The Cheese Stands Alone

I did a bad thing this morning. We never got the mail yesterday (it was 15°F yesterday, I was deep in the throes of designing the program for my concert this coming Saturday, and I was getting ready to take Thing 2 to the doctor--yes, I know, excuses, excuses). So, I stopped and picked it up on the way back from the bus stop this morning. In there was a letter addressed to my five year old from one of his classmates.

Now, my five year old's mail falls into only a few categories:

1. cards from grandparents
2. National Geographic Little Kids magazine
3. thank you notes from birthday parties already attended
4. birthday party invitations

Based on forensic evidence, I determined that this must be a Category 4 missive. With the holidays coming up, and knowing that he was very put out the last time we had to decline an invitation, I opened the letter to get an advance peek at what was inside. Analysis proved to be sound, and I, with much dread, opened an invitation to a Chuck E. Cheese party, the second one from one of his classmates this school year.

Now, as you must know by now, I have two older children. During the past twelve years, eight of which have led me through prime whole-class birthday party territory, we have only ever once been invited to Chuck E. Cheese. When the kindergartener was invited to a party there last month, I figured that, based on the law of averages (and the fact that CEC is about 40 minutes away from our town), this would be the only CEC party he ever got invited to, so we accepted and went. He was gleeful and had a wonderful time, and I gambled (in CEC's glorified slot machines) with his coins and got him prize tickets. That said, it was packed, the parents are stuck there but are not fed anything or even given drinks for two hours (not that I couldn't take care of that myself, and, hey, at least they serve Coca Cola products!), and the birthday girl sat at the table the whole time, looking shocked and not even playing with the other kids. Really, the place was nutso.

So, while all clues pointed to the fact that I'd be opening a birthday party invitation, I was not expecting yet another one to CEC. Eek! Really, I don't consider myself to be a mean mom. I take my kids to these parent-accompanied parties as much as our schedule allows. But WHY can't we have something else scheduled during this one? The idea of driving to CEC, forty minutes away, through holiday shopping territory, and making my way through the mall parking lot in which it is located, on the Saturday before Christmas, and THEN having to actually spend two hours in CEC, just does not float my boat. It makes me wonder if these people scheduled it at that time in the hopes that no one would come (yes, I'm in an evil mood today).

Luckily, I have reasonable children. So, I'll tell him about the party (I don't like to hide this stuff from the kids--it'll just come back and bite me in the butt later), but we planned to go to Mystic Aquarium (at HIS request) that weekend, and, guess what? That trip is now scheduled for the Saturday before Christmas, at the same time as the birthday party. Darn the luck!

And that's my silver lining for today.

A Turkey For You, And a Turkey for Me

Well, I've come out of my turkey coma (there should be a new holiday song: The Five Days of Turkey), and I guess I need to get writing again.

I did a different thing this year. Almost every year, my husband's family comes here for Thanksgiving (my own family sticks close to Pennsylvania, because Thanksgiving there is merely a preparation for the real holiday: The First Day of Deer Season). In years past, the imminent arrival of the inlaws and outlaws has inspired me to do strange and unusual things. Paint rooms. Redecorate the bathroom. Remove the handles from the sinks and soak them in Oxyclean before reinstalling them. Clean the dryer vent. Run around with touch-up paint and a roller brush "erasing" the marks from the walls. Scrub the toilets with a toothbrush (an old one, not my husband's). Climb on the kitchen counter and clean the tops of the cabinets (you know, because my mother-in-law MIGHT just look up there).

Last year my brother-in-law brought his girlfriend to meet us for the first time. While I've slacked off a bit over the years on pre-mother-in-law preparations, I kind of went wacko, scrubbing and cleaning and making things white and purty again (our well water, as lovely tasting as it is, has this wee rust issue). Then they all got here and spent the week discussing the evils of cleaning products to the environment. I was not amused.

This year, I decided that "Good enough for government work" was my mantra. So, I did clean up. I dusted, I vacuumed, I mopped. All at once, not the slap-dash way I normally do it (that was what was nice about having a cleaning service back in the day--coming home to a house that was ALL CLEAN AT THE SAME TIME). I made the family put away their detritus. I changed the sheets. It was all good. But, instead of rabid toothbrush-and-paint-roller wielding, I spent the pre-visitor prep time prepping what people really want at Thanksgiving: the food.

The end result was that I was not exhausted before it all even started; I had half of Thanksgiving dinner already made when I woke up on T-Day morning; and I got to relax a bit instead of pulling a four-course meal out of my you-know-what. It was good enough, everyone seemed just as happy as they always do, and I got to join in the fun instead of either watching from the sidelines or falling asleep before it started.

And that's my silver lining for today.

Ephemera

The other day my five year old dragged me to McDonald's. I haven't been there for lunch in years (we went for breakfast a few times last year, when he was still in preschool) because, really, the food just doesn't taste good to me any more. Perhaps you need to be a starving, dining-hall-bound college student to appreciate it. But, anyway, I ordered a Big Mac. And it was actually good.

Now, the Big Mac, unlike many of it's calorie-ridden compatriots, has been around for a very long time. I still remember seeing commercials for it when I was in elementary school, back in the Dawn of Time (that would be the 70's). One in particular showed people saying the ingredients backwards. Unlike my offspring, who can recite the entire script to any movie they've seen more than once, I have a hard time memorizing things. Always have and probably always will. My brain just doesn't want to do it. However, I was totally entranced by Backwards Big Mac, and I worked VERY HARD to learn to do it. Despite forgetting many a memorized classic poem and Shakespearean speech, I can still do it today. Bun seed sesame a on onions pickles cheese lettuce sauce special patties beef all two. It's probably more impressive in person, a few hours into a cocktail party, but there you go.

Another thing I memorized in my youth was this:

Drink Coca-Cola cigarettes,
Smoke Wrigley's spearmint beer.
Kennel Ration dog food makes your complexion clear.
Simonize your baby with a Hershey's candy bar.
And Texaco's the beauty cream that's used by all the stars.

Take your next vacation in a brand new Frigidaire.
Learn to play the piano in your winter underwear.
Doctors say that babies should smoke until they're three.
And people over 65 should bathe in Lipton tea....with flow-through tea-bags.

I think it's funny what we remember. I cannot remember the phone number I had for seven years in Virginia or even what I had for dinner last Tuesday. I'm not one of those people who can tell you their seventh grade locker combination. I don't even remember the addresses I lived at over the years. I'd say that I'm like Sherlock Holmes, purging all extraneous information from my brain, but I'd also make a poor witness to a crime--I can't even tell you what vehicles my neighbors drive, and I stand next to their cars every morning at the bus stop. But, I can still play the first song I ever memorized in piano lessons, and I can still remember Backwards Big Mac and Mixed-Up Billboard. Sometimes, for whatever reason, these things will pop into my head from nowhere. I'll be driving along, mulling over adult problems and kid logistics and what's for dinner tonight and suddenly my head will be singing "Great green globs of greasy grimy gopher guts/Mutilated monkey meat/Itty bitty birdie feet." And it makes me smile.

And that's my silver lining for today.

Fix or Repair Daily

I have vehicle envy right now. Every once in a while, my current vehicle gets to the point where I get this itch to ditch it and get a new one. Have you seen the LG washer commercial where the woman dreams of destroying her old washer in order to be able to get a new one? Well, I've started having those fantasies (note: if something DOES happen to my car in the near future--a tree falls on it, a sudden hailstorm squashes it like a bug, a freak tornado whisks it away to Kansas--I assure any and all insurance adjusters who stalk me and find this blog that I had nothing to do with it!!).

We bought our first Ford right after my husband moved to Connecticut in 1998 (I moved later, but that's a story for another day). OK, he bought it, and told me later. During our (large)-dual-income-one-kid period, this was not really unusual or a big deal, and he had asked me about it beforehand. He just didn't wait for the official concurrence. He traded in his Volkswagon Cabriolet sport coupe for a Ford Explorer after he decided that the combination of being out of warranty, not liking the service at the (then) one local VW dealership, and slipping on icy roads in October did not bode well for his sporty little pre-kid Grapemobile (yes, reader, it was PURPLE). It was a wise transaction, and the only lingering bit of annoyance I hold is the fact that he had conned me into trading in MY Saab 900S for our minivan because he really wanted to keep the sports car, and then, less than a year later, he got rid of it. I mean, I gave up my heated leather seats and sporty spoiler for this?

Our second Ford came about by happenstance. We had decided to get rid of the Dodge, as we did not really need two large vehicles, and the Explorer was, by far, a "keeper." So, I started shopping for a New Beetle. The terms of the loan from our credit union were extremely good, but the trade-in would have negated it (there was a minimum loan value), Beetles being not that expensive to begin with. So, we decided to sell the Dodge ourselves. Right about then, Consumer Reports rated the 1996 Dodge Grand Caravan as one of the worst deals in used cars (which was true--as I mentioned, Moby was a lemon). Plus, the husband I married--the one who subscribed to Smithsonian and National Geographic--started subscribing to Motor Trend and Car and Driver. I suppose this was his mid-life crisis. A wad of Navy severance pay and Moby in hand, my husband went to his trusty Ford salesman and purchased a 25th anniversary edition Mustang convertible, trading in Moby for $8000, which was far more than he was worth. We call it Convertible Summer: my husband was out of the Navy and very happy in his new job; I was preparing to get out; we were renting a home at the time, having sold our house in Virginia; and we had one easy-breasy toddler child. It didn't last long, but it was certainly fun while it lasted. That fall, he went back to his same trusty Ford salesman and sold back that Mustang for only $1000 less than he'd paid for it. So, we essentially laundered The Great White Whale for $7000, in a deal that I don't think we'll ever repeat in this lifetime. The proceeds of the sale were the down payment for the house I'm sitting in now.

So, now we're on our third Ford. We bought the Windstar when I was pregnant with Child Number Three (trading in the Explorer, which we really liked--it wasn't big enough for two carseats and three kids, though). It's been paid off for over a year and, like any six year old vehicle, it has its share of quirks, the biggest being that, despite repeated repair attempts, the internal lights don't work and neither does the now-totally-useless entertainment system (our number one suspect is the mouse that my husband trapped in the car a few years ago). It's a little disturbing to travel around at night and get in and out of the car with no cabin lighting. Unfortunately, our dear Beetle bit the dust two years ago, after setting the record for Longest Held Automobile, coming in at 8 years in service and over 150,000 miles traveled. My husband bought a 4WD Subaru Impreza for his commuter car, and it's a great little automobile. Luckily, he gets home from work in time for me to use it for my evening activities, so I don't very often have to drive the Lightless Wonder after dark. I say "unfortunately" because we really can't afford two car payments right now. Plus, we're at kind of a crossroads in the car-buying zone: we're almost to the point where there's only going to be one car seat to worry about fitting in.

That said, I don't know. My husband and I both remember car trips with three or four kids in the back seat of the car. Cars were wider back then, I guess. At least the seats were. Plus there was that really cool station wagon trunk to roll around in. We rented a medium-sized SUV on our trip to California, and the kids were crammed into the back seat like sardines. It wasn't very pleasant. But, they persevered and, really, we are considering buying a mid-sized hybrid sedan or SUV. In the meantime, we can afford to repair Wonder Windstar, and we're having fun looking at cars, discussing alternative energy sources, and seeing what we can see. Not to mention, dreaming about sudden car-destroying meteor showers!

And that's my silver lining for today.

Blogophobia

Have you ever started something and suddenly found you were in over your head? I've never been the journaling/diary-writing type of person, so doing this blog just seemed like a good way to mess around with the blogging software and learn how it all fits together. I have another blog where my performance has been spotty at best. The topic and format I set up take a lot of work because my ideas come from needlework projects I'm working on. Well, you may have figured it out by now, but I'm a bit of a Jane of all Trades. I don't chug away daily on projects like that. I tend to go in fits and starts, and then totally go and do something else for a few months. So, I'd do a few entries and then...poof...disappear for six months when I ran out of steam/interest/desire to knit and crochet things. Or I'd have a few months when all I was doing was mindlessly knitting dishcloths and, well, there isn't a lot you can say about that!

A friend of mine was after me to get blogging (waving at Kristin). When I was getting my other blog up and going again (note that I've since gone into yet another lull over there), I started this blog on the spur of the moment, and, as they say on 'Seinfeld,' it was pretty much about nothing. The first couple of weeks, I was doing really well in posting every day. I'm in some community activities; have neighbors; have kids; have a husband...it's all good fodder for rambling thoughts and colorful commentary.

Then I started playing around with blog gadgets. I installed this thing called "FEEDJIT Live." You can see it on the edge of my blog (well, you can now--if you read this post a month from now, it may be gone, for reasons I'll get into). It lists people who visit my blog, by location of their server. And, suddenly, I had this overwhelming feeling of writing to an audience because people were actually visiting my blog! Then the fretting started. There was pressure. Was it all too sicky sweet? Did you like it that way? Why the heck are you all coming back here to read this, and how do I give you more of it?

OK, so I psyched myself out. I'm still a bit addicted to the FEEDJIT thing. When I should be blogging, I'm watching it to see who pops in. It's kind of like watching the news ticker at the bottom of CNN--once you see it, it's all the same, but you keep watching, anyway, because something new might pop up. But I'll try harder to not worry so much about what I'm writing and, as I originally intended, just write things as they occur to me. I'll trust that you'll let me know if I cross the border into the Land of Syrupy Sweetness. Because, after all, you're reading!

And that's my silver lining for today.

Pianissimo

I don't know if I've mentioned it, but I play the flute in a community orchestra. I also play piano for a community choir. This sounds impressive until I say that the conductor is the same for both, the orchestra is small and enthusiastic at best, and the choir is tiny (but with a lot of heart).

A few years ago I decided that I needed a hobby. So, I started playing the flute again. Practiced like mad, and approached the local orchestra in a very scared state of mind. Like most things in my working and non-working life (it's a curse), this has evolved to my being board president of that growing-but-struggling group, and, after suggesting that the conductor couldn't really conduct both groups on the same night, playing piano for a growing-but-struggling choir. How do I get myself into these messes?

That said, I'm not sure what's gotten into my conductor lately. It's not a bad thing--he's trying to improve us musically (and we need that). But, really, I'm not in middle school and don't need lectures. I do understand dynamics, and can do them when I'm not trying to figure out what tempo you want us to do it this time, or wondering what the heck the strings are up to. And, really, it's not necessary to tell the choir to sing louder by telling the eight whole members that the orchestra members are amateurs and CAN'T play more quietly. I did play for another group this past summer, and I know that it doesn't have to be this way.

The long and short of it is that I'm really ready to move on. I want to be part of a better group. But, I like these people. While the conductor is looking for greatness, I kind of see it as a group of local musicians who like to get together and play. So, I'll stick around. It's fun. As board president, I have control of what we play. I can play first flute or second flute or piccolo or whatever-the-heck part I want. I might double up and play with another group, but, really, why give up a good gig? Pianissimo is a musical term, but keeping quiet about the group-related drama of it all is a pretty universally respected thing.

And that's my silver lining for today.

Our House

Is a very, very, very fine house
With one cat in the yard...

OK, OK, sorry! And, yes, I know the song says "two cats"--I'm working on it!

I haven't been around and blogging because (1) I succumbed to the pressure of worrying that people were actually reading my ramblings (including my husband), and (2) I've been suffering from my seasonal affliction.

No, I don't need a doctor. I need a decorator, and a budget of about $20,000. OK, I'd settle for the $1000 Trading Spaces makeover at this point and a couple of extra bodies to do the labor. You see, every few months, I get this nagging urge to move furniture. And, if you've ever read "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie," then you know how this is going to go. It's a chain reaction that results in moving, cleaning, scrubbing walls and baseboards, patching mysterious (and not-so-mysterious, since moving furniture means moving artwork) holes in walls, painting...well, you get the picture.

It usually starts innocuously. My mother-in-law is coming for Thanksgiving, along with my brother-in-law and his fiancèe, so I started thinking about where people were sleeping, where people were sitting, where people were eating, etc, etc. After that, the Christmas tree will need to go somewhere. This stream of thought then leads to the terrors of Internet Diagnosis. You know--I start visiting decorating websites and THINKING. Stewing. Mulling. Waking up at 3 a.m. and wrapping my brain around it. And, then, one day I give in to the urge and start pulling things around.

My husband doesn't like it when I do this. My twelve year old son, as oblivious as he is to most of what goes on around here, refused to help me on Monday because "Dad wouldn't like it." My husband says he wants it to look "lived in." Well, husband dear, the problem is that "lived in" around here means "cluttered and dirty, with nests of pet hair behind the sofa." At least the furniture moving results in seasonal housecleaning! Besides, you're the one who told me you wanted the Christmas tree in the living room this year.

So, why do I do it? Well, primarily because our family is slowly exiting the toddler/pre-school phase. As the big, chunky toys slowly meander out of our house (or, at least to the basement, since they're old enough to get it out themselves, or just go down there and play with it), it leaves SPACE. In the meantime, our needs change. We now need more room for hobbies and board games, rather than the vast floor space we needed when they were playing with Little People all over my kitchen floor. It's like one of those sliding puzzles--you move one piece, and that leaves a space into which you can now move something else.

This house has its issues, too. We bought it when we had only one child, so three bedrooms meant that I had a nice guest room. The cathedral-ceilinged foyer was bright and architecturally pleasing after a couple of years in The 1900 House (a dingy-but-charming Cape Cod that had last been updated in about 1957). We never used the formal living room in our house in Virginia, so it didn't matter that this house didn't have one--the other rooms were bigger because of it. Well, fast forward two kids later, and I wouldn't complain if the renovation fairy dropped a two-story addition onto my house in the middle of the night. Besides, I need a place to put my piano. I now call the foyer "my fourth bedroom" (if it HAD a ceiling, then there'd be a ROOM up there). The rooms are too big to just push the furniture against the walls and say "Well, that's the only way it will go," but too small to really float the furniture and group it the way the decorators suggest. And, some of the rooms (the foyer/fourth bedroom, and the large-but-undefined-space side of the kitchen) have too many doors. So, I shuffle stuff around. My husband says I'm "fenging my shui" and, really, it DOES have that effect for a while.

I drove a friend of mine home on Saturday night. I had never been to her home, and, when we pulled up, I laughed and said, "Hey, it looks like mine!" She's been here, so we sat in her driveway for a while, grousing about what was wrong with our houses. Finally, she laughed in the middle of a complaint and said, "As if we really have anything to complain about!" And, the truth is, I don't. I have more house than many people do, and part of my problem is that we have just plain more furniture and stuff than it will hold. So, I declutter it, I shift it, I Freecycle what we don't want or use any more, and I have a good time doing it.

And that's my silver lining for today.

P.S. My friend Carrie and I seem to be on the same wavelength. Read her blog if you want a little decluttering inspiration.

The Fall Doldrums

Autumn in New England is a thing of beauty. It brings warm days and cold nights; a new wardrobe (or, at least, bringing out stuff I'm not sick of!); and, oh the colors!

Then comes fall.

Now, you ask, aren't "autumn" and "fall" one and the same? I suppose, technically speaking, they are. But, to me, autumn is a time of promise, while fall is the reality. In autumn, the children return to school, excited to start a fresh, new year. We go shopping for new school clothes, and they excitedly wait for it to be cold enough to wear their new acquisitions. Homework isn't so bad when you can race through it and then go outside until dark. It's fun to settle down for the evening with the older members of the family after the younger ones (whose late summer bedtimes are now curtailed) are in bed, either watching the new TV shows, or sitting by the fire working on a crochet project that was too big and bulky to work on in the summer. Long autumn Saturdays and Sundays bring soccer games and the slowing up of yardwork, as the cooler weather makes the weeds and grass stop growing faster than you can cut them down. The same cooler weather, and the onset of late-season vegetables, brings out the Dutch oven for some good old-fashioned pot roast or roast chicken (and then the soups that result from the leftovers). Yes, life is good in autumn.

Then the bloom wears off the rose--or the leaves fall off the trees, to be more exact. I spent most of Sunday cleaning up leaves and getting flower beds ready for winter. I went out this morning for about an hour, and then later this afternoon, again. Well, I think I did--it's covered with leaves already. The weather is gray and rainy. It's been down in the 30's on many mornings, so I guess it's time to pull out the winter coats and figure out where to put them. Daylight savings time ended this past weekend, and now the kids race outside to play for a bit before doing homework--it's 4:50 pm as I sit here writing this, and it's already dark out, so the kids are now stuck in the house.

Then, as I sat outside the middle school this afternoon (where I sit MOST afternoons these days), I thought I might have seen a flake. It wasn't--it's too warm and muggy this afternoon. But, for just a moment, I got excited, because, after all, winter is just around the corner. Every season has its beauties and, while I'll probably sit here complaining by mid-January, there's nothing more exciting than the first snow. And, I have that to look forward to.

And that's my silver lining for today.

Tradition!

I went to my polling place this morning, a little sad. Nostalgic, really. We moved to our rural Connecticut town in 1999. Until this morning, I had always voted in the old Town Hall, a tiny building built in 18-oh-something, with white clapboard sides, a pine floor, and a little pot-bellied stove providing whatever heat the warm bodies inside don't produce themselves. And, of course, old-fashioned lever-operated voting machines, complete with that satisfying "Click" when you open the curtain and finalize your vote. When I voted in the last presidential election, I stood in line with my then-toddler in tow, watching acquaintances and neighbors filter through, and feeling the heat ripple off of the wood stove as I stood by it in line. Sen. Dodd was behind me with his family and entourage, creating a bit of stir as he moved through the building. The process was ripe with small-town ambiance, and, even then, I appreciated that it really served to emphasize that governmental change and progress starts at the smallest, most local level and filters its way to the top.

As I've mentioned before, our new middle school opened this year. Due to changes in the voting process, our polling place has been moved to the old middle school gym. My husband and I went there to vote this morning. We were handed our OCR forms and folders, went to our little plastic cubbies, cast our votes with black felt-tip markers, and then went to the next line, where we waited to insert our forms into the scanner. The space was large, and the whole process was fast and efficient, but there was no satisfying "Click." Still, although the pine floor and pot-bellied stove ambiance is a thing of the past, it's, all in all, still a small town. As I walked out, my son's old Cubmaster was there to hand me my "I Voted Today" sticker. And Chris Dodd was still behind us in line.

And that's my silver lining for today.

Live from New York...

When I was a teenager and in my 20's, I could tell you what was on TV most nights of the week on all of the major networks, and what was coming up in the near future. Now, with the proliferation of cable channels (do we still call them that?), and the fact that my zoning-out TV-of-choice is HGTV rather than network television, I couldn't tell you anything about any TV show that I don't specifically choose to watch. For the most part, I don't watch anything on NBC right now, so, I was a little out of the loop and a bit surprised to turn Saturday Night Live on this past weekend and find John McCain on the show.

I saw Sarah Palin on SNL a few weeks ago. She did the opening bit, sat and took it while they poked fun of her during Weekend Update, engaged in some witty repartee with Lorne Michaels and Alec Baldwin, and that was that. She was never NOT Sarah Palin, herself, the candidate-for-Vice-President. John McCain lampooning himself as a QVC host, though? I don't know. It bothered me on some level. Now, I know that John McCain hosted SNL before, so this wasn't his first foray into skit-based comedy. But, I just don't know...he's running for President. Really, I don't care what you do as a Senator. I don't care what you do after you lose (Bob Dole made a great SNL host!). But, is it wrong for me to want a presidential candidate to look...Presidential?

So, I pondered this Saturday night. I pondered it a little more yesterday. And, really, I pondered it until there was nothing left to ponder. I still don't know what bothered me about it. My sister mentioned that it's weird for her to see presidential candidates on David Letterman. But, really, that doesn't bother me. It's comforting to know that the person who wants to be at the helm of the country has a sense of humor. They laugh, they (like Palin on SNL) exchange a little witty repartee with Dave, but, all-in-all, it's a talk show, and they don't ever leave their personas at the door and tread the boards as something they are not (OK, OK...not they we know what they really are, anyway. As McCain says in his SNL backstage interview, politics and acting are joined at the hip).

So, overall, I guess it doesn't matter that it bothers me. And, as McCain says, "You do get a difference audience and a different exposure" by going on SNL than you're going to get with any talk show, even Letterman. If McCain making a fool of himself on SNL gets more 18-22 voters out to the polls tomorrow, then it's all good. It's a free country. A really free country, and SNL is one of the biggest examples of how free it is.

And that's my silver lining for today.

Mm Mm Good

My husband's birthday was on Tuesday, but, between weeknight activities and a his last-minute trip to D.C., we rescheduled it. So, since I'm getting ready to spend several hours making a cake and, later, coq au vin, I figured I'd pick on him for a bit!

My husband is a coffee snob. Now, he comes by it honorably because his dad was the ultimate coffee snob, ordering beans by mail and grinding his own back before Starbucks made it fashionable. I, on the other hand, grew up in a household where last night's coffee becomes this morning's coffee with a simple flick of the little red button (or, in a pan on the stove back in the olden days). Have I mentioned that I left my parents' home not liking coffee?

Early in our marriage, my husband started getting coffee through the mail. Every month the little Starbucks box would show up. The rise of internet ordering meant that he could tweak his monthly order, adding more or taking away depending on our usage, and switching out blends based on his current fancy. He took great pleasure in this tweaking and in grinding his own beans and raving about how good the coffee was.

Shortly after we moved to Connecticut, he got a letter from Starbucks, informing him that they would no longer be providing mail order services, and directing him to his "local" store. At that point, the "local" store was a good hour away. (My husband is also a former retail manager and is, therefore, a retail snob. Sometime I'll have to post about his rants on the shelf-stocking policy downfalls of Target.) Enter a month that included great rants and letters written to Starbucks. Ultimately, he switched his loyalty to Peet's, and now claims that Starbucks "tastes burnt and really isn't good coffee anyway."

He's mellowed a bit over the years. He orders it pre-ground now, rather than grinding his own. He figures that he uses it fast enough, and Peet's grinds it just prior to delivery, so it's a toss-up. Last year his trusty old coffee pot at work died (yes, you read that right--he made his own coffee at work), and he decided that he would discontinue the tradition. I bought him a new stainless thermos for Christmas, and now he gets up early, brews it, and takes it with him. He could fill up a big travel mug with it and take it all (I would!), but he doesn't. So, every morning when I go downstairs, there's at least one large mug of freshly-brewed coffee left in the carafe for me to drink while I chivvy the kids out the door to school.

And that's my silver lining for today.

Girl's Best Friend

We've had four dogs since we were married, all of them Schipperkes. They've brought us varying degrees of joy and sadness over the years, including one of the toughest decisions I ever had to make.

Sabot, our first dog, our pre-children baby, was a cute little puppy that we bought at the local pet store. We took her to puppy school and, later, obedience training; we read all of the books; we socialized her; and, yet, at about a year old, when she matured, she started developing aggressive tendencies (translation: she bit people). Since then, we've learned all about the negative side of buying a pet store dog--she was loving to us, and we loved her, but she had fear aggression, the worst kind, as it's psychological as opposed to habitual or territorial, and, ultimately, we had to have Sabot put to sleep when she was seven years old. I still miss that dog and feel an overwhelming sense of failure when I think about her.

During the time we had Sabot, before her problems became obvious and STILL pre-children, we adopted our second dog, Laars. Laars was a rescue who had been abandoned outside a vet's office. He shared our lives for four very short years, when he slammed his 22 lb bulk against the screen door in our new/old home ("The 1900 House") in Connecticut, popped the latch, and was hit by a car moments later. We still miss that dog, too, but for different reasons--he was truly one of the sweetest, gentlest, and most loving dogs I've ever had the pleasure to share my life with, and he was taken from us far too soon.

Our third dog came to us by chance. We were consulting with Schipperke Rescue when we were deciding what to do about Sabot. Maverick was a nine year old dog who'd already been returned to rescue by the first family who adopted him. Unfortunately, the husband abused him, and the wife had to return him. His injured leg developed arthritis, which was really his only health issue up until old age caught up with him. He was our dog for 6-1/2 years, when on a cold January morning, shortly after his sixteenth birthday, he took off (yes, a dog who had to be carried down the steps to go outdoors somehow managed to pick up and mosey off in the sunset in the 30 seconds my husband got distracted by a screaming child). My last vivid memory of him was the week before. I took him for a walk out to the mailbox on a brisk, grey, wintry afternoon. His legs were stiff and, as he limped back up the driveway, he stopped, turned his nose into the wind, and closed his eyes, almost like he was imagining himself running into it. Maverick's first owners gave him up to rescue when they had a baby. Well, he made it through TWO babies with us, and I think he did just fine, don't you? We were happy to have shared our lives with him, and he clearly enjoyed living with us and "his" cats.


And that brings me to my current dog. I say "my" because, oddly enough, this is the first dog to have totally latched onto me. Sabot gave fairly equivalent affection to both my husband and me; Laars just plain loved everyone with two legs (he chased cats, though, and took great pleasure in it); Maverick liked us all, two-legged and four-legged alike, in his big-hearted way, but worshipped the ground my husband walked on. So, now, out of the blue, I have a dog. We adopted Berry right after Maverick died. We'd been working with the rescue organization for over a month to adopt a senior dog as a companion to Maverick. Black Bear was a 10 year old Schipperke with Addison's disease, placed into rescue by her owners because they moved and could only keep two dogs (I note that they appear to have kept the two that didn't have the expensive medical condition). As my husband says every month when we go to the drug store and pay $100 for her medication, "What price, love?" We redubbed her "Blackberry," a much more feminine name, but not different enough to confuse her Senior Dogginess, and, really, do you know how many Schipperkes there are named "Bear"? Berry has been with us for almost two years now. While it took her a while to get used to kids and to make friends with our cat, she's now a much-loved member of the family. She's even decided that it's probably not a good use of her time to sit by the door pining for me when I go out--after all, she might miss some errant crumb of food dropped by some other member of the family. During the day, the cat follows her around, and she follows me. Sometimes I feel like a drum major leading a parade--I have to be careful not to turn around too quickly, or I'll trip over a pile of black animals.


(This photo is as bad as it is because every time I backed up to take the shot, they followed me! But, it gives you a good idea of the view from where I am.)

And that's my silver lining for today.

Life in the Slow Lane

Now that my youngest son has started kindergarten, there are three boys to get out the door in the morning. OK, two, because my husband gets rid of one of them without even waking me. I am happy to leave this 6 am wake-up routine to Mr. Bright and Cheery because I am NOT a morning person (besides, I woke up Mr. Coma for many, many years, even when I worked, and I was quite happy to pass on that baton). My 7 year old has always been a late sleeper, and, despite getting up for years at 5:30 am and bouncing in our bed, my 5 year old is becoming quite the little bed bug as well. Because of a change in the bus schedule, their bus ride this year is about 50 minutes long. So, between our sleepy-headedness, my five year old's stringent desire to NOT ride the bus for 50 minutes, AND my having to be at the middle school to volunteer two days a week, I confess that I've been driving them to school more days than not.

Enter the Bus Lane.

Our bus lane is really just a traffic pattern. The parking spaces are in the middle, with the driving lane in a big oval around them. It's wide enough that people can pull up to the crosswalk that crosses the buses-only lane, while other people can go around them to leave the lot or to find a parking space. In a school with only 400 kids, there's really no need for a highly-organized teachers-get-kids-from-cars-and-parents-better-stay-in-their-seats-and-be-ready-to-move-on extravaganza. But, really, people, can't you show some common courtesy?

Almost every time we go to the school, there is someone in front of us who wants to make a huge production out of getting out of the car. For a week or so, we got stuck repeatedly behind the same Dad (how's that for dumb luck?), who got out of the car, got a kid out of the driver's side, walked around and got the other kid out of the passenger side, handed them their backpacks, gave goodbye hugs, and then stood at the crosswalk and watched his daughters walk the whole way into the school before getting into his car and driving forward so the next person could drop off. Today (in case you're wondering what set me off on this tirade), we pulled up behind a big black van, its doors shut. I assumed that the parent was watching her children walk into the school, as more people than not seem to feel the need to do this, no matter how many people are waiting behind them. Since we were directly behind her, next to an empty handicapped space, I went ahead and let the kids out. Still, it sat there. I was stuck, since I'd been stupid enough to pull too close (you know, assuming that she was about to pull away). The parents lined up behind me got out of their cars and started escorting their children to the crosswalk, as it was getting late. Finally, there was MOVEMENT in the car, and kids started getting out. Yes, dear reader, the whole time they were sitting there, they were GETTING READY to get out. Find a parking space, idiot, if it takes that much work to get your kids out of the car.

Now, when we pull up, my second grader opens the van door; both boys hop out; second grader closes van door; boys head into crosswalk; and I pull ahead. Sometimes, after I've pulled out of the drop-off spot, I'll pause and watch them--they generally walk straight into the school, looking fairly cheery, sometimes greeting people they see, but not dawdling outside. During the first few weeks of school, my second grader walked my kindergartener to his classroom without being asked to do so. While I still like to snuggle with them in bed in the morning and push the snooze button a few times, and they, more often than not, drive me nuts, it's also nice to know that they are growing up into self-sufficient boys who don't need their Mommy to hand them their backpacks and watch to make sure they make it into the school from no further than they'd go if they were getting off the bus.

And that's my silver lining for today.

Boo!

My sister is a costumer out in Hollywood (Doesn't that sound impressive? I keep telling her that it is!), and I guess I got a little bit of the gene because we generally go all out. I've posted elsewhere about my crocheted chain mail, and I'm usually digging out the sewing machine and sewing like mad right up to the day, because, well, I'm a procrastinator and, even with a cut-off date for costume decisions, we often end up making idea changes when we actually head out to the stores to shop for materials (see my post from Wednesday, 10/22). Despite the often tight deadlines, I really enjoy making the costumes. It gets my brain working and my creative juices flowing. Even the annoyance of now having to make the Headless Horseman be able to see and move his arms has an upside because, in the end, it's a challenge that can be overcome if I can just get my brain to go in the right direction.

The costumes I make go into our (now) vast costume bin. If you drive by my house on any given day, you'll probably see my kids dressed in various combinations of the pieces that have been made or purchased (I'm also a sucker for Disney Store costumes--good quality, and usually on massive sale right before or right after Halloween--we've even given them to the kids for Christmas presents). When we go places we also tend to pick up bits and pieces--hats, swords, props. Really, I promise--I'm not trying to be an Impressive Mommy when I make this stuff. It's fun, and their enjoyment of it is worth any effort I expend. Plus, pinky swear--it's FUN!

:::Returning the next day because I got distracted by finishing up Mr. Headless for the party they are at right now:::


Yesterday, as I was driving the kids to school, I was talking my my 7 year old about his costume. I told him I'd make him a cravat out of the black material I'd brought up out of the basement, and he'd be able to see through it. This material is left over from making my younger son's Halloween Bat costume two years ago (one of the photos in the slide show). He got very concerned and said, "Oh, mom, please don't cut up Tom's bat wings." I told him that it was leftover from when I made them, so the bat wings would survive to swoop another day. His reply? "You MADE Tom's bat wings? Wow!"

And that's my silver lining for today.

Far From the Home I Love

Two weeks ago we flew to California, and drove north from L.A. to a little town called Solvang in the Santa Ynez Valley. My husband, a California-is-for-Californians kind of guy, who whined about having no snow the entire time we lived in Virginia, has been out to L.A. and San Diego a few times on business, as have I, but our view was mostly of highways and Naval bases (although I was lucky enough to have time to visit the San Diego Zoo, and my husband still talks about getting to play Torrey Pines at the resident/military fee). So, it was rather refreshing to actually spend some time in a section of California that is more similar in character to our own town in rural Connecticut. It was interesting to see the farms, with raised or covered crops and large irrigation systems, and to note the difference in the landscape, which ran in shades of vivid blue, dark green, and various degrees of brown. We both decided that, given a winning Powerball ticket, we'd have no problem living there (because, as I pointed out to my husband, one can always visit snow, which, of course, would be shoveled and plowed by others).

Then we came home. Right into the height of a New England Autumn. Now, I have to admit, I'm liking spring more and more each year. The colors are more subtle, but I like to see how many different shades of green I can see, and then see them develop over the next month, as they mix with the flowering bushes and bulbs that also start appearing around that time. Autumn gives a brief, fiery show and then you get...fall (literally, as I look out at the yard covered with dead leaves that weren't there on Sunday). That said, coming back into it from the more subdued browns and tans of California was invigorating. It's nice to travel and get away from the humdrum of daily life, but sometimes, in quirky little ways, it points out to you what you'd miss if you weren't where you are, right now.

So, it's a week past peak color, but it's still going strong and breathtakingly beautiful. On the drive home from my volunteer job this morning, I was thinking about how gorgeous it is where I live. I'll have to do another post on the view driving into town, because it's picture-postcard perfect. Can you imagine what it really looks like, if it looks this good through my dirty car windows with a cell phone camera?



And that's my silver lining for today.


Note: Here's a (rather blurry--I'll have to get another one on Saturday--he kept jumping around) photo of the costume that resulted from yesterday's turmoil:


Of course, apparently I still have to figure out how he can lower his arms and see to walk. But, hey, it LOOKS good, right?!?!

A Vacation from the Vacation

That's what I need. Even though I did several loads of laundry on our trip (thank-you, sister dear, for loaning your machine, and, of course, the Embassy Suites free-wine-fiesta is quite amenable to waiting for the laundry to be done!), it has piled up again. Where did it come from? It was all done before we left, and we came back with only the dirty clothes from 2 days of travel. But, here I sit staring at 3 or 4 baskets (now clean) and another two (still to be washed).

Enter Halloween. I thought I had two weeks after we got home from an eight-day trip to California. Nope. Cub Scout party, this Saturday. Happy, happy, joy, joy. My husband e-mailed me from work yesterday to remind me (and, yes, I should have known, since I do the Cub Scout newsletter, so stupid on me). Luckily, or so I thought, I had the stuff already--my son and I bought the materials Sunday when we went on a mall trip. But, then the trouble starts. My husband and son have apparently totally redesigned the costume, against my better wishes. Several dozen e-mails have gone back and forth between yesterday and today, as well as some quite livid in-person conversation last night (which ended with me declaring that, as I was in the process of leaving the house for choir for the evening, they could do what they wanted, but leave me out of it). Then, when I got home, they couldn't find this, and this isn't working, and could I just...sigh. So, more e-mail this morning, and sarcastic words and then nice words. And, we've worked it out.

We started e-mailing each other years ago (the Navy is kind of a hurry-up-and-wait workplace, with massive lulls in between the gotta-do-it-yesterdays, so we'd e-mail to chat back and forth), but, since having the third child and realizing that we either (a) got so busy that we forgot to talk about things in the evening that needed to be discussed or (b) were so tired by the time the kids went to bed that we got nowhere, it's really become a useful tool. My husband is funny, too, because, unlike the stereotypical wife bothering her husband at work with trivialities, most of the time he starts the conversation ("By the way, don't forget that we have_______"...of course, half the time, I didn't know in the first place, but that's another topic!). For two introverts who are of the type to need to think a little bit between volleys, it's helpful, too. Or, sometimes it's as simple as a stream-of-consciousness "Help me remember to talk to you about _______ tonight" (although, I usually send those to his home e-mail, so he sees it when he's checking it while I'm making dinner). And, if there's a sticky issue (money, kid behavior problems, our-parent issues, etc.), we can work it out without the kids around to hear it (particularly with a twelve year old now staying up until 10 pm), which is better for them, too. In the end, even though it's probably an odd way to handle it, I'm glad we've discovered it.

And that's my Silver Lining for today.

The Twouble with Tweens

This year my youngest started kindergarten. I'm toying with getting a job starting in January (i.e. the start of the spring college semester). I couldn't really start this fall because we had a family wedding/vacation to attend, and I didn't want to start a new job and then cause trouble by leaving for over a week. In the meantime, I thought I'd enjoy having time to be alone in the house. You know--to clean, declutter, muck out the kids' rooms when they aren't here to see what I'm removing. Oh, and EXERCISE. Ha! OK, I might have the time if I made it, but I'm lazy at heart and, really, kindergarten just isn't long enough. Plus, I'm just not in any hurry whatsoever to try to figure out how to manage my oldest son's activities. Shoot, I'd put the youngest in after-school daycare in a heartbeat, but who's going to pick the 7th grader up at school at 3:30 pm (when most of the one-hour-after-school extra-curricular activities end)?

That said, one of the reasons I don't have a lot of free time in the mornings is that I started volunteering at the middle school library two mornings per week. I love libraries. I'm thinking about going back to grad school and getting a Master of Library Science degree. Libraries ROCK!! I originally thought I'd volunteer in the elementary school library. But, then, I realized that there are lots of Mommies hanging out at the elementary school, while the middle school has trouble getting people to volunteer for anything. Plus, I figured I owed it to my oldest to give him the first shot, since I had these darned babies the whole time he was in elementary school, and couldn't conveniently come in and volunteer there (Note: Yes, the Mommies will tell me that I could have just brought my toddler with me. No way. Is it really helpful to a teacher or to the PTA book fair if you volunteer-avec-toddler?). All right, and, I'll admit it--the middle school just opened in August and the library is freaking gorgeous!

But, I ramble. I've been having fun at the library. I'm organizing the card catalog, which they still want to use as a learning tool, but haven't been able to keep up to date due to staffing issues. I go in, I grab my work, and I get to it. The librarian and her assistant are nice, the kids come in and out. It's all very pleasant, but mindless. In other words, it's relaxing.

And, the funny thing is that, as many fights as we have over homework; as many times as we tussle over chores or behavior towards parents and younger brothers; as many times as I am subject to that Tween Attitude on Steroids...my son comes to see me every day that I'm in there.

And that's my Silver Lining for today.

Monday Morning

OK, we all have Monday mornings. Some of them more Monday than others. But, doesn't something good happen every day? A smile, a sudden burst of sunshine...SOMETHING?

So, here you have it--my list of somethings. Monday morning somethings. Wednesday afternoon somethings. Sunday-and-the-kids-woke-me-up somethings.

Today's something:

I got into the freezer this morning to get ice. Now, I've gotten into the freezer many times over the last few days. But, what caught my eye this morning (as I prepared to battle an errant McAfee program that had been sending me the same error message every 30 seconds ever since it updated Saturday night)? A little package of meatloaf that I'd stuck in the freezer before we went on vacation 2 weeks ago. Just enough for one sandwich. Mine. All mine. Warmed, rechilled (for proper cold meatloaf consistancy), and slabbed onto wheat bread with mayo. Mmmmmm.

(No photo--it was a done deal before I thought to post this).