradition no doubt dating back to the Christmases of old), and then every night your elf flies back to report to Santa, returning the next day in a fun new clever hiding place. That means that parents have to remember to find a fun new clever hiding place for the elf every day.

I absolutely see why parents would like this tradition. Most of us have been threatening kids with Santa's Naughty List for years, and this elf spy just the threat all the more believable.

But, threats of punishment and/or coal aside, I decided the Elf on the Shelf thing just wasn't for us. I'd like to say I made this decision because I don't need some external threat to keep my child in line, or because I believe he needs to learn how to behave because it's the right thing to do and not because some magical elf is spying on him. But the reality is that I love threats and bribes. I just don't think the Elf on the Shelf is for us because I'm really bad at keeping up on these things.

I could just see our elf sitting there for days on end in the exact same spot, because I forgot to find a clever hiding place for it. I'd forget to put the elf away on Christmas Eve, so then I'd blow the cover on the idea that he had to go back and be with Santa. Also I could never enforce the whole "kids aren't allowed to touch the elf" thing, because I'd end up looking the other way when Nathan incorporated it into a fort, just so I could get 5 minutes of peace to check Facebook.

Also, the poor elf would probably get crushed by all the clutter on our shelves.

14 Days of Festivity: Day 10

2011-12-14T17:48:00.000-06:00

Baking

It was time for Nathan's school's twice-yearly bake sale, which meant it was time for my twice-yearly rant about how pointless bake sales are.

I mean really. First of all, I thought schools stopped doing bake sales because of fears of allergies or H1N1 or anthrax or childhood obesity or something. Is Nathan's school like the last school ever that still does bake sales?

But also, I thought by now everybody had realized that it's a waste of time, money, and energy to have everybody buy ingredients/packaging, and then bake and wrap everything, only to turn around and purchase more baked goods, so that the net profit is less than people collectively spent on the ingredients. Hence the bakeless bake sale.

Is it really that people would refuse to give the school a $5 or $10 donation if they were asked for that instead of a donation of baked goods? Would parents be mad because they already pay tuition at the preschool and shouldn't be asked to give a donation on top of that? Because, I personally would happily hand you a $10 bill if it meant not having to bake a bunch of stuff.

Also, must this bake sale be held at the holidays, when we all have enough other stuff to do and enough other junk to eat?

Anyway, I always go classic when it comes to the bake sale. I always make the Toll House cookies, with whatever assortment of M&Ms is seasonally appropriate. My theory is that nobody is every going to be disappointed with a chocolate-chip cookie.

Now, last year, approximately 75% of the bake sale items contained red and green M&Ms. So as to distinguish my cookies from the others, I threw these Pillsbury Christmas tree cookies in as well, because I think kids like those.

But then this year my contribution was the only one with M&Ms. I know because I volunteered to work at the bake sale. Oh, and my cookies were hugely popular, largely because I promoted them more than the other cookies.

And even my cynical self could see that people still get excited about a bake sale. All the senior citizens who were at the park district for art or exercise classes, or just to hang out, seemed to get a certain kind of excited nostalgia upon seeing a bake sale. And I guess everybody thinks it's cute when it's a fundraiser for a preschool.

So maybe you do need to go through all the motions of a bake sale, because it's important to get everybody in the spirit of working together. Asking for monetary donations doesn't generate much spirit.

But I still would have rather given $10.

14 Days of Festivity: Day 9

2011-12-11T16:45:00.000-06:00

A 1950s Christmas

About 15 minutes south of my hometown lies the town of Park Forest, Illinois. Park Forest has the distinction of being America's very first fully-planned post-WWII suburb. (Many believe Levittown, New York to be the first post-war suburb, but Levittown was actually just a subdivision.) Park Forest and Levittown represented a whole new sociological phenomenon when it came to communities. As sociological big-wig Studs Terkel noted:

"The suburb, until [about 1946], had been the exclusive domain of the 'upper class.' It was where the rich lived. The rest of us were neighborhood folk. At war's end, a new kind of suburb came into being. . . . Thanks to the GI bill, two new names were added to American folksay: Levittown and Park Forest.

"A new middle class had emerged. Until now, the great many, even before the Depression, had had to scuffle from one payday to the next. . . . [Before there had only been one] car on the block. Now everybody was getting a car. Oh, it was exciting."
--Studs Terkel, The Good War (copied off that most-definitive source, Wikipedia)

Park Forest was also made famous in author William Whyte's The Organization Man, which looked at how conformity to the organization became more important than individualism in the 1950s. A huge part of the book's research looked to the citizens of Park Forest for a glimpse into the Organization Man's home life.

The town is also featured in the "America on the Move" exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum.

The first homes to be constructed in Park Forest were single-family rental townhouses. Construction began in 1946, and the first tenants came together for a town hall meeting in a tent on November 27, 1948, which is the day before my mom was born. It's strange to think of a town being that young.

At that first meeting, the new residents were encouraged to set up their own town government. These residents are often described as "pioneers," starting a whole new town from scratch, often far from their extended families. They very quickly set up schools, churches, and shopping areas. Apparently everything was muddy for awhile, a situation common in brand-new GI towns.

To educate future generations about Park Forest's unique history, the Park Forest Historical Society maintains the 1950s Park Forest House Museum in one of the original rental townhouses. The house is set up to look like a young family lives there in the early 1950s. All appliances, dishes, toys, and clothes are accurate to the period.

The house is decorated with 50s-era decorations at Christmas. Nathan and I were able to visit the house yesterday, and, since we were the only ones there, we got a private tour.

The first thing that strikes you is how small the house is. The new homes in Park Forest generally represented the standard of living that families aspired to in the postwar era, which means the standard of living sure has changed. When I was growing up, the thing to do was to add on to your postwar suburban home, because those tiny homes that once provided ample space for an entire family suddenly seemed totally inadequate. My grandmother added another bedroom onto her house, and then turned my dad's childhood bedroom into a bathroom--and not even a particularly large bathroom, by today's standards.

Here's an exterior shot of the museum:

We first visited the kitchen, where I told Nathan about the milkman:

Or you could just read that helpful children's book there, Milkman Bill.

It was around this time that Nathan rudely announced to the docent, "I don't like this house at all."

I, however, was intrigued. Look at this refrigerator! The tiny little part in the upper-right-hand corner there is the entire freezer! They had the ice cube tray with the little handle that cuts the ice.

I was also interested to see S&H Green Stamps, which I had always heard about:

And what lovely wall decor a cake pan makes!

The hand sanitizer is not historically accurate.

Here are some 1950s toys:

My dad had talked about American Plastic Bricks, but I didn't know exactly what they were. I guess they're like a precursor to Legos:

What seems odd to me is that even the toys we still have, like Tinker Toys, came in smaller containers. I guess everything is bigger now.

One of the two bedrooms is set up to look like a classroom, to commemorate the town's first school, which was housed in one of the rental units until a permanent school could be built. Nathan was intrigued by this dollhouse in the schoolroom:

And he also liked this globe piggy bank. I'm surprised it isn't just America and the Soviet Union on there:

He also thought this paper Santa was cool:

The desks were the kind with attached chairs and very heavy tops that lifted up. Nathan thought they were intriguing:

The weirdest thing I found out was that Park Forest was once such a buzzing metropolis that it had a Marshall Field's and some other big department store. The adjacent town of Chicago Heights also had a nice department store. I never think of these little rinky-dink towns as being shopping destinations.

This was the parents' bedroom. Note the presence of Dr. Spock's book, which radically changed parenting in its time.

Next we saw the bathroom. I don't know why, but the toilet training potty made of wood with the little metal bucket underneath was interesting to me:

In the hall they had popular doll Chatty Cathy, who I think looks kind of creepy:

This newspaper photo shows all the families moving in to Park Forest at the same time:

Baby carriage, originally retailing for $19.95

Down in the basement, the tour guide introduced me to these wire things you put inside your pants to keep their shape when they were drying on a clothesline:

You didn't have a dryer. You just washed your clothes in this giant cauldron of a washing machine, then ran each garment through the ringer at the top before hanging it on your clothesline in the basement. And then you had to iron everything.

The whole thing made me think I shouldn't complain about doing my laundry anymore, but I probably still will.

Now, at this point in the tour we sort of doubled back and revisited the kitchen, because that's where the door to the basement was. Apparently the closed-back cookie cutters were common back then. Plus they spelled cookie like cooky.

This is the phone book. I still don't get old-school phone numbers that are partially made of letters.

Or course being a Fiestaware enthusiast, I had to photograph this kettle:

Here's an old stand mixer:

Nathan wanted to go back into the classroom again because it was his favorite part.

I liked this teacher's poster that said, "We went to the store. We had a penny. We got candy." Nowadays you can't get candy for a penny, and teachers would never promote foods that contribute to childhood obesity anyway.

This ad indicated that the type of house the museum is in, a two-bedroom townhouse, cost $88.50 per month to rent in 1948. Today the same unit rents for $1,000/month.

This is a picture of the headset that the librarian wore in the Park Forest Library. When answering reference calls, she could plug the headset into a jack right next to the card catalog. The original mobile phone!

I've personally never heard of Crayonex Crayons:

I took this picture of the class photo from a kindergarten in 1950. I'm interested in how a kindergarten classroom had a toy grocery store and dolls to play with, not like today's kindergartens that are so academically-oriented. The kindergartens of the 1950s are now known as preschools.

Also isn't that kid in the upper left-hand corner a dapper young lad?

Here's Nathan in the living room in front of the spinning aluminum Christmas tree:

And here are both of us in front of the tree, with the "Family Radiation Measurement Kit" visible in the lower-right-hand corner:

A little closer look at the kit:

Exactly what level of family radiation would be safe?

And that was our trip back in time to the 1950s. The whole experience was really thought-provoking. I think what makes the 1950s and 1960s so interesting to us (as evidenced by the popularity of Mad Men and The Help) is that these decades were so very near and yet so far. On the one hand, a huge percentage of the population alive today can remember those decades, so that era is not exactly ancient history. And yet, an experience like a visit to this museum or an episode of Mad Men reminds us just how much things have changed. Some things have changed for the better--women are allowed to have identities outside of their husbands, our societies are much more racially-integrated, and nobody's wrestling with a laundry ringer.

But on the other hand, it's disturbing how much more we expect now. We eat more, we buy more, and we want bigger houses to hold larger people and more stuff. Many of the items we perceive as necessities today weren't even on people's radars in the 1950s. Indeed, the town of Park Forest itself is an example of how expectations have changed. The town once embodied the highest standard of living, and today it's largely a working-class suburb. And you kind of have to wonder if our complaints about how we can't afford everything we need is because we have just been socialized to believe we need so much more than we do.

I'm not suggesting that I'm going to offer any kind of solution here. I'm just as guilty as everybody else when it comes to needing stuff and wanting stuff and buying stuff.

But a trip back in time sure does make you think about things.

14 Days of Festivity: Day 8

2011-12-10T20:12:00.000-06:00

A Very Bloggy Holiday

My online-turned-real-life friend Farrah hosted a blogger holiday party on behalf of her site, DuPage Mamas.

Of course the first picture I took was of the food. These cupcakes were purchased by the site KidGrade. (Remember I'm a KidGrade ambassador? And Farrah is too.)

Prior to the party, Farrah and I talked over Google chat about how much more important it is to make a human connection than an online connection. I mean, not that the two are mutually exclusive--obviously the people connecting online are humans. But I think you can tell when people at a gathering are more interested in the online connection than the connection with the humans in front of them--people spend most of the party on their mobile devices, tweeting and Facebooking and Instagramming with the party's hashtag and the names of the relevant people and brands.

In contrast, I think at this party Farrah pulled off the human connection aspect perfectly. People were legitimately talking to one another about real issues, and the mobile phone usage was minimal. There were no name tags where people were identified in four different ways (name, blog name, URL, twitter handle). The party didn't have a hashtag.

It was just real human beings at a real party. It was totally festive and represented exactly the kind of human connection that I believe is the true force behind mom blogs.

Here is Farrah (far right) with some other bloggers:

Naturally, I have another picture of the food. This is the dinner buffet: pizza, salad, chicken, and pasta:

Some of my other blogging friends:

Here's Farrah at the raffle prize table. She gave out like 20+ raffle prizes, which were generously donated by the companies on this poster she's going all spokesmodel with:

Thanks, Farrah, for a great affair!

TJ & Pals Preschool Computer Games

2011-12-10T19:42:00.000-06:00

Recently I had the opportunity to test-drive TJ & Pals, an online gaming site for preschoolers.

I got a membership to TJ & Pals for free.

If the idea of online gaming for preschoolers makes you nervous, rest assured that TJ & Pals has a downloadable "Safe Play" application, which is like a closed system where your kids don't have access to the Internet, and the people of the Internet don't have access to your kids.

I was skeptical about TJ's ability to hold Nathan's interest, since, unlike the rest of the online games he plays, it wasn't based on any of the licensed characters from the children's TV shows he watches.

But he loved TJ & Pals! He played for like an hour the first time I turned it on. And, unlike with the shoddily-thrown-together games on the children's TV network websites, there were no weird glitches that frustrated Nathan and caused him to interrupt me every four seconds.

Let me make this clear: He mostly played on his own for an hour. Boo-yah.

Then the next day he begged to play "that new thing that you got on the computer."

What do you get with TJ & Pals? The site offers 5 main menus:

How To: These would be your basic educational activities, which teach spelling, reading, math, writing, and drawing/painting. Most of the activities in this section are still "coming soon," so we didn't spend too much time on this particular section.
Games: Naturally, this was Nathan's favorite section. There are a few different kinds of puzzles: jigsaw, sliding tiles, hidden pictures, and memory. There's also a "Let's Play" activity, where you basically complete scenes using the online equivalent of stickers. All the scenes are based on careers (builder, musician, baker, etc.), although most are "coming soon." What I like about the games and activities in this section is that they are all multi-step. For example, after a kid finds all the missing pictures in a particular scene, he/she is given another black and white scene to add the pictures back into, and then upon completion the scene becomes colorful and animated, and music plays.
Stories: This section features several animated story videos, which can either be read aloud to children, or else children can read themselves.
Activities: This section includes the Art Studio (your basic draw/paint program), Sing Along (with options for karaoke that you can record), Color In pictures, and TJ's Gym. Connect the Dots and Make Cards are coming soon. The gym was my favorite feature of this section. It includes 4 exercise videos that children can work out with, although 3 of the videos are "coming soon." This could be a really great indoor exercise opportunity during the long winter months.
Explore My World: This is sort of like a safe social networking place for kids, where they can connect with friends and play online live with those friends. Scrapbooks, Guest Passes, and Gallery are coming soon.

TJ & Pals also offers iPhone/iPad apps.

Overall, I really enjoyed TJ & Pals. You can't go wrong with an activity that is safe, educational, and doesn't make a mess, right?

14 Days of Festivity: Day 7

2011-12-09T11:07:00.000-06:00

I figured it was time to step up my 14 Days of Festivity efforts, since the previous few days were kind of lame. So, this one is a two-parter.

Part I: Preschool Crafts

I signed up to be a "Gingerbread Helper" in Nathan's classroom on the day they were making gingerbread houses. It turned out there were a few different craft activities going on that day in the classroom.

Here's Nathan with his candy cane ornament made out of beads and a chenille stem. (Chenille stems are the craft supply formerly known as pipe cleaners, but I guess maybe the makers of pipe cleaners didn't want their product associated with tobacco use.)

Meanwhile, my first assignment was to help kids write letters to Santa by filling in the blanks of a form letter with the answers kids dictated.

Next I got moved over to the gingerbread house station. Doesn't Nathan look thrilled here?

Slightly better action shot:

Part II: Bass Pro Shops

I'd been meaning to get Nathan down to Santa's Wonderland at Bass Pro Shops for days. Bass Pro Shops is a great store, despite the fact that I'm not into hunting or fishing. (However, I could get into ice fishing. I totally see the appeal of sitting out in the middle of a peaceful frozen lake, drinking a huge thermos of coffee and having emotionally intimate conversations with your fishing buddy in that little hut thingy.)

But even though I'm not so much into the outdoorsy stuff, I like Bass Pro Shops because they have really cool displays, like the giant fish tank and the waterfall and the stuffed animals. Plus Nathan likes to climb on the boats and crawl in the tents and sit on the ATVs they have.

And at Christmas, Bass Pro has the best free Santa. You can take a free picture with him, do a little craft, and play with various toys they have set up. It's a great winter destination.

However, despite the fact that my main goals at Bass Pro were of a photo-taking nature, I failed to realize that my camera battery was dead when we went there. So these are all somewhat crappy cell phone photos.

Here's Nathan in front of the big fireplace they have in the entryway:

Somewhat whimsical photo in front of the big tree:

Here's the remote-control monster truck area:

Slot-car racing against some random kid who needs a haircut:

Look! It's the Red Ryder BB Gun that Ralphie wanted in A Christmas Story:

Aww, festive holiday traditions with a crossbow:

Aaaand ... now he wants a crossbow for Christmas. That's the price you pay for a free picture with Santa. (To be fair, the arrows have suction-cup tips.)

Here's our official photo with Santa, which was free, but I paid for the digital rights to display it here, all legal-like:

14 Days of Festivity: Day 6

2011-12-09T10:13:00.000-06:00

Crafts for the Contagious

I had "Library Holiday Crafts" on my calendar for weeks. I love the annual library holiday craft event. It's local, free, and fun. All the crafty mess stays out of your home. It's perfect.

Furthermore, I had my 14 Days of Festivity event all locked up for that day. (What? I think about these things in advance.)

But, as is becoming my theme with this series, my plans got derailed. This time it wasn't our new rodent friends who threw a wrench in my day, but instead Nathan's random illness.

He started showing signs of a stomach bug in the morning. I think it turned out to be just a fluke, something he ate or something, but to be on the safe side I decided to keep him away from other kids. (Also he was ridiculously crabby, so I considered it a public service that I was keeping him away from other people in general.)

So, I decided we'd just do a craft at home!

I'd checked out a book about holiday crafts from the library the week before, and I was intrigued by a project where you make Christmas ornaments out of a sugar/glitter dough. I had purchased super-fine glitter the previous week in preparation for the craft.

So, you know those blogs you read where the mom and the kids seem all perfect with their perfect little craft they do? And everybody is smiling, and the kids follow directions instead of just making a huge mess out of expensive art supplies, and the mom isn't looking like a vein is popping out of her head? And you feel all bad because it never goes like that in your house, and you're barely eking out a crayon-based artistic existence for your own children?

This is not going to be one of those blog posts. This craft was a horrific failure. Please, take comfort in my pain.

I figured since I got the craft idea out of a legitimate published book instead of some unreliable website, the craft would be a success.

Part of the problem is that I didn't exactly "follow directions," as they say.

Here's what you were supposed to do: Mix 1/2 cup of sugar, 1 tablespoon water, and 1 teaspoon glitter.

I had absolutely no faith whatsoever that this dough would ever harden, so I drizzled about a teaspoon of white glue in there, too. And I think I added an extra tablespoon of water.

The other thing was, you were supposed to press the mix into cookie cutters that had backs on them. But who on earth has those, considering they are (a) harder to find, and (b) the biggest pain in the ass for making actual cookies? So we just used your standard cookie cutters:

You were supposed to immediately remove the cutters and leave the shapes to dry without the cookie cutters framing them. This seemed fraught with potential for crumbling, so I left the cookie cutters there.

Meanwhile, Nathan dumped all the ingredients, plus a few others, into a bowl to make a potion:

The potion got transferred back and forth from bowl to mug, and then somehow paper cups got involved:

And I think somehow it was mentioned that Nathan wanted to keep the paper cups of potion to give Bill for his birthday (which is in June) ... ?

I put a towel underneath the potion, and I figure it's Christmasy because it's red:

Oh, and the next day I took the sugar/glue ornaments out of the cookie cutters. Or the original 5 we made, only two survived the cookie-cutter-removal, the star and the stocking. Then Nathan decided to crumble up the stocking, just for laughs.

So, behold, our one ugly star ornament:

The ornament will not survive to Christmas 2012. Unlike the Star Trek ornament you see in the upper-left-hand corner of the above photo.

Oh, and who on earth does a sugar-based craft when her house has a rodent problem? All kinds of win, I tell you. All kinds of win.

Nathan's New Soccer Gig

2011-12-07T13:42:00.000-06:00

This has nothing to do with Christmas festivities, but I realized I never wrote about Nathan's new soccer activity. And I have to record all this for posterity. Dammit.

Look, I really enjoyed Nathan's fall competitive outdoor soccer experience. (Well, it was sort of non-competitive, in that they didn't keep score, but I am labeling it competitive because it was a league where teams played games against one another.) He made tremendous progress during the season in terms of his engagement and enjoyment of the game. In the end, I think I can call his first soccer experience a success, and say that we all had fun.

But it was all a lot of work, too. Forcing him into his shoes and shin guards twice a week, parking a million miles away from the field for each game, at least three snack obligations, two end-of-season parties ... it was all kind of a lot to give a four-year-old an athletic experience.

In contrast, his post-season soccer clinic has been a breeze. Well, maybe Super Strikers Soccer isn't exactly a clinic--I don't want you guys to think we're grooming him for a soccer scholarship or something. It's more like a little class offered by the park district for ages 3-5, in which the kids practice various soccer skills and burn off some energy.

There are no games. I never have to bring snack. It's indoors, so no cleats are allowed, and nobody wears shin guards either. (I did put them on him the first day, but when I realized that (a) none of the other kids had them, and (b) there's no aggressive potential shin-hurting activity anyway, I stopped bothering with the shin guards.) It's indoors, and it's right down the street at a place with convenient parking. It's the perfect cold weather exercise activity for kids.

Also? Nathan loves it. Like, seriously, the kid who barely ever gets worked up about anything has said repeatedly, I love my new soccer.

The pictures I took at Super Strikers are kind of grainy, because I was far away and under florescent lights. But I think they demonstrate the ball-handling skillz Nathan is acquiring at Super Strikers.

The activities are usually tag-based, or else they tie in with popular children's licensed characters like Spongebob or Shrek. The final activity of the day is always dribbling to the orange cones. Under each cone is a gold coin. The kids have to dribble back with the coin and exchange it for a piece of fruit.

That's right--not only is this program super fun for one and all, it also gets my kid to eat fruit:

Win-Win.

Unfortunately, the program is not offered in the winter, so we'll have to find a new way to burn off energy. I have some ideas in the works, but that's a story for a different day.

14 Days of Festivity: Day 5

2011-12-07T11:49:00.000-06:00

Cop-Out

Mousewatch 2011 continues, and the resulting cleanup efforts have really put a cramp in our holiday festivities.

So, the most festive thing I did on Day 5 was make it snow on my blog. The snowflakes change direction according to your mouse movements. The snow collects at the bottom. It's a guaranteed 4 seconds of entertainment.

I don't know why it's blue, though.

14 Days of Festivity: Day 4

2011-12-06T11:25:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas Alien

I had big plans for Day 4, but those plans got derailed the moment I woke up.

I walked downstairs to find Leia intently staring at a corner where we keep our shoes. There was only one reason a cat would be staring that intently at shoes: A tasty rodent friend was hiding in there. And, sure enough, moments later a tiny mouse scurried up the stairs and out of our sight.

"MOUSE!" I yelled loudly, waking up the other members of my family and setting a day of unfortunate events in motion.

Now all the creatures were stirring, including a mouse. (That was my attempt to turn this event into something festive.)

Anyway, Bill began throwing items out of closets to try to locate the little rodent. Everything from my closet was thrown on top of my bed.

So I guess the day's new plan was cleaning out the closet.

Cleaning out the closet evokes a certain painful level of emotions that I wasn't prepared for. So many articles of clothing have memories attached: the shirt I wore to get my hair done for my wedding; my old work wardrobe; maternity clothes. And mostly there was just a lot of stuff I don't fit into anymore, and probably never will.

But I turned my sentimentality off and just purged and purged. I ended up with two huge bags of trash, three huge bags to donate to the Salvation Army, and a giant bag of hangers to give back to the dry cleaners.

The cleaning and subsequent trip to the Salvation Army took up most of the day, so we didn't get any of our holiday festivities in. Fortunately, Nathan had a babysitter coming, and the two of them spent some time doing holiday crafts while I cleaned.

The idea for the Christmas Alien came from the fact that, as I was fishing out craft supplies, I could only find 3 googly eyes. I explained that since most creatures on earth have only two eyes, we might have one left over. But no:

The babysitter's name is Danielle. She is awesome.

That's all they made before Nathan got bored and asked to work on his Christmas Super Mega Book of Fun (an activity book I purchased from the $1 bin at JoAnn).

But we did have a couple of other crafts lying around from an event Nathan went to at a local church the previous night, so I thought I'd include photos of those to beef up this post.

This first craft is a sticker nativity scene. Of particular note is that Nathan drew lines between the stars to make a constellation. I guess it goes with the Gingerbread Planetarium. Oh, and remember I mentioned that my grandpa runs a planetarium? Well, he does an annual show about what the stars might have looked like during the first Christmas. No doubt Nathan's depiction is totally accurate:

Also the North Star is now a roof decoration, and a camel can fly.

Reindeer with hand-shaped antlers:

Holiday bell necklace:

This photo also demonstrates that we've done too many crafts on this table.

Merry Christmas, Alien!

14 Days of Festivity: Day 3

2011-12-06T10:49:00.000-06:00

A Christmas Story Exhibit

The beloved holiday movie A Christmas Story ("You'll shoot your eye out!") is based on two short stories by Indiana native Jean Shepherd, who is also the narrator of the movie. The events in the movie come from five of Shepherd's short stories, contained in his books In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories: And Other Disasters. (The five stories were also later compiled into the book A Christmas Story after the movie was made.) Shepherd's stories tell the tales of his childhood in Hammond, Indiana during the 1930s and 1940s.

The fictional town of Hohman, Indiana, where young protagonist Ralphie and his family live in A Christmas Story, is based on Hammond. So, Hammond hosts an annual event called A Christmas Story Comes Home.

The event consists of five miniature animated displays depicting scenes in the movie, which were originally window displays at the New York City Macy's store.

This first scene shows the neighbors' dogs, The Bumpus Hounds, eating the turkey Ralphie's mom made for Christmas dinner:

Next to this display was a stack of Lifebuoy soap, which is the soap Ralphie has to suck on after he says a bad word. I smelled the soap in the gift shop and, woo-wee, that would be a punishment.

Each display had a TV next to it, showing the scene depicted in the display (on mute, with closed-captioning). Here are Bill and Nathan watching the Santa's Mountain scene:

And here's the diorama of the scene:

This scene shows Ralphie's parents sitting by the fire on Christmas night, with Ralphie upstairs in his bed, cradling his BB gun:

Here's Nathan in front of the scene where Ralphie's friend Flick gets his tongue stuck to a frozen flagpole, on a dare (a triple-dog dare):

This display shows Ralphie's dad setting up the leg lamp he won in a contest:

We probably should have showed Nathan the movie before we went to the exhibit. Having never seen the movie, he was a little lukewarm on the whole outing:

But you could purchase a craft kit in the gift shop for $1.00, and since two of Nathan's very favorite things are crafts and stuff you can buy, he perked up a little:

Next we wrote a letter to Santa. I wrote the letter and Nathan signed it:

At his parent-teacher conference last week, the teacher gave us a handout that said that if a kid starts kindergarten not knowing how to hold a writing instrument correctly, he or she is already behind on Day 1. Phew, at least I think we have that one covered. Unfortunately, he willingly chose to write his name backwards (he knows the right way) and with alternating huge and teeny letters. I mean, I guess he's an outside-the-box thinker with age-appropriate fine-motor skills?

Here he is mid-signature, no doubt pondering future ways to annoy us:

Mailing the letter:

Finally, it was time to see Santa! Despite his previous attitude, he did pose for this most adorable photo:

The slide down Santa's mountain was a little bit smaller than the one in the movie. Here's footage:

When it was time to leave because we'd seen the whole exhibit, Nathan cried, "WHAT?! We're leaving already?!"

14 Days of Festivity: Day 2

2011-12-04T16:55:00.000-06:00

Gingerbread Houses

I have fond memories of making gingerbread houses as a kid. I remember my mom would let us have a bunch of friends over for a house-making party. I remember making the houses at school and in Girl Scouts.

But I also remember the time in third grade, when my house kept falling apart, and I cried in frustration, and I had to be removed from the activity and later brought back to finish during some sort of remedial gingerbread house session.

So, I find gingerbread houses both whimsical and frustrating. Especially frustrating these days is that the gingerbread house ante has been upped. The graham cracker/milk carton creations of my youth are no longer sufficient, as now we're expected to buy one of those kits and actually create a home-baked structure. It's no wonder every parent I know who's made a gingerbread house describes the experience using words like stressful and never again.

Therefore, I resisted buying the gingerbread house kit when Nathan asked for it. Just thinking about trying to assemble a gingerbread house made my eye twitch.

And then, a little angel from the local park district swooped down and saved my gingerbread-ambivalent ass. You could pay to make a gingerbread house, assembled by somebody else, at the park district!

They set the scene just perfectly. Carols were playing, a big tree sparkled in the corner, and they had hot chocolate and cookies you could decorate to get your creative juices flowing:

There was a pre-assembled house on each table. Nathan selected this one:

The snowman has just purchased this property. It's a real fixer-upper.

Pastry bags of frosting and edible "glue" were provided for us, along with an assortment of candies for decorating.

Nathan began by decorating the roof with a gumball pattern. Math lesson!

Here's Nathan mounting the telescope on the gingerbread house. And that's when he declared it the Gingerbread Planetarium!

I helped him extend the telescope with the help of a coffee stir stick:

Then we made a candy replica of the solar system:

It's not exactly to scale. We had limited materials to work with.

We needed some ground foliage:

The finished product:

The Gingerbread Planetarium has two snowman employees, shown here. I like to think one of them represents my grandpa, Papa Jack, who is 90 years old and still runs the planetarium at his local college.

Now, since getting the house home, we have experienced two gingerbread house-related challenges. First, where does one display a gingerbread house? We don't have a lot of free horizontal surfaces on which we can plop a big candy- and frosting-coated monstrosity. The fireplace mantle isn't quite deep enough. So right now the house just gets moved around from one surface to another, as needed for convenience.

Our second problem, which I predicted, is that Nathan doesn't totally understand the idea that the gingerbread house is to look at, not to eat/touch/play with. Fortunately his four-year-old short attention span seems to be working in our favor, though, because one day later he's kind of lost interest in the thing.

But we did have a great time making it.

14 Days of Festivity: Day 1

2011-12-04T16:33:00.000-06:00

Hometown Holiday Light-Up

I don't have a ton of photos from this event, because it was at night, and it's hard to take photos at night. So I'll just have to fill in the gaps with my sparkling commentary. (Get it ... sparkling ... holiday lights?)

The village where we live has its annual tree lighting the first Friday in December. Santa rides in on a decorated fire engine and switches on the lights on the big holiday tree at the park. Then you stroll around the streets and stores, or ride the trolleys, to various little activities.

I remember the year I went to the tree lighting by myself, back when we still lived right next to the park. I remember carrying an infant Nathan to see the tree, trudging through the snow and wondering what I was thinking having a baby out in the bitter cold at the ungodly hour of 7:00. I remember the year we skipped it because it was 10 degrees outside.

This year it was about 50 degrees, and the warmer weather must have attracted more people. It was so crowded, and I felt like everywhere I looked, I saw somebody I knew. There's that woman from the gym! There's Nathan's little friend from school! And the soccer coach! And some kids I know from my plays!

It's kinda neat to live in a town where you know so many people. And it's special for me to know so many people here, because when we first moved here I didn't know anybody, and I remember crying tears of joy the first time I saw somebody I knew at the grocery store.

It's also just kind of cool to kick off the holiday season with an activity that brings out most of the town. It feels so festive, you know?

A highlight for me this year was getting to pet a live reindeer. I also enjoy the annual ice-carving demonstration.

But mostly I spent my time waiting in line for 20 minutes to get popcorn for Nathan. While I was in line, Bill and Nathan went and looked at the decorated antique cars. I don't know why, but every festival in my town seems to feature a display of antique cars.

Here are a few shots from the car display:

Pooh loves a good car show!

With the Woody in the background

This would be Christmas Threw Up: The Automotive Version

After we got the popcorn, people's feet started hurting, and people had to go to the bathroom, and people were cold. So we walked through the luminaria-lined streets to our car, buoyed by the Christmas spirit.

REJECTED, Part 2

2011-12-03T17:00:00.000-06:00

So, that whole professional opportunity I've been alluding to? Didn't pan out.

The weird thing is, I've had two job interviews where I thought it was an absolute lock. One was my very first interview when I was 16. The other one was my most recent interview. And I didn't get either job. I guess I'm not a very good judge of these things.

I admit to having felt absolutely crushed when I got the rejection letter yesterday. Like There is no hope for me to ever get another job again ever crushed.

I couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel. And I thought, I can't write a blog post about this, because every blog post concludes with a light at the end of tunnel.

But that was yesterday. And then I started to see some lights, both literally and figuratively. See, last night was my town's annual holiday light-up, and my friend had a light-up pre-party. I realized how many wonderful people I'm surrounded by, and how much I love living in this town. The whole thing was fun and festive and wonderful and cozy.

And it was time to leave Self-Pityville.

Today, there are lights everywhere. (BTW do you like my new blog design?)

There will be more opportunities.

Until then, I am going to immerse myself in holiday festivities. Which is why, following this post, I will begin a series called 14 Days of Festivity. Why 14? Well, because the festivity started December 2 with the town tree-lighting, and I can only commit to festive activities until December 16, at which point I need to start preparing for our holiday travels. Also, the word fourteen starts with F, so it's alliterative with the word festivity. I'm all about alliteration.

And, since this song has been stuck in my head the entire time I've been writing this, I conclude with lyrics from one of my favorite musicals, Starlight Express:

But there's a light at the end of the tunnel

There's a light at the end of the tunnel

The inside might be as black as the night

But at the end of the tunnel there's a light.

Party of One

2011-12-02T10:35:00.000-06:00

You all know my weakness for good-smelling bath products.

Now, in my recent attempts at saving money, I have restricted myself from Bath & Body Works purchases. They sell perfectly good-smelling lotions and body washes at Target, in the generic brand, which I can purchase with coupons.

Plus I had an adequate stash of previously-purchased Bath & Body Works products in my bathroom, so I wasn't hurting for good smells in my house. However, the scents designed for use in spring are horribly inappropriate for this time of year, and you can't expect me to use a lotion with hints of lilac when I clearly should be using one with hints of evergreen, and Oh for the love of God WHAT KIND OF LIFE IS THIS?

Anyway. The point is, I was perfectly clean and moisturized with my seasonally-inappropriate bath products, and all was well.

Until a little thing called Twisted Peppermint came back to Bath & Body Works.

Twisted Peppermint is the greatest scent ever. Minty and fresh, with just the teeniest amount of sweet, it's pleasantly festive without choking you with the Christmas spirit. And I'm not the only one who likes it. Last year Bath & Body Works sold out all the Twisted Peppermint long before Christmas, in-store and online, because people were buying huge quantities and selling them on eBay. It's like the Cabbage Patch Kid of lotions.

This year I was not going to be left empty- (and dry-) handed. I trotted over to Bath & Body Works while Nathan was at school yesterday. I got to the mall before the stores opened, and I saw Santa being escorted down the elevator by a mall security guard, and seriously I was so excited that I yelled, "It's Santa! Hey Santa!" and he said hi back to me and I teared up a little. (Let me remind you I did not have my kid with me. Christmas Spirit FTW!)

Three games of the hugely addictive cell phone word game Dabble later, the store opened. And soon I was plunged into the most complicated mathematical situation in life--more complicated even than splitting up the restaurant check--trying to maximize my Bath & Body Works coupons. I don't care what level of math you reached in your educational career, you can't possibly wrap your head around the calculations required to outsmart Bath & Body Works at their coupon game. I'm not even sure the people who create the coupon campaigns understand the exact math behind them. I think there's just an earnest Bath & Body Works marketing person in a conference room doing a PowerPoint presentation like, We don't know the exact numbers, but the coupons bring people in the store and we make money, and there's only one slide in the presentation and it looks like this:

Anyway, bottom line, I picked out a bunch of stuff, and I closed my eyes and pointed to one coupon and picked that one to use, and I ended up with some lotions, body washes, a hand sanitizer, a bubble bath, and a hand soap in the following holiday scents: Twisted Peppermint, Vanilla Bean Noel, and Winter Candy Apple. Total expenditure: $28. That's pretty good for 6 items, right? I mean, almost Target prices? Plus the good smells get me in the Christmas spirit, which is, as they say, priceless.

So, after my experiences with not-so-extreme couponing, I made a trip to Costco and then picked Nathan up at school. Upon pickup, the teacher told me that Nathan had been reluctant to play with the other kids at recess time, and that they had tried to encourage him to join the group, but he didn't want to.

Now, this whole loner thing is a new development, at least as far as I'm aware. The first time I heard of this issue was at a recent parent-teacher conference, wherein the teachers had expressed concern about Nathan's reluctance to play with other kids sometimes. I was really surprised that he was having problems socializing, because he always seems to enjoy playing with other kids at the park or the gym daycare or wherever, and in fact he's usually disappointed when there aren't other kids to play with in a particular venue. And when I pick him up, I can't pry him away from two other kids in particular (one of whom is in a different class at preschool).

So I decided not to worry about Nathan's social issues right now, because -- oh, okay, who am I kidding? I worry about everything. But I decided to worry more about Nathan's other issues, namely his recent tendency to talk back and/or not follow directions. And he did get a good report on those behaviors from school yesterday, so I sort of put the whole doesn't play well with others issue out of my mind.

As the rest of the day unfolded, we did our usual things like eating and chores. Then Nathan had a very cold playdate at the park, during which he did play well with others. Next we went to the gym, and it seemed he played well with his friends there, too.

Now, I didn't take a shower immediately after working out, so by the time dinner was over, I was feeling pretty gross. That's when I remembered my new Winter Candy Apple bubble bath! Bill and Nathan were happily playing with Legos together, so I said, "I'm going upstairs to have some me time."

Oh man, you guys, I love that bubble bath. It's so pretty and red and sparkly, and it smells so good.

Following the me time, I gave Nathan a bath, which was much less relaxing than taking a bath myself. As I was drying him off, I talked to him about how his behavior had been pretty good that day, but I asked him why he hadn't wanted to play with other kids at school.

"Nobody wanted to build a fort with me," he said. "So I just played by myself."

"Oh, that's okay," I said. "Sometimes I like to be alone, too."

"Yeah, I just needed some me time," he said.

Fair enough.

November Goals: How Did Those Go?

2011-12-01T15:08:00.000-06:00

In November my goal was to go through all my belongings and purge items I no longer wanted/needed, in anticipation for the acquisition of new items at Christmas.

I did none of that. I don't want to talk about it.

My other goal was to budget better on groceries and household items.

I created a ridiculously low budget for these two categories. Somehow I thought I could feed my family for $300 for an entire month, and that I could allot a separate $100 for toiletries and household items.

On November 1, I went and withdrew $400 cash from the ATM, and then I established envelopes for Groceries ($300) and Toiletries/Household Goods ($100). All month long I diligently recorded purchases on each envelope, removing cash to reimburse myself if I had paid for items with a credit or debit card.

Both envelopes were empty by November 13, which meant I misjudged my budget by about half.

Not wanting to give up altogether and just go all crazy financially, I put $100 more in each envelope. (I figured the first half of the month would cost more, food-wise, since that's when I make my Costco trip.)

Well, I blew through that by Thanksgiving. Bottom line, before this becomes all TL;DR, is that I spent $700 on groceries and $300 on toiletries/household goods. I suspect I spent a bit more on groceries this month because of Thanksgiving. Oh, and the Toiletries/Household Goods budget got blown by purchasing rodent traps.

Maybe if we purchased less food, the rodents would go away, and then it would be a win-win for both budget categories, not to mention for the rodents who won't be getting killed in traps.

So, I wasn't altogether successful this month with the budgeting, but I did learn a lot, and I believe I acted in the most financially responsible way possible. (Okay, maybe not the most financially responsible way possible, because there were some trips to Starbucks in there, but I think I was disciplined.)

I did read that the average person spends $300 per month on groceries, so I assume that means that the average expenditure for two adults would be $600. I mean, I realize that buying/cooking in bulk saves you money, so I guess you can't say that a family with n members spends n times more than a single person. But you have to figure that more people equals more money spent on groceries, at least to some degree. And I have no idea how an extremely picky 4-year-old fits into that equation, but he has to be good for at least $50, right?

So, I don't think $600 is altogether unreasonable for our family to budget for food in a month. That will be my budget in the future. (Recall that all three of us have specific dietary needs/preferences, and that I don't want to fall victim to the "savings at the cost of nutrition" phenomenon.)

So, that was November. I am not going to set goals, financial or otherwise, for December, because December is tricky. On the one hand, I'll be buying more food to bring to potlucks and whatnot. But on the other hand, we'll be traveling, and therefore won't be buying groceries during the period while we're away. Point is, December is atypical, and I won't be setting any goals. As always, my goal for December is just basic survival.

Let's Talk About the Weather

2011-11-30T14:37:00.000-06:00

I got all my leaves raked. Or, okay, I didn't, but the trash service's free leaf pickup is over, so by default I'm done raking leaves. Which means I have something to admit to you.

Come closer. I'm only going to whisper it.

I kind of want it to snow.

I know, I know, I know.

That is like the worst thing you can ever admit in Chicagoland. But I'm entitled to my feelings, and that's how I legitimately feel.

Part of my desire for snow comes from a ridiculous misconception I hold about how there's a limited amount of crappy weather each season, and you might as well get it over with early so it's nice in the spring. You know, like the winter that starts late is going to end late. Like most people, I find a pretty dusting at Thanksgiving to be much less vile than the snow that's still coming down when professional baseball starts in April.

In actuality, I'm sure the start time for winter weather has no bearing on the end time for winter weather. And that's okay, because my wish for snow doesn't really stem exclusively from my misconceptions about weather anyway.

It's just that I legitimately like snow. It's pretty.

I remember the first snow after I moved here. Do you think it will snow today? I remember asking somebody at my gym. I sure hope so.

You're crazy, she replied.

And apparently I'm still crazy. There's still enough Californian left in me that I get excited every time it snows. Well, okay, maybe I'm not excited about those last little spring flurries. By then I'm counting down to the opening of the pool.

But now? During the holiday season? It just seems right that everything should be dusted in a little coating of snow.

I like the way everything looks uniform and clean when the snow has fallen. And can we all agree that a snowfall is peaceful?

In conclusion, that is why I like snow. No snow right now feels wrong, like we're neither here nor there. And you know my feelings about neither here nor there.

No doubt many people disagree with me here. And if a big storm comes our way, those people will probably blame me for willing the snow to come (because I am just that powerful). So, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go duck from flying objects being thrown at me. Though, if I get my wish, those objects will be snowballs.

Tidings of Comfort and Joy

2011-11-28T19:40:00.000-06:00

This post is sponsored by Tempur-Pedic, the brand millions of owners trust to deliver their best night’s sleep every night. Enjoy our Buy 2, get 1 free pillow offer now and give the gift of custom comfort to someone you love.

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They look comfortable, right?

Well, guys, there's no messing around anymore. The holiday season is here. Time to find a way to cram all that shopping, wrapping, gift-exchanging, cooking, traveling, and eating into your already-packed life. It's no wonder stress is often the first word that comes to mind when thinking about the holidays.

Still, I don't want to let all this stress turn me into a Scrooge. That's why I try very hard to find small moments of joy during the holiday season.

This post is about those holiday comforts that make the season special.

First off, the best thing about Christmas is that everything is peppermint-flavored! There's peppermint mocha, peppermint hot chocolate ... or, in the non-edible category, peppermint lotions.

And, since this is a post sponsored by a mattress company, let's not forget the many comforts of a warm, snuggly bed in the winter. I mean, I love my bed year-round, but there's nothing better than snuggling into flannel sheets under a fuzzy blanket at the end of a cold day.

In that same vein, let's remember the bed's comfy cousins: slippers, soft blankets, fuzzy socks, and cozy fleece. No more of that hot, humid summer with all the skin exposure and shaving and whatnot. It's winter, let's bring on the fuzz!

I should also mention that it's best to take a soothing bubble bath before slipping into all that fuzz, preferably a bubble bath with evergreen- or vanilla-scented candles.

And while superficial creature comforts are all well and good, sometimes you need something to comfort your soul. That's why this year I'm trying to take time out to sit and snuggle with Nathan in front of the Christmas tree. The photo above was taken just after our inaugural snuggle session. Like a peppermint mocha for my heart, I tell ya.

So, this holiday season, don't let all the insanity make you Grinchy. Seek out your own holiday comforts and savor them.

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Comfort is the perfect gift for everyone on your holiday gift list, so be sure to take advantage of Tempur-Pedic's Buy 2, get 1 free pillow offer! I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective.

What I Did The Day After Thanksgiving

2011-11-25T20:15:00.000-06:00

1. Participated in my gym's Butterball Burner 5K with Katie and Trainer Jill.

2. Read part of a really good book called The Sisters.

3. Took a nap.

4. Ate leftovers.

5. Thought about taking out the Christmas decorations, but didn't.

Thanksgiving Post 2 of 2: The Pictorial

2011-11-25T19:43:00.001-06:00

This Thanksgiving I decided to just cook at home. I have shied away from cooking at home for just my family in the past, because I have: one family member who likes only four Thanksgiving foods, one family member who likes nothing, one family member who only eats cat food, and me. Not a very gratifying crowd to cook for. And that one Thanksgiving where I stuffed the turkey with cat food did not go over well.

But I thought of how relaxing it would be to just stay home and not have to go anywhere. And fortunately Katie came down on the train to eat with us. She's not a picky eater at all, so I was able to justify making all the foods that nobody else in my family likes besides me. (Read: stuffing/cranberry sauce/sweet potatoes/apple pie/salad.)

It turned out to be an awesome Thanksgiving. I decided that since I wasn't cooking for a crowd, I would endeavor to do it all from scratch this year. Normally I have the jelly cranberry sauce shaped like the can, and gravy from a jar, and I always purchase Bill's beloved pecan pie from the grocery store. But this year I was like NO! I will do it myself. I even made the bread for the stuffing.

(And now the whole from scratch bug is out of my system, so I can go back to laziness next year.)

Here's the obligatory picture of the table before the meal, featuring the Toy Story alien:

The logistics:

Even though a turkey breast would have sufficed, it was cheaper to make a whole turkey. I got the turkey for $6 with a coupon, and, because I'm frugal like this, I got a second coupon and got a second turkey to freeze for later. I know, look at me!

I brined the turkey using this brine recipe. I really liked it for its simplicity. After the turkey brined overnight, I rinsed it and popped it into an oven bag. And then, as Ron Popeil says, I just set it and forget it. Four hours later, we had a turkey.

I went rogue and did the stuffing in the Crock Pot. I didn't use a special Crock Pot stuffing recipe, I just put the regular stuffing in the Crock Pot. Because I like to play fast and loose like that.

We also had: homemade rolls; cranberry sauce (pop, popped, popped by me in a pot the day before); mashed potatoes; homemade gravy that loosely resembled turkey-flavored pudding; the sweet potato casserole that I list as one of the foods I would eat exclusively if I found out I had a month to live; salad with gorgonzola and Craisins; and a compromise green bean recipe (compromise because I prefer the traditional green bean casserole and Bill prefers boring, plain steamed green beans).

Here's another photo of the table, this time with candles lit and alien removed:

It was the first Thanksgiving meal prep where I didn't feel like the last 30 minutes before dinner were ridiculously stressful. I felt calm. Katie helped me peel the potatoes, both sweet and regular, while Bill watched a professional wrestling match from 1987 and Nathan set up my cat figurines to create a village called Cat Town, which is not pictured here:

And finally! Time to eat! Here's a blurry picture that proves that I always put my napkin in my lap before eating. And also that I used cloth napkins:

Immediately Nathan found himself in a Thanksgiving time-out, not altogether different from his Easter time-out:

Upon returning to the table, he was appalled that we asked him to eat four green beans and four bites of turkey:

Yadda, yadda, yadda, eating, something something dishes, and then it was time for pie!

This year I made three pies, which I think is about right when you have three adults, plus a kid who decides he doesn't want to eat pie.

Now, as I said, Bill loves pecan pie. Apparently the price of pecans has gone up this year, so the bag of pecans needed to make this pie cost me $13. And that was with a coupon. Add in two kinds of corn syrup and some other ingredients, and I think the pie cost me about $20 to make. Recall that the turkey cost $6. But I didn't think of not having Bill's favorite pie. And that is love, people.

My favorite pie is apple, and I figured you have to have pumpkin, right?

Here are the pies:

Nathan preferred to play video games instead of eating pie:

Meanwhile, Leia ... did what she does every day:

And back at Pie Central:

Katie brought some sparkling peach dessert wine to go with the pies. It tasted like those gummi peach ring candies, but in booze form.

Here's me all, "Hey look, I'm eating pie!"

And here's Katie all, "Hellz yeah, you are!"

Also, note how Bill had to drink his sparkling wine out of a margarita glass, because even though all signs point to the fact that we are grown-ass adults, we only have a total of 3 wine glasses, and out of those only two match, and one of them is cracked.

But, in spite of our dire glassware situation, it proved to be a great Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving Post 1 of 2: The Philosophical

2011-11-25T19:00:00.000-06:00

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I like that it has the delicious food and family togetherness of Christmas, without the obligatory gift-exchanging.

But I always find the week before Thanksgiving sort of sad.

I think it started when I was in college. See, I went to a public university in California, which as you know is a very large state. Therefore, some people who went to my college came from places that were like 14 hours away, but were still in California. Those people were always trying to maximize their Thanksgiving breaks by taking, like, a whole week off for Thanksgiving. However, my family lived only two hours away, so I usually stayed at school until Wednesday afternoon and then went home.

There was something that felt strange about that week before Thanksgiving. Like, some people were gone, in on some party that I wasn't invited to. The week felt neither here nor there.

These days, it seems about half the world considers the entire week of Thanksgiving a holiday, while the rest of the world proceeds as normal. Some stuff is closed, but you're still trying to go on about the week as normal, and it just seems too quiet.

This is all to say that on Wednesday, I was in sort of a weird place emotionally. It didn't help that I was dealing with some sort of illness that's just one of those things where you feel crappy and off for one day, and then it disappears.

But I had things to do! I had to get the shopping done and the pies made and my eyebrows waxed and blah blah blah blah blabitty blah.

The place where I get my eyebrows waxed is next to a Panera. On my way out of the parking lot, I saw two young girls run up to each other from far away and engage in the most enthusiastic reunion hug. It seemed these were two high school friends back from their first year away at their respective colleges.

It was the sweetest thing. And because I'm an overthinker, it turned into A Moment for me.

I thought of all the stuff that reunion meant. About rites of passage and coming home and a truly exciting time in a person's life. I thought about how, throughout the course of college, the balance of your friends begins to shift from childhood friends to college friends, and about how the balance in your sense of home and identity shift too. So much to figure out. So many questions.

And I thought about what a wonderful time college and early adulthood are, and how I wouldn't have wanted to skip those phases of life, but how mostly I'm just glad they're over. Which is exactly the same thing I could say about all the subsequent phases, such as my first professional job, new parenthood, etc., etc., etc.

That's when I knew what I was thankful for. I'm thankful for being right here, in this moment, at this point of my life. And all the cliches-for-a-reason go along with that: the thankfulness for family, shelter, adequate food, and health. I'm thankful for being at a place where I am secure, and happy, and stable.

Lately I have been focused more on the future than the present. What should I do? What will happen? How will it work out if I do This? Or That?

But really? Things are right as they should be right now. And I am thankful in the present.

We Went to The Chicago Toy and Game Fair!

2011-11-24T10:19:00.001-06:00

Prior to meeting Bill, I would have included board games on my list of hobbies. I'd take a night at home playing board games over a loud, impersonal bar any day.

But on our second date, I told Bill I liked board games. He was so excited. He liked board games!

"So, what kind of games do you like? Advanced Squad Leader?"

"What?" I asked, puzzled.

It turned out, I liked some simple little party games, but I didn't really like Board Games. Board games, at least the kind Bill likes, are complicated and involve rule books contained in 3-ring binders. They consume large amounts of time and physical space. They are usually made in Europe in very small batches.

Bill downloads no fewer than 3 board game podcasts a week. He's on multiple board game sites. He has an entire bedroom full of board games.

So, Bill likes board games. And now Nathan likes board games.

Nathan also likes toys.

And I like getting stuff for free because I'm a blogger.

So, we went to the special free blogger event at the Chicago Toy and Game Fair Last weekend.

The pictures I took were with my cell phone, because you had to tweet them as part of a complicated Web 2.0 scavenger hunt that you had to complete in order to get your free swag bag at the end.

My first photo is Nathan with Lego Santa:

Speaking of Legos, I love how you get a kid in a room of brand-new, innovative toys, and he could spend the whole time playing with toys he already owns and plays with hours a day at home:

This next toy looks really cool, but I have no idea what it is, so I'm not doing a very good advertisement for it:

Look at the adorable Viva Topo! with kitties and mice in it:

You had to pick the coolest toy to photograph/tweet. I picked the Air Swimmers shark. I've seen this in catalogs and online, and I have vowed not to purchase it because of the cost, but damn if it isn't pretty cool floating through the air:

Aaand by far the nastiest game was this one about a dog pooping. The object of the game was to collect the most poop.

Also, what exactly did this dog eat?

This is Nathan with Olly Oogleberry, a Chicago-based character who will appear in a new book next month. The people behind Olly are being very nice and sending me a free copy of the book, so I though I'd pimp him up a little:

This next toy is called Q-Ba-Maze 2.0, and it's a variation on the old marble maze with the tubes. What I like about it is that you also build a structure in addition to the marble maze, and you're guaranteed that the marble travels all the way down (as opposed to the old version where it might just plummet from the top to the ground).

Also look how adorable Farrah's kids are in the background.

Nathan spent a ridiculous amount of time on this game Contraptions, in which you build a structure for a ball to roll through.

I hate to say it, but we could kind of DIY this with blocks we already have.

Over at a booth co-sponsored by ArtTerro and the Girl Scouts, you could make a bookmark out of fancy papers. I actually really loved ArtTerro. They make craft kits that include papers made in India out of recycled cloth, so they are eco-friendly. I'm also really trying to get Nathan more art supplies this year, and I like the idea of something simple and creative. Unfortunately I thought the kits were a little more girl-oriented, although a few are unisex.

Play Foam is the newest weird substance on the market, and it was featured at multiple booths. One booth gave me a free pod of it, and I love it. It's super sticky and feels like a Rice Krispie Treat, but it doesn't actually make your hands sticky or stick to any surface. Also, it never dries out.

As part of the scavenger hunt, you had to have somebody take your picture in front of an exhibitor logo. Bill put a lot of thought into what company I should represent, and he picked Rio Grande Games:

Rio Grande games makes the Viva Topo! cat game shown above, as well as this game based on pie:

The game is called Piece of Cake, because according to the Rio Grande people, it's made in Germany, where pie is actually called cake. Germany sounds very confusing.

This next toy is called Doodle Roll, which I thought was a pretty cool toy consisting of a roll of paper and crayons. It would be good for travel or to carry in your purse for those many, many kid entertainment emergencies you seem to encounter.

Here's me in front of the Chicagonista booth, in the final picture of the scavenger hunt. Chicagonista is a fun site that I used to write for, until I decided I wasn't cool and in-the-know enough to keep up.

And, to conclude, a wholesome picture that reminds us that, whatever the fun new gadget on the market, kids still love playing with blocks:

WINNERS: Yankee Candle Prize Packages

2011-11-21T13:42:00.000-06:00

Prize Package A

Prize Package A goes to:

None other than my friend Katie, to whom I can hand-deliver the candle on Thanksgiving!

Prize Package B

Prize Package B goes to:

Ashley! Note that there were two Ashleys, so click the link.

Prize Package C

Prize Package C goes to:

Jen Werner!

Please send me your addresses at the email link in the sidebar. Thanks to all who participated!

Well, It's Come to This

2011-11-20T19:32:00.000-06:00

Last night I actually made a separate dinner for each member of my family.

Many criticisms can be generated from that sentence.

First of all, many people might criticize my parenting because I make Nathan a totally separate dinner most nights. Most of those people are parents of kids who just happen to be more adventuresome eaters.

Nathan used to be a more adventuresome eater. He used to eat daal makani from Trader Joe's Indian Fare. He used to like black beans. He used to eat chicken in non-nugget form.

I don't know what happened, but now we can't pinpoint one thing that the child will reliably eat. One day he's devouring a peanut butter sandwich and downing a yogurt tube, and the next day he won't touch those items.

People like to offer criticism and/or advice about how to get your kid to eat more. You have to put a food in front of a kid 17 times [or 21 times or 37 times] before he's used to it! Well, in our family we're often putting the same exact food in front of him several times, like if he doesn't eat his sandwich at lunch I'll just put it in a bag and give it to him for dinner, or for the next day's lunch. (I usually stop at 3 outings for a particular food.) You have to tell him the only other choice is starvation! This kid is a limit-pusher, and honestly I think he might actually pick starvation. Don't bribe! Don't force anything! Don't lie about what the food actually is! Whatever.

The fact of the matter is that even if we could nurture our child into having a more adventuresome palate, he still comes by pickiness genetically. My husband is an incredibly picky eater. Which makes it hard because I'm an incredibly sensitive cook.

I myself have my food aversions as well, of course. I don't like red meat, mayonnaise, or anything spicy.

There's very little I can make that Bill and I can both eat, let alone all three of us. And on several occasions I've made a dinner that gets tweaked in various ways for each eater, like a taco bar (Nathan just has a "cheesy roll-up," which he may or may not eat) or pasta with different kinds of sauce. And of course we have separate meals when it's a leftover and/or "scrounge around for what you can find" night.

But last night was the first night I actually prepared three separate entrees. Although, since I'm in the education field, I prefer to think of it as individualized, differentiated dinner curricula.

Many people might say, I would not put up with that! Well, in the case of Nathan, who is still in his formative years, and who I have some responsibility to mold into a decent human, I probably do enable pickiness. But I'm also convinced that everybody falls somewhere on the pickiness continuum naturally, and there's only so much sway a parent has over a child's palate.

In the case of my husband, why would I want to prepare meal after meal that he doesn't like? Especially because, as I said, I'm very sensitive about my cooking, and I get upset if he doesn't like what I make. We have gotten to a point where he is perfectly willing to make his own dinner if he doesn't like what I'm making (and, just so you know, I don't like the one thing he knows how to make, either).

I'm also kind of a control freak about the cleanliness of my kitchen, though, so I don't always like it when Bill gets home from work and makes a big old messy meal in my just-recently-cleaned kitchen.

So I just decided to make separate entrees myself.

(Also Nathan's wasn't really an entree. When he's given free choice of his meal, as in when we aren't forcing him to at least have part of the main dinner entree, he knows he has to choose a protein and a fruit/vegetable. So, he picked carrots and yogurt. As in, not an entree.)

It wasn't a big deal to make the other two entrees because I have two Crock Pots. In Crock Pot #1 I made split pea soup for myself. (Recipe here and photo/description here.) I have decided I could eat split pea soup every single night. (And, fun side story, I actually did bring split pea soup in a thermos every day for lunch in high school. It's a wonder I wasn't more popular.) Bill doesn't like this particular split pea soup recipe, which is vegetarian and contains the dreaded celery.

On the other hand, he loves red beans and rice, which I do not like because they are too spicy. I found the recipe here and set it up in Crock Pot #2.

Yes, it was twice as much work. BUT! Both Crock Pot meals were a huge hit, and we had the leftovers tonight. Which means that while it was twice as much work last night, it also made twice as many meals. (Plus I had some soup for lunch, and there are more beans in the freezer, so I guess it was more like 3 meals, but I'm just gonna say two because it was two dinners.)

I'm not saying I'm going to make separate meals every night. And I'm not saying I'm totally comfortable with my child's pickiness, nor my husband's for that matter. But I'd certainly rather make food that everybody's going to like, and I include myself in everybody, of course. I would not have been happy eating the beans and rice and consuming calories that I didn't even enjoy. Plus, I like to think it's more economical to take one portion to eat and then freeze the rest for later, rather than have to scrape a bunch of food into the trash when people don't eat the stuff on their plates. And hey, at least we actually sat down and ate together, even if we were eating different things. That's what counts, right?

Right Now

2011-11-20T18:39:00.000-06:00

It's 6:35 and it just occurred to me that Nathan is not bathed, the dinner dishes are not in the dishwasher, and Laundry Load 1 of 2 is not folded. (Laundry Load 2 of 2 is not even in the dryer.)

And yet today I went to the gym and did 50 minutes of cardio, cleaned the kitchen like on my hands and knees and shit, planned out my whole Thanksgiving menu and went to the first of many stores, picked up the kitchen when it got messy again, started two loads of laundry, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I'm annoyed with the everyday tasks of life. I feel like my house is one step away from Hoarders.

On the plus side, I got a whole bunch of new stickers for the grocery store game, and I made an Excel database of all the duplicates I have. Send me an email if you want to trade stickers.

Why I Haven't Blogged in Two Days

2011-11-20T18:35:00.000-06:00

Because I'm a big fat lazy oaf.

The fat assessment comes courtesy of Nathan, who told me the other day that I couldn't fit into his blanket fort because "you're too fat." Now, before you go arguing that a tiny little kid's perspective is skewed, I should note that he called Bill thin.

It was seriously one of the saddest moments of my life.

I consoled myself by eating peanut butter straight out of the jar.

The lazy label comes from not being able to stay up past 9:00 p.m. It used to be that Nathan would fall asleep easily at 7:30 in his own bed, and I would just drop him off in his room, say goodnight, and have the whole evening to myself to read or watch TV.

Now, though, I've gotten in the habit of lying down with him until he falls asleep. I let him pick whether he wants to fall asleep in my bed or his, and I'm secretly happy when he picks mine because the sheets are so soft and the mattress is so cushy.

And I think, I will just lie here until Nathan falls asleep, and then I'm going to go do X, Y, and Z. But then This bed is so warm! And downstairs is so filled with laundry! And then I figure I'll just go to sleep for the day.

And that's why I haven't been blogging.

Some Stuff I've Watched on TV Recently

2011-11-18T09:43:00.000-06:00

At this point in the world, I think my policy should be that if I don't have a show recorded on my DVR, it's probably not worth watching.

I seldom follow this policy. Instead I just turn on the TV and flip around to whatever looks the most watchable out of all the channels in my cable TV lineup.

That's how I got sucked into some crap TV Monday night.

First I watched the second half of "Top 25 TV Infomercials" on the TV Guide Network. I'm a sucker for countdown shows. It's like you just have to stick with them until they get to Number One in the countdown, which inevitably follows a very long string of commercials. Also the host of this particular countdown was John O'Hurley, who played J. Peterman on Seinfeld, so that sold me on the show right there.

Now, first off, what qualifies as an "infomercial?" Because a lot of the products were in the "As Seen on TV" genre, but weren't sold via a 30-minute infomercial, so I don't think they qualified. And, as a side note, a lot of "As Seen on TV" products are readily available in stores now, so how does that separate them from every other product in the universe that is advertised on TV?

Deep questions, I tell you.

Anyway, what was sad about the Infomercial Countdown was that I still remembered all the slogans from these ads. Stop the Insanity! Set It and Forget It! Squeeze, Squeeze, Squeeze Your Way to Shapely Hips and Thighs!

Item #1 on the countdown was The Clapper, which, again, did not have a full-length infomercial devoted to it.

But can I say something about the Thigh Master? Back in the mid-90s I used to work in a sporting goods store, and one day I actually fielded the following call:

Me: Thank you for calling Big 5 Sporting Goods, this is Shannon, how may I help you?
Guy on Phone: Yeah, so you know that show that used to be on, about the guy who lived with the two women in the apartment building?
Me: Three's Company?
Guy: Yeah. So you know that product that the woman from that show advertises on TV, the one with the thighs?
Me: The Thigh Master?
Guy: Yes. So anyway, I broke my wife's, and I was wondering if you sell them?

Now, at that point I am pretty sure the Thigh Master had been discontinued for safety reasons or something like that, so no, we did not sell them.

Anyway, when that scintillating piece of television was over, I watched Hoarders. The first woman on the show had inherited a million dollars from some dead relative, and had spent almost all of it on crap she was hoarding. The best part of the show was that she had about $30,000 worth of checks buried somewhere in the hoard. At one point her brother asked her why she hadn't just deposited these large checks in the bank when she got them, and she said (get this), "I wanted to deposit them in the bank in another town. This is a small town, and I don't want everybody up in my business." I hope nobody in your small town was watching this program on national television, Lady.

The other hoarder on the episode was so crazy that she blamed all the hoarding on her six children, and said that she hoped that DCFS would deem the home unfit and put the children in foster care "to teach them a lesson." The husband was a firefighter who knew the house was completely unsafe, but kind of just put up with it. Why? Because he was a dimwit. At one point he said, "I'm starting to think my wife may have some psychological problems."

Tell me this show isn't scripted.

After Hoarders I got sucked into some show called Monster In-Laws, which was so stupid that even I couldn't watch it.

On Tuesday, as if to punish myself for Monday's crap TV-viewing, I forced myself to switch back and forth between Saving Private Ryan on AMC and a documentary about the Holocaust on The History Channel. Both awful. The worst part about the Holocaust one was that they had this one survivor from one of the death camps (which I guess were different from the regular concentration camps) who talked about how when you got in there, a Nazi guy politely said, "We're really sorry, but for sanitary reasons everybody has to take a shower," and then told them to leave their clothes in this one room, carefully labeled so they could get them later, and then the victims all cheered for the friendly soldier before going to the gas chamber and auuuggggggggghhhhhhh I just can't. Horrible, horrible, horrible. And then, to make it worse, some of the historians on the show shared some photos of the Nazis engaging in leisure activity on their off-time, like at after-work happy hours and whatnot.

Wednesday I read a book instead of watching TV.

Thursday is always the good TV night. I watched my boyfriend Joel McHale on Community, and then Parks & Recreation. Both are good, but I so miss 30 Rock. It comes back on January 12, which is also my birthday, so I'm calling it Thirty-Four and 30 Rock!

That concludes this installment of What I Watched on TV This Week. In my next installment, I get so fed up with the TV that I grab a baseball bat to smash it to shreds, but then get distracted by Top 50 Infomercial Product Hoarders, so I just curl up with my bat and watch it.

Don't throw away those Ped Eggs! There could be a horrible winter where we're all forced to walk barefoot in the snow, and then we're gonna need those Ped Eggs!

When You Care Enough to Send the Very Best

2011-11-16T09:22:00.000-06:00

Yesterday when I bought myself the present, I embarrassingly bought myself a card to go with it. Because I think all gifts should be accompanied by a card. Otherwise how will you know who the gift is from?

I hoped the cashier assumed that the card was to accompany another gift I was buying. But really it was for me because I liked the quote on it:

This quote is So. Me. Right. Now. I've actually kind of had recent thoughts along these very lines, though not stated quite so eloquently. Thoughts like, the steps you take that scare you the most are the ones that are going to do you the most good.

I have a life right now that is mostly easy and comfortable. And it's even easier and more comfortable to just remain stagnant and keep the status quo.

Except, this particular status quo is not what I really need. I can feel it. If I keep the status quo it will eventually hurt me. I can't remain tight in a bud. I have to bloom.

In conclusion, let me note that the issues I'm vaguely alluding to here are of a professional nature. I wanted to keep it vague so it would have a more universal appeal, but I also don't want everyone assuming I have plans to, like, up and leave my whole family and move to Paris or something.

And so, here on the precipice of the dark, barren winter, I pledge to bloom.

Keep Calm

2011-11-15T18:56:00.000-06:00

Due to my recent frugality, I haven't bought myself a present in awhile. But today I was in a store, and I thought, It's time to buy myself a present.

Here it is:

In case you can't tell, it's a necklace that says Keep Calm and Write On, with a picture of an old-fashioned typewriter.

I'm generally not a huge fan of the "Keep Calm" posters, which are takeoffs on the British WWII poster that said Keep Calm and Carry On.

From what I've read, the poster was never actually displayed in England during the war. It was created for use in case of a full-scale German invasion of England, which, umm, like hell anybody would keep calm. Somebody discovered the poster in, like, the 90s or something, and ever since then it has become trendy as decor, whether in its original form or in some sort of variation. I've seen Keep Calm and Go to Target (with the crown replaced by a bulls-eye), Keep Calm and Bake Cookies, and all manner of hobbies which one is supposed to keep calm and practice.

The thing is, I don't really like the idea that a poster created in case of a horrific war-related event just becomes something cool for twenty-somethings to display on throw pillows in their living rooms. Though I do like this variation:

My motto

But anyway, I bought the Keep Calm and Write On necklace. Because two of the most important things I need to do are keep calm and write. I mean, not that writing is as important as food, water, and shelter, but it is my favorite hobby. And just this morning I was thinking, Why do I write this blog? I don't care about making money off this blog or any other writing endeavor.

I do it because I love it. I write because, cheesy as it sounds, that is what my soul needs.

And because I'm wired so wackily that, sometimes, writing is the only way I can keep calm and carry on.

STOP: CANDLETIME! (A Giveaway!)

2011-11-15T14:28:00.000-06:00

One of my favorite mom blogs in the whole wide world is Ask Moxie, written by Magda Pecsenye. Magda has the ability to pinpoint and articulate life's disappointments and frustrations, simultaneously acknowledging their magnitude and finding a way to make the best of them, all with a certain kind of non-cheesy pluck. Nowhere is this ability better exemplified than with Magda's invented November holiday, Candletime.

Magda created Candletime as a way to make November meaningful in and of itself, not as the sort of "Christmas Phase I" that the retail industry likes to make it. The Candletime celebration, as originally explained here on Ask Moxie, consists of dimming the lights and lighting candles (real or the electric kind) and taking a quiet moment to spend some time with loved ones over your beverage of choice before dinner. On her new Babble blog last week, Magda credited Candletime as the only thing that got her through the disappointment of the extended hours of darkness when she was a full-time working single mom living in New York City.

There is power in candles.

To help you celebrate Candletime (or Christmas or the holiday season or whatever), I am giving away not one, not two, but three separate Yankee Candle prize packages!

Here they are:

Packaged A includes three 3.7-oz candles in a cute box: Cherries on Snow, Christmas Rose, and Mountain Berry.

Package B is a cylindrical candle from Yankee's "Favorite Things" collection, an homage to The Sound of Music. This one is Warm Woolen Mittens, which smells kind of like a really good laundry detergent. Since it's the smallest package, candle-wise, I'm throwing in a $10 off Yankee Candle coupon and the adorable Yankee Candle flash drive.

Package C is a large candle in the Balsam & Cedar scent, which is the scent that my husband burns in our home year-round. If anything smells like Christmas, it's this candle. And it's pictured here next to the adorable gift box it comes in.

Here's how I'm going to work this. You have until Friday, November 18 at 11:59 p.m. CST to enter. To enter, leave a comment with an answer to this question:

What are you 3 favorite scents?

On Saturday, November 19, I will have random.org determine a separate number for the winner of each prize package, and the people who left those numbered comments will be the winners. I will report the winners on this blog shortly thereafter and ask the winners to email me their mailing addresses.

Good luck, and Happy Candletime!

Reading, I Suck at It

2011-11-14T13:20:00.000-06:00

The last book I finished reading was completed on Wednesday, October 5. That's over a month ago. The book was Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver, and I read it as part of my librarian friend Carolyn's YA For Adults book club at the library.

Next I got Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life With John F. Kennedy. I wouldn't say I'm a Kennedy-ophile, but I am interested in 20th century American history, and especially how women lived in previous generations.

Jackie's book was interesting, because it's a transcript of interviews she did right after JFK died, but which were sealed in a vault until recently. So it's sort of like a time capsule, which is always kind of cool. You hear her say things like, "You'll have to talk to Bobby about that," and you're like, Oh no, you don't know, Bobby gets shot too!

But the book was also very tedious to read, because she would make these references to something, and there were footnotes to clarify what she was talking about, and it was so hard to not get bogged down in all those details. I plugged away earnestly for the entire two weeks I had that book from the library, but I only finished about 2/3 of it. But I think with nonfiction you can still count it as having read the whole book, even if you didn't, because you mostly got the gist of it. And also, I did look at all the pictures.

I probably should have read a novel after that to clear the palate, but another nonfiction came in from the library for me. It was Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield. Now, a book about fonts sounds horifically dull, but since it was on the New York Times Bestseller List, I figured fonts might be more intriguing than I previously thought. And it was sort of interesting. For example, I learned that in the days of movable type and the printing press, capital letters were used less frequently and were therefore kept in the less-convenient upper-case, hence the term uppercase. Mind your p's and q's is also a phrase that comes from the printing press, because it was very easy to get confused between the blocks for p and q if you weren't careful. I also learned that font aficionados hate it when they see a font in a movie that was invented after the historical period where the movie is supposed to take place, and that when Ikea changed the font of its signs it caused an Internet fontroversy.

However, there is only so much you can care about fonts. The author really tried to make the book interesting to a mainstream audience, but at a certain point it just becomes dull to talk about the unfinished lower bowl of lowercase g in some font or the other. I only got through half the book before I took it back to the library, about a week before the due date.

I did, however, reserve a library copy of a movie about fonts, the documentary Helvetica. I figured I would employ comedian Jim Gaffigan's philosophy of "You know what I liked about the movie? No reading!" I figured Helvetica would be one of those movies that sounded so boring it just might be interesting. But no, just boring. Enough for my feigned interest in fonts.

Meanwhile, another meeting of the library YA for Adults book club had passed, and I never read the book, Ten Miles Past Normal. I still have the book, and I'm plugging away at it, but I just do not care.

I have another book, The Four Ms. Bradwells by Meg Waite Clayton. I read her other book, The Wednesday Sisters, and I really liked it. This new one though? So boring.

I have another book called The Tea Rose that I got for my Kindle and started reading, but then all these library books came in for me and I had to put that one on hold. And I have Flip for the next book club, but I haven't even looked at it yet.

So many books, none of them finished. Someone recommend a guaranteed winner so I can get out of this slump!

My Particular Challenges, At This Particular Moment

2011-11-12T09:15:00.000-06:00

Like a lot of new parents, when Nathan was born I was struck by how dependent the human newborn is. Yeah, they can't control their own arms and they need another person to provide the most basic of human necessities, but what especially struck me was the fact that they needed somebody else to make them burp. I don't know why the whole burping thing stood out to me, except that I guess I always sort of saw burping as an involuntary action, one that you should be able to make happen for yourself, even from birth.

I'm getting a bit sidetracked here. My point is, newborns are needy. You accept this neediness, you hunker down, you get through it.

What I'm having more trouble accepting, however, is that at 4 years and 8 months old, Nathan seems to have regressed to a level of newborn neediness.

Now, of course I'm exaggerating. The boy can walk and talk and feed himself (on the rare occasions that he actually eats). But damn if he doesn't act as though he's lost every other life skill that he's acquired since birth.

For example, I know the boy can dress himself. I know because several times a day he likes to take off the normal, respectable outfit he's wearing and change into a costume or some mismatched pajamas he outgrew two years ago.

But first thing in the morning, he acts like putting on clothes is the hardest thing on the planet.

Let's get me dressed! he calls. Or sometimes just, Get me dressed!

I do try to insist on adding please, but I admit to giving in to his requests if he asks nicely. For one thing, this is one of the many parenting mistakes I make for the sake of convenience: We usually have somewhere to be, and I don't have all day to sit there and wait for him to put on his clothes.

But as the day goes on, the requests just start to grate on me. I want to watch a DVD! More milk! Come see this commercial for something I must have for Christmas!

Where I really fall apart is at the laziness. I'm happy to give you a refill on the milk, but please go get your cup, I say. Noooooooooo, I don't know where it is! he whines. I tell him it's in the family room. But it's daaaaaaaaaaaark in therrrrrrrre! he replies. (Yes, the lights are turned off, but it is the middle of a sunny day, and the room has a window.)

He whines and whines until he either gets the cup or gets distracted by something else.

I think I try to stand firm, but maybe I'm doing it all wrong. I generally assume I'm doing it all wrong. Pre-Kid Judgmental Shannon probably would have professed that she would say, I'll give you milk if you get your cup, take it or leave it, and calmly walk away. She would not get sucked into even one minute of a battle over who would retrieve a cup. She definitely wouldn't offer to stand so she could see into the allegedly dark family room and ascertain that there was no imminent danger while the cup was retrieved.

I could go on and on about what I do, and what I don't do, and how I blame myself for all his behavioral shortcomings. But my point is, I find myself struggling to get through the day with all his neediness.

Augh, you have so many needs, I say several times a day, quoting Tina Fey's character in Date Night.

I suspect part of our problem is that this past week was the first week where the weather was unreasonable for outside play. Whether or not getting outside to run around helped his behavior, I don't know, but it certainly helped my mental health to be able to get out.

And I know, this is just the beginning of the wretched six-month season of indoor play, and I'd better get some coping strategies really fast if I want to make it through.

Another problem is just the sheer volume of hours I spend with him. He no longer takes a nap, and he no longer needs as much sleep at night as he used to, but yet he's not old enough for regular school. So he's up about 14 hours a day now, and even with outsourcing strategies like school, the babysitter, and the gym, we're still home together a lot. Even with ample TV and computer time, there are still a lot of hours to fill.

Yes, there are places we can go and things we can do. But I'm also trying to save money and stay out of stores and other places that cost money. The library is a nice, free indoor activity, but it doesn't burn off a lot of energy and it's kind of a once-a-week destination. The mall playground is technically free, but I sort of feel an obligation to at least spend some money sometimes in the mall in exchange for their free playground. Same with McDonald's: you can't play there if you don't buy something.

We have memberships at the zoo and the Museum of Science and Industry, so those are technically free (MSI does charge a small parking fee), but those are big productions and we can't be jetting off to them all the time.

Anyway, those are my current challenges. *END RANT*

Pulling Her Weight

2011-11-10T15:27:00.000-06:00

Bill and Leia have kind of a love/hate relationship. On the one hand, he likes cats, and Leia is a cat, and so he likes her. He knows she makes me happy, and he respects her for that.

However, he has no tolerance for her excessive vomiting. Not that anybody likes cat vomit on the carpet, but I think I do a better job than Bill of accepting that the vomit is just something we have to put up with in order to experience the awesomeness that is Leia.

Also a few months ago, Leia got spooked in the middle of the night and ran across Bill's face, causing a dramatic-looking scratch under his eye.

So, their relationship is sometimes strained.

But all of the sudden Bill and Leia are totally BFFs, due to a recent occurrence stemming from what I'll call The Fruit Roll-Up Incident.

See, this past weekend I bought a 40-pack of Fruit Roll-Ups using a coupon at Costco. (I don't know why I mentioned the coupon, except that couponing is hotter than ever right now!)

It turned out that Fruit Roll-Ups brought out Nathan's criminal side. He wanted Fruit Roll-Ups so badly that he would lie and steal just to get them.

So as to put a stop to this illicit activity, I put the big box of Fruit Roll-Ups way up high, above the kitchen cabinets. Note that I have never, ever put food up there before.

The next day, I went to get out two Fruit Roll-Ups, and one of them had a bunch of teeth marks and bites taken through the packaging.

"Nathan, did you chew through the Fruit Roll-Up?" I asked.

"Umm, no, I don't think I did. Maybe. No, probably not. I don't think so."

(Note to all criminal types: Don't use a 4-year-old as your alibi.)

It seemed unlikely that Nathan would have chewed through the packaging, though, seeing as he is perfectly capable of opening a Fruit Roll-Up. All signs pointed to a rodent.

Still, I ate another intact Fruit Roll-Up out of the package.

I regretted this food choice the next day when Bill inspected the box and found several Fruit Roll-Ups with teeth marks in them.

(This would be a really great place for photographic evidence, but I was too busy recoiling in horror to get out the camera.)

Later that day, Bill bought some traps.

He noticed that Leia was really interested in the area under the sink, so he put the trap there.

An hour later, he had caught a mouse.

Now he's totally thrilled with Leia. He's acting like he and Leia are some sort of mouse-trapping team. He even sent me an email from work today, asking me to pet Leia for him.

He says the rule is one mouse equals one vomit forgiveness.