Seven in Seven 4: Today

Lauren posted her day 4 post on Twitter. I read it as I held Nora’s hand while she went to sleep and was reminded that I am also participating in the “Seven post in seven days” (hosted by Jennifer at Conversion Diary), and I may have cursed internally a little bit. But blog posting is like exercise: I’m always glad I’ve done it even if I’d really rather be watching Veronica Mars while in the middle of it.

Today you get to hear about my day, because I don’t really know what else to talk about and when you give yourself arbitrary deadlines you are choosing quantity over quality. In contrast, Snoozical chose quality with her last post, and even if it did mean she quit “Seven in seven,” it was absolutely worth it and you should go read it.  

Meanwhile, my day started at 2am when Ann Marie woke up and threw up in her bed. Is there anything more pathetic than a barfing toddler? She had no idea what was happening of course and everything was just terrible. On the bright side, the mess was all contained in the crib so it was a relatively easy clean up. I should say it was relatively easy for Andrew to clean up because he was the one stuck with ferrying gross sheets and blankets upstairs to the wash while I cradled Ann Marie in the bathroom and tried to comfort her.

She and I stayed in the bathroom for a while and then she slept with me in my bed while I dozed fitfully, bolting upright every hour or so to hold her head over the bucket. Meanwhile, my sainted husband made trips back and forth to the bathroom to clean out the bucket and then slept in the chair in the girls’ room because Nora was freaking out.

All this meant that I had to call in sick to work today. Given that today was my day to work for an hourly rate, something I only do every other Thursday, this was irritating because it means I lose out on the pay for today. On the other hand, it was a blessing to have Andrew home so there were two of us to deal with the terribleness that is a sick toddler. And in fact, Andrew got up and started to get Jack ready for school while Ann Marie and I stayed in bed for an extra half hour. Then Andrew took Nora – whom we kept home from school because she was up for about two hours due to all the commotion – and ran a bunch of errands while I held Ann Marie on the couch and we both took a nap. So I’m pretty glad I stayed home.

In all, it was really not that bad of a day. Ann Marie threw up for the last time at 9:30 or so and was begging for cheese sticks by noon. (Almost as pathetic as an actively vomiting toddler is a recently-vomiting toddler who is now hungry and can’t understand why you won’t feed her.) The entire household was in bed by 9pm and it is now 9:23 and I’m the only one awake, so we’re OK. All that’s left now is the ticking time bomb feeling that one of us is about to be felled. We’ve laid towels out on the rugs by Nora’s bed and talked to her about aiming for the bowl, but who knows.

I thought I’d have something else to say here, but it looks like you’re stuck with this. But that’s what you get for choosing quantity over quality. You get this. 

There were so many other parking spots

Ann Marie and I went to Costco today. I got there when it opened, so I had a pretty decent parking spot nice and close to the cart return. After we were done and I had loaded all of the things into the car, I saw a minivan waiting for my parking spot, blinker fully engaged. She sat there while I shut the trunk and walked the cart back to the cart return. There were plenty of other spots free, so I don't see why she didn't just park in one of them. Why is it people are willing to spend extra time waiting in the car in order to save time walking? It's like the people who show up forty-five minutes early for school pickup. Yes, they get a spot close to the door which makes for a quicker getaway, but I get there ten minutes early and I drive away only about five minutes after the early people, so the total time I spend waiting around the school is only fifteen minutes and they wait forty-five. How does that make any sense?

But this minivan lady must have thought it would be worthwhile to wait; after all, all I had to do was return the cart, buckle the baby into her car seat, get in and drive away. How long can that possibly take? What she failed to consider, however, was that buckling the baby into her car seat takes at least five minutes, and that's when she is being cooperative. When she is not cooperating, it takes approximately 400 years. Getting into the car is one of the times where I hear a lot of "DO SELF!" but do not see a lot of self-doing. Other areas where "DO SELF" is unwelcome: Pouring milk from the full glass quart container, putting shoes on when we have places to be, and changing dirty diapers. She is most definitely not allowed to "DO SELF" her own poopy diapers.

But the car. The car is where I am most likely to lose my mind as I stand in the weather, waiting for her highness to stop pushing buttons and deign to turn around and sit down. Every time I must weigh whether it will be faster to let her DO SELF or to force her and endure her stiff-bodied wrath. If it were just regular old screamy wrath I'd endure it no problem, but she's a lot stronger than you might think and it can be pretty challenging to force her into a car-seat-amenable body shape if she doesn't want to comply. So I usually give her a few minutes.

But the lady in the minivan has apparently never tried to put an independent toddler into a car seat before. To her, it looked like I returned the cart and then went back to my car in order to stand there with the door open for no reason whatsoever. "What is she DOING?" she must have been thinking. "Doesn't she SEE ME HERE?"

Yes. Yes I did see her there. I thought she was probably going to be unhappy with how long it took me to get into the car. I would maybe even have felt some slight pressure to try to hurry Ann Marie along, except that there were about fifteen other parking spots within my sight line. None of them were closer to the entrance, but at least one was only fifteen feet further away. And that one was closer to the cart return.

And yet she waited. After what must have seemed an interminable length of time where I just stood at the car, waiting in the cold just for fun, she pulled forward and looked at me with an expression that said, "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?" I said, "It's going to be a long time," and shrugged. I don't know if she could read my lips or not, but she drove away and the vibe I received was very annoyed. Meanwhile, I was saying "Turn around and sit. Turn around and sit. I will give you the juice box when you are buckled. Turn and sit. Turn and sit. Sit. Sit down. Sit. Sit. Sit. Sitsitsitsitsitsitsit," because that is how I spend 15% of my overall time. And it's not even that I drive that often, it's that it takes Ann Marie so long to get in the car.

So, no, lady who didn't want to park fifteen feet further from the entrance. I have no sympathy for you whatsoever.

The cons of autumn

I love fall. Fall in New England makes February worth it. I especially love fall in the city where I now live. There seem to be just so many more types of trees around here compared to where I grew up, and so many of them are huge. The house next door to us has a simply enormous oak tree and two gigantic maples in their yard. Every year, they turn the most glorious colors, and when the afternoon sunlight angles in and hits them just right, they glow.

So. Huge, beautiful trees turning gorgeous colors: Pro.

But do you know what happens to the leaves after they're done glowing on the trees in the afternoons? They fall off the trees. Into your yard. And have to be picked up.







Do you see the size of that leaf pile? Nora is standing up in that middle picture. In the top picture, Ann Marie actually got stuck in the pile as if it were leaf quicksand. And that's not even all the leaves in the yard! I didn't bother with the part in front of the side door or the section around and behind the swing set. Why not rake all of it and be done, you ask? In response, I present the trees directly above our yard:



That's a lot of leaves up there. And over the past eight years we have learned that these trees shed their leaves last.

Actually, the past eight years have given me the chance to make some observations of the natural world. First, walnut trees turn yellow and lose their leaves in September when Norway maples are still lush and green; Norway maples turn last. Second, the first leaves to turn are the ones that get the most sun. This is a particularly nice effect because of the afternoon sunlight angling in and making them glow, as I mentioned. Third, trees in a clump turn colors starting from the outside in. My theory here is that the inner trees are kept warm by their neighbors and thus get the temperature signal to go dormant only after their neighbors have shed their leaves, but the takeaway message is that in a copse of Norway maples, the ones in the middle lose their leaves dead last.

These?



The middle trees in a copse of Norway maples.  So yeah, we've got several weeks to go. We will be raking up those leaves in late November, when it is really really cold and there will be a distinct lack of joyful jumping into the leaves. There will instead be a lot of grumbling about cold hands.

Late November freezing cold raking of leaves: Con.

Ah, well, I still think the pros outweigh the cons.

A time and place for paper towels

Temerity Jane just wrote a 150,000 word post on paper towels and how she won't buy them and has instead bought unpaper towels. In case you don't have the kind of time it takes to read 150,000 words on paper towels*, let me recap it for you here: Kelly doesn't like to spend money on things like paper towels which are used only once. She tried to use dishcloths, but they did not fulfill her paper towel needs. So she bought some handmade "unpaper towels" which are basically a specialized dishcloth that have the right thickness to stand in for a paper towel. There, Kelly. That only took 55 words.

Now I am ALL FOR the end of paper towel purchases. I am fully on board. I stopped buying them myself, under the premise that if I don’t have them, I can’t use them. I have found that dishcloths and dish towels do work pretty well for our paper towel needs, but I have to admit I am intrigued by this unpaper towel product and may buy some to try out.

But all that being said, there is a time and a place for paper towels, and that place is your kitchen and the time is immediately after an entire glass quart full of milk is dropped on the floor and shatters.

You see, we buy our milk in glass quarts from the local dairy. We do this because I like to support local businesses, and because I like reusing things whenever possible, and because the purchasing of reusable glass bottles of local milk gives me a pleasant smug feeling. There are two major downsides to this system. First, the glass bottles only come in quarts, so a week’s worth of milk takes up an inordinate amount of space in our refrigerator. Second, when a glass quart of milk is dropped on the floor, you get milky shard of glass everywhere. Just everywhere.

The first time this happened, I had recently climbed on the “no paper towels” train, so I grabbed a bunch of dish towels – including the pack of brand new dish towels that I had purchased that very day because when your kitchen is covered in spreading puddle of glassy milk you grab whatever is most handy- to sop up the milk. And it worked fabulously. The towels were absorbent enough to get all the milk and thick enough to protect my hands from the glass splinters.

But then I had a pile of milk-soaked towels, studded with shards of glass. “I’ll just put these in the washing machine immediately so they don’t fill the kitchen with the smell of sour milk,” I thought, and dropped them in. “I’m sure the washing machine will also get all the glass out.”

Did you spot the flaw in this plan? The good news is that I also spotted the flaw just as my hand was about to press the start button, and I did not run a bunch of broken glass through my washing machine. So that’s something. So then I decided to dump the glassy towels on the porch to dry in the sun with the plan of shaking the glass off the towels once everything was dry.

Did you find the second flaw? But fortunately, a few days later my brain clicked on mere moments before I shook a million glass splinters all over the porch my kids sometimes walk on barefoot. Unfortunately, that left me with a pile of glass-splintery, sour-milk dish towels - three of which were brand new – and no idea what to do with them.

I threw them out. Much like I would have thrown out paper towels, but far more expensively and probably with a bigger environmental impact.

So now I try to keep at least one roll of paper towels around. For milk emergencies.

*You should though, because Kelly’s version is much, much funnier.

If the question is "Do we need any bananas?" the answer is always "Yes."

Evening. Interior office. Andrew enters.

ANDREW: How can there only be three bananas left? This morning, there were eight!
MAUREEN: You mean there were eight bananas this morning, and then each of the five of us ate one and now there are three? HOW CAN THAT BE?
ANDREW: Shut up.
Scene.

He's right though, the rate at which we go through bananas is positively shocking. I cannot keep them in the house, even though I instituted a policy that anyone in a grocery store must buy bananas no matter how many bananas were purchased just yesterday. We are always out of bananas.

Sidewalk parking

I live in a city, but in a suburban-looking neighborhood. There is a lot of off-street parking but also a smattering of multi-family houses without enough, so lots of people park on the street. Well, I wish they parked on the street. Actually, they park on the sidewalk. And I’m not talking about parking with two wheels up on the curb a little bit to make the street wider. I’m talking about parking so far up on the sidewalk that it can be challenging to walk by single file, nevermind squeezing through with a double stroller or a wheelchair. Consider these fairly typical examples:





The first photo is on the main street I use when walking to and from school with my three small children. It is a wide street with plenty of room for parking along both sides. The second photo is a side street off of the main street which is a bit narrower, but also less busy, and so cars aren’t usually parked along both sides. And even if they were, YOU CAN’T PARK YOUR CAR ON THE SIDEWALK. I have been brewing angry resentment at these cars for about four years now, getting angrier and angrier every time I have to walk in the street with my baby in a stroller and tell my three-year-old I will “meet her around” as she squeezes by the cars on the eight inches of sidewalk remaining next to the car. I kept wondering if I should leave notes on the cars asking the people to stop parking on the sidewalk, because I am pretty sure no one is thinking about the people who actually use the sidewalk for walking, but I’d have to leave at least fifteen notes, and it became ridiculous. I was also boiling with resentment about having to ask people not to park on the sidewalk. I shouldn’t have to ask them not to park on the sidewalk. “No cars on the sidewalk” is a fairly elementary rule of driving. So I finally started calling the police, but I didn’t see any tickets and by the second call, there was a definite “Oh, THIS lady again,” tone in the voice of the officer who answered the phone.

I have also happened to catch two drivers as they were getting into their cars on the sidewalk and said, “Excuse me, but if you park like that, I can’t get by.” The first woman just said, “OK,” and got in and drove away; I haven’t seen her car again. This is the second woman’s car:



When I pointed out to her that I can’t get by when she parks like that, she looked at me and my stroller and my preschooler and was clearly embarrassed, but still explained that the cars on the street “drive so fast” and she “doesn’t want her car to be hit” but that she will “try not to park so close.” I said, “I understand that, but I don’t want to walk in the street.” I also pointed out that she is parked next to an enormous tree which encroaches on the sidewalk, thus making it even more difficult to get by, so she said she’d try not to park as close to the tree. Got that? She’s going to keep parking on the sidewalk, just not quite as far onto the sidewalk, and not quite as close to the tree. She’s not doing a good job with it, though. The other day, she was still there, just maybe three feet further back from the tree. I still can’t fit the stroller between her car and the tree. Also, she is, as always, parked facing the wrong way. I can certainly understand how she doesn’t want her car to get hit by the speedy traffic in the street, though. I feel similarly about myself and my children.

This has become a pet project of mine. I met a city councilor last night at the senate primary (MA special election to replace John Kerry), and he gave me the name of a captain in the police, and I just left him a voicemail. So we’ll see.

A post that should probably have been three separate posts

1. Last Friday I had to take the kids to buy shoes. I also had some things to bring back to the Gap, so I decided to take them to the Stride Rite Mall B instead of in Mall A, my default mall, because the last time I went to Mall A and tried to return something to the Gap I discovered that Mall A no longer has a Gap. I know! I mean, if the Gap isn’t at the mall, where is it? (Incidentally, you know what Mall A now has that it didn’t used to have? Yogurt shop.)
   
   So anyway, I had to go buy three pairs of very expensive full-priced shoes, because I had managed to put off the shoe-buying until the last minute which unfortunately landed me between sales at Stride Rite. I would have taken them to Marshall’s, but I was buying Ann Marie’s very first pair of real walking shoes, so I needed an actual trained person to measure her feet. I also would have taken them to the shoe store near my mom, but I had to return that stuff to the Gap, so Stride Rite it was.
   
   I loaded them all into the van, and halfway to the mall Nora needed to use the bathroom. Twenty-minutes-in-a-Dunkin-Donuts-bathroom later, I loaded them all into the van again. We got to the mall and I went straight to the Gap. Halfway through my returns transaction which was complicated because one of the things had been a gift, which included a gift receipt, but they would nevertheless only give me the value towards a purchase right then or else mail me a gift card. Why on earth they couldn’t just hand me a gift card then, I will never know, but there you are. And everything in the store was 30% off, so I wanted to maybe buy something right then. But before I could look, JACK had to use the bathroom. So I took my gift back and off we all schlepped. While Nora, the baby, and I waited outside the men’s room for Jack, I scanned the directory for a Stride Rite. Which, as it turns out, Mall B doesn’t have.
   
   I wailed and moaned and gnashed my teeth, Jack emerged, and we all schlepped BACK to the Gap where I was going to BUY something for 30% off SO HELP ME. I chose a pair of pants and exchanged my gift for them while noting to the cashier that they were definitely not going to fit, so I was going to have to come back anyway. “Oh, we have a dressing room that the stroller will fit in,” he said. Meanwhile, it was 4:45 pm and my children were race walking (no running allowed!) around the store. “Not worth it,” I told him.
   
   After a stop at Kids Foot Locker for (full-priced) shoes for the older two, I found myself once again loading three kids into the van for a drive down to the strip mall that is about halfway between my house and Mall B because there is a Stride Rite there. We pulled into the parking lot, and you will never guess what is next door to Stride Rite. Literally next door. Not even at the other end of the strip; it is the storefront immediately to the left of Stride Rite. Yep. The Gap.
2. Kelly tweeted some time ago about noticing an under-mounted sink on a television show rather than noticing the attractive actor. I can relate to this, because I keep zeroing in on window treatments. My house has a lot of windows, and I lost momentum four rooms in. The problem lies mostly in that window treatments cost a bajillion dollars. You know what television show has some gorgeous window treatments? Parenthood. The oldest brother’s house has, at a conservative estimate, $5,000 worth of window treatments. Valances! Curtains! Tie backs! Fancy hardware! Custom Roman shades! Do you have any idea how much a custom Roman shade costs? ONE BAJILLION DOLLARS.
   
   But even though I lost momentum, window treatments became an issue when we took over the downstairs apartment. The sheets and towels clamped to the window frame weren’t really working for me. Because we had so many windows to cover, we decided to just buy inexpensive vinyl shades, which don’t feel that inexpensive when you buy them in bulk. Then there were a series of ridiculous problems which resulted in no less than five trips to three different hardware stores, an extra set of useless shades that we can’t return and don’t fit anywhere, and the kids’ room having shades just slightly too narrow. And there are still five windows without shades in the dining room and kitchen!
   
   I gave up and decided to rehang the blinds that we bought for the windows before we rented the place, but none of them fit. This seems impossible, but it’s because I threw out the blinds that were in the kitchen because they were gross, and the kitchen windows are apparently a quarter inch wider than any other windows in that apartment. Meanwhile, we had the woodwork around the dining room windows replaced, and the new trim is about a quarter inch narrower than the old trim. But that, at least, I thought we could solve by just asking Home Depot to recut them. I figured it would be easy; we had bought them at Home Depot originally. The label even says “Home Depot” right on it.
   
   Yeah, they wouldn’t cut them. And it’s not because they were just being jerks, it’s because their machines do not cut the plastic blinds, “But, you cut them when I bought them,” I said. “No, we can’t cut those,” he said. “But… they DID,” I insisted. “If they did that,” he said, “they weren’t supposed to. It’s against store policy, and they ruined the blade and destroyed the machine. We can’t cut those.”
   
   It was the “If” that rankled. “If” they cut them? They cut them. Believe me, 22 7/8 inches is not a standard width for plastic blinds. And that “if” really made me want to get him to admit that they at least USED to cut them, so I asked him how long he’d been working there. “Two years.” So OK, fine. I bought these seven years ago, when they apparently had different machines, because THEY CUT THEM. Which he never admitted. But he did give me some replacement mounting brackets for free, so I forgive him.
3. This has nothing to do with shopping or home improvement, but here is what I would like to happen on Sunday mornings: First, I want to sleep late. Second, I want to have a leisurely breakfast. Third, I want to go to the early mass so that the rest of the day is free.
   
   Somehow, I do not think I’m ever going to have all three of those things happen together.

When engineers get mad

Last night Andrew and I got into a fight about fluid dynamics. Yep. See, I had been trying to recreate this weather experiment on cyclones and anti-cyclones: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzqvGIAWHOk, but I couldn’t get the dynamic profile to fully develop. If you don’t have time to click on the video, just know that the experimental set up is a can of ice set inside a pan of rheologic fluid which is in turn set inside a larger pan. The entire apparatus is spinning on a turntable, and at the start of the experiment, hot water is poured into the second, larger pan. The setup is a model of the earth: The can of ice models the cold “north pole”, and the hot water warms up the equator (the outside edge of the inner pan).

In the video, you can see three cyclones and three anti-cyclones form, and in between them is a continuous line which is a model for the jet stream. But when I tried to repeat the experiment, I never got steady cyclones or anti-cyclones; I just saw small transient cyclones form at the “north pole.” The video is only a demonstration and therefore doesn’t give a step-by-step methodology, so I wasn’t sure which critical thing I was missing. One of the differences between my set up and the one in the video, however, is that I have a Lazy Susan, and not an electric turntable, so I couldn’t start the rotation until after I had poured in the hot water, but I was pretty sure that wouldn’t matter. I thought I’d ask Andrew what he thought, though. You should note that I had shown Andrew the video the night before, so I thought he was familiar with the setup.

But Andrew said the lack of rotation would make a difference, because the hot water would make hot spots. I blinked. What? Hot spots? In the outer pan? I stared at him, confused. “No it wouldn’t,” I said, lamely.

“Of course it would!” he said. “The hot water would make one part hot before it could get everywhere!”

Again, I was at a loss. Did Andrew not understand that water… flows? “But the water doesn’t just stay in one place!” I said. “How could it make a hot spot?”

I won’t repeat the whole argument word for word, although, actually, I pretty much already did. We basically just kept repeating those two statements back and forth to each other, with growing frustration. “It HAS to create a hot spot!” “But the water doesn’t just stay still!”

Eventually, he said he couldn’t talk to me about it anymore, because he was just too aggravated. I, however, insisted that we continue. “I think you are not understanding something,” I said, “Because it cannot make a hot spot! The water is being poured into an empty pan. It goes all over the pan! It flows!”

“Wait… you’re not pouring the water into the fluid?” Andrew asked.

OH THANK GOODNESS. So here’s what was happening. Andrew thought I was pouring hot water into a cold fluid and failing to understand that this would create a hot spot before the mixture had time to come to thermal equilibrium, something that I should understand very well given my degree in chemical engineering which is basically the study of heat transfer and fluid flow. But to me, it seemed like Andrew was failing to understand that when you pour water into a dish it will not stack up on top of itself but will instead flow into the pan, something that Andrew should understand very well given that he has POURED WATER BEFORE.

I tell you, we argued about this for a good ten minutes. And I think we had such trouble finding different words to explain what we were talking about, because what each of us WANTED to say was, “WHY ARE YOU BEING AN IDIOT?”

Use what you have

Andrew was holding the naked baby, having just gotten her ready for a bath. While I drew the bath, I noticed that this time, Andrew neglected to put a prefold diaper between her and his arm, the way he usually does in this situation. I turned my attention back to the tub and then heard Andrew yelling from the bathroom doorway. “Get me a diaper! Get me a diaper!” he cried out. But it took me too long and Andrew, already streaked with wet down his leg, saw the puddle on the floor approaching the kitchen baseboard. Because our house is so slanty, the baseboard does not actually meet the floor in a few places; for example, the place towards which the puddle was heading. So Andrew mopped it up with the only thing he had. His sock. Which he was wearing. 

Wish I'd written it

Looking for a post I started writing a while back, I cam across this in my "to write" folder:

"Write about Curious George play and scooting to church and back and being chased by crocodiles and chasing the bunnies and scooting/walking around the park and showing daddy the bird berries and playing chase and nora swinging and what an awesome weekend"

It was created March 7, 2010. I don't even remember what "bird berries" are now.

So I am not losing my mind after all

Oh ho HO! My mother-in-law called me today, and guess what she found "stuck between the bed and the wall, it must have fallen down there, I don't know how"? That's RIGHT. My library book. And now she and her husband are jetting off to Costa Rica and I can't get my hands on it for two more weeks. ISN'T THAT CONVENIENT.

I kid. I kid because I love. She reads this blog, so in my last post I was teasing her with all my accusations of book theft and lies. But this does not change the fact that I secretly, deep down in my heart, thought the book was at her house, despite her insistence that they had looked everywhere. "Sure you did," I thought to myself. "Everywhere except where the book is."

WELL. She read my blog this morning and felt like she had to do a deep search for my library book, and there it was stuck next to the bed. And the good news is that the librarian took pity on me when I went in to pay for it, and let me renew it, so I have three weeks before they send the library police after me. Just enough time for my mother-in-law to take it to Costa Rica and read it herself.*

And now I will show you some of my child's art. I'm sorry. Except not really. What follows is a picture of what Jack likes to eat.



Lest you think my children have sophisticated palates, note that the top left is a picture of mac 'n' cheese, and that's a hot dog up there on the right. But I think my favorite parts is the smile on the fish. Which, incidentally, I have never served whole.

 *She's not really taking it. She's going to drop it off at my brother-in-law's, and I can probably get it this coming weekend.

It sounds like it's from a horror movie

For her preschool class's Christmas Grab, Nora got a musical jewelry box. It's the kind where you open the lid to make the music start, and there is a little ballerina who spins around. I remember my sister had a green one with a ballerina when we were kids, and I remember it fondly. My sister's played "Music Box Dancer," and we used to play with it all the time. I loved it.

Nora's plays "The Unicorn Song." (You know? "Green alligators and long-necked geese/ Humpy-backed camels and chimpanzees/ Cats and rats and elephants as sure as you're born/ But the loveliest of all was the unicorn") But while my sister's music box played a lovely, if tinkly, version of "Music Box Dancer," Nora's music box is juuuuuust a titch out of tune. Or even more than a titch. Really kind of a lot out of tune, actually. Hilariously, astoundingly, gloriously, out of tune. Also, the ballerina broke off immediately. Then the key for winding up the music broke off about twenty minutes later, but that was a blessing, really.

I tried to describe the degree of out-of-tuneness to Andrew when he got home that night, but he didn't really believe me. Sure, he nodded and smiled and said, "Yes, wow, sounds pretty bad," but all the while he was secretly thinking, "How bad can it possibly be?"

Well. Nora managed to jam the key back into the winding mechanism, so you can all bear witness to how bad it can be.

Pretty bad.

Music box from Maureen on Vimeo.

Italian tapas

I went out to dinner last night with one of my best friends from college whom I only get to see every six months or so because she has a baby she works all the time, I have three kids and two school schedules,   and she doesn't drive. But I got to see her last night! We went out to dinner near her house at a restaurant that opened recently near her house that can best be described as Italian tapas. After perusing the menu, we decided to split the bruschetta and the gnocchi with brown butter and sage. We were particularly excited about the bruschetta because it came with avocado. In fact, after ordering I told her that every time I have avocado now I mourn the years I wasted thinking that I did not like avocado, apparently because it looked weird. I used to turn down the guacamole! Just because it was green! Turns out that my friend did the same thing, so we were really looking forward to the avocado on the bruschetta, if only to make up for the lost years.

We were therefore very disappointed when the waitress brought out the bruschetta with a pile of leaves on it.  "I'm sorry," she said. "The chef said that the avocados were too ripe, so he substituted arugula."

Arugula! In what universe is arugula an appropriate substitute for avocado, I ask you? I don't actually know what you would substitute for avocado, but I know that it's not arugula. What was going through his mind, do you think? "Oh, no, the avocados are no good. Oh, man. I have to put something on there. Let's see. What tastes like avocado? Avocados are egg-shaped, have large pits, and are green. Also, 'avocado' starts with an 'A.' Hey! Lettuce is green! But it's not close enough. I know! Arugula! That tastes terrible, but it's green and it starts with an 'A'!"

As much as I love avocados, I hate arugula. They offered to take it back, but my friend doesn't mind arugula so much, and it was easy to scrape the arugula off my piece. So we ordered something else to round it out, and they didn't charge us for the bruschetta, so it all ended well.

Arugula, man. I just don't know.

Skunk update

Does anyone remember how there was a skunk living under our shed in the backyard? Oh, wait, a quick search indicates I didn’t actually blog about that, only tweeted. Well here’s the story: This summer, we discovered that a skunk was living under the shed in our backyard. I had actually been suspecting this for several summers now, but I chose ignorance and never actually investigated. But then this happened:

We immediately took the following proactive steps:

1.       Posted a photo on twitter

2.       Fretted

3.       Googled “get rid of skunks”

4.       Put down flour at the entrance/exit to the under-shed paradise (to watch for footprints)

5.       Forgot to look for footprints before it rained

6.       Talked a lot of smack about buying a light to shine under there

7.       Called the city, were told it’s not their problem but be advised we have to KILL it, we are not allowed to catch and release it

8.       Called the pest-control guy recommended by the city, were told it would cost “$150 and up”

9.       Became concerned about the “and up” part

10.   Called our regular pest-control guy, were told it would cost $495

11.   Discussed the costs and labor involved in preventing skunk access to the shed – agreed it sounds like an awful lot of work

12.   Discussed the logistics of just agreeing to live in peace with the skunk which is, after all, nocturnal

13.   Put down more flour

14.   Checked for footprints but never saw any at all

15.   Sprayed some “Critter Ridder,” given to us by my in-laws, all over the yard

16.   Bought some mothballs for $5.37

17.   Left them on the stairs for several days

18.   Finally tossed some mothballs under the shed

19.   Was told by Andrew that the entrance the skunk was using was in the BACK of the shed, not on the side, so all the flour I was putting down was in the wrong place entirely

20.   Crossed our fingers

Thanks to our quick and decisive action, we believe we have successfully eradicated the skunk based on the fact that we never smelled it again after putting down the Critter Ridder. The flour never told us anything, not even after I sprinkled it near the actual entrance the skunk was using - or at least what we think the skunk was using - so we don’t have any actual evidence. But I’m sure it’s totally fine now.  

Right?

Stinky cheese

Whenever Nora does something sneaky, she likes to tell me, her friend Mommy, about how she put one over on her mother. Oftentimes when she does this, I and wish she were better at sneakiness, because then I could pretend not to know and let her get away with it. And I'll be honest, sometimes I let her  get away with it anyway. So today, when she interrupted me putting the baby down for a nap to whisper, "Mommy! I sneaked more cheese!" I just sighed and told her "No more cheese, Nora." I figured she probably just took another handful of the shredded cheese I had already given her.

But after resigning myself to the baby's refusing to nap anywhere but in my arms, I gave up and went into the living room to look for the Ergo*. I noticed an unusual smell in the air, and then I saw the white powdery substance all over the couch. "What is that white stuff?" I said, alarm inching into my voice.

"Cheese," came the reply.

You guys. Nora had not stolen more shredded, easily-clean-upable cheese. No. She had stolen the grated Romano, and had brought the entire container into the living room to eat it with a spoon. I was livid. The children are not allowed to eat in the living room without permission, but I suppose neither are the children allowed to help themselves to a snack of spoonfuls of grated Romano. And so I was faced with a living room  that smelled like cheese, a smell that was only going to get worse if nothing was done.

I'd like to tell you that I calmly explained to Nora what her infraction was, but the truth is that I flipped my lid. I made her dustbust the couch; meanwhile, I started clearing the floor so I could vacuum properly and did it while yelling at her. I forbade her from any more cheese for the rest of the day, at which point I picked up the satchel of poker chips that the kids play with so I could move it to its proper location. Sadly, it wasn't latched and eleven million poker chips poured out onto the floor and scattered in eleven million directions.

That is when I failed to get a sticker. But I haven't told you about my sticker chart, have I? We have a couple of sticker charts going in our house. Nora has one for potty training. Jack has one for cleaning up his dishes without being asked. And at Jack's suggestion, I have one too. It's called "Mom's Slamming Chart," and every time I want to slam something but don't, I get a sticker. When I fill up the whole row, I get ice cream! It seemed like a good idea to me. I like ice cream, and also slamming cabinet doors in anger is not behavior I  particularly want to model, but, damn, does it feel good to do sometimes. So. No sticker for me this morning.

Thank goodness today was Andrew's half day at work, because when he came home, I was shampooing the couch with a sweaty baby strapped to my sweaty body, and I was still pretty angry about the whole situation. So he made me lunch, and Jack cleaned up the poker chips, and it all ended well, and now Nora knows that grated Romano cheese is under no circumstances allowed in the living room.


*Why Ann Marie chose the 90-degree, 87% humidity day to insist on being attached to me at all times, I will never know. 

Pictures for Emily

Emily just asked me on Twitter why I never post pictures of Ann Marie, thus documenting her increasing cuteness. My answer was threefold:

1. I have no smart phone, and thus posting photos is a multi-step process that involves changing out memory cards and exporting and resizing and blah de blah, it's a huge pain.

2. It's an even huger pain on my blog because I don't like the way Blogger does photos so I have to post to Photobucket and then copy links and there is EXTRA TYPING, people.

3. Ann Marie is the third baby, so there are practically no photos of her at all. (There probably would be if I had a smart phone.) (Or maybe not.)

BUT. I actually coincidentally JUST COPIED brand new photos to my computer! I got Emily's tweet while putting Nora to bed so I came right out and sat down and went through the process - the MULTI-STEPPED process - of putting them on my blog. All for you! And Emily! Because who am I to deny requests for photos of my adorable baby? Who is and remains a DREAM BABY SENT FROM HEAVEN, by the way. Tonight she did cry a lot for a total of maybe fifteen whole minutes, split over two cry sessions, but the first fussy period was because she was starving and I ignored her more patient whimpers while I finished making dinner for the other two. The second round of fussiness was because she was wet and tired, and then I Nose-Frida-ed her. In between those two screaming sessions, she hung around in her bouncy seat and grinned like a fool at anyone who was willing to make eye contact. (Many of us were willing.) (But she stopped grinning as soon as I got the camera.)

All this complaining about the hardships of having to click buttons and type things makes me think of an issue I once had with a website. I maintain a corporate membership account for my company, but I am not personally a member of the service we offer our staff. Whenever I send the invitation to join to the new hires, however, I always click the link I send them to make sure it works. The link takes me to a sign up page, and at that point I just close the window, because I do not need to join. But during the last round of hires, I started getting chirpy little emails from the membership service reminding me to complete my registration. These were annoying, yes, but not nearly as annoying as discovering that when I went back to the website, I was routed directly to the registration page instead of my normal homepage. The first time this happened, it took me a few tries to even figure out how to get back to my homepage. And I couldn't shut it off.

So now, every time I wanted to check the billing statement which is the only thing I ever need to look at, I had to first go to step 1 of the registration, then click the logo in the top left corner, and then click "Account settings." That's TWO EXTRA CLICKS. I lived this nightmare for WEEKS. I finally emailed the company to ask them how to shut it off, and I ended up having to call them. It was difficult to explain the problem to the agent I spoke to on the phone, but once he understood exactly what was happening he realized he'd have to send an email to a separate department and have them get in touch with me. "It may take a day or two," he warned me, apologetically. "Is that OK?" I told him I'd probably be able to survive two more days of unnecessary mouse clicks, but only just.

And now here are pictures of my adorable children.

2011 In Review

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?
Right off the bat, I’m thinking I’m not cut out for a review like this, because I can’t think of anything. Not one thing! I mean, besides “have a third baby” but I’m already planning to use “baby” as my answer for 50% of these questions, so shouldn’t I come up with SOMETHING new I did? Hmm. Flew across the country with two little kids? Got some financial software up and running for the organization I work for? These seem lame. I want to say something like, “Ran a marathon and came up with a cure for cancer on the way,” but I don’t have anything like that. Mostly I hung in there.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Last year I made three resolutions: Find a place for everything in my house and get rid of the stuff that has nowhere to be, run two 10k’s, and call people more/cultivate more phone-friends. I did pretty well on the first one; while I wouldn’t say that everything has a place, but we cleaned the attic and I threw out/gave away/donated quite a lot of things. It’s hard to get on top of this when more stuff is coming in all the time. But I have definitely had a mind shift this year, and I think about where I’m going to put something before I buy it. Also, when the time comes to tidy the house, it’s generally less stressful because a lot of the stuff that used to just go in a pile now has a permanent home. So I’m calling it a win.

I completely failed at the second two resolutions. I give myself a pass on not running two 10k’s, though, since I was pregnant. I had already registered for one in May when I found out I was pregnant and I tried to run it anyway, but instead I lay on my bed, took a nap, and cried a little about feeling so terrible. I did not register for second, obviously. But once the debilitating fatigue, nausea, and depression that came with the early part of this pregnancy had passed, I did think I’d be able to keep jogging throughout the pregnancy. I know, isn’t that adorable? I went twice, maybe.

As for making new phone friends, fail. Utter fail. I called Arwen once. I called Annie a bunch of times, but we never managed to speak, mostly because of the time difference and resulting conflicting nap/feeding schedules, I think. I did talk to Maggie one time, but she called me. Oh! And I called A'Dell once. The calling people turned out to be the hardest one, because I think I’m always afraid I’m going to have nothing to say if I call someone just to talk, but I’d really really like to have a cadre of friends I can call when I need to speak to another adult. It’s a conundrum. So for this year, I’m making the same resolutions: Keep organizing the house. Run two 10k’s. Call people.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Me, obviously. Many internet friends, eg: Diane, A'Dell, Maggie, Lucy, Arwen. A new friend I made this fall had a baby in November; her daughter is in Jack’s class and she also has a two-year-old and now a new baby, so we are a matched set (except for genders, hers are girl-girl-boy, mine are boy-girl-girl).

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Thankfully, no.

5. What countries did you visit?
HAHAHAHA! You’re cute. I did manage to renew my passport that’s been expired for about five years, but I lost it pretty much the instant it arrived in the mail. Next time I’ll just throw the $130 into the trash and save myself a trip to the post office. (Seriously, where is it? I had it in my hand, and then it vanished!)

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
Infinite patience. And hell, infinite money. Why not, right? Just as likely. On the realistic side, I’d settle for MORE patience and some perspective when it comes to the level of clutter in my home. I don’t want to live in a filthy mess, but I also don’t want to spend all my time maintaining (or attempting to maintain) an unrealistic level of cleanliness/organization when I could be living my actual life.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
December 3 is the only date I will remember since it’s Ann Marie’s birthday. Otherwise, the days I remember are our trip to California in June, the times I took the kids to the beach in the summer, our hikes through the local state park, stuff like that. I won’t remember the times I cleaned the whole dining room; hence my answer to number 6.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I think I’m going to have to say it was managing to stay mostly sane and keep living a mostly normal life while pregnant and then delivering a baby. Remember, I’m taking full credit for the ease of Ann Marie’s birth, deserved or not.

9. What was your biggest failure?
I think my failures are the same as many parents’: All the times I’ve lost my patience and snapped at my children for just acting like children are my biggest failures. Most especially the times I, myself, have thrown a tantrum because things aren’t going my way.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Yes, actually. In July, I dropped the shower head on my toe, and the toenail is still black and is going to fall off soon and I’m scared. Gah. I also had a mysterious illness in September that made my entire body hurt to the point that Percocet only took the edge off. It was pretty much horrible. I never got a diagnosis other than “viral” and it eventually went away, but it was a loooooong week or two. I also had a bunch of sinus infections. And of course, I was pregnant, which certainly feels like an illness a lot of the time.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
This was a tough one to figure out, but I think probably our California trip. We had a great time and got to see old friends. I also got a Phil & Ted’s Dash for half price (HALF PRIIIIICCCEE!), but time will tell if it proves to be as awesome as I hope, since Nora’s too tall to sit in the doubling seat when it’s up front, and that’s the only way she and Ann Marie can both ride right now because Ann Marie needs the main seat to be flat. But when Ann Marie can sit up, it is ON.

12. Where did most of your money go?
Oh, mortgage, by far. And then probably food. I’m kind of snobby about what food I buy.

13. What did you get really excited about?
Well, the trip to California, for one. And the birth of my third child. And Christmas break. And the times my kids spent a night or two at their grandparents’. Probably mostly that last one, though.

14. What song will always remind you of 2011?
And now we reach a question that makes me feel like a loser, because I don’t KNOW any songs. All I ever listen to is NPR. I do like Adele, even I couldn’t escape hearing her songs all year, and I also like OK Go, but I don’t even know if that’s from this year or not. I am so unhip. But maybe I’m approaching this wrong: Nora’s favorite song is “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” so I’ve heard and sung that approximately 4378925 times this year. So maybe that one?

15. Compared to this time last year, are you:
– happier or sadder? Happier
– thinner or fatter? Fatter, but I did just have a baby.
– richer or poorer? Probably about the same, depending on how you measure it. Net worth is possibly higher, but as far as actual lifestyle cash, the same.

16. What do you wish you’d done more of?
I’ve been pondering this question for a while, and I think I’ll have to say exercise. I did walk a lot, so I guess I did pretty well for a pregnant person, but I miss exercise when I can’t do it. I also wish I could have seen more movies. This may make me shallow, but I love movies, and I currently can’t even stay awake for a whole movie at home, never mind going to a movie.

17. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Any pointless time wasting or yelling at my kids instead of dealing with them patiently.

18. How did you spend Christmas?
We spent Christmas Eve with my family (Ann Marie makes it a total of 15 grandchildren on my side), then went to the pageant mass, which was at 5:30. Afterwards, we brought the kids home and put them in their PJs, and then drove around to look at Christmas lights. This was a mistake, because on the way to a particularly crazily-lit-up street, Jack asked us to turn the music down so he could sleep. Oh, well, Nora saw some of them. When we got home, I think we tried to watch a movie, but I fell asleep (see question 16). Then we had Christmas morning at our house and spent the afternoon with my in-laws (grandchildren count: 5). It was very lovely.

19. What was your favorite TV program?
Hmmm. Probably still Burn Notice.

20. What were your favorite books of the year?
I didn’t read any books that made me say “WOW!” this year, but I liked Snuff by Terry Pratchett, A Visit from the Goon Squad, Ape House (which I technically read this week but I’ll forget by next year), and a bunch of other books that I can’t remember.

21. What was your favorite music from this year?
I plead the fifth.

22. What were your favorite films of the year?
The only movies I saw in the theater were Harry Potter and The Muppets and they were both awesome.

23. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 35, and Andrew made me a cake.

24. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
There is a difficult person in my life, and she created a situation where I fantasize about responding with the childish thing instead of the adult thing (which is what I did), and in my fantasy it totally schools her. This would have been immeasurably satisfying. This may be petty, but there you go.

25. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?
Stretchy.

26. What kept you sane?
My husband and the internet. (I only put “husband” first so his feelings wouldn’t be hurt, because, let’s face it, who’s here for me at 4:45pm on a weekday? The internet or my husband? Exactly.)

27. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.

That difficult person did some things that got me really upset, so I learned that it takes me a week to get over the things hateful people do. After a week, I can laugh about it instead of cry.

Don't shake it! DON'T SHAKE IT!

When Jack was four months old or so, we left him with his grandfather for an afternoon as a test run for my upcoming return to work. Andrew and I used the baby-free time to go find some bedside tables at the unfinished furniture store. We found some perfect ones and bought them along with some stain and poly. The man who helped us pick out the poly made very clear that we were not to shake it when it was time to mix it, as that would introduce bubbles. He even wrote "STIR" in black Sharpie on the lid so that we wouldn't forget.

And so we didn't shake it. Any time we rearranged the four trillion paint cans we had, we made sure to pick that one up and set it down again without shaking it. We were very careful.

So when I finally did stain the first of the bedside tables a few months ago , I knew there would be no bubbles in the poly. And when I opened the can, I found out I was right! There were no bubbles at all! It would have been really easy to see them if there were, because bubbles show up very plainly in solidified polyurethane.

THIS is the right spot

I was just reading Jonniker's latest post on vacations, and had to stop in the middle to come tell you this story. The comment that sparked this little blog aside was about how she and her family slept in a car on the side of the road during last year's vacation, and it reminded me of the summer between college and grad school when I spent a month in Colorado as a... home aide? Horse's aide? I don't know what we were, but my friend Elizabeth called me that June and asked me if I was interested in spending a month on a horse ranch in Colorado with her and helping the 95-year-old couple around the house. Ranch. Whatever. I said yes, obviously, because who would pass that up? We "worked" about 4-5 hours a day, doing household chores and things, and then we got to ride horses for an hour or so in the afternoon and then we were off the clock. I think 90% of our responsibility was probably to be non-95-year-old people on site in case there was an emergency of some sort. It was an isolated ranch.

But that is not what I came to tell you about. I came to tell you about how we went to the Royal Gorge one weekend. According to our Rand McNally Road Atlas, there was a campground about twenty miles or so from the bridge, and that's where we planned to spend the night. In our rental car, because we didn't have any camping gear or anything, but we figured we could just park in a campsite and sleep in the car.

We arrived around dinner time, so we were going to camp out and visit the gorge the next day. So we had dinner in the local hotel - where we saw an impromptu fiddling concert - we headed out for the campground. We drove and drove and drove and drove and eventually discovered that Rand McNally was a big fat liar. (I feel I should point out for those of you who are wondering why we didn't just use our GPS-enabled smart phones to find a place to stay that this was last century, when there WERE no GPS-enabled smart phones. No smart phones at all, and the military were the only ones with GPSs. Imagine!) (For the record, I still have neither a GPS nor a smart phone, although Andrew has both.) So, as I was saying, no campground. Nothing for miles, actually, and it was getting late. So we just slept there. For free! And then the next morning, we drove back to the Royal Gorge.

So let me recap: We were at the Royal Gorge, then we drove twenty miles out to a very specific spot on the highway, parked the car, slept, and drove twenty miles back to the Royal Gorge.

An interesting side note is that the day we were at the gorge, there was a fiddling competition. "Wow!" we kept saying. "This is so crazy! First we saw those fiddlers last night at the hotel, and then today we see all these fiddlers for the competition! What are the odds that we would see SO MANY fiddlers in a two-day span? It's so strange!" We marveled about the amazing coincidence for quite some time.

It was not until we were on our way home, hours later, that we put it together.

A Minor Annoyance

So here's a little thing. About four months ago, in a fit of decluttering the office, I brought 14 or so spent ink cartridges to Staples to recycle them. When I called to find out if the do, in fact, recycle spent ink cartridges, I was told that yes, AND I get $2 for every one, plus money off of new cartridges and paper for each one! Yay! But then when I GOT to Staples, I discovered that I had to sign up for a customer loyalty card to get the money. And they will only take 10 cartridges a month. So. OK. I gave her 10 of my 14 cartridges, signed up for the program, and paid for my new cartridges and paper. But what was this? No money off! And no money back!

No, they MAIL you the rebate at a later date, and it actually comes as "Staples Dollars" (or whatever they call it) only to be spent at Staples. So. FINE.

But here we are, four or five months later, and I do not have my Staples Dollars. I finally got around to inquiring at the store, and they said, "Oh, they must have the wrong email address." But I get the ads JUST FINE. In fact, I was inspired to write this complainy post by a Staples ad I got in my email just today! As I do every day! And there is nothing they can do at the store; I have to call Staples and complain. This is obviously a huge pain, so I didn't, and then a month went by and I lost the info, and had to inquire at the store again. I should note that at this point, I also brought back the other four cartridges, so now they owe me at least $28. Then I actually DID try to call, but it was the weekend and I have to call during normal business hours. Which I didn't, and now I've lost the phone number again.

But I will hunt down my $28, and I will complain heartily and try to get more. At least, I hope I will. I'm a lot of empty talk sometimes. But I'll try to channel A'Dell who would definitely not put up with this sort of thing.