Five for Friday

It’s Friday and I am posting this on Friday, March 15; you may not see this until June for all Feedly cares, but I don’t think I have any control over that. This is kind of a cranky way to begin a blog post, so, as I say to Carla: Let’s try that again.

It’s Friday! I am coming off a night of broken sleep (child coming in at three, returning to bed around four, husband waking up for the day at five thirty), so let’s have some Friday bullets. 

1. Are you as steeped in the Kate Middleton drama as I am? If you have no idea what I’m talking about, a) bless you and b) here is a really thorough explainer. If you are In It, I highly recommend finding a friend who is similarly obsessed so you can text her memes and links to conspiracy theories at all hours of the day. My personal opinion is that Kate is recovering from surgery, probably doesn’t look or feel her best, and just wants to recover in private until Easter as previously planned and communicated by the Palace. BUT, simmering in that dark gross part of me that enjoys drama, especially when it feels very removed from my own boring non-royal life, I am kind of hoping that someone is pregnant with someone’s love child.

2. What kind of snacks do you keep stocked in your house? I ask because we have become friendly with our new neighbors and they invite us over all the time for all manner of things. While I am a little intimidated by reciprocating with A Real Meal (they are incredible cooks and bakers, and every time we’ve been invited to their house the food has been astonishing in both quantity and quality), I am ostensibly fine with having them over for drinks and snacks. The other day, the kids went sledding and we had them over for impromptu cocoa. Luckily, we had cocoa mix in the pantry, and even more luckily the mix had tiny marshmallows, and even more luckily, we had an unopened bottle of spray whipped cream because one of the neighbor kids informed me that he really likes whipped cream on his cocoa in a tone so grave I understood him to mean that something dire would happen if no whipped cream appeared. But then there are all these kids and their parent in my house and I realized I DON’T HAVE ANY SNACKS. It’s not that I don’t enjoy snacks; it’s that I enjoy them too much. We managed to scrape together some muffins I had in the freezer and some individual bags of chips and veggie straws that we had leftover from some party or other, so no one starved. But it made me feel like I need to have at least some snacks on hand. But what?!? I’m not crazy about having a bunch of cookies around, because they either go uneaten or get devoured in two seconds. If we have chips, I will eat the chips. Cheese and crackers aren’t big among the elementary school set, and it’s not like I can have an emergency brie on hand for last minute guests (or can I?). Fresh fruits and veggies, yes, great, and I try to have those around as much as possible, but we don’t eat enough of them to have a ready supply in the fridge at all times. Occasionally I panic buy a bag of clementines, but at least a third of them inevitably go bad before we can eat them. So: shelf stable snacks that appeal to kids and adults but are not so appealing that my family will eat them before we have guests. Is this a thing? 

3. In vanity news, I have been Influenced to buy several things lately. I really like this very inexpensive multi-use highlighter stick. Of course I cannot find the video that originally persuaded me that this was an essential tool in my (non-existent) makeup game, but I like dabbing it on the inner and outer aspects of my eyes and swiping it below my eyebrows for a little bit of lively glow. Totally worth $2.94. The other thing I’ve already tried enough times to recommend it is this bronzing mousse. The weather is edging ever closer to summer, and I don’t want to scare the new neighbors with my fish-belly legs, so I’ve been practicing in the hope that I can add a little lifelike color to my skin before I appear in public in running shorts. I am always on a quest for the perfect fake tan, and this is the closest I’ve gotten. The things I like best about it are: a) It’s dark when it goes on, so you can SEE where you are applying it, and you can also see if you are introducing streaks to your thighs or stomach before the streaks have become one with your skin. b) While it has a scent, as all tanning products inevitably do, it strikes me as much fainter and less objectionable than any other tanning product I’ve ever used. c) The resulting tan is darker than my normal skin tone, but not so dark that it screams FAKE TAN. (I use this tanning mitt to apply it to my body which works really well and helps prevent streaking.) Once again, I have no idea which account suggested this tanning mousse, but I am a fan.

4. One of my current parenting goals is to provide more opportunities for Carla to spend time with her friends. I think I’ve mentioned before that I hate playdates. They fill me with anxiety, because they are both forced social time – sometimes with parents I don’t know well – and because I have no idea how to deal with more than just my one child. For better or for worse, that’s just how I am, and so we haven’t had a ton of playdates. But now that Carla is older, playdates presumably no longer require that social element AND the kids are old enough that I can give them a lot more independence. I used to agonize over how I was going to entertain two whole children, and so I’d gravitate toward things in my comfort zone, like baking projects or crafts. Unfortunately, those things require a lot of prep and supervision and clean up, so they aren’t relaxing or easy. But now I can pretty much let the kids go off and play together. Sometimes we all take a walk outside, and I’m always happy to take a walk, even if the kids ask me to pretend I’m not with them.

Even though playdates are, in many ways, easier now, I still of course have anxiety about them. I find myself fretting about planning An Activity, just in case. I find myself worrying about what happens if the kids get into a fight or misbehave or want food (it always comes back to snacks!) or want to be on screens the whole time.

This is so silly! When I was a kid, I don’t think my friends and I EVER had An Activity. We just went and played Barbies or roller skated in my basement or played school or ran around outside or played house. I can’t even imagine asking my mom or a friend’s mom for ideas. And snacks were not provided by the parent! We scrounged up our own snacks, and I don’t even remember a parent being present for any snacking. In fact, part of the fun of going to someone’s house was checking out their snacks. (Not as fun: eating any sort of meal at a friend’s house, because they had different foods than I was used to and different rules. THAT filled me with anxiety.) I loved my friend J’s house because they had an entire drawer full of candy, and you could just… eat candy when you wanted to! J, notably, was pretty uninterested in the candy. I loved my friend R’s house because her garage freezer was STOCKED with popsicles. At my house, we always had little bags of chips or Zingers in the pantry and Dilly Bars in the freezer and pickles in the fridge. (R and I used to each eat a pickle when we were at my house.) So I am guessing that kids DON’T CARE either what they do or what they eat at playdates. They will figure it out. And yet. We have two playdates on the schedule in the next few weeks and I am already stressing about it. I am planning to be Mean Mom and put a ban on screens, but beyond that… I don’t know what to do or what not to do. Wow, I wish I could chill out about this. 

5. You know something that always feels like magic to me, even though it’s science? Topology. Various algorithms keep serving me videos of topological experiments – because I keep watching them when they appear in my feed – and my mind cannot grasp the mathematics/physics. My dad taught Carla how to make a mobius strip and even seeing him create it with my own eyes doesn’t help me understand how or why it works. It’s witchcraft.

What are you up to this weekend, internet? And, more importantly, what kind of snacks will you be eating?

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Five for Friday

It’s March! A new month! Spring is inching ever closer! I am feeling so much better today. No fever, and I SLEPT last night, which is everything. I still have no voice to speak of (ha, unintentional pun!), which is more annoying than I anticipated (our house has a lot of stairs and I tend to holler at people rather than walking to where they are which is EFFICIENT) and this infection has fully settled in my chest, so I am coughing at ALL TIMES. (Do you have a go-to cough drop/cough syrup? I have been drinking a LOT of green tea with honey but I think I need to pull out the big guns.) 

I am feeling a little KEYED UP, I feel so much better, is what I’m saying. Like maybe I’ve had a full pot of espresso or a fistful of cocaine instead of three sips of my normal tea and zero cocaine. So I guess… Prepare yourself for even more exclamation marks than usual. (I added an exclamation mark after that sentence, then deleted it. It looks mean, now. Mean!!!!)

Let’s have some Friday bullets, shall we?!

1. With all of my Feeling Better Verve, I am making muffins. We had some sad bananas on the counter (we have the Proverbial Banana Problem of either going through bananas more quickly than we can supply them or ending up with an entire bunch slowly liquifying on the counter. So the first order of business is banana chocolate chip muffins, which are in the oven as I type! I have still not gotten around to making the apple cinnamon muffins I mentioned a while back, but I have left all the muffin making ingredients on the counter (which makes me itchy) AND I have already washed all the muffin making equipment (bowls, measuring devices) to prompt me to make Batch 2 as soon as the banana muffins are done. Why not make them simultaneously? Why not, indeed! It is because I have only one set of silicone muffin cups and they are currently in service. Clearly, I need to get another set! These muffins are intended for the freezer – I mean, that’s my intent for them; I can’t speak for the recipe writers – and I find I prefer to reheat a naked muffin rather than try to disrobe a frozen muffin in a paper wrapper. This reminds me that I would love a better muffin freezing solution than the one I have (Tupperware rectangle). Surely Amazon has a product that is designed for this highly specific need? YES! Do I need a muffin fresh storage container just for this purpose? Yes, I think I do!

2. The only problem with making muffins is my oven. I think I have mentioned before that we have two ovens (!!!!!) and that neither of those ovens heats properly (womp womp). For instance, my banana chip muffins required a baking temperature of 350 degrees Fahrenheit. I set the oven to 450 degrees. When it had reached approximately 325 degrees, my oven alerted me that it had come to temperature. Yes, I get it, we’re all eager for muffins. (I only know the “real” temperature because we got a thermometer to put inside the oven.) This would be sort of okay if the oven held a consistent temperature difference – like, if I set it to 450 but it reliably stayed at 350. (Although that would be problematic for dishes that require a temperature of 450, because the oven dial only goes to 525.) Except, no, it does not do that. It slowly continues to heat. This is true of both ovens! BOTH! I hate it, thanks. Let’s be clear, though: I do not want to replace the ovens. Especially because one of them is a Big Fancy Oven that costs more money than I care to imagine. But I also can’t go on like this. I suppose what this means is Another Phone Call!!!! Woo! 

3. It’s that time again: I need new walking shoes. I don’t know WHAT I do to my shoes, but at some point, the vertical section of shoe that wraps around the back of your heel inevitably fails. And by “fails” I mean there is a big hole through which the plastic starts poking painfully. Do I have horns sprouting from the backs of my heels? I am contemplating ordering another pair of Brooks Ghost shoes – they are what I was using, and I liked them. They are also a lower price on Amazon than I’ve seen them. But maybe I just want a cheapo pair of Asics? These are the shoes I wear around the house all day every day and I like them just fine. 

4. We keep inching our way toward finishing Carla’s room renovation. Well. Not really a “renovation,” per say. We have painted the walls and bought a bunch of decor and are now trying to make her space usable. In this house, she has ample space: an enormous bedroom PLUS an enormous craft/toy room. It is The Dream, truly. Unfortunately, we haven’t figured out yet how to make them workable for what she likes to do. (“Crafting all over her bedroom” is NOT THE ANSWER.) The craft room is a big mess right now (but behind a door so I don’t have to see it!!!!). We want to get her a drafting chair so that it’s easier for her to work at her crafting “table” (which is a door balanced on top of several storage units). We want to move one of our couches into that space (we got a new couch for the basement, so now we have too many couches), to give it a cozier feel. She also requested a second bean bag chair. And we want to organize everything so that all the paper and foam and pompoms and markers have A Specific Home. (Do you think we need a label maker for organization purposes? I’ve wanted a label maker for a long time but haven’t made it past putting various label makers in my various digital shopping carts.) It’s a big project and we’ve been limping toward the finish line for a long time. Will this be the weekend we complete it?!?! Probably not, but a girl can hope!!!!

5. Speaking of things I keep wanting to buy but haven’t yet, I am feeling lately like I NEED a stick blender with a cup attachment. Probably I don’t, considering I already have an immersion blender (which I cannot find! they all seem to come with cup attachments now!) and a regular blender, which came with a smaller cup I use for making dressings and single serve smoothies. But it looks so useful! So many delicious recipes on Instagram are made with one of these guys!

Okay, if I continue in this vein I am going to spend too much money and wear out my 1 key. By the way, the muffins are done (and I have left the oven on, set to 375 and the temperature seems to have evened out at 350), my child is awake (and off from school today, whoo five day weekend!!!!!), and I need to go make muffin batch number two! 

Tell me something you want to buy but haven’t yet done so.

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Five for Friday + Mini Giveaway

1. For Valentine’s Day, I made two kinds of cookies. I had some leftover scraps of dough, so I cut out little hearts and whipped up a strawberry buttercream frosting and made little sandwiches. They were cute and tasty. Then I added a few cookies to these adorable plates I found at the grocery store of all places and gave them to a couple of local friends.

My husband and I exchanged cards and candy and we got Carla a bunch of candy and a little pink bunny. (Side note: I happened to be near a Kohl’s recently and went in, remembering the luck I’d had finding stocking stuffers there. They had one tiny Valentine’s Day display and the rest of the holiday products were related to Easter. And not just bunnies — they had a strange array of large, weary-looking pigs, which seems a little odd for Easter. I mean, I would look weary if I were a stuffed animal on display in a Kohl’s too, that’s gotta be a hard job, but they were not particularly cute or cuddly and really seemed like they were counting the hours until they could clock out. I DID find one small, pink bunny and snapped it up.) Carla also cut out a bunch of paper hearts and stuck them all over the walls of the house. It was adorable and the hearts are still up and may remain for months.

2. A recent parent interaction has me feeling cranky. And ranty, just to warn you. I was at a school event and several of us were discussing various challenges our kids are having, as one does, and the topic turned to leaving our kids at home alone. I was struck, once again, by how adamant some people are that their way is The Only Way. The comments ran the spectrum from, “Oh my gosh, I would NEVER leave a kid that age alone!” to “There is NO REASON a kid that age can’t stay at home by themselves for reasonable periods of time.” With equal emphasis and near outrage. 

I don’t know why, after nearly eleven years of being a parent, I am still surprised by people’s inability to consider the wide array of differences in our situations, upbringings, and specific children, but I guess I am. I’m guilty of it too – I still cringe, remembering how I’d mentioned to a friend that I OF COURSE make my child sit in the back seat because the American Pediatric Association says it’s best to have them sit in the backseat until age 13… and then she’d gently noted that her child is not yet 13 and sits in the passenger seat. Gah. When I KNOW that she is a wonderful, thoughtful parent and also know that MANY of my kid’s cohort sit in the front seat of their parents’ cars, for a wide variety of reasons I cannot begin to know because I am not them. (ALSO, lest you have a moment of panic about your own car-seating choices, the APA data on why age thirteen is a magical turning point for kids suddenly being safe to sit in the front seat is not super persuasive! I have read it!) 

Okay – there are obviously some parenting choices that are less safe than others; if we’re talking about an infant in the front seat, that would be different; if we’re talking about a child riding in a car without restraints, that would be different. But there are SO MANY things that have NO SINGLE RIGHT WAY and yet some people seem incapable of understanding that there are many equally fine ways to do a thing. 

This comes up every time I mention that my daughter needs melatonin to fall asleep. People have strong feelings about melatonin! As they should! And yet I have Reasons – and have carefully considered the angles and have consulted with multiple physicians and continually revisit whether it’s a good idea in our particular case for our particular child. It’s just so frustrating when someone says, “I would never give my kid melatonin” or “If she’s tired enough, she’ll fall asleep on her own” or “She clearly needs more physical activity during the day, that’ll help her sleep” as though they know. 

And this happens with everything! I have had people scold me for allowing my child to wash her own hair. Does she do a great job? Not particularly. But am I weighing Other Factors? YES. The ways we judge one another are endless! Food – frequency, type, preparation. Buying clothing at Target vs upscale department stores. Bedtime. Age-appropriate chores/responsibilities. Sleepovers. Access to devices. 

Screen time is a big one. For my particular kid, screens are a no-go on weekdays. There are REASONS for this. Do I despise screens? Not really, no. Would I love to be able to set her up with a TV show after school while I make dinner? Sure! Would it be much more convenient if I could say yes to her playing a video game after she does her homework? Definitely. BUT IT DOES NOT WORK FOR US. I have no concerns about YOUR family’s screen time choices. None! If your kid has unlimited screen time every day, I am sure that is a choice you made based on what’s best for your kid and your family. (Please note that I am aware too much screen time can have a negative impact on children. I am not advocating setting your three-year-old in front of a screen all day every day, although of course there are still probably Reasons someone might make that choice! Like if that is the only way you can work the job that allows you to feed your family or if you are so sick or pregnant you cannot do anything else or all sorts of other situations I know nothing about.) If you ask me about screen time for my kid, I am neither judging you for your own screen time limits nor inviting you to say, “Come on, an hour of Netflix after school isn’t going to hurt anyone.” 

I know I cannot SOLVE this problem, and all I can do is surround myself with people who say things like, “This is what we have found works for us,” and who don’t make black-and-white accusatory statements about what I SHOULD and SHOULD NOT be doing without having all the information I am trying to balance, but I am SO SICK OF IT. Listen. I am not saying that I am completely free of judgment. We all judge one another, to some extent, because usually we think our choices are The Right Ones. But… I try really hard to acknowledge that we all have different value systems and different priorities and that, mostly, we are all trying our very best. Also, we can all judge one another SILENTLY. It is hard enough to be a parent, turning to other parents for support about choices that you have made based on Reasons but maybe you aren’t really sure are the BEST choices, as in my case with the melatonin, you are just doing the best you can with the information you have, without having someone who is not an expert, especially on YOUR CHILD, say you are Doing It Wrong. 

Wow. I really got fired up about that. MOVING ON.

3. Accidental laundry efficiency hack? Laundry is my nemesis. I am pretty good about sorting the clothing into piles, and pretty good about putting the piles into the washing machine and washing them. I am less good about remembering to dry the freshly washed clothing, and then really terrible about folding the clothing. Yesterday, I had two loads of clean, dry laundry to fold and I was dreading it. I had a little more than twenty minutes before I needed to leave to pick up Carla from school and I just wanted to finish my book. So I made a deal with myself: I would set my timer for six minutes, and fold laundry until the timer went off. Then I would go read for fifteen minutes. Even a little progress on the laundry would make me feel better about it, I reasoned. Plus, sometimes if you get started on an onerous task, momentum will carry you through. I set my timer for six minutes, started folding… and FINISHED BOTH LOADS IN SIX MINUTES. How is that possible? In my head, folding laundry takes HOURS. But two loads took six minutes! (To be fair, I don’t fold all of Carla’s clothes, because a lot of them hang up in her closet. Also, I only put away my own laundry – my husband and Carla ostensibly move their clothes from my bed to their own drawers/hangers.) It was an astonishing and bolstering discovery. Has this new knowledge prompted me to fold the clean and dry load of laundry that is currently hanging out in the dryer? No, it has not.

4. How about a little mid-February giveaway? Amazon has issued me a refund for a product I did not return. I ordered a book and have not returned it; it’s right next to me as I type this. Nor have I returned anything else. And yet I got an email from Amazon saying they had processed my refund. I would like to pay for a product I received and kept, so I looked online at my options… and the only option I found (“cancel my return”) simply took me in a loop back to the returns page. I was able to chat with an associate, and they said I could keep the item. Seems like the perfect excuse to do a little giveaway. I have $14.40 in money that I should not have, which is the perfect amount for a paperback book that you’ve been meaning to read for a few years but haven’t gotten around to. If you want the chance to get a free paperback book, and are willing to share your address with me, let me know in the comments what backlist book you would order. I will randomly choose someone and send them the book of their choice, compliments of Amazon. Unfortunately, I will only be able to include US readers in this mini giveaway, which is a huge bummer. But if you are from outside the US, I am still interested in whatever backlist book you have been meaning to read but haven’t gotten to yet. Let’s say this giveaway is open until midnight on Monday, February 19 or until Feedly decides to say I wrote this post, whichever comes LAST.

5. I am suffering from home maintenance burnout. This past fall, when we moved to our new house, we had to do so many things, some elective, others more urgent… and I grew so very weary of all of them.  But that doesn’t mean we are DONE with the home maintenance issues. I feel like they continue to pile up. This includes things I knew about last year that I intentionally put off until the spring (getting a tree cut back, finding a pool person, getting our air ducts cleaned, looking into the carpenter bees issue with our roof) as well as things that have cropped up in the interim (some electrical issues, a leak in our furnace, also our furnace is making a weird noise, our doorbell is caput). But I am having such a mental block to doing the things. Maybe if I write about it here, the guilt and self-consciousness will spur me to schedule at least one of them? Maybe I need to apply my laundry efficiency hack to making home maintenance phone calls, somehow? (Except they always drag on so much longer than they should, and require research and multiple phone calls and visits. This is part of the problem.)

That’s all I have for today, Internet. Hope you have a wonderful weekend! 

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Five Food Related Topics for Friday

1. First Attempt at Tuna Salad: Bolstered by everyone’s suggestions Monday, I bought some solid white tuna and made tuna salad. I used the America’s Test Kitchen recipe as a jumping off point, and then added red bell pepper. I also substituted pickle juice for pickles (I don’t like pickles in my tuna salad, although I do like celery and red onion), ignored the request that I add fresh parsley (parsley can die in a fire), and squeezed on some lemon juice. I also add capers to my sandwich before eating, although I don’t like mixing capers into the tuna salad itself for reasons I haven’t fully excavated from my soul. I sort of squinted so that the tuna in the can was blurry, and then added it to a mixing bowl and immediately put the other ingredients on top of it and stirred everything together so I didn’t have to think about the color of the tuna. It turned out okay. I think the tuna salad I love has more mayonnaise than I am willing to add to my own tuna salad, because I ostensibly don’t like mayonnaise. 

Next time, I will use more mayonnaise and less mustard; I can put mustard on the bread. I also want to make this mini focaccia because I like tuna salad on focaccia. 

2. Finger Food: In addition to tuna salad, I have been thinking about food a lot this week because we are having guests for the Super Bowl. There is almost nothing I like better than an excuse to make a bunch of fun and tasty appetizers that can be eaten in front of the TV.

We are having two guests, which brings the total of people who will presumably be eating food to five, although counting Carla is probably dumb because she will only eat chips and guacamole, nothing else. (She asked me to buy TWO bags of Lays and TWO bags of Tostitos because she is anticipating a LOT of chip eating.) Keep that in mind as I lay out all the many, many things I am slavering over. We will probably do one of the below things, plus some veggies. Our guests are bringing meatballs. And my husband is making seven layer dip (with taco meat and without olives) because that is the food that is calling to his heart. 

• Air Fryer Bang Bang Salmon Bites: At various points my Instagram feed seems FULL of people making delicious looking salmon bites in the air fryer. I would love to try these and they seem perfect for a party. 

• Bunless Cheeseburger Bites: These are adorable and they have the added benefits of being carb-free AND something that Carla would potentially eat. I am not crazy about making burgers in a frying pan though… if only I had additional air fryers to call into service.
• 
  Air Fryer Buffalo Cauliflower: I am not much for buffalo wings, but I do love spicy cauliflower.

• Mini Crabcakes: I really, really want to eat some crabcakes on Sunday and found a package of mini ones in my grocery store’s freezer section. But the price is deterring me. I could make them on my own. But… after the cost of crab claw meat and then making them myself, I wonder if it might not come out to more hassle than it’s worth?

• Air Fryer Artichoke Hearts: Why does this sound so delicious??? I think only I and one of our guests will eat these, so probably they won’t make the final cut. But I am eyeing them!

• Endive with Goat Cheese and Candied Nuts: I had this appetizer at a party a million years ago and it was so fresh and delicious and it is VERY EASY to make. You dollop some goat cheese on an endive leaf, add a few candied nuts, and then drizzle with balsamic reduction. This recipe that includes blood oranges sounds appealing, too. 

• Spinach Artichoke Zucchini Bites: YUM. If I can find some pre-made spinach and artichoke dip at the grocery store, I might do these in addition to whatever else I choose. 

Are you planning to watch the Super Bowl? If so, what kind of snacks do you hope to eat? If not, what’s your favorite party appetizer to make or eat? 

3. Valentine’s Sweets: The Super Bowl will be followed closely by Valentine’s Day. Carla is SO INTO Valentine’s Day this year, and I love it. She and I scrolled through a billion options online for her to buy for her classmates and then she also made everyone a friendship bracelet. She filled all of them out the day they arrived in the mail. She also wanted a special Valentine’s Day outfit, and, while we were unable to track down the ideal dress she had in her mind (which I think was a floor length gown of tulle and sequins, which I expressly said she could not wear to school), we did find some adorable pink clothing at Target that she has already set aside for The Day. 

This is all to say that I am very into making Valentine’s cookies this year. I really want to make two kinds of cookies. Well, in reality, I want to make three or more kinds of cookies and then make up Valentine’s Day cookie plates for all our neighbors but that seems a little extra even for me. So I have reined it in to two varieties. I am pretty sure I want to make these stripey heart cookies because they are darling. However, I have made them in the past and if memory and my blog serve me, they were somewhat prettier than they were delicious. 

I definitely want to make something chocolate. Carla’s old standby is the chocolate snickerdoodle, which I think is delicious and also fun because it is unusual. But my husband isn’t a huge fan of them. Perhaps these brownie crinkle cookies would be good instead? The idea of a brownie in cookie form is delightful. These cinnamon cookies with Red Hots are very appealing to me as well, not in small part because they have cream cheese frosting and I adore a frosted cookie. But I’m not sure where I would find Red Hots? They aren’t something I’ve seen in awhile. I have been tossing around the idea of making raspberry macarons. I haven’t made macarons in a long while and they are delicious and festive. (But also kind of fussy.)

I could always go the cupcake route instead of cookies. Carla has been talking about Nutella quite a bit lately, and these strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate cupcakes are filled with Nutella. I would vastly prefer to make vanilla cupcakes with raspberry filling and raspberry buttercream – but maybe if I make the Nutella ones I won’t eat them all. 

If you make sweets especially for Valentine’s Day, what is your favorite?

4. Grocery Store Swap: Since I have successfully reintroduced yogurt into my diet (hooray!!!!) I have been testing out different yogurt varietals. My current favorite is the Fage 0% blended cherry yogurt. (I cannot stand fruit on the bottom yogurt.) But I can only find it at one specific grocery store, so I have completed rejiggered my shopping schedule to make that store my preferred store. Fortunately, it is near my friend’s house, and we usually go to her house once a week for a writing session, so it’s not wildly out of the way. But I feel slightly neurotic for rearranging my grocery shopping life around yogurt. It’s better than going to multiple stores, right?  

5. Feedly: Okay, so this isn’t TECHNICALLY food-related. But I have been noticing that Feedly is increasingly unreliable. I completely missed a post by Nicole yesterday because it didn’t show up in my feed. Sometimes people’s posts show up late or three times in a row. Sometimes I will see a week’s worth of posts all in a row, as though someone posted them all in one day. A few commenters have noted that some of my posts don’t show up until a day or two later. (Edited to add: I follow my own blog on Feedly and as of 6:00 pm on Friday, my post still has not shown up in my feed. SIGH.)

This all sounds like a really good argument to finally add an old-school style blog roll to my blog, so I don’t miss anyone’s posts. I have been thinking about doing it for a long time, more than a YEAR… but haven’t, mainly because I’m afraid of missing someone and hurting feelings. But that’s silly, right? If I miss your blog, you will know it’s purely a brain failure and not that I don’t adore you and your blog? And you will alert me immediately? My current “systems” – the unreliable Feedly or having everyone’s blogs bookmarked in a browser – are not working. And I don’t want to miss your posts!

How are you keeping up with the blogs you follow?

That’s all I’ve got for this Friday, Internet. Hope you have a delicious weekend. 

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Five for Friday: It’s Almost Christmas! Edition

How many hours of TV watching is still considered “acceptable” while one’s child is on winter break? Asking for a me. 

Carla is feeling nearly back to normal. No fever since Sunday, and no more sore throat. Just a little sniffle and a bit of congestion.

We have SNOW this week, which is delightful!!!!! Probably because I am not obligated to drive in it. But I loooooove snow. I think it is supposed to warm up in the next couple of days, so it may not linger. But it’s so lovely while it’s lasting.

• Carla and I spent FIVE HOURS running errands on Monday. Five. Hours. It was… not pleasant. She is a real trooper, though, and maintained her good humor throughout. Me… not so much. Somehow, despite the marathon, I still need to go to the grocery store and I really really want to go to the garden center because I continue to have Porch Panic about the state of my front stoop. It is so dumb, but I feel like the dead mums (which I panic bought three days before Thanksgiving, by the way; they were beautiful and lush at that time) are emanating a Gross Dead Vibe and the entire neighborhood is whispering about me behind my back. (Going to a neighborhood Christmas party and having one of the neighbors teasingly ask why we don’t have any lights up didn’t help. THEY ARE PAYING ATTENTION.) Maybe I could just swirl some twinkle lights festively on the dead mums and call it a day???? I still would need to purchase twinkle lights though. I also have a strong urge to buy more poinsettias. I have two small ones, one of which is trying to die already, but I want MORE POINSETTIAS. Part of this is a case of Christmas Décor Envy, which I developed while attending the aforementioned holiday party: the hosts’ house was GORGEOUS and every inch of it was bright with Christmas magic. There is no point in comparing oneself to other people – and in reality, I have no idea WHERE they store all their Christmas paraphernalia, and I have only a creeping horror in my bones to hint at what kind of time and energy is required to dress the house in such a fashion – but still I WANT MY HOUSE TO BE A WINTER WONDERLAND. Poinsettias would go a long way toward helping me achieve that goal, right? RIGHT? 

• The real problem, I think, is that I have no idea how to decorate this house for Christmas. The living room is weird, so our Christmas tree is weird. It was kind of a battle, to be honest, to figure out where to put it. And I was the one who gave in, which makes me feel crabby. It’s a very open space, with really only two full walls: the other walls are the kitchen (which is a partial wall separating two doors) and the stairway/entryway which isn’t even enclosed; there’s a balcony that overlooks the living room. The longest wall isn’t even a wall wall, it’s a wall of windows. And the other wall is taken up by cabinets and the fireplace. So there’s no REAL place to put the tree. We ended up putting it in the middle of the wall of windows, which I think at least makes sense symmetrically. (My husband and child wanted the tree off center, which just felt wrong in so many ways.) My big idea was to put the tree up against the stairway, but my husband hated that idea so vehemently I think he might have simply declined to celebrate Christmas if I’d pushed. (I still think it would look great.) Also, we are planning to get new furniture for the space, so NEXT YEAR it will be even weirder, but my husband said not to think about that now. (Does he know me?) And that’s just the living room! It’s definitely the most Christmassy of all the rooms. The other rooms have… nothing. Which feels so unfair! (The party host had FIVE CHRISTMAS TREES. That is more Christmas trees than I could ever handle, but maybe I could handle two????) I could fill the piano room with poinsettias! What I really want to do is to line the doorways with something festive (yes, I know I mentioned this already) – I originally thought pine garland. And I have seen so many Instagram videos of people putting shower tension rods in their doorways and decorating them with pine garland and ornaments etc. that I have started thinking that’s a viable idea. (Keep off the internet, kids.) My mother suggested ribbon, which sounds not only economical but also less dusty (and less of a pain to store) than pine garland. But I am not crafty like my mother is, so who knows. I did end up buying some bow-things at Joann Fabric (70% off!) (I also got a box of Hanukkah candles for next year, also 70% off, so perhaps we will have enough candles to light the menorah FULLY every single night of Hanukkah next year lol cringe.) and a spool of ribbon and I’m going to see what I can do. It may be very Preschooler Makes a First Ornament, but it will be Something.
• Where I have excelled, at least in volume, is baking. I have made not one but TWO batches of cranberry crumble bars, and they are still by far my favorite Christmas treat. They are just the perfect combination of buttery/tangy and crunchy/chewy. Carla wanted to bake, and her very specific baking request was snickerdoodles with buttercream frosting, so she made those. She really wanted colorful buttercream, and while she was rummaging around for food coloring she found the box of candy eyes we used last year and so she went wild with the eyes. Very Christmassy. I wanted to make molasses cookies, but they turned out a) completely smooth, not crackly like molasses cookies are supposed to be and b) very dry and crumbly on the inside. I tried to save them by adding an eggnog glaze, which I think does help, but… meh. From my online troubleshooting, it seems like my oven is the problem. (My understanding is that the crackly tops come from a combination of rolling the dough in sugar to dry it out, and having a nice hot oven.) I am pretty irritated with our ovens. Yes. We have TWO OVENS and neither of them seems to heat appropriately. SO FRUSTRATING. You should have seen how pale our Thanksgiving turkey was. It was cooked through, but it needed some time on the Jersey Shore with a bottle of baby oil. 

• During our marathon errand day, Carla came across a selection of dog toys. She promptly burst into tears because she wanted to give them to all the dogs in our old neighborhood. Listen, I am a heartless bitch when it comes to I Really Need That tears. But I got a little misty, too, and I allowed her to buy them. She wanted to use her allowance, but then I had a discount situation that made them free. A Christmas miracle! She wrapped them and I texted our old neighbors and we spent an afternoon going from house to house, giving dog toys (and cookie plates) (although they were last-minute cookie plates, so they were on Hanukkah dishes because that’s all I had) and lots of pets. It made Carla’s day, although I think it also made her sad. It’s so hard to find a balance between honoring her grief by allowing her to visit these old neighbors, while also helping her to move on. I don’t think I’ve got it right. But it was lovely to see our old neighbors, who EACH had a little gift for Carla.  
• Stocking stuffers have been procured. I feel as though I didn’t give you the full story, on Monday, when I alluded to shopping for stocking stuffers and how difficult that would be with Carla in tow. The thing is, I ordered stocking stuffers for Carla (and for my husband) long ago. Or at least long enough ago for them to have arrived already. However, my parents are spending Christmas Day with us, and I feel super awkward about them coming to our home and NOT having stockings to open. It is probably very silly, especially because they are minimalists at heart. But my desire to have Stocking Equity overruled my knowledge of their minimalism, so I got them stocking stuffers. (We have anonymous stockings that we set out for guests, so they will have stockings as well.) And also, I had NO IDEA what I wanted to get for stocking stuffers. The only thing that I really wished I’d learned about earlier was this flexible screwdriver bit. My dad would use the heck out of that bit! It’s so handy! But alas, I only learned about it on Monday when a YouTube ad interrupted my workout video. Next year, for sure. What I really needed to do was wander around a store and happen across the exact right stocking stuffers. And I got the chance during Carla’s music lesson and found a bunch of stocking stuffers that will hopefully be fun and/or personal-ish enough while also not making the recipient feel too guilty about throwing them out. So now there will be Stocking Equity and I am super relieved. 

Kohl’s is the place to go for stocking stuffers. I also got everyone candy. And Carla, shockingly, will get a bunch of other stuff because she is spoiled beyond belief.

Well, that’s it for me before Christmas, I think! I still have the grocery store/garden center to visit, and I still have to wrap some presents. (And Santa has to wrap gifts AND stocking stuffers – WHY, Santa, WHY did you begin such an arduous tradition????)  (Then again, maybe this is the last year Santa will visit our house, and I will henceforth be sobbing about NO SANTA GIFTS????? Parenting is so fun.)

Oh, by the way, I just have to include this here. Carla went to the orthodontist this week (yay, braces in our near future woo) and the orthodontist was very chatty about Santa. He said he sets TRAPS for Santa, to which Carla reacted with scorn. “Do you want to HURT Santa?” she asked, voice dripping with disapproval. No, the orthodontist just wants to SEE Santa, in person! “Why don’t you set up video cameras?” Carla suggested. Oh, but the orthodontist has tried that. And it didn’t work! Didn’t capture a thing. “That’s because Santa deletes the footage,” Carla said, and she might as well have added, “you idiot” because that’s what her tone conveyed. 

SANTA DELETES THE VIDEO FOOTAGE. You heard it here, folks. Don’t try to mess with Santa, even via digital surveillance methods. 

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Five for Friday

It’s the Friday before Thanksgiving! I am in full on pre-houseguest, pre-holiday panic mode. 

• I have managed to work out several days this week. It is a relief to be getting back into a routine. The workout I did yesterday was a weighted cardio and strength routine. Usually I stick to strength training videos and I was reminded why: I am too uncoordinated to manage the cardio! Tracy would give a quick little demonstration of how to do something, like a high knee kick with a punch, and then she’d jump right in… and it would take me at least 20 of the 45 seconds allotted for the move to figure out how to do it. If I could do it at all. Oh well. No one is grading me on how well I can copy the moves. But my complete inability to follow the moves reminds me why I prefer to work out at home.

• It’s been a while (yes, Suzanne, a whole year) since I’ve revisited my Thanksgiving Planning Documents. I really need to open them up and start making my grocery lists and planning out what to do when. But I am feeling, more than usual, the weight of how much work it is to carry off this holiday. (I almost typed “stupid holiday,” but refrained. But that’s where my grump level is at the moment.) Bleh. If I could go back in time, I would tell my mother-in-law that I was not up for hosting Thanksgiving this year. But Past Suzanne was full of naivety and optimism and everyone has plane tickets so I’m stuck. It’s not that I’m not looking forward to seeing family! I am! We haven’t seen any of these family members in months, and none of them have seen the new house, and I am dying to spend time with my niece who continues to be more delightful every time I see her. It’s just that the whole undertaking is so MUCH. The houseguests and the cooking and the cleanup. It will be fine. It’s not a big deal, nothing is terribly difficult on its own. It’s just a one-foot-in-front-of-another kind of situation. I do wish I’d done some advance gravy work though. There is never enough gravy. 

• One thing I have not planned for is DESSERT. In years past, our traditional Thanksgiving dessert has been pumpkin bars. But a few years ago, my husband admitted that he has grown sick of them. Neither he nor I like pumpkin pie, and while I would be fine with someone else making it, I don’t really wanna. We are getting a free apple pie from our real estate agent, so we’ll have that. Except a) no one besides me and my husband like apple pie and b) we have to pick it up on Monday and I don’t know if it will keep until Thursday. (Can you freeze an apple pie?) Perhaps I will eat it for breakfast. But that leaves us without a dessert! One of our guests likes chocolate things – and so do my husband and daughter. Two of our guests either avoid dessert entirely or eat it very sparingly. My choice might be cranberry crumble bars, because they are easy and I love them… but I don’t think most of the family members really like fruit desserts. What do you think I should make? Or kindly ask one of my guests to make?

• Another thing I am fretting about is the accommodations. We have a guest room; my in laws will stay there. My niece will sleep on a futon in Carla’s room. My sister-in-law will sleep on a mattress in my daughter’s craft room. I feel a little bad about the mattress! I mean, it’s a perfectly nice mattress, and I have sheets and blankets and a comforter that she can use. I did not have any extra pillows, but Target resolved that problem for me very quickly. We have a little end table and a lamp that we can borrow from elsewhere so she’ll be able to have a makeshift nightstand. I bought some extra nightlights to help her navigate from room to room. She’ll have access to an adjacent closet and bathroom. But what else should I do to make a craft room into a comfortable-enough guest room?

• My in laws called my husband last weekend to chat, and asked what the plans are for Thanksgiving weekend. Plans? What plans? My plans are to spend all week prepping for Thanksgiving dinner, then spend Thanksgiving day making dinner, then eating dinner, then collapsing from exhaustion for the rest of the weekend. I had sort of thought people would entertain themselves? We have games and puzzles, and there’s bound to be some sort of football game to watch. Should there be other plans? I am feeling like a terrible hostess! It does look like there may be a new Trolls movie out, so perhaps some faction of people could go to a movie the day after Thanksgiving? And there’s always walking, as long as the weather is amenable. Or people who like shopping on Black Friday can do that. But that’s really all I can come up with, and that will have to be enough. 

What are you doing this weekend? Are you fretting about anything in the lead-up to Thanksgiving? Any ideas for how we in the US can persuade the country to move the holiday back to line up with Canada’s Thanksgiving? 

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Five for Friday

It’s not only Friday, it’s the first Friday in November. I am not ready for the pell-mell can’t-catch-my-breath of the last two months of the year (and I don’t even want to THINK about the holidays; I am pretending they don’t exist), but ready or not, they’re here. 

• We had our first snowfall of the season! I love snow and it was such a pure delight to see big flakes falling from the night sky, and then to wake up to a good two inches of snow on all the exterior surfaces. Especially because the roads were blissfully bare and dry. I did realize that a) I’d purged Carla’s snow clothing prior to the move, because she’d been wearing them for two years straight and they were sprouting holes and showed an inch or two of ankle and b) I’d never replaced them. Fortunately, Lands End is having a sale so I was able to order her new things. And new snow boots. 

• Speaking of Carla, and snow, and clothing: she has extremely specific fashion tastes these days. And those fashion tastes are not always compatible with the weather. But she’s TEN, and I’ve grown weary of negotiating with her about whether shorts over tights counts as appropriate winter wear. Also, at what age does a child realize that it might be wise to put on a sweatshirt if you are cold rather than complaining plaintively about it to your mother? It’s not age ten, that’s for sure.

• Halloween was fine. There was a neighborhood gathering, at which I felt completely overwhelmed. People were nice but not friendly, and there were so very many of them. I brought the wrong thing and used the wrong container (this group seems to lean quite Fancy), but at least I know better for next time. On the good side, Carla seemed to have a BLAST. There were tons of kids. Twenty? Fifty? I couldn’t keep track of them because they didn’t stay still, and sometimes they had masks on, and sometimes they didn’t. But Carla got to run from house to house in a pack of children and that made me feel very happy and relieved. We bought WAY too much candy and now have an entire grocery bag full of leftovers (on top of Carla’s haul), which I am itching to donate as soon as Carla’s school accepts donations. I wasn’t missing candy – so why am I unable to ignore the siren song of a fun size Snickers? None of my favorites showed up this year, either in the candy we bought or the candy Carla brought home; I’m partial to Milky Way Midnights and Sour Patch Kids. But I’m making up for it with the aforementioned Snickerses and a fairly obscene number of Reese’s peanut butter cups. 

• Do you put outgoing mail in your mailbox, or do you take it to the post office? I am having a bit of a disagreement with someone about the appropriate course of action. Some context: One of us grew up in a country area that wasn’t served by the postal service; mail was delivered to a post office box in town. One of us grew up in the suburbs of a large city and had access to a mailbox at the end of the driveway. One of us believes that you put outgoing mail in the mailbox, and, in fact, this is part of the purpose of a mailbox; why else would there be a little red flag on the side of the mailbox meant to alert the postal worker to the presence of outgoing mail? One of us thinks that outgoing mail should be handled at the post office only, or perhaps at one of those once-ubiquitous blue mailboxes that used to be on every street corner but have all but disappeared in the wake of 9/11. Who is right? Where does outgoing mail go? If a person wants to utilize the home mailbox, do they have to call the post office to make sure it’s okay, or is lifting the little red flag alert enough?

• I recently read the newest Robert Galbraith book, The Running Grave. It was truly gripping, despite the fact that it seemed like no one had really edited the thing, and despite the fact that the will they/won’t they storyline has been grating on me for about three books by now. In fact, reading it made me want to reread the series from the beginning, so I waited until we had unpacked all the book boxes to find the first book… and it wasn’t there. Neither were the second and third books in the series. My husband thinks that I may have started reading the series on my kindle, which sounds plausible. But for various reasons, I don’t want to read it on kindle again, so I am contemplating buying a copy. But then I will want to own ALL the books in the series, and that feels like a commitment I’m not ready to make. So. Here I dither, not reading the book I want to read, not buying books I want to buy, and not complaining about it on the book blog, but here instead. What would you do? I suppose I could check it out from the library, which would address a whole host of issues, some of which I started to discuss here but then deleted. However, for some unknown reason the library option isn’t appealing to me. What would you do? Have you ever bought a book you’ve already read just to own the complete series? What if I DO buy the rest of the series and the hardbacks are no longer available so half the series is in hardback and the other half is in paperback? Will that drive me book bonkers?

That’s all I have for today, Internet. Hope your Friday is sunny and that your weekend starts early!

I am kinda sorta attempting to complete NaBloPoMo, with the full expectation that life will make it impossible any day now. If you want to follow along, or join in the fun, check out San’s blog here. 

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Five Woes and Five Wows

“Are you loving the new house?!” This is the most common question I get these days, and it’s posed in an excited, expectant way. People are so happy for us! They are so excited to see the new place and hear all about how much we are loving it!

Well. It has been one month since we moved into our new house, and in general I feel like it’s been a huge, expensive, horrible mistake. This is supposed to be our dream house, our forever house, and I am instead feeling like we uprooted our happy, perfectly wonderful life for nothing. No, worse than nothing. We replaced something not-perfect-but-pretty-great with a money-sucking monster that we drastically overpaid for. I have been feeling so negative about the house and so overwhelmed with all the minutiae of moving and so guilty for feeling so disgruntled over something I CHOSE, ON PURPOSE, something I should feel grateful for and appreciative of, that I’ve had neither time nor inclination to blog. 

I also feel guilty for getting so bent out of shape about what are very minor things. I know this! It’s not like we are lacking clean water. We aren’t dealing with family tragedy, we have food and shelter. All the REAL needs are being addressed, and I know – I know – we are super fortunate to have this house at all, and to have savings to apply toward fixing it up. Plus, we had a home inspection and the house is FINE, overall. It just feels like death by a thousand paper cuts, you know? Like I could deal with a corroded shower handle, and deal with replacing it… but then when the grill doesn’t work and the refrigerator leaks every time you open it and the oven makes a horrific rattling noise when it reaches temperature and half the light switches make a sizzly I-am-about-to-shock-you noise when you flip them and the other half seem to operate nothing at all and the garage door suddenly won’t close AT ALL, it feels like everything is falling apart. Plus, everything – EVERYTHING – seems to be at least $3500 to address. Every estimate we get is right around that price point, as though all the service companies in the state got together and decided that this would be the standard starting fee for any and every type of service. $3500 is not nothing! 

This week, I’ve been able to dip my toe back into blog reading, and I do want to get back to blog writing. But it feels like all the negativity is clogging up my writing pipes. I think the only way to move forward is to write it all down. Even though it will sound whiny and self-pitying and unrelatable.

But! If you want to skip all the negativity (and I don’t blame you – there’s enough in the intro paragraphs of this post already), I did force myself, Elisabeth-style, to come up with some things that are bringing me joy and giving me hope that this low phase is indeed temporary. 

Five Woes (and I recognize that I am tremendously lucky to be able to complain about these things)

5. Phone Calls and Appointments. I have made approximately five million phone calls and endured five thousand service appointments in the new house and spent an obscene amount of money. There are things that we chose to do, like installing new floors and asking an electrician to estimate the cost for installing an outlet in the floor of the living room and changing the locks and hiring someone to rein in the overgrown landscaping. There are things we had to do, like replace my daughter’s leaking trim kit in her shower, and install a pressure regulating valve on our water line, and replace the failing pool heater, and fix the garage door that refused to close. There are things that were supposed to be “free” (or covered under our membership plan), like flushing our water heater and getting a clean and check of our furnace, which both uncovered things that need to be taken care of. There are things that are still in the works, like installing a security/fire safety system and getting our air ducts cleaned. There are things I never ever would have wanted to spend money on, like hiring an exterminator to get rid of all the mice in our basement (yuck) or inviting a bat guy to assess and address our bat problem (wtf). I have had to be available between 8:00 and 12:00 pretty much every single day since we moved here, which is annoying and hard to schedule my life around. 

4. Critter Corpses. Mice – five of them, three in traps the exterminator set after we discovered our mouse problem and two in our furnace intake valve, which the very nice HVAC person found and disposed of. Chipmunk – one, drowned in the pool. Frog – one, same fate. Bat – only one (so far) thank everything – in our basement, which the very unflappable plumber discovered and removed when he was installing the new pressure regulator. 

3. Cold or Allergies? I have been sneezing nearly nonstop since we moved here. Early on, the sneezing developed into what seemed like a genuine cold: fever, runny nose, general crankiness. (Covid tests were negative.) But while the cold ended two weeks ago, I am still sniffly and sneezy and my head is stuffy and I feel ever-so-slightly like I need my inhaler. The previous owners had dogs and I really think that I am allergic to this house. We replaced all the flooring on the first and second floors, getting rid of all the threadbare, mismatched carpet… but the carpet in the basement was in great shape, so we just got it cleaned… and I’m afraid that was a mistake and we should have replaced it as well. I’m hoping that cleaning the air ducts will help, but I’m waiting on another estimate before we schedule it.

2. Commute. Our previous house was, on the worst, most-trafficky days, seven minutes away from my daughter’s school, so my daily commute was 28 minutes total (not counting after school activities). Our current commute is nearly four times as long (not counting after school activities), which means I am spending roughly two hours in the car each day. I am listening to a good number of audiobooks, but sheesh. 

1. New Car. This has been the most expensive summer of our lives, so why not add a new car to the mix? My lease is about to end, and being a one-car family is not workable for us. But this is pretty much the worst time (ever????) to buy a new car, as inventory is nonexistent and prices are high. It would be prohibitively expensive to buy out my lease, so we are planning to lease another vehicle… but the current lease deals are also SO EXPENSIVE. (Nearly double the cost for a similar vehicle to what I drive now.) Plus, while my preference would be to lease the exact same car I drive now, there are none of that model available. So we are going with a totally different vehicle and even though it gets great ratings and I enjoyed driving it, I am not great with change. Plus, I am having trouble communicating with the salesperson, who seemed very eager to work with us at first, but now seems to have ghosted me??? And yes, I realize we could just get a smaller, less expensive vehicle so a lot of this woe is our own damn fault.

0. No One Calls Me Back!!!!! You might expect that with so many service appointments, this would be hyperbole… And I suppose it is. But it feels like no one will return my calls. I have filled out so many online estimate requests that go completely unanswered and left so many voicemails that go unreturned. A person from one of the landscaping/snow removal companies I called returned my call FOUR WEEKS after I’d asked for an estimate, and then when I told her we’d gone with someone else (the one person who did get back to me – this is now the bar: respond to me and I will pay you money!), wanted to tell me about all the things that had prevented her from returning my call right away. People who said they would send me estimates have never sent them. The salesperson who was going to lease us our car stopped responding to my texts and didn’t return my voicemails. WHAT IS HAPPENING. I get that there are ongoing staffing issues, but… how are businesses operating???

Five Wows

1. The Pool. Longtime readers may recall that having a pool was one of my wishlist items for my dream house. Since the pandemic, I’ve really come to realize how much we depend on our home to provide space for everything from exercise to entertainment to comfort. Plus, we still lean toward entertaining outdoors. So having a pool was definitely on my list. (“Be careful what you wish for” has been a cruelly gleeful refrain in my brain these days.) This house has nearly everything on the wishlist, including a pool. And, while taking care of a pool and getting it serviced is a massive headache, it is also one of my favorite things about this house because it makes Carla SO HAPPY. Since it’s the end of the pool season, we have been able to find pool toys for cheap and she is loving her inflatable shark and her scuba gear and her treasure chest of jewels to dive for. Fall has been very mild so far, so we are still enjoying pool time and it makes me so happy to see her enjoying herself so much. Plus, I have dreams of being the Teen Hangout House when Carla gets older, and I feel like a pool could be very attractive to her friends.  

2. The Commute. Even though I hate driving on the freeway and I feel like I’m at the gas station way too often, I am surprised to find that I otherwise love the commute. Carla is so charming and energetic in the mornings. She is usually quite chatty and I get all sorts of tidbits about what’s going on her brain and at school. We often listen to the Kid Nuz podcast and that opens up all sorts of interesting topics for discussion. After school, she’s more subdued and worn out from the day, so we often listen to classical music or maybe stop at Starbucks on the way to her music lesson. I am loving this focused time with her, with none of the usual distractions of laundry or dinner or my phone. (Plus, as I mentioned before, all this time in the car means I am listening to a ton of audiobooks. I listened to eight of them in September alone, which is a lot for me.)

3. My Parents and My Husband. It seems like something goes wrong every single day at this house. (Yesterday: the gas line started making a weird noise.) I am stressed and worried about money. I feel like Tom Hanks in The Money Pit, with the hysterical seal-laugh and all, but my husband is being so calm and optimistic. He says soothing things like, “We’re just taking care of everything up front so we can enjoy the house for the long run!” and “These are all little things, and we will fix them.” and “We are going to enjoy this house, this is just a rough patch.” It is buoying and gives me strength. My parents, likewise, are being so matter-of-fact about everything. The mouse thing really shook me, I think because I expected to move into this brand-new house and found out it was full of mouse poop and scurrying critters. But my mom reminds me that I grew up in the country and mice are just Part Of Rural Living. She’s very blasé about the bat, too – bats eat mosquitos, after all. My dad inspects or fixes things every time he’s here, and is available by text when I need to ask whether I should call the gas company (yes) or just not worry about the weird squeak click click coming from the meter. He and my husband removed all the awful curtains and reattached the cupboards to my daughter’s vanity. He tested the bathroom fan to see if it is fixable and offers suggestions for how to deal with day-to-day issues and is helping me address the mouse entry points. My parents took Carla on a hike and picnic the other day! They come over to hang out by the pool occasionally! When I need a babysitter, I just ask them and they say yes! It is so nice to have them here. 

4. New Neighbors. One of the hardest parts of leaving our old house was leaving our neighbors (and their dogs). We haven’t met everyone on our street yet, but we have met three of the nearest neighbors, and they all seem super nice. The across-the-street neighbors are SO lovely. They invited us to a backyard dinner (and by the way, they are extraordinary cooks!) and introduced us to a bunch of people who live in the neighborhood. Best of all, they have three children who have been so friendly and welcoming to Carla. She has already been over to their house countless times, has walked their dog, and has invited the kids over to play games at our house. One afternoon, the kids’ parent took all of them plus Carla to the park. I am LOVING THIS. I want kids running in and out of my house. I want Carla to have friends nearby. 

5. All the Trees. This is my backyard. Do you see how one tree is wearing a scarlet sweater???!!!! I look outside and I walk around our yard, clipping some of the beautiful dahlias the previous owners planted, and I feel so peaceful. 

(Until the next serviceperson arrives, or I get an email with the next $3500 proposal for work to be done. Oh look. Here’s the estimate from the bat guy. Do I want more bats, or do I want to pay $3,675 for bat prevention measures?) 

What’s the occasion for your current pity party? Lay it on me.

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Five for Friday

My poor husband is STILL not caught up on sleep after his call week, so I am continuing to make his coffee for him every night when he inevitably falls asleep early before taking care of it. Last night, I managed to grind the coffee beans for too long – the grinder makes a terrific racket, but somehow I stuffed it into the far reaches of my overstuffed brain and just FORGOT that it was on, merrily grinding away. So I ground too many beans and had extra grounds, and so as not to waste them, I made myself a pot of coffee this morning and now I am at the Visible Trembling stage of caffeination. 

Also, I have SIX PHONE CALLS to make today. SIX!!!! That is too many phone calls! How will I get through them all?!?! That is why I am procrastinating. Although no one is quite awake yet, I think. So I am just wasting time until I have to CALL people. So many people!

1. What kinds of flowers should I buy? We are about to list our house for sale. (ACK!) The realtor had a few suggestions for how we should spruce up our house. Most of the suggestions were very simple: remove family photographs, clear surfaces, thin the books on the bookshelves. Okay, I can do those things. But at the very end of her visit, when we were touring the outside of my house, she said, “Add some flower pots to the front here.” I dutifully wrote this down, but honestly I have no idea what she means. No idea! I am happy to buy more flowers – of all the things I can spend Sprucing Money on, flowers are at least FUN and PRETTY, at least until I kill them. But I don’t know what she means or how to execute whatever it is she envisions. (She is a wonderful realtor and human, but I will be unable to get any additional suggestions from her. When I tried to gently prod, she said, “You can look it up online.”) (I looked it up online and am STILL CLUELESS. I even walked around our neighborhood to try to find things to emulate, and nothing!) Do you know what I should do? Do I buy a bunch of marigolds and shove them into the ground around the perimeter of the beds? Also, we have DEER, who are JERKS. (They just ate all the beautiful, flourishing petunias in my backyard, the jerks.) How would you spruce up this area with color? Here is a photo of what it looks like now: 

I will note that Carla’s rock pile has been relocated. She was allowed to keep seven precious rocks. The others now make up the border of another, smaller bed.

Also, my petunias are hanging in there, by the skin of their teeth. I hate to toss them, since they are still blooming. But they are so RAGGEDY. Tell me, should I say goodbye to the petunias (not pictured, due to raggedyness) and get something else? (And if so, WHAT?) This whole area of the house gets lots of direct sunlight (we face east), so I think the petunias are suffering from a combination of benevolent overwatering and sun crisping. 

• I have been totally slacking on my exercise routines. I have also been eating more comfort foods (nachos, pizza) than I want to be eating at this time in my life, but listen. Sometimes you just need to eat what you want to eat. Sometimes nachos feed the SOUL. But the exercise! I NEED that, for my mental health. And I have just not been finding time. Also, the last couple of times I have managed to grab an extra 30-60 minutes to devote to working out, I have injured myself. I did a really great workout (it was a Tracy Steen workout, but I can’t find the specific one), but it had some lunges and on one lunge I felt a muscle in the side of my thigh just… clench, I guess is the word. It hurt, at the time, and then it was painful to walk for a few days, but then it was fine. And then the next workout I tried had SO MANY LUNGES. I need to not do lunges, I think. I know some people avoid burpees in a workout (I get it; I am not a fan), but I need to avoid lunges for awhile now. I wish I knew a good alternative to lunges, like a modification that I could do that would work similar bodyparts without straining anything. I also tried tacking a seven-minute ab workout on after a brisk walk outside, and it was SO HARD. How can a seven-minute workout be SO HARD? (It was so hard.)

• No matter how many interviews I give, I never get less nervous. Interviewing subject-matter experts has been a part of my writing work for… decades now. I like interviewing people and learning about their passions and getting them to talk about how they got involved with a particular industry and discovering what makes them get out of bed in the morning. It’s invigorating, talking to someone about something they love. And yet, I still get SO ANXIOUS in the hours leading up to these calls! Yes, calls! They are not even in-person interviews! Sweaty palms, knotted stomach. I am also one of those people who can’t accomplish anything else until an appointment is over. Maybe not, like, a doctor’s appointment. But certainly if I am speaking with a subject-matter expert in advance of writing something about/for them, I can think of nothing else until the call is over. This works out okay if the call takes place first thing in the morning. But if the person I’m speaking with is in a different time zone, forget about it. The day is TOAST. 

• Speaking of things that make me anxious: I had an initial consultation with a therapist. I was, of course, deeply anxious about every step of the interaction, from the initial email to the actual call. But she seems very nice and comes highly recommended from a friend. So we’ll see how it goes. She was very upfront about saying that if we have a few sessions and I don’t feel like she’s the right fit, she will happily help me find someone who will be a better fit. I liked that. I feel really, really stupid about pursuing therapy. My life is full of gifts. I am, in the majority, happy and healthy. Also, I am extremely self-centered and so have thought a lot about what my “issues” are, so I’m not sure a therapist will have a lot to add in terms of insights. (That’s a very arrogant way to think, I see that.) And yet, I do think I could benefit from therapy. Especially if I can learn some techniques to help avoid negative self-talk and to be more proactive about expressing my needs/boundaries and to be a better/more patient parent. I also think that if I had a friend in my position, I would encourage her to reach out for some therapeutic input. So I am trying to be my own friend. I’m doing it. But I still feel like I might potentially be wasting this person’s time, and/or be taking up a slot that could be going to someone who REALLY needs it. 

• I bought something(s). Because we are in a phase of CULLING, not in a phase of acquisition (unless you count acquiring packing paper and bubble wrap and endless boxes), I have been trying to discourage BUYING THINGS. But… Loft got me. There’s this dress that I bought last year that I LOVE. It is literally the only thing I own that always gets compliments when I wear it. It is SO comfortable and SO flattering. Plus, you can just throw a denim jacket over it in the fall and wear it then, too. Then this summer, Loft came out with the same dress in a few different colors. I resisted buying any of them ALL SUMMER, and then Loft had a $40-dresses sale, and I even resisted THAT. But each time they sent me an email advertising the dress, I would go look at it… and even put it in my cart. And then of course I would get emails saying, “Don’t forget…” or “It looks like you left something behind…” or “Lots of people are buying this dress, don’t miss out” and all other sorts of super creepy tracker-y things that I hate and yet were hugely effective. I kept thinking about the dress and thinking about it. And finally it was on sale for 48% off – just a little more than the $40 it was at its lowest. So I bought it in three other colors. They haven’t arrived yet, and I can and will take back one or all should they not be as cute as the original. But I’m kind of excited about having more dresses.  

What are you thinking about this Friday?

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Five for Friday

It’s Friday! Here are five things on my mind. Be aware they are mainly about packing; forewarned is forearmed.

• We have closed on the new house! This is very exciting and also very anticlimactic as we will not be able to move in for more than a month. (One of the things we did to “sweeten the pot” when we made our offer was to allow the sellers to stay an extra month. In this market, we made the best offer we could and our realtor said this would help, so we did it.) People keep asking how closing went. “Were there any surprises?” my dad wanted to know. Um. No? It makes me a little nervous, how well it went, because people seem surprised that it was so seamless. A notary met us at my husband’s hospital, we signed a billion papers, then we wired over the down payment. Simple. I think? But all this interest in whether it went well makes me uneasy. Did we overlook something important? WERE there surprises and we just didn’t register them as such? Was it too easy???? Maybe everyone’s so interested because we didn’t make a big deal of it. Because of the anticlimax. 

• I finally packed a box. It was MUCH HARDER than it should be. I decided, after fretting all over the blog about it, that I would start with the guest room closet. We don’t use the stuff in that closet. There are books in the closet, plus old fancy clothes we will probably never wear again, plus lots of other things. I could totally empty it out, was my naïve thinking. Well. I did manage to fill a giant bag of To Donate items, and half-fill another giant bag with trash. But then I had to stop. The items in the closet are either too big to fit nicely into a box (my daughter’s sewing machine, for example) or they require some input from my husband (do we really need to keep all those home improvement books?) or I feel like they might actually have alternative uses during the move (like all of the extra towels and blankets – those could be used to cushion things, or wrap up delicate items right?) (as I am typing this, it is clear I should get a box, grab some of the extra towels, and start packing delicate items). So I ended up abandoning the guest room closet. But! I did manage to clean off the top of my desk in my office and get some tchotchkes off the shelves, like my potato pig and my skier tile. I packed three four boxes of office stuff and made little piles of leftover stuff (“random important things,” “shred or file?,” and “keep”) (why “keep” is separate from “random important things” I’m not sure I can articulate, but they are different) that are now taking up all the real estate on my desk. I haven’t figured out yet what to do with the items inside the desk – but maybe they can stay there! 

• I also cleaned out the top shelf of our pantry, on which lived an assortment of things like cookie cutters, the popcorn popper, an ice cream machine, and a thousand cake pans. How many cake pans does one person need? I usually make layer cakes for birthdays, so I did not even THINK about getting rid of any of the regular cake pans. And we probably don’t need two springform pans, but it’s good to have a backup in case I have some sort of emergency that can only be addressed with multiple cheesecakes. There were a few things that I have literally never used – two Bundt pans, a tart pan, and a Madeleine pan – and probably should consider donating, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it yet. Maybe the me who lives in our new house makes Bundt cakes all the time! I threw all these things, alongside a pizza peel, some disposable grill pans, and some plasticware I use solely when I make food for other families, into two boxes and topped them with some insulated grocery bags. (I did have a moment where I thought, might we NEED the insulated grocery bags during the move? But I pushed past it. They are on the very top of the box anyway, for easy access.) I was also able to clean out half of the drawer under the oven (what do you keep in the drawer under the oven? or do you use it as a warming drawer as I think it is intended to be used?), in which I keep additional cake pans (I have SO MANY cake pans), brownie pans, and loaf pans. (Have I ever used a loaf pan? Maybe once or twice, to make banana bread. Certainly not enough times to require THREE loaf pans.) So that’s two more boxes packed. (This is on top of the glassware I was able to pack away. We have a bunch of wine glasses and champagne flutes that we got for our wedding, nearly 14 years ago, and we somehow had kept ALL THE BOXES, ready to spring into use at this very moment.) (There are still a bunch of martini glasses and non-fancy Champagne flutes in the glassware cupboard that I will have to deal with, as well as an entire shelf’s worth of crystal goblets that I inherited from someone’s grandmother.) (At what point am I no longer actually writing parentheticals, but am instead continuing on with this bullet point? It seems I cannot stop.) Next up in packing: the winter clothes, which should probably have been the first thing I addressed (I know you all said BOOKS but I have not been able to bring myself to do that yet), but which I have not, in fact, addressed. The thing is that I am PACKING THINGS and hopefully the momentum will continue to build.

• One thing we want to do before we move in is to install new flooring. The carpet in the house is uniformly kind of… tired. Which happens after you’ve lived in a place for more than a decade! Especially when you have children and a dog! I get it! But I want fresh, clean carpet. Plus, the downstairs has different flooring in nearly every room, which I personally hate, especially because the new house has a really nice flow from room to room so the flooring shifts are extremely obvious and choppy. I want one seamless type of flooring. I know from experience that once all the furniture is in place, the idea of moving it again to install new flooring will be too awful to bear. So! We are getting everything installed before we move in. Supposedly. The catch – there is always a catch – is that manufacturing and shipping delays mean we need to order the flooring NOW if we want it to be installed before we move. It is surprisingly stressful to try to pick out flooring when you don’t have access to the space it will live in and when you are basing your decision off of a single 2” by 3” rectangle. Also surprisingly difficult to choose between two options that look very nearly identical. I think I have landed on “it doesn’t really matter, either will be fine.”

• My orchid is planning to re-bloom! Here is a non-moving bullet point! This is the orchid I repotted a few months ago. It is so happy that it has decided to delight us all with new blossoms. The process seems to be rather slow, but I doubt it will delay blooming until we move. I am a little anxious about trying to transport it, but it seems to be a determined and sturdy orchid so we’ll see what happens.

In the background there you can see the newest plant acquisition, a mother-in-law’s tongue.

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