We have been plunged back into winter. I don’t mind winter – in fact, I adore winter, and we had far too little of it this year. What I do mind is the vacillations between winter and spring. Turns out I prefer the seasons to progress as intended, rather than swinging back and forth willy nilly. Well. Perhaps “seasons” no longer exist, in this iteration of the world, and I should enjoy the beautiful snow falling all around the house while I can.
The robins, however, have decided It Is Spring. One of the new delightful (no) quirks of our new house is that we seem to be neighbors with a bunch of attack robins. As of this weekend, we are constantly startled by the unpleasant sound of a robin flinging himself bodily into our windows. All. Day. Long.
Robins are not, as I originally assumed, getting distracted mid-flight by daydreams and blundering into the glass. No. I have seen them perch on the lintel outside the window and then flap violently at their reflections. There is also belligerent pecking. A small robin can manufacture quite a lot of racket and I no longer need an alarm clock.
My understanding from a very cursory google search is that the robins are not trying to systematically deprive me of my home and sanity. Instead, they perceive their reflections as rival male robins and attack them. Seems to me like this would be a fairly easy trial and error sort of experience. You see a male robin on your home turf, you flap in his face, but instead of scaring the intruder robin away, you are rebuffed by something smooth and hard between you. I mean, maybe it takes a couple of times to realize that the other robin is in some alternate dimension that in no way intersects with your own. But no. The robin returns and returns. And then when I shake the window blinds at it, it flies away for a few minutes and either returns to that window or a different window. Maybe future iterations of robins could benefit from additional brainpower and a smidge less territorial rage hmm????
My daughter’s brilliant idea of setting up a giant stuffed Pikachu in the window has not been the deterrent she hoped it would be. It seems that our options are a) stick a reflective decal/tape on the window, b) get an owl sculpture to police the windows, or c) close the blinds, although closing the blinds doesn’t seem to work. I am hoping this frenzy of possessive bluster is tied to mating season and ends soon. My husband and I both wonder why this was never an issue at our old house. I guess the new neighborhood’s robins are fiercer/dumber than the old ones.
Robin attack team aside, we must eat.
Dinners for the Week of March 18-24
Guinness Beef Stew with Homemade Egg Noodles: To be fair, we made this meal on a whim yesterday; such was the extent of our St. Patrick’s Day observance. But the recipe made such an enormous amount of stew that we have plenty for upcoming meals, so I’m counting it. The egg noodles were my husband’s idea, and much easier than I anticipated. I think of stew as soup, with bigger chunks of things in it. But he was anticipating something thicker, like maybe a beef stroganoff or a chicken paprikash type of texture. This stew is closer to soup, despite a couple of cornstarch slurries. I followed the instructions for making it on the stove, but once the beef was seared and the onions/garlic were deglazed with the beer, I put everything in the crockpot for six hours. I also added about 10 ounces of mushrooms, a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar, and quite a lot of salt. Delicious.
Spiced Chicken Kebabs with Salad and Yogurt Dressing: I cannot abide ground chicken, so I will use chicken breast, cut into chunks, and roasted in the air fryer. So not kebabs at all; I know, I am one of Those People. The marinade sounds delicious, though (I am very intrigued by sumac) and the rest of the salad and yogurt sauce are highly appealing.
That’s all I have on the meal plan for this week, Internet.
Has winter returned to your neck of the woods? What are you eating to cope with the ongoing Kate Middleton drama?
1. For Valentine’s Day, I made twokinds 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!
We have come to the portion of Moving Into a New House where we are considering buying some new furniture. We have plenty of furniture, from the old house, but there are a few things that are missing from our collection. Plus, there are a few things that we’d prefer to replace because they just aren’t right for the current space.
The thing is, we have never really had to buy furniture before. We are deeply spoiled: most of the furniture in our house was handed down to us by my husband’s parents, who have moved several times over the years and who accompanied each move with gifts of furniture. Hand-me-downs from my in laws include two couches, two loveseats, an armchair, a kitchen table, The Piece, a desk, some filing cabinets, a baby grand piano, and lots of artwork. I know. We are very, very lucky.
This means that, aside from purchasing two bedroom sets and assorted furniture for our child, we have no experience buying furniture. But… buying furniture is kind of hard? And unpleasant? Like, how many couches do you have to sit on before you decide that THIS ONE is the right combination of firm and comfortable, that it is formal enough for the space, that it will fit in the room, that the quality is good, that the price is reasonable? And then you have to choose the fabric?! Yikes.
In an instance of great good fortune, my friend Jen (HI JEN) happened to send me a photo of her couch (it wasn’t really of her couch, it was of her beautiful and charming children), and I asked about it (because it looked comfy but also aesthetically pleasing) and she gave me the details. And THEN our local Macy’s had several of the very same couch IN STOCK. There was only one person working in the entire Macy’s so my husband and daughter and I were able to sit on all the different options and examine the different sectional combinations and look at all the fabric samples completely unbothered by salespeople or other customers. With Jen’s assurance that this couch is a good couch, and the evidence of our own sitting, we are now going to order this couch. SO. That’s one big thing to check off the list.
But we have other furniture needs and I don’t really know where to begin. You have Furniture Opinions, yes? Because I need your input please.
Where do you get lamps? We have looked at Target, and the lamps are… limited, and also a lot of them look kind of cheap. I am aware that Target does HAVE perfectly acceptable lamps; our old bedside table lamps were from Target, and they lasted a long time and I liked them just fine. We would not be looking for new beside table lamps had I not broken mine during the move. I have been suffering for my sins, lampless, since August. I looked at Crate and Barrel for lamps and it seems like you can’t get a lamp for less than $100, which is far more than I feel like I want to spend on a lamp. So maybe my question is not, “where do you get lamps?” but “where do you get nice, sturdy, aesthetically pleasing lamps that aren’t a million dollars?”
What is the deal with slipcovers? My husband and I had a hand-me-down loveseat in our bedroom for twelve years. Neither of us noticed until now that the loveseat is wearing a slipcover. The slipcover is not, as I would have assumed, covering anything; I would have thought you would have purchased a slipcover to conceal a fabric you no longer liked, for instance. But now that we KNOW, we feel like we might want to get a new slipcover. One that is more our style. That is as far as I’ve gone with this line of thinking because I don’t really know where to go next. And also, are we stuck with the skirt part?
Sheesh this is a terrible photo. And I couldn’t even straighten the cushions before taking the picture? YIKES. P.S. The side table is a hand-me-down and I hate it so much. I can’t even articulate why. I just HATE IT. But it has utility so I haven’t yet donated it. The lamp in this photo came from World Market, which no longer exists in our city.
Do you have a yoga mat you’d recommend? Does a yoga mat count as furniture? Let’s pretend it does for the sake of not wanting to revise the post title. One of my favorite parts of the new house is a dedicated room for exercise. But the flooring is Very Hard; my princessy bones have apparently grown accustomed to working out on a yoga mat on top of a plush carpet, and my tailbone and shoulder blades scream at me if I try to work out on a yoga mat on top of the floor. My solution was to get a nice thick yoga mat from Amazon. But, while the new mat is technically thicker than my old yoga mat, the material is much squishier, so it is not any more comfortable than what I already have. I tried to stack the yoga mats, one on top of each other, but they slide around. What I really want is a GIANT yoga mat that is also thick. Does such a thing exist? Rephrase: Does such a thing exist for under a million dollars?
Another terrible photo! And the floor is so dirty! Mainly because we had boxes filling this room until three days ago. But also because itis surprisingly difficult to clean this kind of flooring. Also, my husband and I discovered that the bottoms of his shoes, which are highlighter yellow, are shedding when he walks on the treadmill, leaving two yellowish tracks on the treadmill belt and a film of yellow dust on the floor. So weird.
Those are the most pressing furniture questions I have at the moment. Don’t even get me started on end tables. I think we’ll need at least one – maybe two – for the upstairs living room. We will also need couches and chairs and a rug for that space, but we’re living with our old hand-me-down couch and no rug for now. I don’t have the mental fortitude for ordering more than one couch at a time.
Once again, I am awarding superlatives for the week.
Biggest Success: My husband and I designed and ordered our holiday cards!!!! Holiday cards are my favorite thing about December, but I am rarely thinking too much about them this early. This year, cards feel extra urgent because we just moved. And I have not had it together enough to send out change-of-address cards, so the plan is to send out holiday greetings that also alert people to our new address. We did not take any new photos. My husband took complete ownership of this year’s card, and found photos and card options for us to choose from, put the card to together, found a coupon code, wrote the copy on the back, and placed the order. I had some input, but it was really his thing from start to finish. Is it exactly what I would have made? No. But it’s good enough and it was extremely pleasant to have him take over a task that is usually my purview, and which I usually have to beg and wheedle and prod him to focus on. We (he) ordered our cards Sunday and they arrived Thursday! Some very well-organized people on my recipient list send out their cards immediately after Thanksgiving, so we have to get these babies in the mail! My plan is to get them out the week of Thanksgiving. I already mailed two, including one to the person whose card arrives earliest every year.
Most Delicious Thing I Made: My parents came over for dinner one night, so I experimented on them. I made cider braised pot roast with crispy sage butter potatoes and, of course, my favorite fall salad. First of all, this meal is SUPER EASY and yet it tastes like it took hours to prepare. I mean, it does take hours, but the oven is doing the work, not you. I was a little worried that it would be too sweet, but it wasn’t, it was meaty and perfect. The onions turn into jam and the potatoes – while I could have crisped them up a bit more – were delicious. I don’t even LIKE sage, and I loved the potatoes. I highly recommend this as a tasty, super easy, prep-in-advance dinner to prepare for company. Also, my husband RAVED about it. He is always very nice about the food I make, but I can’t remember him being so enthusiastic as he was about this dish.
Most Panic-Inducing Realization: At some point this week I realized that Thanksgiving is TWO WEEKS AWAY. Family will be arriving at my house in eleven days. This is… too soon. We still have boxes EVERYWHERE. There is no lightbulb in the guest room lamp. I have not yet located the guest towels. My daughter’s bathroom (which she will be sharing with my niece and sister-in-law) has no towel rack. We have A TON OF WORK to do in the next eleven days, and that doesn’t even include all the normal Thanksgiving prep! At least Past Me had the foresight to order a turkey. Whole Foods offered a pre-brined version this year, which removes an onerous step from my prep list.
Best and Most Comforting Decision: I made another batch of pumpkin bread. I was a little worried that the first batch was good through the magic of Beginner’s Luck, but no. It is just delicious, delicious bread.
Longest-Time-Coming Completion of a Task: I would have counted this as my biggest accomplishment of the week, but I’m not because the whole thing is so dumb. I have been trying to end my relationship with a financial institution for TWO YEARS, and, in fact, thought that I had finally done so last winter. So imagine my surprise when I got a statement recently that listed assets the financial institution supposedly was still managing (no) and charged us a $30 maintenance fee (ARGH). But! I think we have finally finally cut ties with this institution. Unfortunately we are not getting our maintenance fee back, but it is money well spent if I never have to talk to the plan administrator (who never administrated ANYTHING) ever again.
Current Most Perplexing Home Maintenance Issue: While the new house is flush with perplexing things (why does the laundry room smoke alarm, which is wired into the house’s electrical system, chirp constantly and why is there no way to turn it off?), my husband and I have encountered a new one this week. We are trying to hang things like artwork and the aforementioned towel bar, but twice now our efforts have been thwarted. My husband will begin to drill into a wall, and will hit something. He thinks it is somehow our ductwork, because it sounds and feels like flexible metal. HOW did the previous owners hang things? There was a towel bar in my daughter’s bathroom, for instance; the painters removed it to paint, and then when they reinstalled it, found that the screws were stripped. So we asked them to simply remove it, patch the wall, and then we would install a new towel bar. (To make this boring story even more boring and also longer, the existing towel bar was very small, and there is no linen closet near my daughter’s room, so we wanted a double towel bar on which to hang multiple towels.) So there WAS a towel bar there, and my husband is trying to install the new towel bar in virtually the same place… how did they make it work?! So weird.
Any superlatives you need to award this week?
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 the fun, check out San’s blog here.
It’s Friday! We are chugging right along through November. Here are five things I’m thinking about today.
Falling Back: Changing the clocks has messed me up. I hate it so much. I mean, I guess I don’t mind driving to school in the daylight again. But give it a few weeks and we’ll be back to driving in the darkness. In the meantime, I am going to bed at a NEW normal time and waking up at the OLD normal time, which means I am getting less sleep than I was before. Plus I am still waking up each morning at three or four, full of existential dread. GOOD TIMES. My poor kid is so far on the exact same page. Why could she not have inherited her father’s ability to sleep anytime, anywhere? We are both wandering around, exhausted and cranky. She keeps draping herself over furniture and moaning about how tiiiiiiirrrrred she is. I cannot stop yawning. People keep talking about how maybe this will be the last year of Daylight Savings Time! And I keep thinking, yeah, sure, whatever. But I also think it’s kind of amazing that we all collectively (except Arizona and Hawaii, I think?) agreed to just move everything back or forth an hour twice a year. That’s BONKERS. I feel like there’s no agreement on ANYTHING AT ALL, and yet we all do this???? No thank you. I would like to abstain.
Flu Shot: I finally got my flu shot. I was at the pharmacy and thought to ask if they administer flu shots; this is a newish-to-me pharmacy, and I’d always gotten my flu shot at Walgreens. We no longer live within walking distance of a Walgreens, so I’ve been putting off the flu shot until I had a reason to be near one. Anyway, I realize this is a very long and circuitous way to the point that yes, the current pharmacy DOES offer flu shots. The pharmacist came around the counter which was the first difference between it and Walgreens; there, you wait until the pharmacist calls you back, and you go into a little room with a door. This pharmacist was a cheery woman who seemed impossibly young. She was much friendlier than the old pharmacist, whose entire body seemed weighted down with regret and drudgery. And then she gave me the shot right there in the middle of the pharmacy! There was another client, sitting behind me, while I stood at the checkout counter. It was a tiny bit alarming. She was very sweet, but then asked me what I did for work. I told her I work from home and she gasped and said, “Well why are you even getting a flu shot?!” That threw me, I’ll admit. My answer in the moment was that I have a young child, but also… shouldn’t everyone get a flu shot? You can get the flu at the grocery store. She then chatted with me for a few minutes about having kids (she has a baby). It was a very pleasant interaction but also kind of weird.
Flannel Time: We have reached the flannel sheets portion of the year. I don’t normally love flannel sheets, because I sleep hot. But our regular sheets are feeling a little chilly lately. I’m a little apprehensive though because our house heats very unevenly. The house will get colder and colder until you’re shivering even under the covers – I have been wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt to bed, when I much prefer a T-shirt – and then the furnace will decide it’s time to take action and it will WHOOSH to life and churn out an intense fog of heat so that you’re kicking off the covers and stripping off layers – and then it will turn off, exhausted by its efforts, and the cycle begins again. Will flannel sheets be pleasant or unbearable? Time will tell.
Forwarding: We continue to receive mail for the previous owners. It’s not quite at the level it was – at first, we got boxes and season tickets to sports games and multiple cases of wine in addition to catalogs and letters and paychecks and things. But we still get some mail. We have been here since September 1. Is it time to start writing “return to sender” on the mail we receive? Obviously the nice thing to do is to keep holding the mail for the previous owners, and texting them occasionally, and asking them what they’d like us to do with it. (They always come to pick it up, and have ignored my suggestion that we could drop it at their new house.) I keep thinking about how mortified I was to learn, from the people who bought our old house, that they’d been receiving mail for us. My husband had been so diligent about setting up mail forwarding and systematically going through all of our bills and regular mailings to make sure our address was changed. And yet some things slipped past the gate. I also keep thinking about how, at our old house, we continued to get mail for the previous owners even though we’d lived there for twelve years. Not a lot of mail, but one or two pieces a year even at the end. Is mail forwarding really that tough? Are we all really that unclear about ALL the places that have our address?
Fear of Friendliness: I saw one of our new neighbors outside and said hello and asked if she worked from home. When she said she was home most days, I said I was too and would she want to get a coffee sometime? She said sure. But now that I’ve made the overture, I don’t know what to do! Do I… have her over for coffee? I don’t actually know how to make coffee (although my husband could probably teach me). And if she comes for coffee, do I need to offer food as well? What do people eat? Do I live on this planet because I don’t feel like it. Do I suggest going for a walk? What if we have nothing to talk about? What’s a normal thing for people to do when they are trying to get to know other people? While I really, truly would love to get to know my new neighbors, I am kind of berating myself for suggesting anything. I know it wasn’t, like, set in stone or anything, and we could probably just never follow up. But… I want to follow up. Even if I also vehemently do NOT want to follow up.
That’s it for today, Internet. What are you thinking about on this fall Friday?
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 the fun, check out San’s blog here.
This is probably a better topic for the book blog, but since a) this is the first day of November, and if I am going to set myself up for the best chance of completing NaBloPoMo (which I am still on the fence about! day by day, folks!) (go check out San’s blog to see who is participating this year) I should probably post on this, the first day of the Mo for which I would be BloPoing, and b) this is both a Book Topic and a General Life Topic, as it concerns the state of my home, and c) I have already been neglecting the book blog for so very long, why not continue in the same vein, I am going to discuss it here, instead.
(You: Get to the point.) (And also use shorter sentences going forward.)
We just moved in to a new house. Me, my husband, my daughter, and our eight million books.
In the old house, we had five bookcases, plus one in Carla’s room, plus three half-size bookcases. We organize our books into rough categories and then alphabetize the books in each category by author.
Sob! My old office. The third bookcase is behind the door to the right.
Carla’s books are easy; they will live in her room.
My new office, while demonstrably larger than my old office, still only holds three bookcases. (This is one of the perplexing non-problem “problems” of the new house; we have much more space but far less wall space.) Probably we could squeeze another one in there… or maybe even two additional narrow, glass-fronted bookshelves.
We have a big, empty wall between the piano room and the living room, and the plan is to install some additional bookshelves there, as well. Maybe something like this.
We have moved the other three existing bookcases – two are black and one is brown – into the basement. Our nonfiction collection will largely live there. My office shelves and the wall unit and maybe the built-in shelves in the living room will hold our fiction collection and all my poetry books. I would also like my writing books (the non-fiction that won’t live in the basement) to live in my office.
Some non fiction.
I have a small “tree” bookshelf in my bedroom that holds Books I (Think I) Want to Read Imminently.
Strangely grainy photo of my old bedroom, with the tree bookshelf in action.
So we’ve figured out our rough categories and where each category will live… now all we have to do is alphabetize them and put them on the shelves. (Well, except that some of the shelves don’t yet exist.)
Except we’ve run into a quandary.
We’ve squeezed all three of my bookshelves together into one unit. Should we treat each shelf as a separate bookcase, and alphabetize that way, so that Bookcase 1 might have authors A-C, and Bookcase 2 might have authors D-F and Bookcase 3 might have authors G-K?
Or do we alphabetize across all three, as though they are one giant bookcase?
This is a very fun problem to contemplate. Except that I already started shelving the books according to option 1, and am loathe to redo the work.
Why is the lamp in the middle of the room? No idea whatsoever.Also, if you have any suggestions for new light fixtures I AM ALL EARS.
What would you do? And how do you organize the books in your house?
Also, apropos of nothing (except that it is tangentially topical), do you think I need this customizable vase shaped like a book? I really think I need it. Maybe you need it too.
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, check out San’s blog here.
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 facingenduring 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?
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.
The thing is, for all my Big Dinner Plans from last week, I think I ended up making dinner twice. And once it was tacos and the other time it was pizza. The rest of it was convenience food from the freezer or from a variety of restaurants.
We’ve had a pair of painters in the house for going on three weeks (this should be the last week, thank goodness). They are lovely people – quiet and friendly and good at their work. But I am deeply uncomfortable with strangers in my space. Additionally, the painters have been entering and exiting via the garage, which means they go through the kitchen semi-frequently. I find myself feeling Very Awkward about making food, including lunch, and have been unable to bring myself to prep anything for dinner while they are around, because they are either traveling right through the cooking space or working in/near it. (To allay at least some of the awkwardness, on my end at least, I have been bringing in occasional treats – donuts or some other pastry-type thing for breakfast maybe twice a week, cookies a couple of times, and last week I brought them lunch from a local shop.) (Should I be buying them lunch and/or breakfast every day???? Sometimes I’m not here during those parts of the day, and what if they are just eating what I provide out of politeness???? Also, feeding two additional people one or two meals a day for 15 days seems… excessive???? Or am I being selfish and cheap???????)
ANYWAY. I have not been making dinner with any sort of regularity, so the list below is highly aspirational. Especially because this is a Call Week, and my husband is unlikely to be home before 8:00 or 9:00 pm on any given day.
Dinners for the Week of October 16-22
French Onion Soup: I already possess all the ingredients for this soup, so making it should be easy. But I was planning to make it yesterday and then got too tired from errands/football watching, so it didn’t happen. Hopefully I can drum up the enthusiasm to make it soon, though, because the leftovers are good and easy to heat up. (I do have some minor anxiety about whether my house will smell oniony once I make the soup, and whether that will bother the painters, even though logically I know they probably don’t care at all and just want me to make the occasional muffin available to them and then render myself invisible for the rest of the time they are in my house.)
Sheet Pan Chicken with Zucchini: I grabbed some zucchini the other day, thinking it was such an easy vegetable to cook, and I already have chicken breasts in the freezer, awaiting their time in the sun, and having the ingredients to SUCH an easy meal on hand would give me NO excuse to resort to takeout. And yet the zucchini and the chicken remain unprepared and uneaten. Just move the chicken from the freezer to the fridge! Just wash the zucchini! That is 40% of the work right there!
Oven Baked Pork Chops with Steamed Broccoli: Pork chops were on sale so I bought some because apparently Me In The Grocery Store is a totally different and much more with-it person than Me In My Well-Stocked Kitchen. I also have broccoli in the fridge I was supposed to eat last week. This is another extremely easy meal that I may still be unable to persuade myself to make.
Some Sort of Curry: My husband and I had a date night recently during which we went to a massive Asian market a few towns over. We had so much fun wandering the aisles and picking out fun things to try (my favorite were the wasabi flavored Lays potato chips – yum!). Among the many things we bought were a few tubs of curry. I have some assorted veg in the fridge and plenty of meat options. Maybe I’ll try out one of the curry mixes.
Time will tell whether I make any of these things, seeing as my intentions are even more halfhearted than usual.
If you meal plan, about what percentage of the meals on your list end up Made And Eaten by the end of the week?
If you were to go on a food shopping and preparation date, what type of food would you shop for and what would you want to make?
Rosemary, Goat Cheese, and Chicken Mac & Cheese: With all my talk of microwave mac & cheese last week, I have talked myself right into a craving for this creamy, cheesy, slightly elevated take. I have made a variation on this pasta many times before, and yet somehow I cannot find reference to it anywhere on my blog. So. I’m not sure where the original recipe came from, but the one I linked to is similar. I always found it a teensy bit bland, though, so I typically start with a diced onion, and sauté that with lots of garlic, and then remove it all from the pot before adding in the cream and rosemary. In years past, I may have also cooked up a slice or two of bacon in the pot prior to the onion, but that seems like a trouble too far for me to deal with this week. There is a dearth of veggies in this dish, unfortunately… so I will probably toss together a side salad, and/or maybe I will throw some veggies into the pot with the pasta. (Peas? Mushrooms? Mushrooms and asparagus, as in this recipe?)
Chipotle Beer BBQ Chicken: Our weather continues to be extraordinary, and I spent three hours cleaning the built-in grill that came with the house (I am reasonably sure it had never been cleaned once since the house was built in 2000), so I want to use it. This recipe sounds fun and different. I think my husband would love the creamed corn that accompanies this recipe, so maybe I’ll try that, too. But I would prefer some zucchini or asparagus. (Yes, I realize this entire meal is SUMMERY and we are full on into fall, but the heart wants what it wants.)
Slow Cooker Mushroom Soup with Sherry: This uses a LOT of mushrooms and more sherry than I’ve ever seen called for in a recipe (not to mention shallots!), but it sounds so wonderful. Rich and creamy and mushroomy. I can roast a chicken breast for my husband, so he feels like it’s A Real Meal, and maybe make a salad on the side.
Tacos: Tacos were the first Real Meal I made in our new home, and it’s been a few weeks since we had them. Time to add them to the meal plan once again.
What’s your favorite seasonal fall food? What summer food do you lament the lack of until summer rolls around again?
One of the things that makes me feel most normal – or maybe, most in control of my universe – is being able to cook Homemade Dinners.
This is not to take anything away from Convenience Meals, which I both 1) love and 2) have made generous use of these past many months. There were quite a few weeks in there when my husband and child and I subsisted on a hearty mix of microwave meals (The Purple Carrot Vegan Frozen Plant Based Loaded Vegetable Fried Rice is quite delicious as well as nourishing, despite the lengthy name) and takeout (I am quite delighted to find that there are both excellent pizza and delicious, legitimately spicy Indian food within minutes of my new house).
But even though I am grateful for them, and they have been a big help in getting us through the most chaotic part of the move, Convenience Meals aren’t something I want every day. I want to cook homemade food and eat it on non-plastic dinnerware. I like eating boring old Meat Plus Veg. I prefer spending $200-ish a week on food, rather than shelling out $50+ every time I set foot in a Five Guys or the grocery store to pick up last minute dinner options.
We are slowly but steadily getting back to eating Homemade Dinners. I am slowly but steadily figuring out how to prepare and cook meals in our new kitchen. I am (mostly) remembering to get everything I need out of the fridge in one go, because once it closes the door seals tightly for an undetermined number of minutes and not even the strongest member of my household can open it until it decides it’s done doing whatever it does during that time. I have no idea why the stove rattles like a freight train when the oven gets to temperature, but that seems like a problem for future Suzanne. It just feels good to make reasonably well-balanced meals and sit down and eat them together.
Here’s what I have on tap for this week:
Sesame Soy Chicken Bowls: This sounds easy and yummy, and the coconut rice can stretch to another night. I will probably through in some edamame along with the carrots and cabbage, just because it seems like it would be a good addition. Plus, I can usually get Carla to eat edamame.
Mediterranean Sheet Pan Bowls with Cilantro Vinaigrette: We haven’t had this in awhile, and the abundance of veggies reminds me fondly of Nicole and anything I can do to add more Nicole Energy to my life will only benefit me and everyone around me, plus the cilantro vinaigrette is really tasty.
Chickpea Curry: It’s been a very long time since I’ve made this, but it will scratch a food craving itch. Plus, I can use the leftover coconut rice to sop up the sauce. As is my custom with curries, I will add sliced bell pepper to the rice before topping with the curry.
Fall Salad: I am not going to allow the current lack of fall weather to prevent me from reveling in fall flavors. This salad is a longtime favorite and I am ready to eat it. Will I have salmon on my salad instead of chicken? Not sure.
Gochujang Chicken and Broccoli: I was pretty sure I had spotted an unopened bottle of gochujang sauce during the move, which made my ears perk up when I came across this recipe. Sure enough I found it in the pantry. But… it expired in 2021. Too late, though – I already committed this recipe to my meal plan for the week, so I guess I’ll be buying a new bottle of gochujang! (And finding ways to use it up.)
We also have a birthday to celebrate this week, so I’ll be making Mud Pie for the birthday boy, at his request. He prefers coffee ice cream to chocolate, and my plan is to buy a pre-made chocolate cookie crust rather than making my own. We will probably also go out to dinner on his actual birthday. I fear it may be kind of dull day, as far as birthdays go; we are both so stunned by all the costs of moving that neither of us has the fortitude to spend money on birthday gifts. (I did get him a couple of small things, but I did not get him the nugget ice maker of his dreams.)
What are your favorite Convenience Meals? I love a good microwavable mac-and-cheese. Both the Hatch Chili Mac & Cheese and the Butternut Squash Mac & Cheese from Trader Joe’s are delicious. I also like the Life Cuisine Vermont White Cheddar Broccoli Bowl and the EVOL Truffle Parmesan Mac & Cheese. If I’m not eating mac and cheese, I’m jonesing for pizza, and Red Baron Classic Crust Pepperoni Pizza will forever be my favorite frozen version.
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life of a doctor's wife 