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 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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Halloween Is Tomorrow; Dinners This Week

Oh right, I should probably write a blog post! (My lack of recent posting is not terribly indicative of my ability to complete NaBloPoMo this year. Which I want to do. Because otherwise I will have dreadful NaBloPoMo FOMO and no one wants that. It might be a Take It Day By Day kind of thing. If you’d like to dither with me, make sure you let San know.) 

Halloween is tomorrow and I am feeling very raw right now about facing enduring celebrating our first holiday in the new house. Nicole really hit the nail on the head with her post today, about these changes feeling like small deaths. I do feel like I’m in mourning. Maybe that’s why I haven’t put out a single Halloween decoration, why I haven’t purchased a single mum or even a pumpkin, why I didn’t buy Halloween candy at all until yesterday. (Seriously. I haven’t had even a single kernel of candy corn!) Maybe if I don’t participate in this holiday, it won’t feel like I’m missing something. It won’t feel like I’ve taken something away from myself and my daughter by uprooting us all and leaving our lovely neighbors and cozy, Halloween-friendly neighborhood behind.  

Well. Tomorrow, we begin creating new holiday memories, in a new neighborhood, with new neighbors who have (luckily) been kind enough to include us in their trick-or-treating plans. Maybe I’ll even buy a last-minute pumpkin at the grocery store, or see if Home Depot has any straggly mums on sale for half-price. Or maybe I won’t, and I’ll mourn The Way It Was this year, and approach The Way It Can Be with new energy next October.

Dinners for the Week of October 30-November 5

• Sheet Pan Balsamic Chicken with Veggies: This is what happens when I buy food without a plan; I end up having to find a recipe that sort of fits what I have, but sort of doesn’t, and hoping for the best. In this case, I have chicken, parsnips, a yam, and a potato. And probably an onion. Close enough, right?

• Salad with Teriyaki Chicken: I am really in a salad mood lately. 

• Slow Cooker Chicken and Wild Rice Soup: We haven’t had this in many, many months but it is the perfect antidote to the dreary wet grey slop that has settled over us.

• Guinness Beef Stew and Fall Salad: My parents are coming over for dinner this weekend, and this is what I plan to feed them. Is stew a weird thing to serve for dinner? Turns out I overthink entertaining even when it is my own parents. 

• Pan Roasted Pork Chops and Broccoli: I haven’t really settled on the exact preparation for the pork chops or the broccoli. (I prefer steamed broccoli to roasted, although my husband is the opposite.) Game time decision. 

I am also really leaning into the soup weather, and plan make some butternut squash soup to eat for lunches. Probably, if the current weather is any indication of future performance, we will have a lot of leftover Halloween candy to deal with, too.

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To the Buyers of Our House

Welcome to this house, this lovely wonderful house that still feels like mine even though it is yours. Even though the rooms are now empty of everything but paint, as though I have traveled back in time twelve years to when my husband and I were just beginning the life we build in this space, imagining the years ahead with no idea what they would hold. (They held so much joy.)

I wanted to share with you a few things about this house, things that are too wordy or too silly to share through the mediator that is our realtor. Things that probably don’t need to be said – you will either find them out on your own, or they won’t matter to you one iota. But things I want to say. 

I’m sorry for all the things that are wrong – it’s an old house, and it has creaks and cracks. The windows are draftier than I’d like, and I wish I’d replaced them five years ago, for you and for us. We tried our best to keep this house in good condition, and we tried to fix the things that we would want to be fixed before we moved our family into a new house. It’s amazing how you live with something for so long and it becomes invisible, or just a thing you accept as you accept the bad with the good in anything you love, like how your spouse snores when he has a cold but refuses to take cold medicine or how your best friend gets so maudlin and depressive when she watches a specific movie but still insists on watching that movie once a month at least. These little flaws are so glaringly huge now that we are turning this house over to you, and I hope they seem less huge to you, or that they disappear quickly beneath all the good this place has to offer.

Our refrigerator, as you know from the disclosures we posted, is “functional but quirky.” It probably needs to be replaced, but I couldn’t bear buying a new fridge when this one does the essentials of what a person needs a fridge to do. It holds a lot of food and it keeps things cold and it looks very lovely in the kitchen. But it is a little quite needy. I don’t envy you the mornings you’ll find the meat drawer adhered to the bottom of the fridge with ice and have to remove large chunks with a butter knife and your hands. Will I miss the little musical chortles, as the fridge asserts its presence in the household? I don’t know. 

The back door sticks a little, when it’s humid.

The oven is quite slow to heat. Everything will take longer to cook than you think it will. Especially the Thanksgiving turkey. (ESPECIALLY THE TURKEY.)

The carpets are old. They were old when we moved in. We tried to take care of them, but – as you’ll note from a few bright pink splotches that no amount of scrubbing can remove – we wanted to wait to replace them until our child was old enough not to ruin new carpet, and we have not yet reached that age. Perhaps these carpets will last until your kids are that age. (Do kids reach that age? One can hope.)

These may seem like a lot of problems, but for me – and I hope, soon, for you – they are outweighed by the joy this house has brought us. 

Can you hear the echoes of laughter and singing? There have been so much of both these past dozen years.

I love the big sliding glass doors in the living room, through which you and your children can watch this little pocket of nature. I’ve always marveled that so many creatures amble through the yard in our urban-edge-of-suburban neighborhood. We’ve seen opossums and raccoons, skunks and groundhogs, innumerable deer and squirrels and rabbits. There’s a chipmunk who likes to come sit on the step and contemplate the world. A red-tailed hawk that will alight on the top of the swing set and contemplate the chipmunk and its many options for dinner. Cats will wander through, sometimes yowling for some action. Very occasionally, the neighbor’s dog will escape through the hedges into this yard – a sighting which always filled my child with delight. My daughter and I spent the bulk of her first three months in front of these windows, looking outside at the grass and trees and sky, naming all the wonderful things in the world, watching squirrels tumble around in the grass and regard one another from gravity-defying positions on the trunk of the enormous backyard oak.

The primary bedroom in this house is enormous. Believe me – after looking at dozens of houses, all much bigger than this one, there are few primary bedrooms that rival it in size. The closet is vast. The ceilings soar and it had ample room for our king bed, a dresser, a couch and two armchairs. It was big enough for our whole family to gather in on lazy weekend mornings. Even among all the furniture, it can comfortably sleep a small child (or two, I assume) who won’t return to her room after a nightmare. 

I will miss the light coming in through the bedroom’s east window. The way the glow suffuses the dormer first, while the rest of the room remains drowsy and dim.

You will, I’m sure, want to choose your own paint colors. But in case you like the ones we picked and painted ourselves – my husband up on a ladder, carefully filling in the walls up to the peaks of the ceilings – there are cans of paint in the basement. My daughter’s room is painted in February Frost, the softest shade of lilac. How carefully we chose that color, how deliberately we picked the furnishings and artwork for her room. The dormer is the perfect size for an armchair and a lamp, for reading Goodnight Moon and I Am a Bunny and all the exploits of Curious George. When your kids inevitably, too-speedily get older, as mine has, that space is the perfect size for a desk and chair, for schoolwork and coloring and LEGO building and playing with dolls. 

The back deck gets impossibly hot in the afternoons – the sun shines directly on it. But the yard itself, with its abundance of trees, is cool in the shade. The hedges and trees make it feel like a private oasis. I hope you fill the yard, as we have, with shrieks of joy from running under the sprinklers, with iridescent bubbles and bursting water balloons, with the thwack of a badminton racket hitting the shuttlecock, with songs sung while swinging, with astonishment and awe as fireflies pinprick the dark with their bright signals. 

The basement walls are red, yellow, and blue – a bold choice, I know. (And not ours.) But they grow on you. The basement itself doesn’t feel like a basement. It’s not damp or dark or creepy. It’s hosted many hours of imaginative play, overseen the conception of thousands of artworks, housed so much laughter. 

In the autumn, the tree in the southwest corner of the yard bursts into the most brilliant yellow. You can see the leaves, even now, beginning to transform. I won’t get to see its exuberant celebration of fall this year. But you will, and I hope it fills you with happiness each day until the leaves fall. 

The driveway and the sidewalks out front are perfect for chalk. Rainbows and body tracings and elaborate games of hopscotch. 

The ice cream shop is just the right distance away for a leisurely summer stroll. As you walk, you’ll pass through the school parking lot – that’s where my daughter learned how to ride her bike; maybe your kids will learn to ride their bikes there too. We spent so many hours there, circling and circling the lot. The sports field is great for running and cartwheels and games of catch. 

Keep an eye out when you drive past the school. People don’t always stop at the stop sign, even though they should.

Make sure you buy a lot (no, a LOT) of candy. Our little cul-de-sac gets a ton of trick-or-treaters. Hordes of them, surging around the block in waves. And it’s such a safe, limited trick-or-treating path for your own little ones. All the neighbors held back special treats for my daughter and she felt emboldened to go up to their stoops by herself to ask for candy.

When it snows – and it will – know that the neighbors don’t bother shoveling the sidewalks. It’s not ideal for dog walking, or accessibility, but on the plus side, there are massive hills of plowed snow for climbing and sliding down. The front yard is perfect for making angels and snow sculptures. 

I know we mentioned this briefly in the list of things we love about living here, but our neighbors are truly one of a kind. Don’t think that they are intrusive or nosy – in fact, they are very good at keeping to themselves. I prefer to think of them as aware. Many of them have known each other for decades, have raised their children together. I think they want to be involved, but won’t push. It took me many years and one effusive, extroverted child to do more than smile and wave in passing. But now these kind, generous, lovely people number among my friends. S texts me long missives about her life and is interested in the minute details of mine. F has the kindest, gentlest manner, lets my daughter walk her dog, and notifies her when tadpoles have arrived in her backyard pond; she’s offered her recycling bin if we need it, her house when our power has gone out, her car when we were filling ours over and over with boxes. L is an expert gardener who shares her fresh grown tomatoes with my daughter, who taught her to love green beans and broccoli, who lets her pet and brush and pamper her dog, who always has a gentle smile and a kind word to share. R and his wife bought Girl Scout cookies every year and offered to give Carla rides to school any time we needed it. T attended my child’s school events in the absence of a grandparent, took me out for breakfast, brings us homemade cookies, runs the neighborhood block party and is irreverent and sincere in equal parts. G and C gave me baby gifts when I was pregnant and suggested babysitters when my daughter was small and C threw her arms around me when she learned we were leaving. Everyone – everyone – knows my daughter by name, keeps an eye out for her as she rides her bike, lets her join in on family games of cornhole in the front yard, welcomes her affection for their dogs (or cats). They are your neighbors now and I hope you build the same kind of relationships with them. 

We planned our family here. We brought our baby home to this house. In this space, we’ve watched her grow and flourish. We have been so happy here. We hope the same will be true for you.

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Neighborhood Wanderings

Walking outdoors is my favorite form of exercise and mental decompression. (Also, mental expansion: walking is a great way to get the writing ideas flowing.) Most of my walks take place in and around my little suburban neighborhood, and I have to admit that the more walks I take, the more I fall in love with our community. 

NGS’s post about walking her dog and all the things they (she) notice while making the rounds made me think about all the things I see on my walks. I have to admit to a certain level of obliviousness. Especially if I am lost in an audiobook or deep inside a storyline for my own work, the world around me tends to fall away. But I do try to be present, when I can. This is place where I live and I want to be a good citizen.

Carla and I love meeting the neighborhood dogs – and we have such a wonderful variety! Corgis! Pitbulls! Scottish terriers! Bernedoodles! Basset hounds! Beagles! Cockapoos! Greyhounds! All manner of golden retrievers and labs! There is a giant cocoa colored labradoodle that lives on a street nearby, and it is so beautiful all I can do is stare and grin any time I drive or walk past it. 

There is a sprinkling of lockdown babies in the area, too, and it is so fun to see them toddling around now after being little lumps in their strollers for the past few years. And now, siblings are being added to the mix!

I have told you before about the prevalence of fake flowers in some of my neighbors’ yards. And I’ve mentioned the giant Costco skeleton that makes an appearance for Halloween and other holidays. Here are a few other things I’ve noticed when I’m out and about.

The Skunk

Last spring, I came across the body of a baby skunk. It was lying on the sidewalk outside someone’s house, between the house and the (very busy) street. Every time I walked that route, I observed the skunk, which was never removed by the homeowners, never hassled by what surely are dozens of bicycles and dog owners and joggers and walkers that travel along the same path that I do. Of course, I never hassled the skunk corpse either. 

(I did write about the skunk and shared the essay with a friend; his primary reaction was, “WHY would someone leave a dead skunk to decay on the SIDEWALK?” and maybe implied gently that I should perhaps do something about it. A) I feel like it would be far too weird to drive from my house with a shovel to… remove the skunk to a garbage can???? because the skunk’s remains lie a good mile from my house. And B) I am a country girl at heart and a little death doesn’t bother me. I mean, it raises a lot of existential thoughts, which is why I wrote an essay about it. But I am wholly unbothered by a skunk slowly returning to the earth concrete and in fact found it quite interesting to observe how it changed over time. Once its fur and innards had receded, exposing its tiny white bones, I brought Carla along to check it out. She also found it fascinating and we had quite an in-depth discussion about whether or not she could bring some of the skeleton to school for show and tell. Her position was that they were examining owl pellets in science class, why not a skunk skeleton. My position was a hard no; I won that argument.)

Now, nearly a year later, I can still see the place where the skunk found its final repose. The sidewalk remains changed, for having ushered that creature into another realm, a little darker, a slightly different texture to the concrete. The people who live in that house – people who never once noticed, it seems, the funerary cast to their sidewalk – have now put the house up for sale. I don’t think the two events are related, but I suppose one never knows. 

The Cereal

(I swear that I have shared this before, but maybe I haven’t? Either way, I am going to share it here now. If you have heard it already, I trust that we are at the point in our relationship where you will smile fondly and say, “Oh! Isn’t that nice!” rather than rolling your eyes and sighing loudly, “You have told that same story SO MANY TIMES!”)

Once, as I was huffing my way up the street east of mine, I spotted a man leaving his house. He stopped near the edge of his yard, and then poured something from a box onto a tree. As I drew nearer, I saw that it was a box of cereal. He was feeding cereal to his tree.

I cannot remember if I stopped immediately, or if this happened a second time – at which point I refused to continue my walk without knowing WHAT was happening. The man, in a half matter-of-fact, half slightly-embarrassed way, said that the squirrels love the remnants of a bag of cereal or crackers. He beckoned to me, and sure enough, there was a small hollow in the tree trunk that acted as a natural cereal bowl. (No milk.) 

The Companion

For as long as I’ve lived in this house, I’ve been aware of a woman who frequently takes walks with a companion. She is a petite woman, slim as a tree branch, her back slightly bowed with the gravity of time. Her companion sits in a wheelchair and wears a brightly colored blanket on his lap. She propels him down the street and up the street, the slope of which is almost imperceptible when you are walking briskly but must surely be much more evident when you are pushing a person twice your size in a wheelchair. 

I know her well enough to wave or smile; we have never once exchanged words. I don’t know her name. I don’t know where this woman lives, although I know her house isn’t on my street. Which means she pushes her companion a good distance; our street is half a mile from stem to root. 

Earlier this winter, I noticed the woman out walking. She was by herself. And then again, again alone. This winter has been so mild that I’ve been outside much more than on a normal year, so I wondered if maybe she simply doesn’t bring her companion outside in the cold. Although it hasn’t been so cold. 

Aside from the neighbors on my little cul de sac, I’m only on a “comments about the weather” or “compliments to your dog” conversational basis with the people in my neighborhood. I don’t know people’s names. I don’t wish to know their business. But oh how I wish I knew her well enough to ask if he’s sitting in his chair, at home, watching for her from the window. Or whether he’s departed this plane for the next. 

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Bad Dreams, Fussy Eating, and Lovely Invitations

I have always dreamed extremely vivid – and usually super violent – dreams. But it’s been a long while since I’ve remembered any. 

This past week, I’ve had two that stuck with me after the fact. 

In one, I dreamed I was in an enclosure hiding from bears. The bears WERE going to attack, and if anyone wasn’t in the enclosure, they WOULD be mauled. There were other people who kept coming into my enclosure, but no one seemed to grasp the fact that BEARS CAN OPEN DOORS, and so they were leaving all the doors unlocked, so I had to keep going around and around to all the doors, locking them and shooting meaningful, grim looks to my fellow enclosees, none of whom seemed capable of grasping the fact that MAULING WAS IMMINENT. There were a LOT of doors, and the enclosure kept expanding. At one point, I went outside into a fenced-in area. The fences had barbed wire on top of them, but they were all only about two feet tall so that a really determined bear could simply step over them. 

I think we can all deduce what particular anxiety THAT dream is about.

The other dream is less memorable, and less perilous. But no less upsetting, for me. In the dream, I dropped Carla off at someone’s house for a playdate, and the mother invited me in to join everyone for a snack. The snack was bananas (which I do not eat), but Carla hissed at me, “You have to be polite.” So I ate a piece of a banana. And the host cut off another slice of banana, so I ate that too. And another. And another. Even though I haven’t eaten a banana since… preschool? I can still feel that mushy, sickly sweetness in my mouth. 

This dream, too, has a direct source. Our lovely neighbor has invited me and Carla over for lunch. The date is still pending, but oh my goodness I wish I could get out of it! 

Eating at other people’s homes has always been a HUGE source of anxiety for me. While I do eat a large variety of foods, I have a lot of super picky aversions. It’s not as easy as saying, “Oh, I have an allergy to X” and then the host just doesn’t cook with X. The list is so long I could not even hope to cover it all.

I remember, as a kid, DREADING going over to other people’s houses to eat. Just absolutely finding it awful. I have a vivid memory of sitting at a friend’s dining table with her whole family as they ate what was, I’m sure, a perfectly lovely meal, and I was just choked with anxiety because I did not want to eat any of it. And I tried to eat things here and there – the bread, maybe – and my friend’s mother was scolding me to clean my plate. It was awful. I don’t think I ever ate at that friend’s house again. In fact, unless someone was clearly and definitely serving pizza or tacos, I don’t think I ever ate at ANYONE’s house again.

I will never do the ”clean your plate” thing to Carla and I will never force one of her friends in my care to eat something she doesn’t want to. But that’s children. I am a grown adult. I should be able to go to someone’s house and eat the food. And yet. It is very anxiety producing, because I am equally afraid that a) I will have to eat something I dislike or b) I will offend the host by rejecting something I do not want to eat. 

I would say that my husband and I only rarely eat at other people’s houses. We have two sets of friends with whom we dine occasionally, and I feel like they are close enough friends that I can say, “No, I don’t eat lamb” when they ask, in advance of the dinner, if we eat lamb chops. (I say it regretfully, and embarrassedly, but with great relief.) But with the vast majority of people, you just show up! And eat the food they serve! I remember going to a new friend’s house and they served an absolutely beautiful meal of which the main course was chicken parmesan. Each breast was just smothered in tomatoes, which is probably my Number One Most Reviled Food. I cannot eat tomatoes; I have tried. I think I tried to be surreptitious in how I scraped them off the chicken, and then I helped wash the dishes, and I am SO hopeful that the host didn’t notice. (I am guessing the host noticed; I would notice. I would then, as host, fret that the food was bad or that I’d made something unpalatable to one of the guests.) Another time, we went to a friend’s house and she served chili with chunks of tomatoes in it. I ate around the tomatoes, but it’s so hard to do that in an unnoticeable way, and yet I cannot eat the tomatoes. I WISH I COULD. If I had access to a genie, and could only make selfish and self-serving wishes, I am pretty sure “make it so I love tomatoes” would be one of them.  

All this talk about tomatoes is making me queasy.

Along the same lines: Carla eats nothing. She is FAR more picky than I am and has not developed the techniques I have honed over the years for eating things she doesn’t like but can stand, or taking (as my mother-in-law calls it) a no-thank-you portion of something she doesn’t want, or trying something that doesn’t look appealing, or swiftly moving an item to her husband’s plate for him to eat instead.  

So now, this lovely, wonderful woman has extended this lovely invitation… to two people who eat NOTHING… and I not only have to somehow overcome my own anxieties about eating but also model good guest behavior to my child. Ugh ugh ugh. (What if she serves egg salad, a food I do not think I could force myself to eat??? Or some kind of lunch meat??? Or almost any normal lunch food????????)

Is there any way, after I have already said, “Oh that sounds lovely” to the neighbor, to now go back and say something like, “Carla and I have a bunch of really fussy food aversions – would it be possible to come have a glass of lemonade instead?” Is there any way?????? There isn’t, is there. I can almost picture her face falling as we reject her LOVELY invitation. Which is almost – but not quite – as bad as facing the Unknown Food. 

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Pandemic Update; Memorial Day Weekend Meals

I am sad and my foot hurts and I have too many things to do but instead I keep bouncing back and forth between reading awful news articles and researching gun control legislation, so I am going to distract myself by blogging for a few minutes. 

Today as I was putting away the groceries (this is the THIRD trip to the grocery store I have made this week, which is a testament to how important it is to MEAL PLAN in advance because I did not do that this week and now here we are), I came across a giant five-pound bag of sugar that I bought in 2020 during the height of the sugar/flour shortage. I remember spotting it at Costco, alongside enormous industrial sized bags of flour and snapping it up with glee and relief. It has remained in my basement lo these many years. 

Well, my sugar container is looking a bit wan, so I will use the five-pound bag to refill it. My sugar container does not hold five pounds of sugar, though, so… I’m not really sure what to do with the remainder. That’s what gallon-size Ziploc storage bags are for, I suppose.

(The reason I need to refill the sugar container is because I am making cupcakes. They were supposed to do double duty: 1. They were to be dessert for an evening with friends, who were scheduled to come for dinner this weekend. 2. They were to be a special birthday surprise for our neighbor, who has become one of Carla’s favorite people on the planet; when Carla found out it was the neighbor’s birthday, she insisted that we make cupcakes. Anyway, the friends are no longer coming but the neighbor is still having a birthday, so I am still making cupcakes.) 

Pulling out the five-pound bag of sugar did jolt me back, a bit, into those dark days of the early pandemic. Not that the days have gotten a whole lot brighter, in many senses, pandemic and otherwise. But things are different. We no longer buy two jars of pickles a week, for one thing. I still note that we are getting low on paper towels or toilet paper, but I don’t fret. I raised my eyebrows when I saw that cream cheese was in very low supply (and zero of the Philadelphia brand was available), but I didn’t grab more boxes than I need for the cupcake recipe. The peanut butter shelves were near-empty, but that’s because of the Jif recall, not because peanut butter is no longer available. (Our giant two-pack of Jif was in the affected batch; we’d already eaten one entire jar but the other was unopened.) I have been gradually and purposefully whittling down our supply of frozen meat, rather than rushing out to refill it. 

I know things are still far from pre-pandemic “normal.” The note about “only four packages of baby formula per person” at my Target is a glaring example of that fact. But I do worry less. 

On the illness front: I have given Carla a Covid test before school every day this week. She keeps waking up with a sore throat or sniffles (that do seem to magically disappear by the time we leave for school), and I just don’t want to take a chance. Plus, Covid is rampant in her grade, with four and five cases per class as of last week (except in Carla’s class, so far). We are five days out from the end of the school year, and it would be amazing if she could make it the whole way… but that seems increasingly unlikely. 

My family continues to wear masks in public, indoor spaces. I am accustomed to wearing one that I don’t really notice anymore how many people are or aren’t wearing masks. I haven’t been hassled. My husband thinks that our road trip later this summer will take us through a lot of areas where masking will be non-existent, and I wonder if we’ll be hassled then; we’ll see. Carla’s school went mask-optional a long time ago, and we allowed Carla to make her own choice about whether to wear one or not. She enthusiastically chose NOT. We have been urging her, as cases at school and in her grade have crept up, to reconsider, and I think she IS wearing a mask at least some of the time. But it’s hard to know. When you are eight, it is extremely difficult to understand abstract non-immediate consequences. 

We are in the very, very privileged position of not having any underlying health issues ourselves, and not having any immunocompromised people in our household or classroom/work situation to worry about so we are more relaxed than some. I don’t know much about Long Covid, so that does worry me a little. We are of course willing and happy to take stronger measures if necessary – like I am always happy to throw on a mask if a friend is wearing one, and I don’t insist on going out for coffee when it is perfectly acceptable to have coffee at my house. But I feel like we have reached a level of comfort and regularity with how we protect ourselves. More than ever, it feels like contracting Covid is inevitable. We have been so lucky not to have it (or to have had such mild cases it went through us undetected); that luck is bound to run out.  

We are looking at a nice long weekend ahead of us. I finally got some flowers into the flowerpots in my front and back yard, and that makes me feel much better about things. They were looking so dejected and depressed; now they have little bright spots of color. (Except for the pot that has been designated as Carla’s. She went with me to pick out the flowers, and she fell in love with some black petunias. She would have had all our pots full of black flowers if it were up to her. Instead, I bought her a black petunia and gave her her own pot. And then filled up the other flower pots with purple and yellow and pink.)

I am very disappointed that our friends are no longer coming. We haven’t seen them since February, and they are the kind of people whose social calendars fill up months in advance so the next time they can work us in is August. (In fact, we’d originally been scheduled to have them over for dinner in April, but they accidentally double-booked us and had to back out of that; late May was the first available option way back in March when they realized the issue.) So I am disappointed and cranky about that. Especially because I already bought – literally – ten Roma tomatoes so I can make salsa and five avocados so I can make guacamole. I guess my little family will be feasting on salsa and guacamole all weekend. Perhaps I can coax our neighbor to come over for a little birthday fiesta? 

In my planning for the dinner party, I totally forgot about the long weekend. So this morning I planned out our meals on the fly, mid-produce section. In addition to chips, salsa, guacamole, and strawberry cupcakes, here’s what we will be eating:

• Ground Beef Tacos: Carla squealed with delight when I told her we will be having tacos. Same, Carla. Same.
• Spinach Salad with Strawberries, Chicken, and Goat Cheese: I will be using regular strawberries this time, not pineberries. Also, I like to use a mix of spinach and arugula because I dislike spinach. Also also, I am going to make my favorite balsamic dressing instead of the raspberry vinaigrette. 
• Steak Kebabs: This may end up being steaks and veggies instead because my husband has a very interesting aversion to cooking shish kebabs. Even if I am the one who threads the food onto the skewers AND grills the skewers, he is very… hesitant about it. I am choosing to see this quirk as cute.
• Crispy Slow Cooker Carnitas: This is what I planned to make for our friends. It’s fairly keto-friendly and always delicious.
• Greek Chicken Chopped Salad: Unfortunately, I could not find any fresh oregano so I will need to go to the grocery store YET AGAIN. I will use that opportunity to buy more berries; I cannot get enough strawberries right now.

Salads and tacos. Sounds pretty great to me.

What are you up to this weekend? If you live in the U.S., are you doing anything special for Memorial Day?

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Weigh In Wednesday (Post Not in Any Way Related to Weight)

My hands are still shaking from a horrendously embarrassing experience, so I am trying to distract myself with some fun and fluff. 

Oh, you want to share in my humiliation first? Okay. 

I texted the owner of The Kitten to see if Carla could come visit him (“him” meaning the kitten; the owner is a woman). I had recently put her number in my phone, at Carla’s request. She’d (the kitten owner, not Carla) texted me so I would have her number, and I’d added her to my contacts. I tend to add people to my phone as “FirstName LastName,” and then never include any other identifying details… and you are well aware that I have a terrible memory… so there are multiple people in my phone who are now complete mysteries to me. One of these days I should really go through my phone and delete those people. 

I clicked on the kitten owner’s name – noting briefly that there was no prior text from her; I must have deleted it – and texted her: Hi, this is Carla’s mom. Is there a good time for Carla to come visit The Kitten?

A few minutes later I got back a series of question marks. 

As you may have intuited from my expert foreshadowing, I texted THE WRONG PERSON. Apparently, I have two people with the same first name in my phone. A fact which I have long since forgotten. The one whose name popped up when I started the text was the wrong one. 

And I have NO IDEA WHO SHE IS. 

Is this an old work contact? Is this someone for whom I’ve done freelance work? Is she a fellow parent from Carla’s school? Is she a board member I’ve interviewed for a writing project? Is she someone I went to grad school with? Is she a friend of a friend I’d connected with at some point? Is she some sort of service provider I have employed at some point? ZERO IDEA. 

I typed back, So sorry! I must have the wrong number!

But what I REALLY should have typed back was, So sorry! I must have typed the wrong FirstName!

Because if she is in my phone, there is a real likelihood that we know each other, and have interacted via phone before. Which means that there is a real possibility that she is sitting there wondering a) why I am contacting her about a kitten she doesn’t know and b) why I am pretending it was a wrong number and c) why I haven’t asked her how her work/family/life is. 

But I have no idea who this person is, or why she is a contact in my phone. I even googled her and I swear I have never seen her before in my life. But she was in my phone. So we must have known each other at some point! 

All I can do is hope that this person has as terrible a memory as I do, and has long since removed me from her phone, and isn’t feeling hurt/miffed/weirded out by my faux pas. 

LET’S MOVE ON TO LESS HORRIFYING TOPICS.

I have some questions for you. 

Weigh In #1: What food do you hate, but wish you didn’t? While I am a very choosy eater, I don’t feel particularly bad about it most of the time. I eat enough of a variety of foods that I’m pretty confident I can go to any restaurant or any friend’s house and find something to eat. I’ve never once thought, “I wish I enjoyed lamb. Or beets.” But there are a few foods I hate that I really wish I didn’t. 

Tomatoes. I hate tomatoes so very, very much. But they are one of those wildly ubiquitous foods that show up all the time, in places expected and not. (I cannot tell you how frequently I have encountered tomatoes on a Caesar salad, when they have no place in a Caesar salad.) Life would be so much easier and more pleasant if I just liked tomatoes! Or could at least tolerate them! Even friends who kindly ask about food preferences before they invite us over sometimes have tomatoes in their offerings, and I am just so very weary of being that picky person who doesn’t like tomatoes. 

Oatmeal. I cannot bring myself to enjoy oatmeal. Outside of oatmeal cookies, which are the sole exception. But lots of people genuinely enjoy oatmeal, and it seems like such a hearty, healthful food. I really wish I liked it. 

Eggs. Outside of scrambled eggs – which, even then, I only like a specific way – I avidly dislike eggs in ALL FORMS. But they are versatile and easy and full of protein. I want to like them. 

Weigh In #2: What is the best seat on an airplane? I prefer the window, myself. I like being tucked in next to the wall, I like being able to look out during turbulence to reassure myself that we are not in fact falling out of the sky, I like being able to lean my head against a solid surface. But when I fly with my family, my husband is the one who gets the window (although sometimes he swaps with Carla) and I get the aisle. I do not care for the aisle, because it puts me in close proximity to people, and those people tend to be very oblivious to the boundary between their space in the aisle and my space in my actual seat. The only benefit to the aisle seat is easy access to bathroom breaks. But then again, you have to be the one to pop up and down while the middle- or window-seater squeezes past you to the bathroom. I still remember the time I flew and a woman in front of me refused to swap seats with her row-mate’s spouse, because the spouse was in a window seat. “I have a bum leg, and I prefer the aisle so I can stretch out my leg,” she said. But… you aren’t supposed to stretch your leg into the aisle, right??!?! Isn’t that a tripping hazard? Isn’t that begging for a new leg injury when the drinks cart slams into your shin? 

Weigh In #3: What is your worst time-wasting habit? I am already terrible about spending too much time on social media. But more recently, I have found new depths to my time wasting online, which is that I have gotten sucked into watching gender reveals on Instagram. There is literally nothing beneficial about this habit – except that I derive occasional joy from the rare parent that shows true, unbridled joy at the result. Okay, and usually only if that unbridled joy is coming from the male parent, and in response to a pink result. These videos are fascinating, though. There are a bunch that feature the same bearded guy, who must run some sort of company that offers and records these sorts of reveals. There are a bunch where the timing is off. There are a bunch where the couple have other children, some of whom seem very disaffected by the whole event. 

The worst – and most fascinating – ones are the ones where one parent is CLEARLY disappointed by the result. I am not faulting someone for being disappointed: when I was pregnant, I was SURE I was having a boy, and I pictured a tiny blond copy of my husband. I got very attached to this fantasy. When we found out that Carla was a girl, I was disappointed. I hope you know that not a single cell of my body is disappointed NOW, now that Carla is a real wonderful human and it has become clear to me that everything I love about her is completely unrelated to her sex. But I get the disappointment. What I find perplexing is recording that disappointment and then posting it for the world to see. Perplexing and fascinating.  

Anyway. That is how I have been wasting far too many minutes of my one wild and precious life lately. I blame spring break. 

Now it’s your turn. Please weigh in. 

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Dog Birthday Party

Happy Thanksgiving, to all those who are celebrating today! I am going to be cooking for part of the day, and swimming in a blissful lake of mashed potatoes and gravy for the rest of it, but before I dive in…

Did I tell you that Carla was invited to a dog’s birthday party?

I believe I have documented thoroughly just how obsessed Carla is with dogs. We are the luckiest people in the universe because we have seventeen dogs on our cul-de-sac (we can’t have many more houses than that; some households have multiple dogs). Carla knows them all by name. She is not quite so good with their humans. But I am familiar with our nearer neighbors, and so I have been trying to teach her to greet the human neighbors by name and to ask after their health before she turns her attention to the dogs. It’s a little perfunctory, with many of the neighbors, but I would say she has developed good relationships with several of them. One is a grandmother-type, who is lovely and sweet, and who allows Carla to walk her very well-trained cockapoo (while she walks alongside them). Another is an empty nester (Lynn) who enjoys kids.

(P.S. Lynn is the type of woman whom I want to be my best friend. She is outgoing and friendly and kind. She has a strong faith that is clear but not evangelical, she works in a social-services type career that I admire, she makes AMAZING baked goods. She has four grown kids, and LOVES having a big family. I get the feeling that having them all home from college during the pandemic was a joy for her, and that it has been really hard to have them all leave her at once this year. She is the kind of person who treats you like a friend even when you don’t actually know her that well, and I wish there were some manual for upgrading from Neighbor Who Entertains My Kid Sometimes to Bestie.)

Lynn has a beautiful, well-trained golden retriever named Barbara. Carla loves Barbara almost as much as she loved my parents’ late golden doodle. And Lynn is very lenient about allowing Carla to play with Barbara on their lawn. I can watch Carla from across the street, so I usually sit outside and write or read while keeping an eye on Carla.

Anyway, it was Barbara’s birthday recently, and Lynn let us know in advance and said she would be having a party for Barbara. Carla immediately wanted to buy a present for Barbara, so we went to the store one day after school and she looked through all the options, haggled with me on budget, and finally chose an appropriate gift. Once home, she wrapped the present and made Barbara a lovely card.  Please recall that Barbara is a dog.

The day of the party, Carla could talk of nothing else. What time was the party? When would Lynn be home from work? Could Barbara come over to our backyard? (No.) Lynn, of course, had normal adult-human things that delayed her and so was an hour later than she thought she’d be; very easy to understand as an adult, but less so for a child frantic to celebrate.

At LAST we got word that Lynn and Barbara would be home for the party! Carla grabbed the gift and the card (Barbara is still a dog) and we headed over. Carla helped Barbara open the gift. Lynn read the card out loud. Then Carla and Barbara played with the brand-new squeaky hamburger, Lynn allowed Carla to give her some treats, and we took lots of pictures, and Lynn handed us some cookies. That was the party. It was entirely for Carla’s benefit.

I feel so incredibly lucky to have such wonderful neighbors. Neighbors who are friendly and kind. Neighbors who understand Carla’s love for their pets and indulge her by bringing their dogs out for pets and walks and games of fetch. Neighbors who stage canine birthday parties purely for the joy it brings my little girl.

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Fake Flowers

I love flowers as much as the next person. Despite facing various and sundry obstacles, including but not limited to disrespectful rabbits, a black thumb, and a flower-hungry herd of suburban deer, I planted flowers in containers for my front porch and back yard. 

Part of this is flower envy. Many of my neighbors have beautiful yards, full of gorgeous flowers. One neighbor planted a border around all their shrubbery of alternating yellow and orange marigolds, and it is so cheery and I ogle it every time I’m out on a walk. 

But I have noticed that some people take a… different tack when it comes to flowers. 

They are going the fake route.

A few years ago, back when I was in a book club, a friend and co-book club member would regale us with stories of her next door neighbor. Among many other quirks, her neighbor was notable for “planting” artificial flowers in her yard each spring. 

We thought this was a remarkable and unusual behavior, specific, perhaps, to this one person.

But it is not, Internet. It is NOT.

I first noticed fake flowers at one house on my walking route a few years ago. (They have since moved, or come over to the dark side of fresh floral arrangements.)

But this year, I’ve noticed more and more artificial flora cropping up around the neighborhood.

This house nearby recently built a fence/gate thing for privacy… and filled in the gap with some fake flowers. 

I drive around a small traffic circle each day and noticed recently it had been spruced up for Independence Day. With fake red-white-and-blue flowers. 

Another house on my route has a wide array of fake flowers in various sections of their yard… but also, some living flowers in their side yard. 

Listen, no judgment. Mild amusement, maybe. But you do you, boo. 

After all, there’s much to be said for artificial flowers. They are eye-catching. They are probably less expensive than fresh flowers. They take way less time to reach their full potential than growing flowers from seed. They are GUARANTEED to be bright and colorful year-round. They never wilt or require weeding. They are extremely drought tolerant. And deer and rabbits don’t have a taste for them (yet). 

If artificial flora makes your heart sing, then by all means, let your fake flower flag fly.

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