It takes a village to raise a mom

My Christmas letter this year is a thank you to all of the people responsible for supporting me in my journey to this place in my life right here, right now. All those people without whom it’s doubtful that I would have my health, my sanity and my sense of humor:

1. For my big, wonderful  family, immediate and extended, who loves me unconditionally, especially my dad, whom I carry in my heart, and who taught me to see the humor in everyday life, and for my mom, who continues to show me how to find joy in the little things in life. And for my wonderful siblings, who make it impossible to take myself too seriously.

2. For my healthy, happy, wonderful kids, who fill my heart with joy, make me laugh, teach me new things every day, and give my life meaning.

3. For all my wonderful friends who love me despite my many flaws, including all the people I’ve reconnected with and/or stay connected with on Facebook and off Facebook, the bunco girls, the book club girls, my amazingly supportive neighbors, the SAHS Pals, my college friends, and Geraldine and Bill, who are each in a category of their own.

4. For the people who love and teach my children, especially Joan, Jorie, Frances, and Anna.

5. For Paris  and the people of St. Christophers, and all the other people who support my faith journey, even when I don’t feel up for the journey.

6. For Ed and Tim, the other people in this world who love my children as much as I do, and who give them a different perspective on life, and teach them things that I can’t.

7. For my colleagues at DePaul, who challenge me in new ways every day, who put up with me on good days and bad, and who don’t expect me to be there by 9:00 every day.

8. For my cleaning woman Todja, who knows where all the bodies are buried.

9. For my piano teacher Perry and my choir director Richard, who make me a better musician (even though I sometimes whine about it.)

10. For the people who read my blog and comment on it, or tell me they like it. I think just about everyone in this group is already covered in one of the above groups, but I just wanted to make sure.

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate. Happy Winter Solstice to those who don’t. And Happy New Year to everyone.

Deb, Emma, David, and Margaret

A room full of tweets

I’ve been thinking about Twitter. Specifically, about the use of Twitter at conferences.  And then I read this post by Joseph Jaffe, in which he states his strong opinion that Twitter should be banned at conferences.  I couldn’t agree more. But I think he misses a few important points.

A little background.  I recently spoke at a conference where there was a lot of tweeting going on. This wasn’t surprising, as it was a social media-related conference.  To be fair, there were no horribly negative experiences, like this this one.  People were respectful, and were complimentary of my presentation in their tweets. But still, I came away with the very strong opinion that conference organizers should respectfully ask the attendees not to Twitter during presentations, and that the organizers should not facilitate the use of Twitter. I want to say emphatically that I am not criticizing the organizers of the conference I attended.  And I’m not even criticizing the conference attendees who were tweeting. Twitter is still relatively new, and everyone is still experimenting with what works. Further, conference organizers are under a lot of pressure to incorporate social media elements into conferences. I also have to confess that I sent a few tweets myself during the conference. Not a lot. But a few.

But having seen twitter in action (and having had the experience of presenting while people were tweeting), here’s my list of why Twitter should not be used during conferences:

1.  It’s rude.  When people go to the trouble to prepare a presentation for a conference, the audience should have the courtesy to pay attention. And when you have your head in your laptop or your Blackberry, you’re not paying attention. It’s really frustrating to look at your audience and see the tops of people’s heads.

2. It’s disrespectful. It’s too easy to be mean on Twitter.  To type something that crosses the line of funny into snarky. And makes the presenter look foolish. While she’s presenting. So as the presenter, you get paranoid wondering what people are tweeting about you.  And worst-case, if people are tweeting nasty things, the presenter can lose control of the audience. (See above example.)

3. It doesn’t add any value. I understand that the idea of the “backchannel” created by Twitter is to allow people who aren’t in attendance to share in the learnings of the conference, and for conference attendees to build on the ideas presented at the conference. But at the conference I attended, the overwhelming majority of tweets were one-line quotes that the presenter said.  And without the context of the rest of the presentation, I don’t see how that’s going to be of any value to anyone not in the room.  And even if there are nuggets of information, how many people are actually going to wade through hundreds or thousands of tweets to get them? And as for the people in the room, they’re hearing it live, so why would they want to read it again on Twitter?

4. It’s a circle-jerk. (Pardon the expression.) So think about it.  You have people sitting in a presentation tweeting. And the majority of the people who are reading the twitter feed are other people who are sitting in the same room. If anyone outside the room was really that interested, they’d be attending the conference, instead of trying to get snippets of information from the Twitter feed.   So the group is in effect tweeting crap to itself. What is the point of that? Why doesn’t everyone just pay attention instead?

5. It will make conferences less valuable in the long run. Because people who have valuable things to say will stop presenting at conferences because it won’t be worth the risk of humiliation.

And those are my 5 reasons to stop the use of Twitter at conferences.

Holiday Preparations…

6:30 a.m. conversation with David:

David:  Look, Mom! Here’s a pretty ornnament.

Me: Be very careful with that one, David. It looks breakable.

David: I’ll be very careful.

CRASH

David (in a sing-song voice): Well, you were right!  It was breakable!

Overheard on the el this morning:

“So I said to Brad, ‘Why don’t we get them movie tickets?’ And he said, ‘You know, I don’t know if they go to the movies all that much as a family.’  And I said, ‘You know what…at this point I don’t even care.’ “

Merry Christmas to you too….

Dear Santa

Dear Santa,

I don’t have much time to write this, as I’m kinda rushing from one thing to the next this weekend.  So forgive the typos (you should see my handwriting if you think my typing is bad.)

I’ve been a very good girl all year. Well, maybe 8 on a 10-point scale. Some days a 5.  But I always usually had the best of intentions. Oh never mind. Judge for yourself. Let’s move on.

Here are the things I’d like for Christmas this year:

1. One more week between Thanksgiving and Christmas. If this is too much to ask (I know it’s December 13 already, so it might be hard to swing), an extra weekend would be okay. Or even an hour. Anything you can do will be fine.

2. An extra dose of patience as David asks me for the tenth time in an hour if it’s time to put the lights on the tree yet. (Seriously, what about “we have to wait for the branches to settle” is so hard for a 6-year-old to understand?)

3.  An automatic gift-wrapping machine. This is my least favorite part.  Christmas cards used to be my least favorite part, but I stopped sending them. So now wrapping is my least favorite part.

4. Good weather on December 26 for our road-trip to PA. I really hate to drive in bad weather. Or any hint of bad weather. Or rain. Or fog.

5. Coffee. Or a glass of wine. Coffee and a glass of wine.

I think I should end the list there. I don’t want to appear greedy.

No need to wrap any of this. I know you and the elves are busy.  And I can only imagine what Mrs. Claus is going through, with all she has to do to get the house ready for Christmas. (I’m guessing you’re not much help with the tree and such, since you’re on the road so much in December. I’d be willing to bet that that’s kind of a sore subject around the Claus house. )

Thanks in advance, Santa!

Love,

Deb

Less frayed around the edges

My sister and brother-in-law came to stay with the kids while I was out of town last week and as a result, we are now a lot less frayed around the edges. I’m happy to report that:

1. We have new shower curtain liners in both showers. No more mildew.

2. All the lights in the house are now working.

3. I have a complete inventory of everything in both freezers (including which freezer it’s in).

4. The refrigerator is clean, all of the shelves are at the perfect height and the cheese drawer is in a better place (no, not heaven. Just a more logical place in the refrigerator.)

5. Margaret dresses herself with no help from me.

6. The dining room table is reoriented the way it really should be (but I never realized that it should be that way.)

7. All of the Tupperware containers and lids are organized (but unfortunately, none of them match each other.)

8. David and Margaret’s Ikea dressers are assembled and all of their clothes are perfectly folded and organized.

9. I no longer have a coffee table next to the couch (that one’s going back, because I don’t have any place to set my coffee when I’m watching TV.)

So this Thanksgiving, I am thankful for my wonderful sister and brother-in-law, who love me and love my kids and come and help me when I need them and un-fray my house.

Things I’ve Been Thinking About

1. Why do airports still have screens displaying arriving flights in the gate area when the only people who can go through security are people who are leaving? Please tell me what I’m missing here.

2. Can’t they figure out a better way to package eggs? By my estimation, approximately half of all egg cartons in the supermarket have at least one broken egg. This seems very wasteful.

3. If someone developed a fragrance called “New Baby Smell”, they would sell a lot of it.

4. Mini-vans should have sensors on the sides which beep when you’re too close to the side of the garage. Another option would be to make sure that the color of the van is the same as the paint color of the garage.

5. Don’t keep pet monkeys in your house. Seriously. Or this will happen.

6. Why does the water in the public-restroom sink only turn on after I STOP waving my hand in front of the sensor?

7. I read a statistic that 2% of people respond to SPAM. I’m dying to know who these people are and what they’re thinking.

8. Clorox Bleach-Free Hand-Sanitizer? Really? Sorry, Clorox, you can say “bleach-free” on the package, but Clorox = bleach, and I’m not putting bleach on my hands.

And those are the things I’ve been thinking about.

Frayed around the edges

If you were to walk into my house today, your first impression would likely be of a small, tidy, relatively uncluttered, fairly clean home.

But if you look more closely, you’d begin to see the evidence that there is way more to be done than I am capable of doing on my own. More to be dealt with than can be fit into two days on the weekend. Days which are already full of birthday parties, grocery shopping, church activities and soccer. (Ok, so soccer is over. I’m still going to use it as an excuse.)

Ballpoint pen on the couch. Permanent marker on the kitchen table. Crayon on the wall(s).  Bed-side lamp that doesn’t work (and no, it’s not the bulb. I tried that already.)  Vanity light in the bathroom that has part of a broken light bulb stuck inside it. Mildewy shower curtain liner.  Bedsheets that are sort of a gray-white-light blue shade because I washed them with a blue sweatshirt in hot water, and that I just haven’t gotten around to bleaching yet.  Dining room rug with permanent stains.  12-year-old Accord with half a front bumper.  (It’s the top half, though, so depending on the angle, you don’t necessarily notice it.)

These are things I will get to someday. Things that don’t really bother me on a daily basis. (Actually, things I don’t even see on a daily basis.)

But they are Things I See when company is about to arrive, which it is on Thursday. (Thankfully, it’s  my sister and brother-in-law, who still love me in spite of my imperfect house. And who will also actually address some of these things while they’re there. Not the ballpoint pen on the couch, though. Or the bumper. Those are beyond hope.)

Someday when my kids are older I will have clean walls and unblemished furniture. Kitchen chairs free of yogurt.

But right now our house is frayed around the edges.  Comfy. Lived in. A bit messy. Just like the rest of my life.

Top 10 rules for parents

So since I found out that the Baby Einstein thing was all a big scam, I’ve been thinking about what I would tell new parents (if asked, that is.  I try really hard – not always successfully – not to give unsolicited advice.)

So here are my “rules” for parenting, for if anyone is interested:

1. Relax. Take a deep breath.

2. Hug your kids a lot and tell them you love them at least once a day. Preferably more.

3. Act delighted to see them when you greet them, and ask them how their day was. (And try to pay attention to the answer for 5 minutes. Which I manage to do about 80% of the time.)

4. Talk to them a lot and use big words.  They may not understand all the big words right away, but they’ll figure them out. That’s how they learn language.

5. Explain why when it makes sense to do so, but don’t be afraid to say, “Because I’m the parent and I said so.”  Because it’s important that they learn to negotiate and persuade, but too much of it gets exhausting. And they need to learn that, in life, sometimes the answer is just no, and they need to accept it.

6. Relatedly, tell them frequently that life isn’t fair.  Better that they understand it than go through life with unrealistic expectations that everything is always fair and just.

7. Be as consistent as you can, but recognize that no one is consistent 100% of the time.  Consistent bedtime routines, regular schedules, plenty of sleep, it’s all good. But breaking the rules sometimes is okay. It helps them be flexible and adaptable. And too much routine can make an adult freaking crazy.

8. Don’t get stressed out if your kid seems to like the caregiver more than you. Kids can never have too many people who love them. And kids know who their mothers are. I know this from personal experience, because growing up, we had a very, very close family friend named Marian, whom I adored. She was like a second mother to me.  There were many days when I wanted to be with her instead of my own mother. To her credit, my mother never felt threatened (or if she did, she never let on.) Despite my attachment to Marian, I always knew who my real mother was.

9. Work full-time, work part-time or don’t work. Do what makes you happy (or whatever makes financial sense.) Happy mother, happy kids. (But if you work, find a caregiver who is delighted to see your child every day.  Thank you, Joanie.)

10. Laugh with your kids a lot. But try not to laugh at them. (At least when they’re around.)

11. Relax. Take a deep breath. (I know I said this already, but it bears repeating.)

Any other advice that you sage parents want to add to the list?

I want my money back

Oh, crap. All those Baby Einstein videos I bought aren’t going to guarantee David’s admission to Harvard? Oops – guess I’ve been duped.

(David who rarely wears a shirt unless he’s leaving the house)

I think Emma was about five when I realized that there’s a reason why most kids don’t get into Harvard, and it’s not that they didn’t watch enough PBS, or they watched too much Barney (thank God those days are over), or they weren’t read to for 20 full minutes a day, or they didn’t play enough Candyland (blech. I hate Candyland.) In many ways, they are who they are from the day they’re born, and the best we can do as parents is stay out of the way and let them be who they’re going to be. (I think Anna Quindlen once said something like that. I know I didn’t make it up.)

It’s nice to be an experienced parent. To not have to get stressed out about how many sight words David knows. Or whether Margaret knows all her colors. Or whether Emma passed her most recent Algebra test. (Ok, let’s not go there.)  There are so many times that I want to say to young parents, “Lighten up. It’s all going to be ok.” (Actually, I do say it sometimes. Not in so many words, though.)

I know, I know. I’ve had my moments.  I didn’t exactly learn all of the lessons the first time around (or maybe I learned them and forgot them in the 10-year gap between David and Emma.) Some of you remember my stress over David not knowing his colors. (In one of my weaker moments, I actually bought colored plastic blocks and drilled him every day for a week before I gave up and figured he’d learn them at some point.)  And my stress over whether he would actually be fully potty-trained by the time he went to pre-school (when he was ALMOST FOUR.) (But guess what? He’s six now, and he goes in the potty every time! And all my stress about it didn’t make any difference!)

I’m not saying that it doesn’t make any difference what we do as parents.  It’s possible to royally screw them up.  But I think that most of us overestimate the long-term effects of the mostly minor daily decisions we make as parents.  Most of it just doesn’t matter.

Now if I could only find those Baby Einstein videos. Where did I put them?

More excuses why I haven’t been blogging

1. Margaret untethered the hot air balloon in the garage and it took me 12 hours to find her.

2. Had to get ready to host bunco.

3. Spending hours and hours making home-made Halloween costumes. No one will believe that one.

4. Catching up on episodes of Glee. (Good show)

5. Catching up on episodes of Modern Family.  (Great show)

6. Catching up on episodes of Dexter, Season 2. (Great show)

7. Trying to practice my art skills so I can stay ahead of David. Futile. He’s already surpassed me. (Not saying much. I can’t even draw a cat that’s recognizable as a cat.)

8. Can’t keep up with news stories about rich, powerful men getting themselves into trouble because they aren’t thinking with their brains. (Not judging, just saying.)

9. Writer’s block. Oh, the pressure.

10. Trying to find the rake. (If you look at my front lawn, you’ll see that I still haven’t found it.)

11. Birthday parties, parent-teacher conferences, weekend get-aways, soccer, work, doctor’s appointments/H1N1 vaccines, Halloween parties, meetings, 10k’s, piano recitals, book club.

But it’s all good…

Recipe for a fun weekend

Here is a list of foods that got us through our girls’ weekend in PA:

1. Peanut butter Oreos

2. Pink ribbon bagels from Panera Bread: http://sheknows.com/blogs/alytude/2008/10/05/pink-and-berry-licious/

3. Crab dip:

2 8 oz. cream cheese (softened)

½ pint sour cream

3-4 Tbsp. mayonnaise

½ tsp. Old Bay seasoning

3 shakes garlic powder

2-3 shakes Worcestershire sauce

Juice of ½ lemon

½ tsp. dry mustard

Mix above with 1 lb. of crabmeat and ½ cup grates, sharp cheddar cheese. Sprinkle a little cheddar cheese on top.  Bake uncovered at 350 for 1 hour.

4. Peanut butter meltaway cake (to die for) 

1 c. margarine

¼ c. cocoa

½ c. buttermilk

1 c. water

2 c. sugar

2 c. flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. vanilla

2 eggs

 

Icing

¾ c. peanut butter

¾ T. oil

½ c. margarine

¼ c. cocoa

1 lb. powdered sugar

6 Tbs. buttermilk

1 tsp. vanilla

 

Combine margarine, cocoa, buttermilk, and water in a saucepan and stir over low heat until bubbles appear, about 5-10 min.  Remove from heat ant add sugar, flour, soda, vanilla, and eggs.  Beat until smooth.

Pour into a greased 9 by 13 inch pan.  Bake in a preheated 350 oven for 25-35 min.  Cool.  Prepare icing.  Mix together peanut butter and oil.  Spread over cooled cake.  Refrigerate for 20 min.   Heat margarine and cocoa until bubbles form.  Add powered sugar, buttermilk, and vanilla, mixing well.  Immediately spread over peanut butter on cake.  Refrigerate before serving.

5. Veggies and dip (hey, we had to eat something healthy)

6. Grapes (ditto)

Kim also told me about a recipe for angel hair pasta that sounded really good, so I figured I’d include that too, even though we didn’t eat it this weekend:

ANGEL HAIR WITH BROCCOLI & SHRIMP

 

1 lb. shrimp (cooked and peeled)

1 bunch broccoli

Salt to taste

¼ c. light olive oil

4 tbs. unsalted butter

2 scallions, cut into ¼ inch pieces

1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed

2 tbs. white wine

16 oz. angel hair pasta

Grated parmesan cheese to taste

 

Cut broccoli into florets. Peel and chop the stem into bite size pieces.  Cook the broccoli in boiling water for 3-4 min. until crisp-tender.  Drain and place in ice water to cool.  Drain.  Heat oil and 3 tbs. butter in saucepan over medium heat.  In a skillet, melt remaining 1 tbs. butter and sauté the scallions and garlic for 2 min. Add the wine and cook for 5 min.  Add melted butter and oil, then the blanched broccoli and cooked shrimp.  Heat thoroughly.  Cook the pasta in a large pot of salted boiling water until al dente, about 30 seconds.  Drain well and place in a serving dish.  Toss with the broccoli mixture.  Serve at once with parmesan cheese.

Happy eating!

And then God laughed at me

My first- and second-born children (Emma and David) both demonstrate traits characteristic of first-borns.  With 10 years between them, it’s not surprising that David is more like a first-born than a middle child.  They are both rule-followers, want desperately to please (well, Emma wanted desperately to please until she became an adolescent), are polite, well-mannered, pleasant to be around, and easy to discipline.  I, of course, chalked this up to superior parenting on my part.  I tsk-tsked at the parents of children who didn’t listen, who laughed when their parents tried to discipline them.  Probably not consistent with the discipline, I thought.  Too lenient. Said no, but then gave in.  Yeah, I had it under control.

And then God sent me Margaret. 

This is a typical picture of her.

Won’t stand still long enough to get her picture taken.

This is a typical video:

 Margaret lives large.  She talked in complete sentences before she was 2 (and I mean, like 11-word sentences.)  She has no physical fear. She makes hilarious faces. She sings at the top of her lungs.  She thinks she’s five.  She has amazing control over her body . She never walked, she just ran.  She’s very affectionate – constantly giving kisses and hugs. She’s absolutely delightful, and she makes me laugh all the time.

And she doesn’t listen. She laughs at me when I discipline her. She won’t stay on the naughty step, no matter how many times I put her back there. She gives me heart failure at the park, because she’s such a dare-devil.  Last week, she flooded the bathroom and smeared my make-up all over everything while she was supposed to be taking a nap (I was blissfully unaware of this, as I was in Pennsylvania.) 

So much for superior parenting.

I wouldn’t change anything about her.  But man, am I tired.

Eat my dust, Mom

Emma and I ran the Frank Lloyd Wright 10k race this morning.  I thought the point was that we were running it together, but apparently I was mistaken, as I discovered immediately after the starting horn, when I found myself inhaling Emma’s dust.  Running the race by myself wasn’t bad - I got into the solitude of it after about the first mile.  Emma and I had different race strategies. She ran a really fast first mile and then slowed down; my first mile was my slowest at 8:42.  I ran each mile a bit faster than the last, and finished in 52:13 (it might have been a bit before that - I forgot to look at the clock as I crossed the finish line - I know, how could I run the whole race and forget to look at the clock? I was busy looking for Emma.) The thing I’m most proud of is that I beat my last year’s time by 3 minutes.  The thing I’m second-most-proud of is that, after running the whole race separately, Emma crossed the finish line only about 10 seconds ahead of me.

It was a beautiful Fall day in Oak Park - cool and windy.  A perfect day for a 6.2 mile run (of such a day exists.)  I felt good throughout the race, although Mile 6 was a killer.  I’m glad I did it, I’m glad Emma and I did it “together”, and I’m glad it’s over.

No rest for the weary – now I have to go clean the garage.

A crock of *******

I’ll be honest.  I have a love/hate relationship with my crock pot.  I love knowing that dinner will be ready when I get home, and I don’t have to do anything.  But I struggle to find recipes that my family likes.  They don’t like roasts (Tim calls them “big hunks of meat”), and so many things I’ve tried come out mushy.  So here are some roast/big hunk of meat recipes that I love, and for which I’ve gotten compliments from other people, even though Tim and Emma don’t love them…and some recipes for things that are meant to be mushy, so they’re fine in the crock pot. 

1. chicken-chili

2. taco-soup

3. slow-cooker-barbecued-ribs

4. Turkey Chili http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Simple-Turkey-Chili/Detail.aspx

5. Pot roast pot-roast

6. Jambalaya jambalaya

7. Beef stew beef-stew

8. Chicken and dumplings http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Slow-Cooker-Chicken-and-Dumplings/Detail.aspx

9. Ham, beans and potatoes. This one’s easy (and really tasty. My mom always used to make it.) Put a big hunk of ham in the crock pot.  Cut 2 potatoes into quarters and add to the crock pot. Drain a can of green beans and add the beans to the cooker.  Add some wedges of green cabbage. Add some water.  Cook on low for 8 hours. Yum…just like Mom used to make.

10. And for something completely different, my friend and colleague, Liz, told me about crock pot cake. Haven’t tried it yet, but Liz recommends it http://www.realsimple.com/realsimple/content/0,21770,1087160,00.html

Please feel free to add other recipes you like in the comments section.

Things I’m grateful for today

1. Margaret is a risk-taker who gives me heart failure every day – they are the ones who can change the world.

2. Emma is laid-back and dispassionate – she won’t make people crazy trying to control them.

3. David is the most literal person I know – the world needs brilliant scientists who can follow directions to the letter.

4. It’s cold outside – makes me appreciate our warm, comfy bed.

5. David and Margaret’s room is still not finished (one week over the original estimated time and counting) – I’m never lonely.

6. David hid Emma’s iPod from her and we still can’t find it – I now know all the places he’s likely to hide things in the future (well, except the place where he actually hid the iPod, that is.)

7. I’m really stiff and sore from the 10k – I got to snuggle with the kiddos in bed this morning instead of going running.

8. The World Series game was suspended in the 6th inning because of rain – my extended family gets to be excited about the Phillies being in the World Series for at least one more day.

9. I can’t figure out how to get my links to show up correctly in by Blogroll – I’ll have such a feeling of accomplishment when I finally break the code.

10. The last roofer did a horrible job and it’s going to cost $2000 to fix it properly so the roof stops leaking – heven’t figured out why I’m grateful for this one yet, but I’m sure it will become clear eventually.

The Christopher Hitchens fan club president

I’m a big fan of Christopher Hitchens.  I disagree with him on many issues – like whether or not God exists (I think hHe does, in case you were wondering.)  I also think he can be a real crank, and probably wouldn’t be very fun to live with.  But I love to read what he writes, and I think he’s right on the money with these two columns he wrote for Slate.com about Sarah Palin:

http://www.slate.com/id/2202642/

http://www.slate.com/id/2203120/

Pennsylvania is a wacky state

And I say that with the utmost affection.  James Carville once said that Pennsylvania is “Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between.”  The author of this article on Slate.com suggests that it’s way more complicated than that, at least as it relates to the current presidential election.  The article explains why Obama is not counting Pennsylvania in the winner’s column yet, and continues to keep the pressure on.

http://www.slate.com/id/2203242

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my

Each year, I feel like I blink and it’s Labor Day, then I blink again and it’s Halloween, I blink again and it’s Christmas, and I blink again and it’s the end of the school year.   As a child, I never loved Halloween.  I could never come up with a really creative costume. As an adult, though, Halloween is one of those “moments” that I look forward to and remember each year.  For the past several years, we’ve had a block party on Halloween, where we block the street and have a party after trick-or treating.  This year, we had a mountain of food – pizza, cake, muffins, fruit, and lots and lots of candy, of course.  Good times had by all.  And now I’ll blink and Christmas will be here.

Here are some pics of our witch and our bat.

Motherhood and apple pie

 

I’ve always wanted to be able to make apple pie like my sister Carolyn.  Her pie is so good, it melts in your mouth.  (My dad loved her pie, and in true Pennsylvania Dutch fashion, ate it in a bowl with milk on top, which, if you’ve never tried it, is really good.)

Of course, the hard part in making pie is in the dough.  I have no trouble mixing the ingredients, but the rolling was always a mess. I could never figure out how to roll the dough so that it didn’t stick to the rolling pin. Or the table.  It was always so much more trouble than it was worth.

Until I found a way to cheat.  Now I roll the dough between two sheets of parchment paper until it’s as thin as I want. Then I peel off the top sheet of parchment, and flip the dough over onto the pie plate, and peel off the other layer of parchment. It’s so easy, and so not messy.  I still feel a bit guilty about it, because I feel like I should be able to do it the old fashioned way.  But not guilty enough to figure out how to do it the hard way.

Freezable pie dough (makes 5 crusts)

2 1/2 cups vegetable shortening

5 cups flour

2 tsp. salt

1 egg (slightly beaten in same 8 oz. cup shortening was measured in)

2 tsp. vinegar

Combine flour, salt, shortening. Chop fine. Add vinegar to cup containing beaten egg. Fill cup (8 oz.) with cold water.  Add all at once to flour mixture. Combine with hands.  Separate into 5 dough balls.  Freeze in separate plastic bags.

To roll pie dough, place dough between 2 sheets of parchment paper lightly dusted with flour, and roll until thin.  Remove top sheet of parchment paper and flip dough over into 9-inch pie pan.

Carolyn’s Apple Pie

5-7 tart apples (I prefer McIntosh)

3/4 to 1 cup sugar

2 Tbsp. enriched flour

dash salt

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

dough for 2 crusts (or 2 refrigerated pie crusts, if you don’t want to make your own)

2 Tbsp. butter

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Peel apples and slice thin. Mix sugar, flour, salt, spices; add to apples.  Fill 9-inch pastry-lined pie pan. Dot with butter. Adjust top crust and make slits with knife.   Bake 50 minutes at 400 degrees.

Today is a very exciting day

I voted last week, so I’m not taking part in the long lines today.  (Although Tim reported that he was in and out in three minutes at our polling place in Oak Park.)  Part of me wishes that I was part in the excitement today, but never mind. It’s still exciting.

I was thinking this morning about why this campaign has felt so different.  I think Barack Obama changed the rules.  Not only the obvious rule about not electing a black president, but the rule about how you run for president.  The old fundraising rule was that you got 10,000 rich people to donate $10,000 each.  Obama made a new rule, which is that you ask millions of people to donate $5, or $50, or $100, whatever they can give.  And then you also ask them to volunteer whatever time they can give.  And in so doing, you build on the excitement you’re creating with your message. 

In the past week, my brother and sister have each told me that they contributed to Obama’s campaign (and my sister is also volunteering at the phone bank in Pittsburgh today. ) I don’t know how much they gave – it’s not important.  But my guess is that they don’t regularly contribute to political campaigns.  See, we don’t come from a family that talked about politics.  Dad made it clear that he voted straight Republican and no one else talked about it.  (Mom always insisted that it was her right and responsibility to keep it to herself, and we kids knew what that really meant.)  Earlier this year, Mom refused to vote in the Pennsylvania primary, because as a registered Republican, she could only vote in the Republican primary, and she said she wasn’t voting until she could vote for Obama.  You go, Mom.

I feel sorry for John McCain.  He’s not perfect, but he’s a good man, doing the best he can. He’s wanted to be president for a long time, and this is his last chance.  I can’t imagine how it feels to pour your whole self into a campaign like this and then lose. But others have come through it, and he will too.

I’m grateful to be an American, today and every day (It’s on my gratitude list “hit parade”).  It’s not perfect, but how could it be, given that it’s made up of 300 million imperfect people.  We all do the best we can. Despite it’s problems, I’d still rather live here than anywhere.  I’m also proud to be an adopted Chicagoan, as the crowds start to gather a few blocks from my office for tonight’s celebration. 

I feel hopeful that things will get better. Maybe they won’t, but it’s worth a shot. (Note to self: don’t make more than $250k a year, or you’re pretty much screwed.)

It isn’t a holiday, but it sure feels like one.  Happy Election Day, everyone.

Regrets only

How would you answer the question, “What is your biggest regret?”

Frog Jesus

The other day I received an email with a video link from a certain person I used to be married to who shall remain nameless.  While he and I have different opinions on many issues, I respect his opinions, and usually read or view the things he sends me.  He’s no Barack Obama fan, so the emails have been coming more regularly of late.  This particular email was odd, as it contained only a YouTube video link, with no explanation.  I pasted the link and was taken to the following video, entitled “Frog Jesus”:

I spent the next twelve or so hours trying to figure out why he had sent it to me and what it meant. I didn’t want to ask him, because I didn’t want to appear stupid or naive (a character defect which gets me into trouble on a fairly regular basis.) Was the frog supposed to represent Barack Obama, and the way many Americans are making him out to be “The One”? But what was the meaning of the crucifixion? Was he mocking the fear that many people have that Obama won’t make it through his first term? 

It wasn’t until yesterday morning, when I pasted the link into the blog, intending to ask the readers what you thought the meaning was, that I realized that there must have been an internal error in YouTube which took me to the Frog Jesus video, instead of this Obama video, where he makes reference to the 57 United States, which he was intending to send to Emma:

But I’m still haunted by Frog Jesus, and the person who made it. What WERE they thinking?

Where have all the neighbors gone?

I’ve always wanted to live on the kind of block my siblings grew up on…the kind of block where everyone knew each other, where there were a ton of kids, and where people threw impromptu parties for the whole block.  I didn’t grow up on that kind of block.  In fact, I grew up in the same house my siblings grew up in, but because I was so much younger than my siblings, all the neighbor kids had grown up and moved away by the time I grew up.  We still knew all the neighbors, certainly. And when I got locked out occasionally, there were plenty of houses I go to to (including my Nana’s), either to get a key, or at minimum, to have a glass of iced tea while waiting for one of my parents to get home.  I was enchanted by the stories of the block…of hot summer evenings where someone would throw a beer can in the street to notify everyone that the evening’s party would be at his house…of kids playing ball in the street until the ball accidentally went into the old lady’s yard, only to be confiscated by said lady (we imagined a big closet full of nothing but balls.) 

So i dreamt of a block full of kids and parties, of people borrowing a cup of sugar, and of  everyone keeping an eye on everyone else’s kids.  And to my delight, the block we live in is exactly that.  Interestingly, it wasn’t that way when Emma and I moved in almost eight years ago – she was one of the only kids on the block.  But since we moved in, new families have moved in (and some have moved out again), babies have been born, babies have arrived from foreign countries, and our block has grown into the place I always wanted to live.

And so I’m a bit melancholy today, because the weather has turned cold, and we will see the neighbors infrequently until spring.  We’ll still plan events – the Christmas party and kids’ gift exchange, a Saturday “blocktail party” on a cold winter day when the kids and adults are going stir crazy and need somewhere to go, even if it’s just across the street.  We’ll email and talk on the phone.  We’ll see each other and wave as we drive down the street.

But it won’t be the same as those wonderful summer days where we gather on Pegeen’s or Stephanie’s porch, and someone with a bottle of wine will bring it out, and someone else with juice boxes will bring them out, and yet another someone else will bring the pretzels.  And the kids will ride bikes up and down the block, and play hide and seek, and play baseball.  And we will laugh and catch up on the weeks’ events, and stay out a bit later than planned.  And sometimes dinner won’t get made, so we’ll order a pizza instead. 

No, for the winter we’ll be bundled up, and we’ll use the back door instead of the front because we need to put the car in the garage.  We’ll cook dinner on time, and we’ll put the kids to bed on time, because they have to go to school tomorrow.  It will be dark when we rise, and it will be dark when we walk out of work at 5:00. 

Good-bye warm weather. Good-bye neighbors.  See you in the spring.

I finally figured out what it’s about

This blog, that is.

It came to me this morning as I was getting ready to go for a run before leaving for breakfast with my sponsor, followed by an “open” AA meeting (a meeting open to anyone, regardless of whether or not you’re an alcoholic), followed by a blogging seminar, with a quick trip home in-between to make something that Emma could throw in the oven for dinner.  I was just about to put on my running clothes, and David said the magic words, “Mommy, will you snuggle on the couch with me”? And in about 5 seconds, I evaluated the situation, and decided to snuggle instead of going for a run.  I could say it was a gut decision. But I know that I actually spent about 5 seconds quickly evaluating the options. On the “pro-run” side, I was going to be sitting in a hotel conference room for two hours in the afternoon, and it would have been good to get some exercise.  On the “pro-snuggle” side, I went for a run yesterday, I wasn’t feeling particularly sluggish, and I wasn’t going to get to spend much time with the kids today.  Easy decision.

It’s cliche to say that life with kids and a career is a balancing act.  I would bet that you could read thousands of blog posts about it every day from moms who are always feeling guilty. Do I really have anything new and fresh to add to that conversation?

But here’s the thing: I don’t feel guilty.  I’m not sure what you call a person like me, but for some reason, the word “satisficer” comes to mind. I don’t know if that’s the correct use of the term (I think I’ve heard it before in the context of purchsing decisions), but whatever, I’m going to make it my own.  The fact is that I have friends who work longer hours. And friends who take their kids to the park more. And friends who run marathons.  And friends who are more active in Al-Anon. But I prioritize my life, I make choices, and I do a good job (not a perfect job) at all of the things I do.  And I let go of the things I can’t do, or that I do at less than 100%. The bottom line is that my kids are happy, healthy, bright, and well-behaved (well, Margaret’s not so well-behaved, but it’s not really my fault – she was born that way). I’m well-respected at work, and I do work that I’m proud of.  I have wonderful friends. I have so many blessing in my life. Why feel guilty about it?

This blog is about my observations and experiences as a wife, mom, higher ed marketer, daughter, sister, runner, cook, Al-Anon member, friend, singer, pianist, Episcopalian book-lover, and how I manage to do a good enough job at all of them without feeling guilty.

That wasn’t a randomly-ordered list, by the way, but a prioritized order.  Things change – the priorities will probably change order at some point. And if something gets out of whack, I’ll have to adjust things.  I may have to let things go. I may want to add other things.  I’ve already made choices in my career based on that element being really out-of-whack (not so much that I worked too many hours, but that I HATED MY JOB and that threw everything out of whack.)

So that’s what this blog is about. Whew – I’m so glad that’s settled. I guess I have to change the name of it at some point, because “Laughter is the Best Medicine” doesn’t really fit. But that will be a decision for another day…

Another Friday of odds and ends

It’s been a light blogging week, folks.  The AMA Higher Ed conference wore me out.  I’ll try to do better next week, but here’s today’s hit parade of odds and ends:

1. I couldn’t have said it better myself.  Joseph Jaffe talks about how the Big 3 automakers got themselves into this mess, and how frustrating it is to think about bailing them out: http://www.jaffejuice.com/2008/11/what-we-have-here-is-a-failure-to-communicate.html

2. This is without a doubt the stupidest study I’ve ever read. I guess 100% of people have long-term developmental problems, because EVERY ONE of our parents used front-facing strollers: http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/family/11/21/baby.buggies/index.html

3. I can just picture Pete’s dad (who used to be general counsel at Helene Curtis, back in the day) shaking his head: http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20238396,00.html

4. I know it’s a turkey, but who’s that with Sarah Palin:

5. I’m not a huge Rosie fan (more like a Rosie agnostic) but this is pretty funny:

http://weblogs.newsday.com/entertainment/tv/blog/2008/11/rosie_odonnell_reaction_to_bab.html

6. Jack is back. I don’t care if it’s getting mediocre reviews, I’m still going to watch it: http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/2008/11/24-kiefer.html

7. Amen, Kathleen: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped1112parkernov12,0,1115580.column

The Maue Sisters take their act on the road

Fred, Deb, Phil, Carolyn

One of the highlights of the holiday for me was last Sunday, when my sister Carolyn and I sang duets in my brother Phil’s church in Shamokin, PA.  He plays the organ in a little UCC church.  It’s such a small church that the Maue family just about doubled the size of the congregation on that particular Sunday. 

Phil is playing the piano in both of these videos, but unfortunately, the Maue Sisters are standing directly in front of him,  so you can’t even tell he’s there until the end of the second video.

“What Shall I Give Him?”

“The Gift Of Love”

Next year, we’re going to get my brother Fred and sister-in-law Leta Jo in on the act.  Maybe we’ll just take over the service and do a concert. The Maue family…give us an inch, we take a yard.

Other photos from Sunday:

Emma and Fred

Carolyn

Mame and Mom

Odds and ends (mostly odds)

1. Why is Oprah’s boyfriend, Stedman, in the news all the time these days?

 

Oh wait, never mind. That’s Eric Holder.

2. Thank you Sully, pilot of the airliner that crashed into the Hudson River.  In addition to saving the lives of all 150 people on board the plane, you provided a real-life eaxmple of one of the messages I’m trying to impart to Emma, teen student driver, who argues that you can be a really good driver without lots of experience.  It was the years and years of experience you had that made you know instinctively what to do in a crisis, and allowed you to stay calm and do what you had to do under immense pressure. 

3. Thought I’d give you the  schedule for Inaguration Day, in case you hadn’t seen it.  If you call me on Tuesday, I probably won’t answer the phone, at least between about 11-2. I’m just sayin’. Email me if you need me.

4. In case you missed the first few episodes of the new season of “24″, let me give you the highlights: bad people are putting the people of the U.S. in danger, Jack Bauer used illegal force against said bad people to get them to tell him what’s going on, and then Jack did something really dangerous that caused an accident that he should have died from, but he’s fine (just a little out of breath.) Wait, I’m sorry. That was the last season of “24″. Or the one before that.  (Full disclusure: I am a huge “24″ fan.)

5. Is it just me, or does it seem like a lot of people are suddenly disappearing from cruise ships? Add that to my list of reasons not to go on a cruise, right after “seasickness”.

6. Remember my point about beer drinking in Central PA earlier in the week (the fact that people still drink a lot of it, even though it’s a real hassle to buy it?) Here are the statistics.

Twittering the time away

I still can’t figure out Twitter.  I mean, I know how to use it.  It’s pretty simple.  It’s social instant messaging using a 140 characters or less.  The technical description for it is “micro-blogging”, where people send messages to their “followers”.  You sign up to follow people, and then people sign up to follow you, and then it starts to get weird.  Let me give you an example.  John follows Mary, and Mary follows John.  Susie follows Mary, but not John.  So John sends  a “tweet” to his followers, and since Mary is a follower, she sees his tweet(which Susie doesn’t see, remember, because she doesn’t follow John.) Mary thinks John’s tweet was thought-provoking or hilarious, or both, and she decides to respond to his message with something equally thought-provoking and/or hilarious, and both John and Susie see Mary’s tweet, because they both follow her.  And Susie has NO IDEA WHAT THE HELL MARY IS TALKING ABOUT, because she didn’t see the original tweet. See? I said it was weird.

I  have exactly 150 followers on Twitter, and I follow 178 people.  Which means I get about 1000 tweets a day, of which I maybe read skim 100.  If that.  I send about one tweet a day, usually either in response to something someone else tweeted (thereby causing confusion for the people who follow me, as I illustrated in the example above), or commenting on some random thing in the news or at work. I don’t know how I got 150 followers.  Mostly, it was in response to people who started to follow me.  (This is common courtesy on Twitter. You follow people who follow you, unless they’re spammers or Amway representatives.) I don’t know how 150 people knew I was on Twitter.  But as I said, it’s weird. 

I joined Twitter to see what all the fuss was about.  I started by following experts in social media, but I’m finding that many of them annoy me, because they have huge egos.  Now I find that my favorite “tweeple” (sorry, I meant “people”) to follow are actually journalists.  I like getting my news the moment it happens. 

Speaking of which, an interesting thing happened on Thursday, when the plane crashed into the Hudson River.  I started getting “tweets” about 2 minutes after the crash happened.  Twitter scooped the main-stream media big-time.  People saw the crash from their apartments and started tweeting. And then other members started re-tweeting (re-sending the same message, and crediting the person who originally sent it.)

Now I have no idea what the implications of this are.  Would anything about the crash or the aftermath have been any different if it had taken people 20 minutes to hear about it on CNN Breaking News instead of hearing about it instantly on Twitter? I highly doubt it.  But it was fascinating to watch. 

I haven’t figured out yet whether Twitter is an important tool for recruiting students.  So far, it’s not being used extensively by universities.  And it’s certainly not clear that those that are seeing results from it.  Time will tell.

But it does look like it’s here to stay.  For those interested in learning more, or those who are still at the “I think Twitter is really dumb” stage (which I still revert to periodically), here are the 5 stages of Twitter acceptance.

If you’re on Twitter and you’d like to follow me, I’m @debmaue.  I’ll follow you back.

A familiar cry in the night

At 3:30 this morning, I was awakened by a distinctive cry.  As I swung my legs over the side of the bed, I said to Tim, “David threw up”. To which he responded, “How do you KNOW that?” And I knew because it’s a cry in the night like no other – actually, it’s two cries. The first is caused by the discomfort of severe nausea combined with the fear of what they know is going to happen next.  Then there’s silence (the actual throwing up time.) And then the distinctive cry of shock, fear, shame, and revulsion, a combination of feelings unique, I believe, to vomiting.

Those of you who are parents (and anyone who isn’t has most likely stopped reading already) know this drill.  I never experience that overwhelming feeling of “I have no idea what to do first” like I do when my child vomits.  (Actually, that overwhelming feeling is preceded by the realization that I would pay someone. Anyone. a lot of money to walk into my child’s room at that moment so that I didn’t have to. )  The list of to-do’s seems endless in the middle of the night: Clean up David. Put on new jammies. Clean up the floor. Strip the bed.  Start laundry. Put towels on the bed. Remake the bed.  Get the bucket from the basement.  Turn my pillow over in case some stomach-flu germs got on my pillow during snuggle-time. )

We divided and conquered. (There are many times I’m thankful that I have a spouse, but never more than throw-up time). I took David into the bathroom  (Is there a way to comfort your child without actually having to touch him?) and did the kid clean-up/jammie change, etc.  Tim started on the room clean up. Luckily, most of it landed on the bare floor (thank goodness the new rug for the kids’ newly-remodeled room wasn’t in the budget this month!) I started the laundry.  Tim made the bed. We put the kids back to bed.

Then came the sleepless horror for the next hour, as I imagined what the next week could be like, as we all  go down with it: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Wondering in what order we’d go. 

With daylight came the realization that David hadn’t thrown up again, and the hope that maybe it was a fluke, caused by severe coughing or some other random event of the universe.  So far, everyone seems okay.  Keeping my fingers crossed.  And washing my pillowcase, just to be sure.

January blahs

I try really hard not to complain. Really I do.  Each morning I list the 25 things I’m grateful for.  I know that my life is easy compared to the lives of most people in the world (even most people in the U.S.)  But I have never experienced life in Darfur…so the relevant comparison is my life in January vs. my life in not-January.  And my life is so much harder right now vs. what it was like in, say, October.  

First, there’s the lack of light.  I get up in the dark, and I go home in the dark.  I catch glimpses of daylight as I look out my office window, and when I run across the street to Subway to get my lunch. But that’s about it.

Then there’s the cold. Bone-chilling cold, particularly when there’s snow in the air. (Don’t get me started on the wind.)Not only do I have to wear a hat, which I hate (I’m no Aretha Franklin, in case you hadn’t noticed), but I’ve been wearing the same pair of boots every day for a month.  It’s a hassle to carry shoes with me, so I bought boots that are actually acceptable for the business dress code that we have in our office (don’t get me started on that either) and I wear them all day. Every day. For a month.

And not only does the cold affect my own personal attire, but it adds approximately 20 minutes to our morning routine, between the added clothing elements that have to be located and donned in the morning (putonyourbootsputonyourbootsputonyourboots) to the extra time it takes getting to and from the car, to the time it takes to take off all the added clothing.

Next, there’s the difficulty in walking down the street.  I am not known for my gracefulness, and I never learned to ice skate (or even roller skate, for that matter). I have not fallen yet this year (knock wood), but I have come dangerously, embarrassingly, gracelessly close, as I’ve lost my balance and looked like an idiot while regaining it.

Finally, there’s the difficulty of getting the kids in and out of the van.  The curbs are covered with about 18 inches of snow/ice.  There are narrow shoveled paths, yes.  But if I position the van so that Margaret’s door is in front of the shoveled path so that it’s easy to get her in, then I have to climb over the snow/ice banks to get into the street to get into my side of the van.  (I think I’m not explaining this particularly well. Just think about a big mountain of snow the entire length of the street between the sidewalk and the street.)

I’m going to put my head under the covers now. Wake me when it’s March.

Random Friday

The newest Cabbage Patch Doll

I’ve run out of variations on “odds and ends”, so I had to come up with another title.

1. Interesting article by David Pogue on twitter. (I’m getting really good at this live links thing, aren’t I? Huh?…Huh?) 

2. Another great post from Bob Hoffman, the Ad Contrarian, on social media and its potential for marketing. Any marketer who reads this is now scared shitless, as we’re all putting more and more resources (money AND people) in social media.

3. Whatever it is, I’m against it. (A little Groucho Marx on a Friday afternoon.)

4. The octuplets’ mom already had six children. Not passing judgment. Just wondering why you would subject yourself to fertility treatments (or would even want them, for that matter) if you already had six children. I’ve had fertility treatments, and it’s no picnic. To me, having more than six children would be no picnic either, though. Again, not passing judgment. Just saying.

5. For the second year in a row, we’re having a pretend  Super Bowl party.  We’re not actually having anyone over, because they would talk too much and then I might miss some of the commercials. We’re just making food as if we were having people over.  Wiener dogs, chips and salsa, veggie tray (with lots and lots of olives. I love olives), and pizza rolls. Yum. 

Go Steelers!

Super Bowl musings

1. Oh, please, the crew of the US Airways flight? Give me a break.

2.  Can there really be any player who doesn’t know the rules of the coin toss? I think the ref should just ask if there’s anyone who needs the rules explained.  If not, skip it.  It would save time.

3. Love the Pepsi ad with Bob Dylan (“Forever Young.”) Makes me want to drink Pepsi, but all we have in the fridge is Diet Coke.  Maybe tomorrow.  [Emma says: Diet Coke is soooooo much better than Pepsi]

4. I love super bowl food! -Emma

5. So far, most of the ads have involved bodily harm and/or insults.  I’m sorry…am I the only one who doesn’t find this stuff funny? The game is actually more exciting than the ads – 1st half, anyway.

6. Wow. Just wow. A 100 yard interception return.  Wow. I can’t stop saying wow.

7. The Pepsi “Forever Young” ad was the best of the first half ads. eTrade was second.

8. Did Bruce Springsteen just pole-dance with that microphone stand?

9. I’m surprised that the Boss didn’t play “Born in the U.S.A.” Not disappointed. Just surprised.

10.  Even the Southwest Airlines commercial was lame.  And their commercials are usually funny.

11. This is one quick Super Bowl.

12. Love the Hulu ad with Alec Baldwin.  I know he’s acted like a jerk in his personal life, but I have to admit, I LOVE Alec Baldwin. He makes “30 Rock” so funny.

13.  Oh my God, the Cardinals are going to win this game (Cardinals just went up 23-20).

14. I just about had a heart attack leading up to that Steeler’s touchdown.  Woo-hoo!!! Game ovah.

15. OMG – that eTrade commercial with the baby in the golf visor was hilarious.  “It was on the cart path. Shankipottamus.”

Super waste of money

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This photo has absolutely nothing to do with this blog post.  But we got our picture taken at church on Sunday, and I wanted to post it, and hey, this is my blog, so I can do what I want. I love the expression on David’s face.

No, this blog post is about the Super Bowl.  The Super Bowl ads, to be precise.  All of the buzz around the ads got me thinking, do the Super Bowl ads actually get anyone to buy anything?  I know I’m probably not a typical American consumer.  I don’t buy Doritos or beer (and if I bought beer, I wouldn’t buy Budweiser.) I’m not in the market for a new car, and I’m not looking to get a new job. I don’t go the movies.  I don’t have a lot of gold, and I’m not looking to sell the gold that I have.  I already use hulu.com on a regular basis, and I’d be ashamed to tell you how much Diet Coke we buy (and consume) on a weekly basis.  Our insides would corrode if we drank any more.

So I’d really be interested in hearing from you about whether you saw any Super Bowl ads that made you want to buy something.

Despite all the hype generated by the Super Bowl ads, the purpose of advertising is to get people to buy stuff.  Or get them to buy more stuff they’re already buying.  Or take some action that will get them closer to buying your product. (I know, I know, a lot of people went to the GoDaddy.com site to see Danica Patrick, but how many of them were interested in Web hosting? Not many, I’d guess.)   Believe me, I know that advertising has a long-term brand-building effect as well.  But if all you’re doing is getting people to think more highly of your brand  (and I would argue that most of the Super Bowl ads didn’t even do that effectively), then you’re wasting your money.

Do I think that advertising on the Super Bowl is ever a good idea? Sure.  I think that if you have a major new product introduction (like something on an iPod scale), it’s a great way to get your product seen by mega-millions of people, both during and following the game. Ditto if you have a major product improvement.  If you want to drive people to a Web site to take some kind of action (some kind of action that relates to your actual product or service, that is), I think it makes sense.  Or if you have a special, short-term deal you want to announce – like “free breakfast at Denny’s before 2:00″, it can really spread the word.

Or if you have a product that will make my almost 3-year-old use the potty, or get my kids to stop fighting.  I’d buy those in a second.

A memory seared in my brain

(USA Today photo)

I’m surprisingly disturbed by the fire burning this morning at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago. On the face of it, there would appear to be no reason for that.  No one died (or was hurt), and the fire appears to have spared the worship area, although it did suffer water damage. (Note: the fire was declared out at 8:00, at which time they allowed Cardinal George to enter, so it must be okay.)

But the sight of a church burning takes me right back to one of my most vivid memories of childhood – the night in 1971  that St. Edwards’ Church in Shamokin, PA  burned to the ground. 

 St. Edward’s Church (now Mother Cabrini) is notable in history because it was the first church in the U.S. to have electric lighting, which was lit for the first time on Sept. 22, 1883.  (And no, I didn’t remember that. Wikipedia told me. )

If it was 1971, I was eight.  I remember being awakened by the fire alarm. 

Now, let’s talk for a moment about the fire alarm in Shamokin. It was a sound like no other I’ve heard since. It was like an awful honking sound. The number and lengths of the honks indicated where the fire was. So you could tell how close it was to your house.  And the number of honks at the end indicated how big the fire was, so the fire companies could tell who was needed. And it was so loud, it could wake the dead.

I was terrified of the fire alarm because I was terrified of fire, a result, my mother believes, of watching our back yard burn after my oldest brother Phil set it on fire when I was about 2. (It wasn’t our back yard, exactly, it was a second yard beyond it which we called the “upper yard.” I know. Weird.)

Normally, everyone would have gone back to sleep, but the number of honks of the fire alarm indicated that it was a big fire.  I heard footsteps in the house, and we soon were in the attic (which, because it was finished, we referred to as the “third floor.”)  I will never forget the sight – the sky was burning orange, like the whole sky was on fire.  My dad got in the car to see if he could find out where it was, and he soon came back and reported that it was St. Ed’s.

Much of my memory of the fire comes from stories I heard after the fact. People standing watching in horror as the steeple came crashing to the ground.  And brave priests running into the burning building to save sacred vestments and vessels.

When a church burns, it isn’t only the physical damage that’s so disturbing. It’s the image of fire – symbolizing death and destruction – engulfing a sacred space. It feels like evil is triumphing over good.  It’s devastating to the parishioners and to the church as a community.

St. Ed’s went on to be rebuilt, and was re-dedicated in 1974. I was married there (my first wedding) in 1991. (It was a compromise – we could get married in Shamokin if we got married in a Catholic church.)  It’s a pretty church, with an altar made of coal, in tribute to the many coal miners and their families who worshiped there.

Yet the memory of the burning sky remains.

Do any other Shamokinites have memories of that night?

The easiest, fastest, best chicken recipe ever

Yes, really, I promise you it is.  The whole family loves it.

I found this recipe about 7 years ago in the New York Times Magazine, and it is my family’s favorite chicken recipe ever.  You make a sauce with low -fat sour cream, low-fat mayonnaise, lemon juice, chutney, and curry and pour it over chicken and bake. These happen to be ingredients I always have on-hand, so I can decide to make it at the last minute. The sauce is delicious, and the chicken stays really moist. (I prepared it this morning, and my family was so happy to see anything other than the crock pot it.)

Now I know that some of you are thinking, “I don’t like curry. I think I’ll make it without it.” (I know this because I can see you sneering.) I assure you that I don’t like curry either (nor does Emma), but I love it in this recipe, and I would encourage you to try it, because I don’t think it would taste the same without it.

Chicken Breasts with Chutney/Curry Sauce

4-5 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1/2 cup low-fat mayonnaise

1/2 cup low-fat sour cream

2 Tbsp. Major Grey’s chutney (in my supermarket, it’s with the mustard and ketchup, not the jelly)

1 tsp. curry powder

Juice of 1 lemon

Lay the chicken breasts flat in a baking dish. Combine all other ingredients and pour over the chicken.  Bake in a  hot (450 degree) oven until done. (Depending on the number and size of chicken breasts, it’s usually 30-40 minutes.) I serve it with buttered egg noodles to soak up the sauce, but you could also serve it with bread, or rice, or any other carb that will soak it up.  Serve with a brightly-colored vegetable like carrots or broccoli, because if you serve it with something like cauliflower, everything on the plate will be white. (Note: I have nothing against cauliflower.)

A great day in the worst month

I think February is the worst month.  (I know, I know, I complained a lot about January.  But my birthday is in January, so there’s always at least one bright spot in the month for me.)  But February, despite the fact that it only has 28 days, always feels like a very loooonnng month.  But we are having lovely weather this weekend, and maybe February won’t be so bad after all.  And today is a great day, because:

1. I went for a run outside, for the first time since November. And didn’t have to worry about falling and breaking anything. (Well, because of the ice, anyway. There’s still my innate clumsiness to worry about.)

2. I can actually see that we have grass on the front lawn, as (almost) all of the snow is melted.

3. I took  the kids to the park (where they got really muddy.  But that’s okay.)

4. For the first time since mid-December, I wore real shoes outside, instead of my boring black boots.

5. The sun was shining all day.

6. David and Margaret picked up all of their toys without much prompting. (That had nothing to do with the weather.)

7. For the first time in about six weeks, not one person in our house has snot running down his or her lip, or a hacking cough.

8. Margaret took a nap! (Promising a trip to the park does wonders.)

Only 20 more days until March…

Randomness

Not much blogging going on this week.  I hurt my back and am pretty crabby and don’t feel like doing much.  But here are a few random things I found interesting in the last few days:

1. Very funny Facebook parody on YouTube:

2. For you Snuggie fans, here’s a parody from YouTube. (It’s just a blanket with sleeves, folks. Really.)

3. Interesting (to me, anyway) article about Twitter from New York magazine.

4. An upside to the recession, as Muzak goes bankrupt?

5. My favorite line of the week from 24.  President Taylor asks Jack why she should trust him.  Jack says, “With all due respect, Madam President, ask around.” I love Jack Bauer.

But who am I really?

Sorry, folks, this blog post isn’t going to be funny. I’m not in a funny mood.

You see, my identity has been stolen. Again. I got a call tonight from a car dealer on the South Side.  A woman was trying to buy a car using my identity.  Actually, when her credit wasn’t good enough to qualify for the loan, she said that her “aunt” would co-sign the loan, and she presented my name, address, phone number, and social security number.

This isn’t the first time this has happened to me.  The first time was 13 years ago, when I got a call from a check cashing place that a woman was trying to cash an insurance check in my name, using a fake id. The check cashing place confiscated the id, kept my check, and that was that. My neighbor at the time had stolen the check from my mailbox.

This time appears to be worse.  I first got a call in December that someone had added herself as an authorized buyer to my Macy’s card, and was using it to purchase thousands of $$ of merchandise at Macy’s.  I did everything you’re supposed to do – I filed a police report, cancelled my credit cards, and placed a flag on all of my credit reports.

It was the flag on the credit report that saved me this time.  The finance manager called to verify my information.

I’ve worked hard to protect my credit.  And this makes me more valuable to identity thieves. If my credit was lousy, my information would be worthless. 

Having my identity stolen creeps me out.  It makes me paranoid. Is there someone out there watching me? Do they know how many kids I have, and their names and ages? What else do they know about me? Will someone not as scrupulous and honest as the finance manager allow them to do real damage? Is there more than one person who has my information, so that even if one is caught, others will attempt to do the same thing?

I’m not even going to get into the whole “why do some people think they have the right to take what isn’t theirs” thing. No, just not going to go there, because there’s no good answer.

Compared to the damage done to some people, I know that this is minor. And I’m grateful for that. But it still pisses me off.

10 Things I Don’t Understand

1. Why people go on talk shows if they don’t want to talk (Joaquin Phoenix).

2. Why potholes happen.  I know it has something to do with ice and snow but I don’t know what. Probably involves physics, the only class I dropped in college, because I couldn’t understand it.

3. What Rod Blagojevich is thinking.

4. Teletubbies and SpongeBob, Squarepants.

5. How the Internet works.

6. Why no one else can figure out how to make French Fries that taste as good as McDonalds.

7. Why the sink in the 1st floor bathroom is still clogged after three Drano treatments. Come on, it’s only toilet paper the kids put down there! (I think.)

8. Why ice keeps forming on the bottom of the freezer so that about every two weeks I have to hit it repeatedly with a meat tenderizer to get it to break up, and then I have to clean up all the ice.  I think we have a leak somewhere.

9. Why the only toy a child wants at any given time is the exact toy that the other child is playing with at said time.

10. What happened to the partners for the approximately 100 individual socks I have stored away in a plastic bag.  I know that as soon as I throw them away, those 100 partners are going to show up!

Inside out

Here are a few things I’ve learned in the past year:

1. When I compare myself to someone else, I can only compare my insides to their outsides. And it’s not a valid comparison. Most people look waaaayyyy more together on the outside than they feel on the inside (myself included).

2. Hurt people hurt people.  People who say and do hurtful things usually learned it from someone else.

3. Most people don’t wake up in the morning thinking, “I think I’ll be an asshole today.”  I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: most people are just doing the best they can.

4. Shame is a bitch of an emotion.  You can’t see someone else’s shame, because we all mask it with other things, like anger and frustration, because shame is so shameful that we’re even ashamed of being ashamed.  I think a lot of really bad behavior comes from shame, but it’s so hard to recognize it in other people.

5. It’s kind of stupid to worry about things that are going to happen in the future, because it never works out exactly the way you think it’s going to.  So all that dress rehearsal was just time wasted.

6. There’s nothing you can do to change the past, so you might as well learn what you can from it and then let it go (or at least try to just think about the good stuff.)

7. You might as well beat your head against a wall trying to get someone else to do something they really don’t want to do. This is true if they’re 3, or 43, or 93. You may have leverage, but you got no control.

8. Riding in a car with someone who’s just learning to drive is a really scary experience. 

 (Sorry, had to throw that one in there.)

And then you’ll be a man, my son

My son (my only son, David, 5) adores his dad.  Adores his dad so much that all he wants to be when he grows up is a daddy.  This is after he marries our neighbor Fen, who is an older woman at age 6. (“Someday, when Fen and I are married…” he muses. )  (The marriage plans are becoming a bit more complicated now that Fen’s family is moving, but hey, they can always stay connected on Facebook, and then have a great story to tell.)

David is concerned, however, because he realizes that to be a daddy, your voice has to be way lower than his is right now. He asked me about this last week, concerned that maybe there’s something he needs to be doing about this voice situation, and no one has told him what it is. He was quite relieved when I assured him that he doesn’t need to do anything, but that it will just happen naturally when he is 12 or 13.

David’s adoration of his dad may stem in part from the fact that they are the only males in the house (other than the cat), outnumbered by the women.  Or maybe little boys just adore their dads. (I have nothing to compare it to.)

My secret that I may or may not tell David is that, when I found out at 13 weeks of pregnancy that he was a boy, I was crushed.  I had been a mom to a girl for 10 years, and it was all I knew.  Further, I didn’t have any brothers (or even cousins) close in age to me. All I knew was girl stuff.  Barbies. Barrettes.

But of course, David has taught me how to be a mom to a boy, and it’s not so difficult. I’ve learned to build train tracks (and replace the batteries in the trains). I enjoy Thomas the Train videos as much as the next person (if the next person happens to be under age 5.)  And of course, there’s the fact that David loves many of the same things I love - particularly singing and listening to music. He’s like me in that he’s outgoing and he loves to perform (and unlike me in that he is EXTREMELY literal and detail-oriented, and has perfect diction.) 

On the nights when Tim has class and I’m doing the bedtime routine by myself,  after I tuck him in (after stories which seem to take an eternity to read, because he has so many questions and so much commentary on each one), he calls, “Mom, wait! I forgot to give you a kiss and a hug.” (Of course, he’s already given me at least three.)  And I go back and get my kiss on the cheek (never on the lips – David doesn’t kiss on the lips), and he settles in to his much-loved bed. 

Unless Tim is home, and then I’m chopped liver.

What a surprise…

Today, a list of things that surprised me about parenting:

1) Before I had children, I always imagined that my children would be exactly like me.

2) Once I had the amnio/CVS that determined that my children were “perfect”, I thought I was out of the woods.

3) I thought parenting would get way easier once the kids were out of diapers. (Actually, I still have one in diapers, so I’m still holding out a bit of hope on this one, but not much.)

4) I thought that if a child had a natural talent for something, they would automatically like it and stick with it.

5) I thought it was impossible to clean up someone else’s puke without actually puking myself.

6) I thought there was a direct correlation between good parenting and having calm, well-behaved children.

7) I thought parents loved each of their children in exactly the same way. (And I didn’t realize that loving them differently is a completely different thing from loving one more than the others.)

I had no idea that sibling rivalry is hard-wired, and doesn’t have anything to do with how much siblings like or love each other.

9) I thought that girls liked dolls and boys liked balls.

10) I thought that I’d be my children’s best teacher.

Boy, was I wrong…

I’d like to thank the Academy…

Observations from the Oscars (well, okay, from my living room watching the Oscars):

1. Can we just watch 3 hours of Hugh Jackman? Please?

2. Hugh has some white spit in the corner of his mouth, and it’s only the opening number.

3. Ok, Hugh chatting people up is getting really tedious.

4. OMG – what is Whoopi Goldberg wearing? She looks like a fur-covered animal.  Tilda Swinton’s attire isn’t much better, but at least she looks like a human.

5. Oh, nice. They had to show Angelina when Jen is presenting, didn’t they? Meow.

6. There’s a lot of beige going on. Must be the recession.

7. Best bit so far – Ben Stiller as Joaquin Phoenix. And Natalie Portman was a good sport to go along with it.

8. If I admit that I really like Beyonce, does that make me a bad person? How about if I admit that I really like this production number?

9. Beige-a-vu. I’ve seen this color before.

10. Okay, my favorite dress so far is on the woman who won for best documentary short film.  It’s red and it’s drap-ey in the back, and it’s beautiful. It puts most of the other dresses to shame.

11. That Tom Cruise/Jimmy Kimmel ad for Jimmy Kimmel’s show was pretty funny.

12. When did Liam Neeson get so old?

13. Nice tribute to Paul Newman, and nice job by Queen Latifah, but otherwise that Tribute didn’t work, because you couldn’t read some of the names on TV.

14. Are Reese Witherspoon and Queen Latifah wearing the same dress? They both have those odd strap things. But at least they’re not wearing beige.

15. More beige. On Nicole Kidman.

16. Love Kate Winslet’s dress.

17. Oops. Anthony Hopkins is a “sir” as well (according to Wikipedia.) Maybe it’s not as important to him as it is to Ben Kingsley.

18.  Good show but not enough Hugh Jackman.

And it’s a wrap.

A tale of two sisters

 Due to circumstances not entirely out of my control, I have one daughter who’s learning to drive, and one daughter who’s learning to use the potty.  One daughter who cried today because she has an ankle injury and can’t run in Thursday’s track meet, and one daughter who cried today because I wouldn’t let her dump the contents of my purse on the floor.

Separated by 13 years, they are night and day, these two girls.  Emma is more quiet and reserved, taking everything in.  (In the words of Tim’s mother, “Emma doesn’t say much, but when she does, it’s really important.”) She is cautious, calm, quiet, quick-witted, sweet, self-assured, and can come across as somewhat aloof.  She never played with toys, but preferred to play with whatever was available, or to just sit watching, smiling and laughing. She is very much a mixture of her dad and me – she looks more like me, but has more of his personality.  She has been my best friend for years, my favorite person to hang out with, my pal for those years it was just the two of us.

Margaret is a world of contradictions.  She’s a girly-girl tomboy, feeding her dolls one moment, and crawling down the stairs head-first the next.  She is bossy (or, as we said in my family, she’s “like Aunt Gertrude”, one of my paternal grandfather’s seven sisters.)  Talking constantly, she keeps up a running commentary of what’s happening, and when she’s not talking, she’s singing at the top of her lungs.  She is hot-tempered and hilarious.  Affectionate and obstinate.  Always right. Likes to break things.  She’s like me on steroids.

Between them, and with David in the middle, they require every parenting skill I have, and some I don’t even have.  They are crazy about each other – for whatever reason, they don’t fight with each other the way they each do with David. (Yes, I have to remind Emma that she’s 15 and he’s 5). 

Must be a girl thing.

Deep pockets

Every couple of years, I feel the need to clean out my coat pockets.  Here’s what I found this morning in the pockets of my winter coat:

1) My crumpled-into-a-ball black leather gloves

2) My CTA card

3) My Blackberry

4) 6 1/2 used tissues (and I mean REALLY used)

5) One lavender “Dora the Explorer” glove

6) $.23 (two dimes and three pennies)

7) Two never-played-with Happy Meal toys (never figured out how they worked)

An empty Jolly Rancher wrapper (grape) and an empty Milky Way wrapper (wait, who put that there…I hate Milky Way bars). (And why does WordPress keep turning my “8″’s into smiley-faces? It’s so stupid!)

9) A drycleaning receipt for $41.70. (Relatively new…dated last Saturday)

10) A pink post-it note with both cell and home phone numbers for someone named Laura. (Hmmm….No memory of that person.)

11) A folded-up black-and-white photo of Barack Obama (?)

12) A folded-up crayon drawing of a house, with the sun out, and me standing next to the house with the name “David” written on it. (Actually, it’s “Davi” oin one line and “d” on the next.)

13) A Chase ATM receipt

14) A black button (maybe from the coat?)

15) Two Jewel weekly supermarket lists

16) A crumpled-up coupon for $1 off Quilted Northern toilet paper (hey, expiration date 3/15…that one’s still good)

Wow – look how much thinner I look in my coat now!

10 things I miss hearing

I lost my dad to congestive heart failure a little over two years ago.  He was three weeks shy of his 90th birthday.  Because he was so sick in the last year or so of his life, my immediate reaction to his death was mostly relief, as I didn’t want to see him suffer anymore.  As time passes, I remember him more the way he was when he was younger and healthy, and less the way he was when he was old and sick.  Here are ten phrases that I will always associate with my dad, and that I will never hear uttered in exactly the same way again:

1) “How’s your weather?” (This was asked during every conversation after I moved to Chicago.)

2) “I think this is the best corn we’ve had all season.” (This was an annual pronouncement at the cottage.  One of my friends said one time that my family’s two favorite topics of conversation are: 1) itself, and 2) food rating.)

3) “Why don’t you practice it slowly until you learn it, and then you can play it fast?” (Guess who now says this to her own daughter during piano practicing?)

4) “Here, let me take your coat.” (God forbid someone tried to keep his or her coat while visiting my parents. Manners dictate that when company comes, you hang their coats in the closet, and my dad was going to accomplish this come hell or high water. I saw more than one person fight with him and lose.)

5) “Did I ever tell you about the time…” (This line could be filled in about 100 ways; however, one of my all time favorites was, “Did I ever tell you about the time we took the train to Chicago when Carolyn was a baby, and your mother wanted to take the stroller?”)

6) “Do you have enough room?…Well, then, move over!”

7) “Hey (insert name of child here)! Want to see me do the penny trick?” (My dad’s only magic trick, but one that could entertain children for hours, and now entertains my own children.)

“I want to tell you something…” (This was followed by some sort of serious pronouncement in which Dad stated his opinion as if it were cold, hard fact.)

9) “Well, I believe the sun is over the yardarm. Would anyone like a drink?” (This meant that it was 5:00 and time for cocktails.)

10) “If the car goes onto the shoulder, the first thing you do is take your foot of the accelerator.” (His main piece of advice to student drivers as he was teaching children and grandchildren to drive. Sound advice, as not knowing what to do in that situation is a major cause of accidents among inexperienced drivers.)

I miss you, Dad.  Thanks for teaching me your gift for seeing the humor in everyday life.

10)

A blog post with Finesse (and Suave and Salon Selectives)

I left Helene Curtis, my first post-MBA job, in 1995, and I have spent the last 13+ years trying to find my way back to a similar organization  (I went back for 5 more years after Unilever acquired HCI, and it was good, but nothing like the old days.) I know that not everyone who worked there feels the way that I do; however, I know from talking to people that many of my former colleagues feel the same way.  It was not perfect, but it was great.  I’ve spent a lot of time over the years trying to figure out why, and I think that these are some of the reasons:

1. We were working against a clear, simple motivating goal: “Beat Procter & Gamble.” Everyone knew what it meant, and everyone knew how his/her role contributed to the goal. It helped that there was a “David vs. Goliath” angle as well.  Everyone likes a challenge.

2. We hired great people. I have never met a more outstanding group of smart, funny, talented, interesting people.  Granted, there was not a lot of diversity, either in color or in thinking.  We were mostly ENTJ’s on the Myers-Briggs scale (at least those of us in Brand Management), and we were either graduates of top business schools or hired from some of the biggest and best consumer packaged good companies.

3. The company was committed to training and development.  We hired great people, we trained them well, we focused on performance improvement, and we counseled people out who weren’t a good fit.  Unlike some other packaged goods companies where the culture was “sink or swim”, we did everything we could to help people succeed.

4. Everyone knew how decisions were made. Decisions were made based on fact and logic.  If the pre-work was solid (and there was ALWAYS pre-work sent in advance of the meeting, the meeting was usually unnecessary (although we always had the meeting anyway, since there was popcorn), because it was clear what the outcome would be.

5. We had huge marketing budgets. Let me repeat: we had huge marketing budgets. The likes of which I will never see again.  This was a huge contributor to the company’s eventual sale – we often paid consumers to take our products.

6. It was small enough so that everyone knew everyone.   We had huge brands with huge budgets, but we didn’t have a lot of brands.  So we all knew each other. And did I mention that we all liked each other (well, most of us, anyway.)

7. We leaned on each other.  Because the brands were growing (top-line, if not bottom-line) and we were launching new brands, there was plenty of opportunity. If you were ready for a promotion, there was usually a spot waiting for you. So we didn’t have to compete with each other for jobs.  This created a highly collegial atmosphere, where information was shared, knowledge was passed on, and we were invested in each others’ success.

I think that for me, it was a moment in time that will never be repeated.  I’m fortunate in that my current job at DePaul comes close. I’m proud of the work that we did, I have great memories, I have lasting friendships, and I learned a tremendous amount from teachers like Stan and Anne and Leslie, who taught me everything I know about Marketing. (And who also taught me how to write for business, which was painful at the time, but for which I am now eternally grateful. Just thinking about that first Finesse analysis makes me shudder.)

Any other thoughts on the HCI experience from those of you who lived it?

Thursday Meanderings

1. This woman called 911 because McDonalds was out of McNuggets. Ridiculous. I mean, I can see if they were out of Filet-o-Fish, but running out of McNuggets is not an emergency.

2. I’m pretty tired of reading stories like this which suggest that one of the main reasons people survive accidents is because the thought of their loved ones pulled them through. Do we know that the people who die aren’t thinking about their loved ones? No, I didn’t think so.

3. Okay, I’m really, really, really thinking about never staying in a hotel again (or sleeping in any bed other than my own, for that matter) after reading this article about bedbugs. “Infestation” is something that is never a good thing.  “Leakage” is another.  Think about it. Never good.

4. Speaking of never staying in a hotel again, or never leaving the house, for that matter, I love this article from O Magazine by Lisa Kogan (who has no Wikipedia page, so therefore, no live link to her info.) I love reading about other people who have as little sense of adventure as I do. 

5. Wow – what are the chances that Barbara Bush and Robin Williams would have aortic valve replacements the same week? And they’re both Episcopalians too.  Freaky.

6. Tryingnottothinkaboutthestockmarket, tryingnottothinkaboutthestockmarket, tryingnotto………..

7. Is anyone surprised by this?

8. No link to the story above, but here’s a proposal by Eliot Spitzer on an alternative way to pay for college.  Your thoughts?

I’m not feeling pampered

I love everything about Pampered Chef products except the experience of buying them. (I just heard a loud “click” created by all of the men closing this post. That’s okay, I’ll try to make the next post about sports. Or not.)

To clarify, I like the Pampered Chef party part a lot. (I think I’ll say “party part” again, because it made me giggle.) It’s just the actual ordering part that is awful.

As background, I got an email from my college friend Tijen letting me know that she was having a Pampered Chef party, and giving me a link to the Web site, so that if I wanted to order anything, she would get credit for it. Having hosted a Pampered Chef party before, I know that the hostess prizes are quite nice, so I wanted to help her out. Plus, my Pampered Chef salesperson “retired” a few years ago, so I had a lot of pent-up demand.

I surfed the site, and decided what I wanted:

Best garlic press ever

Handy egg slicer

Collapsible bowls

Family-sized pitcher

Chip clips ("Twixits")

(This was a challenge in itself, as it’s impossible to figure out how the products are classified. Why is a family-sized pitcher that you put in the refrigerator classified as “Outdoor”? Why is the egg slicer in “Cutting Edge” instead of “Kitchenware?”)

So anyway, after much confusion about what to do, how to order, how to navigate the site, I placed my order. Only to find out that apparently I didn’t navigate the site “correctly”, because it never asked me for Tijen’s name, so she wouldn’t get credit for it.  Teresa, the very nice and helpful independent rep that Tijen is working with, told me that the only solution was to cancel the order. So I went to the Web site, and THERE’S NO WAY TO DO THAT.  So I took the next step and called customer service, and the very nice recorded message told me that “the wait time exceeds 30 minutes.” No problem, it was evening, I figured I’d just call back today. Good thinking, because today the message told me that the wait time to speak with a customer service rep exceeded two hours. Yes, two hours. 

So I finally talked to Teresa, the helpful independent rep, and she told me that even if I got through to a customer service rep, there is NO WAY for them to credit Tijen with the order after it’s been placed.  So I had to place another order with Teresa, and when the first order arrives on Monday, I have to call Pampered Chef and tell them I don’t want the order, and to come and pick it up.  So guess what I’ll be doing Monday afternoon? That’s right, sitting on hold (easy to do with a speakerphone, but still.)

Hello, Pampered Chef? I love your products. And I love cooking. But I can go to a very nice specialty cooking store a mile from my house and get very similar products at very similar prices. So you’d better get your systems and your customer service into the 21st Century, or I’m afraid you’re going to be SOL.

P.S. Tijen, if you’re reading this, I’m not trying to make you feel bad. It’s still worth it for you get the credit.

I’ll take my daylight in the morning

I don’t know who’s idea it was to move up the start of Daylight Saving Time, but I’d like to give the person a piece of my mind. 

First, some background. Each year, I’m caught off-guard by how much my body is affected by the change to DST (the change back in the Fall doesn’t bother me nearly as much.) I’ve been tired, crabby and out of sorts since Sunday.  Granted, there are other stresses in my life, but the only major change since the weekend is the time change, with the accompanying loss of an hour’s worth of sleep.  (It doesn’t help that it’s been raining two out of three days since the time change, but that’s another issue.)

I really, really hate it that it doesn’t get light until 7:15 a.m.  I realize that we get an extra hour in the evening, but come on folks, it’s March in Chicago. It’s not like we’re outside on the lawn in the evening enjoying the nice weather.  I’ll take my extra daylight hour in the morning, thank you very much.

The time change throws off my rhythm.  For one thing, the kids do much better when they can wake with the daylight.  With the change, this means they’re actually sleeping TOO late (please remind in October that I said that if I start whining about them waking up to early when we change the time back again.) Then we’re rushing everyone through breakfast so we can get dressed and out the door.

By this weekend, I’ll be adjusted to the new schedule. But I’m thinking of starting a petition to go back to a more decent late-March/early-April time change.

Anyone want to sign my petition?

Top 10 reasons I’ve been in a funk all week

(In reverse order):

10. Still not adjusted to Daylight Savings Time

9. Thought Madonna was following me on Twitter, only to find out it wasn’t THAT Madonna.

8. Felt unpopular because everyone else got the new Facebook homepage before me.

7. Don’t like the new Facebook homepage now that I have it.

6. Too busy to blog.

5. Thought after Cincinnati win that DePaul would win the Big East Tournament and go to the NCAA tournament, only to have my hopes dashed in the second round.

4. Pampered Chef customer service call wait time exceeded seven hours. (In fairness, they do have a call-back system, so you don’t have to wait on hold.)

3. Dismembered body found in garbage bags one block from my house. (We didn’t have anything to do with it, just so you know.)

2. Missing Rod Blagojevich (at least he didn’t raise state income taxes by 50%).

1. Thought Jennifer Aniston and John Mayer were really going to make it.

Feeling Pampered now

One person going out of his or her way can make all the difference.

I blogged earlier about my frustration with Pampered Chef; specifically, the Web site navigation, system deficiencies, and customer service wait times.  On Saturday, Tim ran into our friend Mark, who works for Pampered Chef, and told him about my frustrations.  Yesterday at church, Mark brought me a nice Pampered Chef bag, with a baking pan and a recipe book.  He didn’t have to do that.  I never expected him to do that.  I’m sure there’s nothing in his job description about fixing customer complaints.  But because he did that for me, I now have a positive impression of Pampered Chef, when I formerly had a negative one. 

I don’t know if that’s part of the culture at Pampered Chef (my prior experiences with them suggest that maybe it’s not part of the culture), or if it’s just Mark. But it highlights the fact that, particularly in the Internet age, we’re all part of the customer service departments of our organizations.  We may not be able to fix every problem, particularly in a big organization, but the small things matter.

Thanks, Mark.

A list of things I don’t do

My friend Stephanie commented to me on Saturday that she doesn’t know how I do all that I do.  I don’t think I do any more or any less than anyone else does, but I’m very intentional in deciding how I spend my time. (Other people may be every bit as intentional, but I don’t know, since I’m only in my own head and not anyone else’s.)  So then I started thinking about all of the things that other people do that I don’t do. Here’s my list:

1. I don’t clean. I don’t know how to clean. It runs in my family.  (My brother Fred commented one time that if my sister ever wanted to clean, she’d have to take out a book from the library on how you do it. This is true of me as well.) I’m not proud of the fact that I don’t clean, but it is a fact. My cleaning role model is my mom, who would have eliminated meat from the family table before cutting out the expense of the cleaning woman. I do clean the downstairs bathroom every couple of days, and I try to keep the kitchen clean, but other than that, it’s every two weeks when Todja, our wonderful cleaning woman, arrives.

2. I don’t watch much TV, and when I do, I’m intentional about what I watch. Thank you TiVo. (Just FYI, I watch “24″, “30 Rock”, “The Office”, and “Say Yes to the Dress.”)

3. I don’t allow my younger kids to participate in many activities. Granted, this will probably change once they’re in school, and want to take piano lessons, ice skating lessons and play soccer (although I can’t really imagine David playing soccer), and my schedule will have to adjust accordingly. But right now, they’re fine spending all of their free time at home. With me.

4. We don’t go out much. I am a homebody (more on this topic tomorrow, when I talk about my upcoming trip to Paris), and am generally exhausted on the weekends. Thanks to the Internet, I can keep in touch with people without ever leaving the comfort of my house.

5. I don’t ski. Not that people who do ski spend a lot of time doing it, but I just wanted to clarify the fact that I don’t ski. I will never ski. It’s way too dangerous, and it’s humiliating.

6. I don’t garden, decorate, do home improvement projects, or try to fix anything in my house that is any more complicated than changing a light bulb. If you want evidence, just come to our house and it will be immediately evident that I don’t do any of these things.

7. Except for groceries and health and beauty items, I rarely shop. (I find that not shopping really cuts down on the spending.) If I do need something, I buy it on-line whenever possible, and if that’s not possible, and I’m actually in a store, you might want to stay out of my way, because I am a woman on a mission to get in, make a specific purchase, and get out, in as little time as possible.

8. That said, I’m not a discount shopper. I don’t spend my valuable free time driving miles and miles to go to Costco so I can save money. It’s not that I don’t think they have great prices. It’s that I don’t have time to go to these places, and I have found that when I do go, I don’t save money, because I buy things like a 6-pack of duct tape, because it’s SUCH A GOOD PRICE. (Note: we will never use a 6-pack of duct tape in a lifetime – see #6 above.) 

What’s your list of things you don’t do?

Are we there yet?

I mentioned in yesterday’s blog post that I’m leaving for Paris on Friday.  I’m going with a group of DePaul leaders, to spend a week “walking in the footsteps of St. Vincent DePaul.”  (It’s like a pilgrimage, but with less spirituality.)  It’s an all-expenses paid trip to tour Paris, learn about St. Vincent and the Vincentian mission, and get to know more of my colleagues.  Assuming I have Internet access, I will be blogging about my trip next week. Otherwise, expect a very looonnng blog post when I get back.

With two days to go, my anxiety is rising. I think I’ve mentioned before that I do not like to travel, particularly internationally.  (Shorter domestic trips don’t bother me much.)  Actually, it’s not that I don’t like to travel. It’s that I don’t like the thought of traveling. Once I’m there, I’m usually okay, even on long trips.  (I come by this honestly – my dad hated to travel.  The only place he liked to go was the cottage. The man HATED Florida.)

I can’t really explain it.  Part of it is that I don’t like not having my bearings. I’m terrified of getting lost. And since I have a really bad sense of direction, there’s a good chance that I’m going to get lost.  (Yes, on foot.)  I also like to be where all my stuff is. (What can I say – it’s a control thing.) And then you add being away from my kids for a week, separated by an ocean, and it’s enough to pretty much put me over the edge. (I’ve never been a person who lives for travel, but it got worse after September 11, when Tim and I were stranded in London, and Emma was here in Oak Park. )

Strangely enough, I don’t mind flying. I actually kind of like it.  It’s the anticipation of flying that I don’t like.

 I used to put on a happy face and pretend that I liked to travel like normal people do. But that was before I had my revelation that people who always pretend that everything is okay when it’s not are really annoying to be around.  So no more happy face on the travel issue.

It was much less anxiety-producing for me when I was traveling more…I had my airport routine down, had my packing list memorized, knew all the things I needed to do before a trip.   Now that I don’t travel as much, it makes me all disoriented.

Just to clarify, I will be fine once I get to the airport. But with 48 hours to go, I can’t sleep, can’t concentrate (partly due to lack of sleep), and my heart frequently pounds.  It’s bad.

Yesterday, I got some interesting responses to my question. So today I’ll ask another. What’s something that most people in the world think is fun that you find anxiety-producing?

Wish you were here

Bonjour…we’ve been running around since our arrival in Paris on Saturday morning.

Wow. There are a lot of churches in Paris. And we’re on a mission to see every one. 

Not sure how much I said before about the purpose of this trip.  DePaul University was founded by priests from the Congregation of the Mission, also known as Vincentians (because the order was founded by St. Vincent DePaul.) The Vincentians, and the Daughters of Charity, a “sister” (no pun intended) order of nuns founded by St. Louise De Marillac, ministered to the poor,  sick  and orphaned in France and transformed the way France treated the less fortunate. The Vincentian order has always been small, and now they’re numbers are dwindling. Within 20 years, there will be no more Vincentians, so DePaul is sending groups of faculty and staff on these trips as part of an effort to instill the Vincentian values in the university to prepare for the time when there are no more Vincentians.  (The way that the Vincentian mission translates to a university is in providing access to an excellent education to those who otherwise would not be able to afford it.)

Things I’ve done so far:

1. Eaten a lot

(This is a photo of me with Marie Donovan, our interim dean of the School of Education. The photo would suggest that we’re drinking a LOT of water on this trip, but we’re actually eating food and drinking wine as well.)

2. Gone to a Gregorian mass at Notre Dame Cathedral.

(I like this one because it shows the flying buttresses.)

3. Gone to Saint-Chapelle to see the amazingly beautiful stained glass windows.

(This photo doesn’t do it justice, mainly because I’m a lousy photographer.)

4. Gone to the largest flea market in Paris (disappointing.)

5. Gone to dinner last night at the home of Jim Haynes, an American who has lived in Paris for 30 years and hosts a dinner for up to 50 people in his home every Sunday night. It was nothing like I expected it to be – it’s a small apartment, so we were elbow-to-elbow. But we met interesting people, mostly other Americans and Brits.

6. Had an hours-long bus tour of the city of Paris.

7. Posed for many pictures in front of the Eiffel Tower. (Our hotel is right next to it.)

(Me with my colleague, Denise Mattson.)

The high point of the trip for me so far was today at the Church of St. Laurent.  While we were touring the church, the organist and trumpeter were practicing. The acoustics were magnificent, and it was so beautiful it gave me goose bumps.

Things I haven’t done:

1. Slept very much.

2. Gone running (that’s on the agenda for tomorrow morning, as we’re starting later.) I didn’t bring proper clothing to go running along the Seine, so we’ll see how warm it is. I may wimp out and go to the fitness center in the hotel.

Gotta run…off to eat again!

More thoughts on Paris

I’m still processing my trip to Paris. We saw so much, and I learned so much about French and European history, that I need time to process it all. (Although I don’t think I’ll ever keep all of the King Louis straight – what’s the plural of King Louis? – couldn’t they have used a few more names so they didn’t have 18 Louis and 4 Henrys?) 

1. There is nothing subtle about France. As our guide, Fr. Ed Udovic frequently said, the motto of France is, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.” The palaces, churches, and monuments are over the top. 

In Gothic churches, the middle door always depicts the Last Judgment.  In this one, Cathedral du Notre Dame in Amien, you can actually see the damned being led into the mouth of the Leviathon. Yikes:

Sacre Coeur on Montmartre. (Just up the hill from the actual Moulin Rouge, which Emma thinks is cool):

(Moulin Rouge):

You really can’t get a sense for the scale of Napoleon’s tomb, which is at Invalides. But let’s just say that it’s about 20 times the size that he was:

Fontainbleu (where Napoleon had the audacity to install a throne):

2.  Nearly everyone I met was very friendly to Americans.  I know that this was not always the case, but I have to say that people were willing to use whatever English they had to communicate, and most people very helpful.

3. There is a museum for everything in France.  Case in point, we went to the Museum of Public Assistance.  I got the sense that it was not frequently visited – go figure- but I was surprised that it actually contained some interesting things.

The Mona Lisa (this is probably one of the worst photos of the Mona Lisa ever taken, but I wanted to prove that I really was at the Louvre):

Winged Victory (ditto):

Nice butt:

4. There are a lot of churches. Well, maybe it just seemed like there are a lot because we visited every one.   (I may have lost count, but I think we toured ten.) Actually, the more amazing thing is the size of the churches, which according to Fr. Ed contributed to the decline in church attendance in France, which is currently only at 15%.  According to Fr. Ed, the government owned the churches (and still does), and was therefore responsible for building new ones.  It was cheaper to build a few big churches than a lot of small ones, so they built massive churches to serve as many as 50,000 parishoners.  The working-class had to work six days a week, and the last thing they wanted to do on their one day of rest was spend hours traveling to and from church. Not sure if it’s true, but it made sense.

I won’t show every church, but here’s the chapel in the Vincentian Mother House.  St. Vincent’s remains are encased in a wax effigy, which is in a sliver box above the altar. What’s interesting about this chapel is that generally, the sight lines in a Catholic church point to the altar. In this one, every sight line points to Vinny:

The church of St. Denis, which is the only church in Paris which still has a joubet (the big thingy that separates the altar from the people. They were all removed after Vatican II):

Window depicting St. Vincent DePaul:

5. I realized on this trip how little I know about World War I, which Europeans refer to as “The Great War.” (If I’m the only one who didn’t know this, you can skip this paragraph, and we’ll just chalk it up to inadequate history teaching at Shamokin Area High School.) Europe lost 30% of it’s males between the ages of 16-15. In the Battle of Somme, 350,000 men were killed in one day. Every church in France has a World War I monument.

More tomorrow…

I <3 Paris

But of course, I have a few suggestions to make it even better:

1. “To go” cups. I like to take my coffee with me. The only place to get a coffee to go is at Starbucks, and they are few and far between.

2.  Faster service. I realize that we are way too fast-paced here in America. Like with eating.  But there are times when slow isn’t charming - like when I’m standing in line for the cash register.  The cash register attendants in France are sloooowwww.

3. A law which requires people to clean up after their dogs. I don’t think that requires any further explanation.

4. Stores open in the evenings. Everything seems to close at 6:00.  (I suppose there is some charm in this, but with little free time, except in the evenings, it was a drag.)

Of course, there are a few things that are definitely better in France:

1. Dollar coins (and two dollarcoins). Love them. 

2. Great public transportation – You’re always a few blocks from a Metro station. You can get anywhere by train, and we rarely waited more than 5 minutes for a train. (Except when the workers go on strike, which apparently they do frequently, but fortunately, it didn’t happen while we were there.)

3. Farmers’ Market every day. Always in a different place, of course.  But fresh fruit, vegetables, fish, meat, and cheese every day. Makes my mouth water to think about it.

4. No snow. Not that there’s much we can do about this one, but I wanted to note it anyway, since I came home to snow on Saturday.

That’s my list. For what it’s worth.

And now you will pay

My homecoming on Saturday was wonderful.  I was greeted with a Welcome Home banner and balloons:

And also with a cake (made by Tim’s mom), and a homemade sign made by David:

Margaret ran into the living room, giggling her Margaret giggle, which continued for minutes.

And then the real fun began.

Margaret has decided to punish me for being away for a week.  She’s on me like white on rice. She wants to be carried everywhere, and she throws a tantrum if I put her down for any reason. (Last night when I put her down to make dinner, she screamed, “I want uppies” about a hundred times. I am not exaggerating.) She cries all the time. Real tears. Not fake tears.  She wants to sit on my lap every time I’m sitting down. (I draw the line in the bathroom, so she stand outside screaming at the top of her lungs.)  She orders me around, and if I don’t do exactly as she wants, she cries and screams, choosing a phrase to repeat over and over again, with increasing volume. She is on my last nerve.

David is able to tell me how much he missed me, and so he’s pretty normal. Emma really minded my being gone (of course, it’s fine if she travels for two weeks without me, but when she’s the one left behind, it’s another story. She wanted me to promise never to leave the country again without her.)  But like David, Emma can voice her sadness.

But Margaret is going to make me pay. It’s almost like she’s testing me to see if she can misbehave so much that it will make me leave again.

It both breaks my heart and is so damn frustrating, at the same time.  At times I think that if I hear her repeat the same phrase one more time, I’m going to go out of my mind.

My mother would say that it’s payback for when my parents went to Germany when I was five, and I refused to let her out of my side for over a week.

I know that we will both live through this. And that she will go back to normal within a few days.  And there will come a day when she won’t miss me when I’m gone (or if she does, she won’t admit it.) 

God, give me strength.

New and improved odds and ends

Not really, but I needed an attention-grabber

1. I enjoyed this post by Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller fame. Normally, I don’t take seriously political commentary written by magicians, but this one is worth a read.

2. Today’s John Kass column in the Tribune explains why Rod Blagojevich beat out Paul Vallas for governor in 2002.  I really like Vallas, and he lost to Blago by only 25,000 votes out of 1.3 million votes cast. Lost opportunity for Illinois…

3. End of an era – My Nana would be heartbroken to know that Guiding Light was cancelled this week.   Nana loved her “stories”, and was known to get teary (we called it the “pink nose treatment”) during soap weddings.

4. Interesting Ad Contrarian (one of my favorite blogs, if you remember) post that should be required reading for anyone who works in marketing or advertising and/or thinks that 1) advertising is dead, 2) TV is dead, or 3) both advertising and TV are dead.

5. My friend Paul posted this YouTube video today.  Johnny Carson and Jack Webb at their best:

6. How the heck is Jack Bauer going to overcome Jakob-Kreuzfeld (or is it Kreuzfeld-Jakob) syndrome, a horrible, fatal brain disease for which there is no cure? He’s been in some big trouble on “24″, but this is BIG TROUBLE.

My wish list (for today)

1. I wish that kids’ shoes had the size number stamped really big, in really dark font, on the bottom of the shoe, rather than  in really small, light font on the inside, where it rubs off.

2. I wish that there were signs in every el station which told you how long it was until the next train, like in London and Paris. I don’t care if it’s 10 more minutes, I just want to know.

3. I wish that kids’ clothing sizes were standard, because taking a 5-year -old boy to try on pants is not fun. (MOM!!! I DON’T WANT ANYONE TO SEE MY UNDERWEAR! He still doesn’t get the dressing room concept.)

4. I wish that all public toilets had a pedal on the floor that you push down on with your foot to flush. (I don’t think I need to say anymore about this.)

5. I wish that kids’ clothing was tagless, like Hanes underwear is, so that I didn’t have to cut the tags out of everything, making it impossible to know what size it is.

6. I wish I could figure out why the rear windshield wiper on the van goes on every time I turn on the front windshield wiper.

7. I wish that gas stations and convenience stores weren’t so icky.

8. I wish I had taken David’s snowpants to school today so that he could have played outside, but who knew they’d enforce the snowpants rule with 1/2″ of snow on the ground?

9. I wish I didn’t still have to be talking about snowpants on April 6. (Having blogged about them for the first time on December 1, if you remember. Or even if you don’t. Believe me, I did.)

Can’t think of a 10th one right now.  Help me out here…

Easter bunnies

Not much time to blog lately.  Partly because I thought it would be a good idea to drive to 10 hours to Pennsylvania for a long weekend.  I’m glad we went, but we spent A LOT of time in the car.  We spent Easter at my brother’s church (officially called Mt. Zion UCC, but really known as “the Welsh church.” )  Emma had her first experience with communion using grape juice instead of wine.

Here are the photo highlights:

(Emma wouldn’t let me take any photos of her, because she didn’t like her blouse. Too ruffly.)

Here’s a quick video of the kids:

Phil played the organ. This is an excerpt of his postlude, which was the same piece played every year by the organist at the church we grew up in:

And the prelude:

Friday, Friday

1. Does George Will really think that this is worth worrying about? Adults who wear jeans? Really?

2. In case you’ve been hiding under a rock, here’s Susan Boyle’s performance of “I Dreamed a Dream”, from Les Miserables, on “Britain’s Got Talent.”  (But be warned, you won’t be able to get the song out of your head. I’ve been trying all week, with no luck.)

And here is what Susan Boyle would look like with a makeover. (I’m not suggesting that she needs one, just pointing out that this is what she would look like, according to some.)

3. I’m pretty much over Twitter now that CNN and Ashton Kutcher had a contest to see who could get to a million followers first, and Ashton won. I find it really hard to believe (actually, I don’t find it hard to believe. I just find it sad) that a million people are interested in what Ashton Kutcher has to say.

4. Yeah, I’m thinking that it’s going to be awhile before I order Domino’s pizza again, given the recent YouTube video that’s been making the rounds. Here is an assessment by Joseph Jaffe, a social media expert.

5. Brilliant (as usual) post from my favorite cranky ad guy, about how the business potential of social media is all hype.

Bang, bang

David and I had this conversation in the car last week:

David: “Mom, we can’t have guns at school, only at home, right?”

Me: “Well, David, we actually can’t have guns at school or at home or anywhere.”

David: “That’s okay, Mom, I can just make a gun with my finger.”

Now I assure you, we do not now, nor have we ever, had guns in our home.  I’m not aware that we allow David to watch TV programs that contain guns or shooting. (Of course, there is the random commercial that comes on virtually every station.)

My friend Lin, who has two boys, warned me of this years ago – that it doesn’t really matter whether you buy them toy guns or not, they’ll just use a Popsicle stick or an index finger. It’s funny and frightening at the same time.

I realize that we live in a culture of violence, and because it’s everywhere, it’s difficult to shield children from it. But I also think that males are hunters. Just as you don’t need to teach a racehorse to run fast, you don’t need to teach a male child to shoot things (or pretend to, at least.) I’m not suggesting that we give up and give every male child a gun.  I will continue my prohibition of toy guns in our home.

I don’t know the point of all this.  Just that it’s complex, this issue of guns.

Easy appetizer that appears fancy

I made this appetizer last night for a family gathering. I’ve made it before, and each time, everyone raves about it and thinks it’s fancy. And that’s my goal – fancy.

Ingredients:

1 Frozen Pepperidge Farm puff pastry sheet, thawed

1 Round of brie cheese

Preserves (can be apricot, peach, or if you want to be really fancy, something exotic like balsamic sweet onion preserves, which I get at the local gourmet shop.)

Townhouse crackers

Instructions:

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Flatten the puff pastry shell on a baking sheet and pinch seams together.  Place brie on puff pastry, top with some spoonfuls of preserves (maybe 1/4 cup?). Fold the pastry sheet over the preserves-topped brie so it’s sealed.  Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes or until pastry is brown.  Serve with Townhouse crackers (you could use other crackers too, but the buttery taste of the Townhouse crackers  goes well with it.) Get a few sharp knives so people can dig in.

Your guests will rave about it.

Rainy days and Mondays

Yesterday morning was one of those mornings.  I can laugh about it now. Maybe it was because it was a Monday, or maybe because it was rainy, or maybe because it was a rainy Monday.  But for whatever reason, everyone was crabby, including me. 

David was upset because of his loose tooth. His first loose tooth, to be exact. I’m not sure he realized that his teeth were going to get loose and fall out. (I don’t think it’s happened to any of his friends yet.) So the whole concept of having a loose tooth totally skeeved him out. He was moaning continously, asking unanswerable questions like, how many more days is it going to be before my tooth falls out?

Margaret was wanting me to hold her. Lying on the floor, yelling, I can’t get up! Every time I put her down, she screamed until I picked her up. Which was long periods of time, given that I needed to shower and get dressed for work.

So between the moaning and the screaming, it was quite loud.  (The kids were making a lot of noise too.  Ba dum dum.)

I had a moment of panic where I imagined that I’d never actually get out of the house. That Emma would come home from school at 6:00 and I’d be sitting on the floor, holding my knees, rocking back and forth, chanting, putonyourshoesputonyourshoesputonyourshoes.

Then I had another moment of panic where I imagined that every morning would be like this for the rest of my life. Or, at a minimum, the next year.

But get out of  the house we did. Wearing clothes, shoes, and even coats.

And today was a better day. We got out of the house with a minimum of fussing, procrastinating, and crying.

And we have 6 whole days until another Monday.

What’s the going rate for teeth?

David lost that loose tooth today. Twisted it and twisted it until it came out.  And now he looks like a boy instead of a pre-schooler.  He’s up there with his head on a “spare” pillow so that the tooth fairy can more easily reach under his regular pillow and exchange that tooth for money. Kind, thoughtful boy.

It’s been a week of turning points.

In addition to the tooth business, David started soccer, his first organized sport. He actually might be okay at it, despite the fact that he doesn’t have a competitive bone in his body. At least he wasn’t out there picking flowers (unlike a certain now-15-year-old in the family who shall remain nameless, who picked flowers through the entire season – one season only – she “played soccer.”)

Margaret is wearing panties and not pull-ups. (Thanks to Joan, our wonderful, amazing day-care provider who decided that it was time to make Margaret go commando, as the pull-ups were not encouraging anything.) Margaret’s doing well with it. Not perfectly. But well, given that it’s only been a couple of days. 2 days, to be exact.

So I feel like we’ve turned a corner, somehow. Graduated to a new level. I have not a trace of sadness over the fact that the baby days are gone. I’m ready. On Monday, in honor of Margaret’s third birthday, I’m throwing out all the sippy cups.

But first, I have to go dig up $5 to slip under a pillow.

What do the swine flu and broken escalators have in common?

There’s nothing that freaks me out more than the words “global pandemic.” (Deep breaths, deep breaths.) It freaks me out so much, in fact, that I’m tempted to stop reading newspapers, watching television or surfing the net (and putting my hands over my ears and chanting “la la la” really loud) so that I can avoid thinking about it.  I hope that the CDC and Baxter Healthcare know what they’re doing, and can avoid a major global catastrophe. Notgoingtothinkaboutitnotgoingtothinkaboutit…

But the swine flu headlines got me thinking about other things that freak me out:

1. Snakes. Even non-poisonous ones. I try to avoid that section of the Shedd Aquarium, and if I have to go into it with the kids, I walk with my eyes straight ahead so that I don’t see anything in the cases.

2. Worms. Just little tiny snakes, in my book.

3. Any sort of mechanical thing that has an “out of order” sign on it or otherwise appears to be broken. This can be toilets, showers, escalators, elevators. Doesn’t matter. I have no idea where this fear comes from.

4. Ferrets. Anything that can squeeze itself into really tiny spaces…freaky.

5. Armageddon, the Book of Revelation, or anything that mentions Nostradamus.  Thankfully, I’ve modified my religious beliefs so that I don’t believe the Book of Revelation to be factual, and I don’t believe that Nostradamus was all that. But Armageddon still freaks me out.

6. Anything by Steven King or any movie where the devil inhabits people. (Probably related to number 5.)

Anyone have any really interesting or strange things that freak you out?

A letter to Margaret

Dear Margaret,

How did you get to be three years old already? It was just yesterday that you were newly home from the hospital, orange with jaundice, wearing those horrible bilirubin lights. (Note: we didn’t know that you had jaundice, as you didn’t look orange to us. We thought you looked perfectly normal. Of course, we laugh at the photos now, as there really was no mistaking the fact that you were totally orange.) 

And now you are three, newly potty-trained (well, mostly. As long as you’re thinking about it).  You are my fearless one, my gymnast, my child who laughs in the face of discipline.  And my parrot…your favorite phrase is, “Mommy. Listen to me.” You are stubborn and willful and funny and smart. And I love you just as you are, my baby who isn’t a baby anymore. 

Just so you know, I’ll be 62 when you graduate from high school.

Love,

Mom

Pasta in a flash

I made this baked pasta dish for Margaret’s birthday gathering on Sunday. It was so easy, and delicious. I used ground turkey instead of ground beef, and I added an onion, sauteeing it with the ground turkey and mushrooms.  I added a bit of sugar to the sauce, as I like my stewed tomatoes a bit sweet (thank you, Dad, for teaching me to put sugar on my stewed tomatoes.)

And how did I find this magnificent recipe? I went to www.allrecipes.com and typed in “Easy Pasta Recipes”.  I’ll share it with you now, so that you can skip that tedious step:

Easy Baked Pasta with Ground Turkey

I served it with Italian bread, and a green salad with blue cheese, mandarin orange slices and walnuts, with a homemade dressing of olive oil and balsamic vinegar with a 1/2 tsp. (ish) of sugar (more sugar…it’s becoming a theme!). 

And cake and ice cream. And wine. (For the adults.)

Mostly odds

1. My favorite blogger, Bob Hoffman (the Ad Contrarian), posted this on his blog, and simply said:

Stop what you’re doing and watch this.

I echo that. (It’ll take your mind off the swine flu):

2. CNN Breaking News: Swine flu blahblahblahblahblah

3. My favorite CNN headline of the day: “Baton twirler smacks down 2 assailants.”

4. I for one am shocked about this revelation that the Miss USA pageant paid for Miss California’s breast implants.

5. Book recommendation: I’m reading a wonderful book by Amy Dickinson, the advice columnist for the Chicago Tribune. It’s called \”The Mighty Queens of Freeville\” and it’s one of those books that I can’t wait to read every night.  She’s a wonderful writer….she reminds me of Anne Lamott without the swear words and the heavy spirituality (and I realize that if you’ve never read any Anne Lamott, that won’t make any sense.)

Bells and smells

I recently read a statistic that over half of U.S. adults have changed religions.  So I got to thinking about my own religious change; specifically, how I became an Episcopalian, and more importantly, why I’ve stayed an Episcopalian for 24 years, with no thoughts about changing. 

People come to the Episcopal church for lots of reason, but judging from the informal poll I’ve taken over the years, most Episcopalians who weren’t born into it seem to have come from the Roman Catholic church.  I came from the opposite end of the spectrum, the United Church of Christ, one of the “bread cubes and grape juice” denominations.  

I was introduced to the Episcopal church in grad school, when I started attending with my adopted Chicago family. My roots in the church, therefore, are deeply intertwined with my love for this wonderful family which gave me a home away from home and loved me despite my flaws, and on a weekly basis fed me and allowed me to do my laundry. 

But that doesn’t really explain why I stayed. I stayed because I love the ritual. I love familiar rhythms of the liturgy, which are the same no matter what Episcopal church I’m in. I love the bowing and the choreography and the swinging of the senser (the thingy on the chain that holds the incense). 

I also stayed because of the grayness of it. The “life is hard, but if you pray and sing and connect with other people, God will show you the way” theology that makes so much more sense to me than the “Follow Jesus and you may just get to heaven if you’re lucky” theology that I perceived as the message growing up. I stayed because I think it matters more to me how we treat each other here on Earth and what we do with the life we have now than what happens afterwards.

I stayed because everyone is welcome at Communion. Because there are no rules about who belongs and who doesn’t belong. If you want to belong, you belong. All you have to do is hold out your hand. Even little children. Even my little children, whose hands are smeared with fresh marker from whatever Church School project they’ve just made. And even if you show up 50 minutes late for the service, as we did today, everyone is still glad to see you.

I stayed because it’s okay to believe in the Truth of the Bible, and not necessarily the Fact. Because what I believe is up to me to figure out, not someone else. 

And I stay now because I love my church, and the people in it.

It’s not perfect. We are all humans, who get feelings hurt and rub each other the wrong way and disagree about whose job it is to make The Coffee. And feel put upon and weary because no one else is working as hard as we are.  There are days when I ask myself why I bother anyway. But those days are infrequent.

There is no perfect church. There is no perfect religion. But in embracing our imperfection, somehow we find our way through the red doors every week. And we are welcomed.

Best slow-cooker pork chops ever

No, I really mean it.  Even Emma liked it, and we know she’s not a big crock pot fan.  (Margaret liked it too. David not so much, but he’s going through a non-meat phase.) I found the original recipe on www.allrecipes.com, but I modified it a bit.

Ingredients:

4-6 pork chops (I used bone-in pork chops, and I think that’s why they were so moist)

2 Tbsp. olive oil

1/2 cup flour

1 tsp. seasoned salt

1 tsp. dry ground mustard

1 can cream of chicken soup

1/2 cup water

Instructions:

Combine flour, mustard and seasoned salt on a plate. Dredge pork chops in flour combination (both sides). Heat oil in pan over medium heat. Brown pork chops.  When brown, place pork chops in slow cooker.

Add cream of chicken soup and water to pan, scrape browned bits off the pan and mix.

Pour the soup/water/brown stuff over the pork chops.  Cook on low 8 hours.

I served this with egg noodles (seasoned with some butter and fresh grated parmesan cheese) and steamed fresh green beans.  The sauce was really good on the noodles.  I think next time I’ll add some carrots to the crock pot so I don’t have to make a separate vegetable.

I’ll be making this again soon.

10 jobs I’m really glad I don’t have

This morning I was thinking, “I’m really glad I don’t have to be Drew Peterson’s lawyer.” And that got me updating my list that I keep in my head of all the jobs I’m glad I don’t have. (Yes, I actually do keep lists of things like this in my head):

1. Drew Peterson’s lawyer. (Or Drew Peterson’s wife, but that’s not really a job, per se.)

2. Bartender in a blues bar. One chord pattern, all night long. And I think bartending involves more multi-tasking than I can handle.

3. Window washer in the Loop. I’m not really scared of heights….but I think I might start to get a bit nervous paralyzed above the 10th floor.

4. Computer help desk person. Did you try re-booting?

5. Painter of the Sistine Chapel. I don’t like to paint ceilings. My arms get too tired.

6. Auto mechanic. I think we can all agree that I would not be good at this. It’s way too mechanical, and you have to get really dirty.

7. Truck driver. I don’t like to be away from home much, I don’t really like to drive, and I don’t think I’d be good at driving really big vehicles.

8. The person who comes and packs up your house the day before you move.  This takes way more organizational skill than I have (lots of “nesting” of things in other things that I don’t have the spatial capacity for.) And I don’t like moving. My own house or other people’s.

9. Astronaut. The whole having to be away from home thing again. Oh yeah, and the not being sure you’ll make it home alive part too.

10. Brain surgery. Talk about needing to pay attention to details. I’m more of a “big picture”/”give me the bottom line” sort of person. (Not to mention you have to be really, really smart in a way that I’m just not.)

What’s on your list of jobs you’re glad you don’t have?

Happy Mother’s Day

Today, we have a guest-blogger: my neighbor and good friend, Pegeen Reichert-Powell, who also happens to be a very talented writer. She sent me this Mother’s Day “letter from her children”, and I asked if I could post it.

Dear Mama,

Thank you for always being there for me (except those times when I 
want to go to the park, but you absolutely have to get your nails done 
that afternoon).
Thank you for always being  my number one fan (except for that time 
you told me I’ll never be a professional football player, because I’m 
too little).
Thank you for always making me feel better when I’m hurt (except for 
those times when you’re drinking wine with your friends and you tell 
me that there isn’t enough blood to warrant a trip inside to get a 
bandaid).
Thank you for always taking care of me when I’m sick (except for those 
times you dose me up with children’s tylenol and send me to school).
Thank you for always having homemade cookies when I come home from 
school (except that you never do).
Thank you for always helping me with my homework (except for that one 
project that you could NOT stand to do, because it was too hard and 
you were mad at the teacher for assigning it, so you made Granddaddy 
do it for you).
Thank you for feeding me (frozen pizza again and again)
Thank you for clothing me (in clothes that are too small, because you 
haven’t had a chance to go through last year’s clothes).
Thank you for tucking me in at night (my favorite times are when 
you’re more tired than I am and you say “We can say two prayers 
tomorrow night.”)
Thank you for teaching me respect (like that time you crumpled up my 
favorite paper airplane right in front of my face because I wasn’t 
doing exactly what you told me to do.)
Thank you for being the greatest mom in the world (except that it’s 
impossible).

Love, Charlie and Elizabeth

Happy Mother’s Day to all the wonderful mothers (and mothers-to-be) out there. And thank you Pegeen, for the letter.

An Evening Prayer

I’m afraid that I don’t have anything amusing or funny to say today. I’m just not feeling it. So if you want a laugh, it’s probably best to read something else.

One of the reasons that I love being an Episcopalian is that I love the Book of  Common Prayer.  (Actually, I know many people who aren’t Episcpalian who love the Book of Common Prayer. If you don’t have one, I highly recommend getting a copy.)  I find the poetry and rhythm of the liturgies and the prayers to be comforting and uplifting. One of my favorite prayers is said at Compline (the Episcopalian name for “evening prayer service.”)  I’m not sure why, but it always makes me weep:

“Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ;  give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen.”

That pretty much includes everyone, in one form or another (even the joyous).

And especially for those who mourn, and for those who comfort them, I pray that you will find solace and strength in these next few days, and in the weeks and months and years to come. 

Amen.

Of course, things were different then

I often hear people reminiscing wistfully about childhood adventures.  They usually involve risk and independence and freedom. “I remember when I was 8 and my mom put me on the bus to go visit my grandma.” “I remember when I was 7 and I camped in my friend’s backyard without our parents and we stayed up all night telling ghost stories.” “I remember how every day of the summer we left in the morning and came in for lunch and went outside again until dinner and then went outside until our moms said we had to come in for bed.”  And then, invariably, they say, “Of course, things were different then.” And I want to say, “Were they? Were they really different then?” (Sometimes I do say it, but it usually ends with the other person being offended, so I’m trying to keep my mouth shut and not challenge people so much.)

I don’t want to minimize the pain and suffering of people whose children have been abducted by strangers.  It is a horrible, horrible thing. But the fact is that stranger abduction is extremely rare. And I don’t think it happens anymore frequently now than it did when we were kids. I just think we hear about every horrible, sad, scary stranger abduction now, and each incident wasn’t  plastered all over the media when we were kids.

I just don’t believe that there are people hiding behind trees waiting to snatch my child away. And I feel sorry for the kids whose moms see the world that way.  I just don’t think the world is more dangerous now than it used to be, at least in terms of stranger danger.  There are two potential implications of this, of course: 1) Our parents were out of their minds to let us have so much freedom, because they didn’t understand how dangerous the world was; or 2) We are doing our children a disservice by not allowing them more freedom.  I understand the position of people who believe the former, but I believe the latter.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t let my children (5 and 3) play outside unsupervised. Much.  (Except when they open the door and go outside when I’m in the kitchen.  Even though I’ve told them a million times not to do that.) But it’s not because I’m afraid they’re going to be snatched away. It’s because Margaret will snatch other children’s toys away. And because they’re still forgetful and run into the street. (Which they do anyway when I look away for a split second.)

But when they are a bit older, I will let them play outside unsupervised. And walk to school without me. (I don’t know at what age, but I’ll know it when I see it.) I don’t want them to see the world as a scary place. I want them to explore the world. And find things to do. And negotiate disagreements with other people without an adult to intervene. And once they turn 13, I’ll let David and Margaret ride the el without me, as I did with Emma. (David will probably be clinging to my leg begging me not to make him go on the el by himself.)

Until they scrape a knee. Then they’re back to 24/7 supervision.

Enchanted Tea Parties – Not

Ever since I heard another mom being praised for the fact that she had Enchanted Tea Parties for her kids, I’ve been feeling guilty about the fact that I’ve never had an Enchanted Tea Party. I’m feeling guilty. A bad mom. For not having Enchanted Tea Parties.

Part of the reason I don’t have Enchanted Tea Parties is because I wouldn’t have the first idea about how to throw one. The thought never occurred to me. And if it did, I’d have to Google it to know what to do. (Let’s be clear that the reason I didn’t have enchanted tea parties is not because I was a working mom. If I were a stay-at-home mom I would have a perfect house. And a perfect garden. But I would not have Enchanted Tea Parties just because I was at home.)

I’ve never had an Enchanted Tea Party myself, because my mother never threw one. She never went to the park either. Or baked things for the bake sale. (She just donated $5 and said that she had baked her fill for my older siblings and that she was done.) She did play a lot of Candyland and Chutes and Ladders, though, as I recall. And I still turned out relatively okay.

I mentioned my guilt over this to Emma, who in her own Emma way said, “Mom, do I look like I’m suffering because I didn’t have Enchanted Tea Parties?” Which is one of the reasons I love Emma so much. Aside from the fact that she’s my daughter. And part of me knows that she’s just not an Enchanted Tea Parties kind of kid. And if she were, we would have had them.  (If I had Googled it or got a book from the library, that is.)

I don’t frequently feel guilty. Yet the whole issue of parenting, and its requirements, causes me great guilt. What should I be doing to ensure that my children are bright and inquisitive and creative and free thinkers and imaginative and good readers? (Don’t get me started on the whole “20 minutes a day of reading” thing.  We read 20 minutes a day, sure we do, absolutely. Except when I’m tired and it’s more like 10.)

I know that I’m doing the best I can. And I know that my children are happy and bright and well-adjusted and pleasant to be around and funny and kind and empathetic.

Most days, that’s enough. As long as no one mentions Enchanted Tea Parties.

Frick and frack

I love this photo of David and Margaret Ruth, taken by Margaret Anne at my brother Fred’s house at Easter:

Their body language says it all.  David, sweet, cautious,  tentative, holding back, holding on to the couch for support.

Margaret, smiling wide, arms raised as if she were on a roller coaster. Ready to take on the world.

These two, each so wonderful, and as different as night and day.

He’s 2 1/2 years older, but it’s likely that she will still do many things first. Get her training wheels off her bike. (Especially since David now says he never wants to take his training wheels off.)  Stay dry at night. (She’s already there.) Advance to the next level in swim lessons. Ride her bike around the block. (With or without my permission. She’ll just make a break for it.) Jump into a new activity.

Yes, they were born to be the people they are.

Transitions, schmansitions

I’m grieving the impending loss of a family member.

Well, she’s technically not a family member. And she’s perfectly healthy. And she only lives a 1/2 block away, so it’s not like we’ll never see her again.

But in August, Margaret is leaving Joan, the daycare provider we’ve been with for four years, since before David turned two.  And who has been caring for Margaret since she was six weeks old.

In four years, I’ve never heard Joan raise her voice to a child and never seen her lose her cool. (She’s not perfect, I know.  I only see her for minutes a day. But still.)   Each day, I’ve seen her greet my children with a delighted smile on her face, as though she’s been sitting there anticipating their arrival.  She’s never done a single thing that I have found objectionable. As my friend Pegeen (whose daughter was also in Joan’s care) noted, Joan’s not really a daycare provider. She’s more like a favorite aunt who’s a much better parent than you. She potty-trained Margaret, she taught my children to say please and thank you and to eat their vegetables, she taught them to play nicely with others, and to be kind and compassionate and thoughtful, and to say sorry like they mean it, with a hug.

For various reasons, both Emma and David had multiple caregivers. It was like a revolving door.  Most of them were very capable and loving. They just didn’t stick around very long.  (The most notable example of this was David’s nanny who, having been with us for six months, said her normal weekend goodbye on the Friday before Memorial Day, 2004, and we never saw or heard from her again. Still have no idea what happened to her.)  So David and Emma (and their parents) never really got that close to anyone. But we have all grown to love Joan. In addition to caring for the kids, she is our back-up in a jam, our child-rearing consultant, and my confidant.

I don’t have any problem with the concept of Margaret, my baby, going to pre-school.  I’m fine with the fact that I don’t have babies anymore.  And the Montessori she’s going to, the same one David’s been at for the past two years, will be a great environment for her.

But I tear up every time I think about leaving Joan.  Part of it is that I don’t do very well with transitions. (Is there any doubt where David got that from?) And I hate goodbyes.   On Friday, David will say goodbye to his teachers at Montessori, and spend the summer at a daycamp before entering kindergarten in the Fall.  And in early August, we will say good bye to Joan (see, my eyes are filling up with tears).  It feels like a summer of goodbyes, and it makes me so sad.

But I have to remember that it is also a summer of hellos, as David and Margaret each move on to the next people who will love and care for them. New opportunities for them, and for us.  New logistical challenges that we will figure out.

And we will still have Joan in our hearts. And the neighborhood.

My 10 Favorite Pieces of Advice

I try really, really hard not to give advice.  So if you don’t want advice, stop reading now.

Well, okay, since you asked:

1. Just because you can get it zipped doesn’t mean you should wear it.

2. Put a little lipstick on. It will make you feel better. (This one’s courtesy of my friend Eva’s mom. And is really just advice for women.)

3. A good tailor is your best friend.

4. Before leaving the house, try to get a look at the rear view in the mirror, as well as the front view. (If you have young children, check your shoulders and upper back too. You never know what is on kids’ hands.)

5. If you’re tired, go to bed. If you’re hungry, eat. (But don’t eat if you’re not hungry.)

6. Don’t send text messages while you’re driving.

7. After dinner, check to make sure you don’t have broccoli in your teeth.

8. No matter how much you need the money, don’t go on a reality TV show.  No good will come of it in the end. (See: Patti Blagojevich, Jon and Kate, and Susan Boyle.)

9. Go to see every Pixar movie (we just saw “Up”.)

10. Don’t give people unsolicited advice. They hate it.

And a bonus: Don’t marry Drew Peterson.

And how many of these do I follow on a regular basis? I always try to wear lipstick.

A Face from the past…and present

A question from my sister yesterday about how I use Facebook got me thinking.

I guess I’ve been on Facebook for almost a year. I don’t remember when I joined, and I’m not interested enough to go back and look it up.

It’s not what I expected when I joined. It’s more like a series of big noisy cocktail parties than small, intimate dinner parties.  Big, noisy cocktail parties with an invite list of an interesting mix of people from my past and my present – people I’ve known since I was born, people I’ve known for 20 years, people I lost touch with, people who’s offices are currently very close to mine (close enough to hear me typing.) Most times, I stop into the party for about 10 minutes to see who’s there, and chit-chat with several people.  Other times, I have longer “conversations” with people, looking at photos, reading notes, looking at quiz results, taking a quiz here or there.  

Some of the people I have the most interaction with on Facebook are people I didn’t know very well in high school, but I’ve enjoyed getting to know a bit better through our “conversations.” Some of them are people I lost touch with from college and grad school and am so grateful to have in my life again, even in this limited way. Some of the people are people I know in real life today, but I find out things about them on Facebook that I wouldn’t find out through our off-line interaction. 

I have my own set of rules – I rarely send flair, gifts, drinks or flowers (and I ignore them when people send them to me.) I don’t enter into conversations about politics or religion (the Episcopal church, yes. Religion, no), as those topics are too complex to discuss in this forum.  I try to keep my updates and comments positive. I try not to be mean, although I’m probably a bit too snarky sometimes. I don’t have arguments with people. I don’t share intimate details of my life.

With a few exceptions, I’m only friends with people I’ve met in real life. I usually accept friend requests. I enjoy reading comments from people whose political and religious views are different from mine, as long as their comments are respectful (they usually are). I have unfriended people who appeared to be mentally unbalanced and/or had nasty, public arguments, or who shared things I wasn’t comfortable hearing about in this public space.  

I’ve had a few disappointments.  Some people whom I was excited to reconnect with quickly disappeared, or don’t participate much.  Some people unfriended me, and I don’t know why. (And it’s really, really bugging me!!) I fear that I offended them in some way, and I wish I knew why. My biggest frustration is that I’d love to have more in-depth conversations with people about some of the things they post (or just about life in general), but it’s not the forum for that.  

But overall, I enjoy it. Very much. Thanks to all my Facebook friends – I am grateful to you for participating in this interesting cocktail party that connects my past to my present.

What are your thoughts about Facebook? What are your rules? What has surprised you – good and bad?

Transitions, schmansitions, part deux

When it comes to transitions, David is his mother’s son (and his Pop’s grandson). He doesn’t like them. He wants things predictable, the same. No surprises.  No new things. And because he’s quite literal, he has certain expectations for how things are supposed to be.  And he doesn’t do well well things don’t work out the way he anticipated.

This presents a parenting challenge for me, as I never know how far to push him to try new things.

Yesterday was his first day of day camp. We counted down the days for what seemed like weeks. We talked about what it would be like.  And yet, as much as I tried to convince him that there wouldn’t be a tent to sleep in (“camp” = “tent”), he was so disappointed when I picked him up yesterday, because they hadn’t slept in a tent all day. 

After dealing with the stress of his first day of camp (everything new) and the tent disappointment, all he wanted to do was come home and play with his trains. But he had a soccer game (which also threw him off, because we’ve never before had a soccer game on Monday night, only soccer practice.)  In hindsight, I probably should have let him stay home. But I made him go to the game.  (“We made a commitment to the team…” Yada yada.) And he was pretty miserable at first. He wanted to be the red team, and they were the white team last night. (He says that wearing the jersey with the white on the outside makes his tummy hurt. Sigh.)  It took about 15 minutes of coaxing from me, his coach, and his teammates, to make him turn the jersey inside out.

He didn’t play much. But he played some.  And he survived. And at camp today he was fine. Didn’t even complain about the lack of a tent.

Fortunately, the anxiety of the transition doesn’t last long for him. (Or for me, I guess.) 

Once again, there are few right and wrong answers with this parenting thing.  As with most things, you do the best you can, and hope you’re doing okay.

And I guess you put up a tent in the backyard.

The return of odds and ends

It’s been a while since I’ve done an “odds and ends” post. I’ve been too busy I haven’t made time to crawl the Web for useless interesting tidbits. So here we go:

1. Wonderful, wise post from my favorite crabby ad guy, the Ad Contrarian (who listed my blog on his site last week). Having been a client for way more years than I want to admit, I can attest that everything he says in this post is absolutely true (sad but true.)

2. I’ve been thinking a lot about this wise quote I read from Lily Tomlin (whom I’ve never exactly thought of as wise, but I’m changing my thinking on that based on this quote): “Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past.”

It makes me think about how much time I spend regretting/resenting/other words that begin with re- things that I’ve done or others have done to me in the past.  As if all my brooding about it could change it.

3. According to A.C. Nielsen, 80% of people who sign up for Twitter send one Tweet and never send another one.  They’d better figure out a business model and fast if they’re going to be around two years from now, because they’re soon going to run out of new people willing to try it. (And then we’ll be on to the next thing saying, “We owe all of this to the brilliant people who thought up Twitter and never made a dime from it.)

4. Sometimes doing nothing is better than doing the wrong thing (especially when people are running around in a frenzy saying, “We have to do something NOW.” Jonah Goldberg on global warming plans. (Note: I’m not suggesting that global warming isn’t a problem, or that we don’t have to figure out what to do about it. I’m just saying that I don’t think we should do things that cost a bajillion dollars until we have a better sense of what the right thing to do is.)

5. And I had really grown to like Bob Sirott. (If you’re not from Chicago, don’t bother to read this, because it won’t mean anything to you.)

6. Once again, the Onion nails it. Having just been at a Museum on Friday, this made me laugh.

7.I really, really don’t want to think about David Carradine’s death anymore.  Nope, just don’t want to think about it at all. Can some things just be private, please?

Missing Emma

I miss Emma.  Standing-over-the kitchen-sink-weeping miss Emma.  Emma is in Ireland with her dad, her grandma, and her grandma’s brother and sister-in-law. (This is actually a much more fun group than the generational description would suggest.)  They left Friday and will be gone for almost two weeks.  Her dad’s been promising her a trip to Ireland for as long as she can remember, and they are finally there. 

This is giving me a preview of what life will be like in two years, when she goes to college. And I don’t like it one bit. (I do recognize, though, that she’s likely to get really icky between now and that time - part of the separation process – to the point where I may be really happy to see her go.) But right now I don’t like it. Don’t like it at all.

You see, it was only last week that she looked like this:

(She’s the one on the right.)

And now she looks like this:

(She’s the one on the left.)

We are all missing her.  Even David, who usually tells her he doesn’t like her anymore.

Margaret put her head down on her arms and said, “I’m missing Emma.” David said, “I really miss Emma.  I even like it when she tortures me.” (Which is pretty much all the time.)

Safe travels, Emma. Come home soon. And oh, yeah, have the time of  your life.

The music that was missing

I recently realized that something was missing from my life.

Music.

Not piano music that I play, or church music that I sing. I have plenty of both of those kinds of music.

No, the music that was missing was the music that I like to listen to.  Since I stopped driving to work (almost four years ago), I don’t spend very much time in the car.  So I stopped bothering to put CD’s in the CD player. I just turned on the radio. And since the kids are frequently watching TV when we’re at home (okay, did I just really admit that? What I meant to say was that since the kids are frequently listening to educational CDs on the CD player), I can’t really turn on the CD player as frequently as I’d like to.

But I realized that I was missing my music.

I know, what you’re saying.  “Um, they have these things called iPods now.” And I know that would be the obvious thing to do. But somehow more urgent expenditures keep arising – like a new starter for the car, or a new tire for the car, or a new taillight cover for the car…you get the drift.

So I decided that I’m going to listen to music whenever I’m in the car, even if I only get to hear two songs at a time. And it’s making me really happy. Really. Happy.

Here’s what’s in my CD player right now:

1. Bruce Springsteen…”We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions”.  If I were going to be stranded on a desert island, I would take this CD.

2. Rod Stewart, “As Time Goes By: The Great American Songbook, Volume II”.  It makes me laugh when he sings, “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” with Cher. Great old songs, with Rod Stewart’s distinctive voice.

3. Lucinda Williams…”Little Honey”. Just got this and haven’t listened to the whole thing yet.  If it’s half as good as “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road”, I’ll be happy.

4. Toby Keith…”Unleashed”. I just like the song “Beer For My Horses.”

5. John Rutter…Gloria: The Sacred Music of John Rutter”.  I know, and you thought the Rod Stewart one was dorky.

6. Emmylou Harris…”All I Intended to Be”.  Love Emmylou, but this one is new and I haven’t listened to the whole thing yet.

What’s in your car’s CD player?

I love this dress

Usually, when something seems to good to be true it isn’t, but occasionally, it actually is.

I saw an adorable little black Norma Kamali dress in this month’s O Magazine (maybe you saw it – it was the issue with Oprah on the cover. Ha – a little O Magazine humor.)  I investigated, and it said was available at Walmart for $20. At Walmart. For $20. My local Walmart of woe (which has actually been remodeled and it’s pretty nice and it doesn’t have that awful smell anymore, so I guess I have to stop calling it the Walmart of woe) doesn’t carry the Norma Kamali line, so I ordered it from Walmart.com. (If you click that link, it will take you to the dress in black.)

It’s fabulous. The jersey material is nice and heavy. The design is slimming. And I love it.  (It fits pretty true to size  – I’m a size 10 and I ordered a Medium.) At $20, I may just order another one.

I would take a picture of me in it, but Emma took the digital camera to Ireland, so I’m camera-less.

It comes in olive as well (but if there’s one color I can’t wear, it’s olive.  People ask me if I’m feeling alright, because it makes me look queasy.)

Note: Walmart’s Web site is a little confusing, because they show different colors of the same style as completely different items, rather than showing you the color options on one page. I think they need to fix that.

Here’s what the dress looks like on the model in olive (not sure what that bump is on her hip, but I don’t get that bump on my hip when I wear it):

Turning a corner

Yesterday was our first day at the pool.  (Not sure why the pools in Chicago don’t just open between June 15-Sept. 15, because there’s really no point in opening on Memorial Day. Ever.) 

And I realized that, for the first time in years, I didn’t have to run around trying to find the swim diaper and the rubber pants.  And I didn’t have to set up the stroller. All we had to do was put suits on, lather up with sunscreen (which I of course had to run to CVS to buy, as I hadn’t planned ahead - see my December 1 post about snow boots) and go.

Everyone put on his/her own suit, everyone walked, everyone helped to put on his/her own sunscreen. And everyone found a friend they knew to play with at the pool.

Maybe I should feel sad about this. Maybe if I were 35, I would.  But at 46, I don’t. Not one bit.  I loved it when they were babies. Every minute of it. But now that my babies are growing up…hallelujah.

How soon can I get them to put away their own laundry?

Top 10 reasons I haven’t been blogging

10. Watching Thriller video over and over and over again, sobbing and eating popcorn.

9. Too busy consoling Patti Blagojevich on getting booted off “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.” (Although, given the name, isn’t getting booted off the whole point?)

8. Hugh Jackman asked me to run away with him and had to go.

7. Was sitting on the veranda with a cool drink and a washcloth on my forehead. (I guess that would require a veranda.)

6. Making many trips to Wal-mart to buy up supply of Norma Kamali dresses.

5. Got lost in Ikea and took 3 days to get out. (All signs were in Swedish.)

4. Running the numbers with Mayor Daley trying to get these Olympic finances sorted out.

3. Trying to get caught up on first two seasons of Mad Men before new season starts August 16.

2. Had to go to Ireland to pick up Emma.

1. Spent the last three days cleaning out the basement, and organizing the house.

The real answer is #1. My wonderful sister and brother-in-law came out to help get the basement organized.  (No, we’re not moving. We had just tired of walking around the junk.)

We did spend 3 hours in Ikea that felt like 3 days. 

Sadly, no Hugh Jackman.

Enough Already

When Emma was in Ireland, she made an interesting comment to me on the phone. She said that she couldn’t believe how much was going on in the world, with major situations happening in Iran and North Korea, and scandals in Great Britain (not that scandals in Great Britain really qualify as news anymore.)  And I told her that from where I sat in Chicago, it didn’t really feel like there was more going on in the world than usual.  Rather, it was likely her perspective that was different. In the U.S., it seems that about 80% of our news coverage (maybe more) is on things happening in the U.S., and about 20% of it is about what’s happening in the rest of the world.  In Europe, it feels like those percentages are reversed.  And not only is our news U.S.-focused, it feels like it’s increasingly celebrity-focused. She was used to getting wall-to-wall coverage of Jon & Kate Plus 8, and in Ireland she was getting real news.

Of course, the frenzy got worse last week with the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and especially Michael Jackson. We now have wall-to-wall coverage of Michael’s funeral arrangements, the paternity of his children, his doctor, multiple autopsies, and the list goes on and on. I’m guilty – I read some of it. But I’m getting tired of it.  We’re still fighting a war in Iraq, we’re still in a recession, North Korea is still screwing around with missiles, there was a fixed election in Iran, and the list goes on and on.  But that seems to be drowned out by wall-to-wall celebrity news, and “baby falls in a well” stories.

I guess we enjoy reading about the problems of celebrities because it’s nice to know they have the same problems we do. (I’m reminded of the SNL “Cowbell” skit, where Christopher Walken, playing record producer Bruce Dickinson says, “I put my pants on just like the rest of you…one leg at a time.  Except that once my pants are on, I make gold records.” And yes, I had to look at the video again, since I’m a woman and therefore, can’t quote TV or movie dialogue.) Or maybe because focusing on the problems of celebrities takes our minds off our own problems.

But when is enough enough? I find that CNN.com has become the worst of the mainstream media in this regard. I’ve stopped visiting the site. As of now. Ok, maybe I’ll look at it once a day. But I’m switching my home page to the New York Times online. Maybe they still recognize that it’s a great big world out there.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Next weekend, I’m off to St. Louis for a three-day reunion with old friends (referring to the length of time we’ve known each other, of course, not our chronological age.) While I will miss my children, of course, there are certain benefits to a child-free weekend.  Here are the things I think I’m going to enjoy most:

1. Going to the pool with people who will not drown if I take my eyes off them for a moment.

2. Not having to cut anyone’s meat.

3. Not having anyone complain that there is meat on their plate.

4. Not hearing the worlds, “Mama, I need a towel. I spilled sumping.”

5. Waking on my own timing, not someone else’s (I honestly don’t care if I wake up at 6 a.m., as long as no one else is doing the waking.)

6. Not having to say the words,” Margaret, stop hitting David.” (I will be with someone named Margaret, but I don’t expect that she’s going to be hitting anyone.)

7. Not having to wonder where the wet wipes are.

8. Not being responsible for anyone else’s clothes, shoes or pajamas.

9. Not having to strap anyone into a car seat (or get them out again). (Just to be clear, though, I do think I’m going to be responsible for driving everyone around in the mini-van, as it’s the only large vehicle we’ll have. But that’s okay, because the others are capable of buckling their own seat belts.)

10. Not having to recite the list of TiVo-recorded “Back in the Barnyard” episodes several times a day.

I’m quite certain that I will eagerly anticipate the reunion with my kids. But there’s nothing like a few days off to make me appreciate it…

Wanna get away?

I’ve been thinking about experiences that make me want to disappear through a trap door in the floor:

1. Seeing work colleagues at the pool.  When I’m in a bathing suit.  With my stomach showing. (I don’t remember this bothering me when I was 26, but at 46, it’s mortifying.) Although it is fun to see who has tattoos and piercings.

2. Forgetting someone’s name. Or worse, calling them by the wrong name. Or starting to call them by the wrong name, getting one syllable out, and then stopping and looking at the floor.  I hate it when that happens. Why can I not remember the names of people I see on a daily basis?

3. When we’re at the supermarket and one of my children innocently points to someone and yells the (obvious) observation that “That person is really fat.”‘

4. Being on the elevator with someone you sort of know and running out of chit-chatty things to talk about so that you’re both looking at the floor, the ceiling or the door.  (I find that looking at my Blackberry is a really good thing to do in this situation.)  With some people, once we’ve covered the weather (always a good topic of conversation in Chicago), there really is nothing to talk about.

5. Realizing that I have a really big stain on my shirt. Or a rip in the seat of my pants. And realizing that it may have been there all day.

6. Realizing that I’m wearing one navy trouser sock and one black trouser sock.  

7. Realizing at 5:00 that I have something stuck in my teeth. When the last time I ate anything was at lunch. And I’ve had three meetings since lunch.

8. Realizing in a meeting that someone else has something stuck in their teeth. Or that their fly is open. Or that their shirt is gaping and one of the girls is hanging out.   (The last one happened to me in a meeting at some point in my career, but I’m not saying who or when.) 

9. Tripping for absolutely no reason and going flying.

10. Being late for a meeting, trying to enter and sit down quietly, and then realizing that I’m in the WRONG meeting.

What are your mortifying moments?

We’ll always be loyal and true

I just spent the weekend with the most amazing women.  Women I’ve known pretty much my whole life (with the exception of Leigh, who was Margaret’s best friend from Penn State, but who we’ve known for so long that she’s one of the group.)  Women who know my deepest, darkest secrets and manage to like me anyway. Women who make me feel humble (because there’s nothing like hanging out with people who knew you ”back in the day” to keep you humble.)

Margaret was the hostess with the mostess. She lives in Caseyville, IL, and works for a securities firm whose name keeps changing, causing her no end of work. (She’s in internal communications.)

Lin is on the faculty at a college in Maryland (I know, my command of the details has always been my strong point.)  She’s the only one of us with a Ph.D.  And we’re very proud of her.

Maria left us after sophomore year of high school and we hadn’t seen her in 28 years. She lives in Colorado and does communications for a not-for-profit foster care agency. And yes, we picked up with her pretty much where we left off.

Leigh is our adopted friend. She lives in Herndon, VA and is a national account manager for a large cosmetic company.

And me, of course.

The sixth member of our little group, Karla, could not be with us this weekend and we were sad. But she’ll be with us next year.

I feel refreshed and relaxed. We laughed and talked and ate and slept and talked some more.  As it always is when we get together, it was like we had never been apart.

We talked about elementary school and middle school and the disastrous (for most of us) “open space” experiment we were all subjected to in 5th grade.  We talked about our jobs and our kids and our mundane lives. And of course we talked about high school.  How nasty we were to each other at times (I think it might have had something to do with some boys, many of whose names now escape us after 27 years.)  How much fun we had at band camp. (No, seriously, we did.) And on the band bus. (Yeah, seriously. We did.) About the differences between the perceptions we had of each others’ home lives growing up, and the realities of those lives. 

We talked about past loves and past good-enough-for-nows.  We shared our best moments and those we were still ashamed of, even after 10, 15, 25 years.  Our proudest memories and our most embarrassing moments.  Things we love remembering about high school and things we’d rather forget. And we made amends for things we should have made amends for years ago, and that we were still carrying around inside.

What was most fascinating to me was that we each had such different recollections of the same events.  And I’m quite sure that if we had a recording of the actual events, they would be different than any of us remembers. 

Though changes come, as time rolls on, we’ll always be loyal and true..

(And yes, I had to look that up. Thank you, Google.)

Feels like home to me

I’ve been thinking a lot about home.  Which I’d always defined as that one place that, when you go there, they have to take you in.  One place. One home. 

But I’m broadening my definition.  Home is where the people who love you live. The people who love you for who you are.

So, by that definition, home is Shamokin, and Sunbury, and Pittsburgh, and Oak Park, and Portland, Oregon, to name a few.

I went to my original home last week. Well, not the original house. I wish I could have gone there and walked around. To see if it looked the same as I remember it, and smelled the way I remember it. But if not to the house, at least to the  town where I grew up, which formed me and then launched me into the world trailing a U-haul. Where I broke my front tooth in the playground of the Washington School. Where I learned to drive.  Where I fell in love the first time and had my heart broken the first time. Where I sang “Seasons in the Sun” over and over and over again.

I shared the places of my growing up with my children.  The cottage, Knoebels. Coney Island. I learned of the love that Emma has for these places, because of our frequent visits over the years. And I know that David and Margaret are developing that same love for the place I originally called home.

By the end of the trip, I was ready to return to our Oak Park home. The place where my stuff is. The place where my life is.  The place where I have wonderful, amazing friends who are like family to us.

But I’m grateful for all the places I can call home.

Everyone in this house needs to calm down

I actually uttered that phrase this morning.  Here’s a list of other things I said before 8:30 this morning:

1. You need to go find something to do.

2. Do you want me to put a kids’ show on?

3. We don’t crumple the New York Times.

4. Margaret, stop playing with my phone.

5. Yes, David, we can take a bath tonight. (Can’t imagine where he gets that planning gene.)

6. Because going to church on Sunday is what we do.

7. I’m not going to tell you again to put your underwear on.

8. Don’t bang on the computer.

9. Where are your clothes?

Yes, just a typical Sunday morning…

Take good care of my baby

Sometimes I’m a little slow on the uptake.

Margaret has been driving me crazy all weekend. Oppositional. Defiant. Whiny.  The worst of the “3″ behavior.

I was thisclose to selling her to the gypsies. And then I remembered.

She’s going to pre-school on Monday.  

And my independent, bossy, fearless, take-no-prisoners, smart-as-a-whip, you-build-it-and I’ll- knock it-down little girl is scared. And she doesn’t know how to say it. 

She’s been with Joanie since she was 6 weeks old. (I know, I know, it sounds like a horrible thing to put a six-week-old baby in daycare. I never thought I’d do it. Except that I hadn’t been in my job long enough to qualify for FMLA. And we had Joan, supermom that she is. But still…I put a 6-week-old baby in daycare?) She knows the rules, the drill. She’s the old kid, the one who tells everyone what to do.

And now, she’s leaving this safe environment and going to school. With rules (lots of rules), and expectations.  When you’re three, new is scary. (When you’re 46, new is scary sometimes too.)

As much as I dreaded this day, as much as my eyes filled with tears every time I thought about this day…now that this day is here, it’s harder for her than it is for me. 

So we had a talk about how going to a new school can be scary. But so worth it for the new friends you meet and the new things you get to do.  And we talked about how great she’s going to be. 

Best of luck to you, Miss Frances. Take good care of my baby (who’s now officially not only not a baby but not even a toddler anymore, but who will always be my baby.)

(I had a cute photo of her to post with this, but I can’t figure out how to get it from my new phone to the computer.  Which is typical.)

Endings and beginnings

As long as I live, I will never forget the look on my dad’s face when my mother walked into a room. For 63 years, he got that look on his face every day.  

Next week, we head to Portland for the wedding of E and B.  E is the daughter of my cousin (makes you feel old when the next generation starts getting married.) Her family is part of my big, wonderful, extended family that loves and supports me. That accepts me exactly for who I am. That makes me laugh so hard that my stomach hurts. 

I remember E as a little girl, with big eyes and long, beautiful dark hair.  But I’ve really gotten to know and love her as an adult, a smart, warm, compassionate, funny, beautiful person. I’ve only met B several times, but t say that he’s a great guy doesn’t do him justice. It’s obvious to all who know them that this is a wonderful match.  

It’s strange going to a wedding when you’re going through a divorce. (There. I said it.) Hearing someone else say the words you spoke and gave your heart to.  In a time when things were different and people were different and you thought you knew how your life was going to be. As if you ever know how your life is going to be.

It would be easy to be cynical.  (And those of you who know me know that I am capable of being quite cynical.) But I’m not going there.  

My hope and my wish and my expectation for E and B is that they are for each other a soft place to land. That they are always kind to each other. And that they never lose the sparkle that each has when they look at each other.  I know that this is possible, because I am surrounded by many examples of it…in neighbors, friends and family. 

Best wishes for a long and happy life together.

And may you always have that look in your eyes.

School days, school days

My sweet, beautiful boy.  My David. Almost 6. Clinging to my leg for dear life, not noticing that all the other kindergartners are together in line and all the other parents are lined up against the wall.  ”But Mom, I want to stay home with you.”  (This boy who’s been in full-time care since he was two.  Does he imagine that I hang out at home all day, watching television? This boy who was never anxious about going to pre-school.)

He’s been like a little old man for the past two days.  Whining and kvetching about everything.  We had an argument this morning because he didn’t want to wear his new back-to-school outfit that his Aunt Carolyn bought for him (yeah, I know that was a brilliant move on my part to pick that battle…going to be getting some kind of Mom award for that one.) He wanted to wear his old clothes.  And walking up to school, he said, “I hope the teacher isn’t mad at me because I didn’t wear my new shirt.”

When I picked him up tonight, he said he was sad because he forgot to remember that I’m always in his heart and he’s always in my heart, so we’re always together. And he was missing me but he forgot to remember.

Of course, much of this is a front for me.  I know that he had a good day, because the mom-spies in the lunch room told me he was happy and carefree. He doesn’t know that I know. Or maybe he doesn’t remember that he had a good day.

My sweet, beautiful boy who’s a ball of anxiety just like his mother but who hasn’t learned to mask it yet.

May tomorrow be a better school day, David. And the day after that. And the day after that. For, oh, like 17 years. (Not counting medical school.)

The hardest part

The hardest part about adjusting to kindergarten is not the new routine. It’s not all the new kids and the new teacher (Ms. Weigel, whom David refers to as “Miss Waggle.”) It’s not remembering the backpack every day (although I confess that I forgot to check the backpack on Friday and therefore didn’t realize that David had homework that was due on Monday. Less than a week and I’m flunking kindergarten already. I don’t remember Emma having homework in kindergarten. But I digress.)   

No, the hardest part is having to be somewhere at 8:00. On the dot.  When the bell rings.  To be clear, it’s not that it’s 8:00. It could be 7:45 or 8:15 or 8:30.  It’s having to be somewhere AT A CERTAIN TIME.  With preschool, we could just roll in when we were ready, somewhere between 7:30-8:45.  But not so wth kindergarten. Be there at 8:00, or it goes on your Permanent Record.  Tardy.  Get a note from the office.

This morning, David had two meltdowns. First, because he couldn’t finish watching the Mickey Mouse Club, which doesn’t end until 8:00. Then, because Margaret “called” the song she wanted in the car (the first song on Bruce Springsteen/The Pete Seeger Sessions) before David did.  So by the time we got to play  David’s song (The Dixie Chicks “If I Fall You’re Going Down With Me”; his favorite song used to be “Wide Open Spaces”, but his musical tastes have deepened), we could only hear the first verse.  (Yes, okay, we live close enough to the school that we don’t even get through two songs, yet we drive instead of walk most days. What can I say…we have to be there by 8:00 on the dot.)  So he had a fit because we couldn’t sit in the car and listen to the rest of the song because The Bell was going to ring.)  

He was still screaming and crying when I left.

My friends tell me that we will be used to this by the first of October. And far be it from me to wish away time.

But is it October yet?

Things I learned this Labor Day weekend

1. A blue Sharpie in the hands of a 3-year-old is a very bad thing.

2. Blue Sharpie does not come out of tan Berber carpeting, although Mr. Clean Magic Eraser makes it less noticeable.

3. Blue Sharpie does not come off Mac keyboards.

4. When using a wet Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to try to clean a Mac keyboard, you should first unplug the Mac keyboard from the Mac.

5. If you don’t unplug the Mac keyboard from the Mac before using the wet Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, it fries the Mac keyboard and makes it unusable.

6. A fried Mac keyboard makes a sound like you’re continuously pressing down a key. (It can probably make other sounds as well, or no sound at all for that matter, but I don’t know for sure.)

7. There’s  a lot of stuff available for resale on Craig’s list, including used Mac keyboards.

And that’s what I learned this Labor Day weekend.

A list of things I can’t do

1. Fix a balloon animal when it starts to fall apart, or unwind, or whatever it is that balloon animals do when they stop being the shape that the balloon animal man created. 

2. Go back in time and make things be different. (As in, BUT I DIDN’T WANT YOU TO CUT MY SANDWICH!!!!!) (But won’t in be a happy day for everyone when I develop the capability to do this?)

3. Throw a baseball. (Kick a soccer ball…this list could go on and on.)

4. Make Teletubbies appear on the TiVo (it’s not on TV anymore. There are some things that I’m happy I can’t do. This is one of them.)

5. Make Apple Jacks miraculously appear in the cupboard without actually going to the store. (BUT I WANT APPLE JACKS!!!!!)

6. Remember to check David’s backpack every day. (Yes, I’m still flunking kindergarten.)

7. Make the damn weeds stop growing the backyard. (I keep KILLING THEM and they keep reappearing.)

8. Fix trains. (But thank goodness for Joe, our next-door neighbor, who is a train fixer.)

9. Get the Sharpie stains out of the carpet (but we’ve already been through that. Still trying.)

10. Make my kids eat peas. (Or any vegetable, for that matter. But I keep trying.)

DNR

Our cat, Mick, wasn’t doing well.  He was old. Somewhere between 15 and 20 years old.  (We don’t know for sure because he had several owners before Tim.)  He was blind, he was down to skin and bones (maybe 4 pounds soaking wet), and this weekend, he could no longer jump on the couch.

Last night, when I got home from a church meeting, Emma told me Mick was worse. He wasn’t moving much, wasn’t eating, he had a pretty serious eye infection, and to be honest, he didn’t really look like the same cat as before…it was like he had already started to cross over.  So I planned to take him to the vet first thing in the morning.

Except that when I woke up, I couldn’t find him. We looked everywhere (actually, I looked everywhere. Emma refused to look under the beds.) I finally saw his big fluffy tail sticking out from under the shelving in the utility closet in the basement. Not moving. Not responding to his name.

This presented me with a dilemma. I didn’t want to leave him there to die if he wasn’t already dead.  I owed him more than that. If he wasn’t already dead, I wanted to hold him while he died. But I really, really, really didn’t want to pick him up if he was already dead.  Eeewww. So I started pacing. And making phone calls for moral support, hoping that someone would say something that would give me the nerve to pick him up.  And that helped, but I still couldn’t pick up the cat. Then I went to get Stephanie for moral support, but she was as scared and skeeved out as I was.

So then I did what any strong, independent woman would do.  I went around the neighborhood to see if I could find a man who was willing to pick up a potentially dead cat to see if it was actually dead.  Unfortunately, no one was home. Not Tom or Matt or Joe.  But luckily, one of my neighbor’s lawn service guys overheard me talking and offered to help me. (Thank you, lawn service guy whose name I don’t even know. He didn’t actually have to pick up the cat, because as we were walking down to the basement, Mick moved, so I knew he was alive.)

It turns out he wasn’t dead. But he was close. He was barely breathing.  He wasn’t moving much.

So I drove to the closest animal hospital that was open. (Not our regular vet.) The receptionist was so kind.  I told her that it was Mick’s time and she explained to me what would happen.

Then the vet came in and this is where the experience took a bad turn. She cheerily asked me when the last time was that he had blood work. I’m sorry…was this a date I was supposed to remember? And she said, you know, maybe he has something treatable. We could do blood work to find out.  To which I said, no thanks, I know that this is the right thing to do. It’s time.

And then. And then she rolled her eyes and sighed a loud sigh. Yes, she did. And then she thrust a piece of paper at me and said in an exasperated tone of voice, “Okay, then, sign this.” And I wanted to yell at her….please tell me you didn’t just do the eye roll thing.  As if. As if I woke up this morning, and said, you know, this cat is really a nuisance. I think I’ll kill it today.

To be f air, she was much more compassionate and kind when she came back in the room to give him the shot. I don’t know why. Maybe she hadn’t actually seen him and the condition he was in before she suggested the blood work. Maybe she got over herself. I don’t really know. I was ready to give her a piece of my mind if she still had the attitude, but it wasn’t necessary.

So here’s my question….at what point did the expectation become that we’re supposed to go to extreme measures to prolong the life of a dying pet? And at what point did someone decide that any pet owner not willing to do this is cruel and heartless?  I don’t think it makes me a bad person because I wasn’t willing to do blood work on a cat that was clearly dying, and had, in fact, gone off to die in a place where I had trouble finding him. I know that I did the right thing. But did I really need a guilt trip from a young, holier-than-thou vet at that very moment?

My lasting memory of Mick will be of him sprawled across my abdomen as I was lying on the couch, when I was very pregnant with David. Mick was incubating me.  (I have no memory of him doing this when I was pregnant with Margaret. I think I was too busy to lie down.)

He loved soft, comfy blankets, and human companionship.  His favorite place to hang out was next to a warm radiator.  He loved us and we loved him.

And we will miss him very much.

Peanut noodles with chicken

Now that Fall is here, I’ve been cooking again.  I found this basic recipe in Good Housekeeping magazine, and doctored it up a bit.  Everyone liked it – Emma even took leftovers of it to school for her lunch. (And her friends asked for copies of the recipe.)

1 lb. spaghetti or linguine

1 clove garlic, thinly sliced ( I use garlic from a jar. Saves time.)

4 med. skinless, boneless chicken breast halves

1/4 c. rice vinegar

1/4 c. soy sauce

1/3 c. smooth peanut butter

3 Tbsp. water

2 tsp. grated fresh ginger

1/2 cucumber, peeled and thinly sliced

1 bag shredded carrots

1 medium red pepper, thinly sliced

lots of cilantro

1. Boil water. Cook pasta according to directions. Rinse and drain pasta.

2. Meanwhile, in a 12-inch skillet, heat garlic and 1 inch of a water to boiling on high. Add chicken, reduce heat to medium-low and cook chicken for 13-14 minutes (until it’s not pink. Pink is bad for chicken.) Remove chicken from skillet and place in a bowl of ice water for 5 minutes. Throw out the icky water.  With hands, shred chicken.

3. While chicken and pasta are cooking, in a large bowl whisk vinegar, soy sauce, peanut butter, water and ginger until smooth.

4. To bowl with peanut sauce, add pasta, shredded chicken, cucumber, carrots and pepper; toss to coat.  To serve, garnish with lots of cilantro.

The last time I made this, I added some steamed broccoli to it as well, as both David and Margaret are eating broccoli these days, and request it early every day. I do not know why – it totally came out of the blue.

Odds and Ends and Odds

1. Like me, the Ad Contrarian has had a case of writer’s block. Or blog fatigue.  He’s now back after a month off, with this example of marketing at its finest. And I wonder why marketers get a bad name (especially from engineers, for some reason).

2.This spot-on animated parody about a social media guru, also found on the Ad Contrarian’s blog, should be required viewing for anyone thinking about hiring such a “guru”.

3. I must admit that I am really happy that Chicago did not get the 2016 Olympics.  I thought I’d be disappointed. But I was wrong.  I’ve had 46 happy years without living in an Olympic host city, and I expect I’ll have many more.  It would have been a huge hassle, it would have created a huge amount of debt, bad traffic, and attracted a bajillion (or should I say a brazilion) tourists. Meh.

4. Things I don’t care about: David Letterman’s sex life. Jon Gosselin. Kate Gosselin. Whether the Gosselin family TV show continues. Or Tom DeLay quitting Dancing With the Stars.

5. Overall, I’m disappointed in this seasons’ Mad Men.  There. I said it.

6. Readers of a Web site called Ship of Fools voted this the funniest religion joke ever told:

was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump. I ran over and said: “Stop. Don’t do it.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” he asked.

“Well, there’s so much to live for!”

“Like what?”

“Are you religious?”

He said: “Yes.”

I said: “Me too. Are you Christian or Buddhist?”

“Christian.”

“Me too. Are you Catholic or Protestant?”

“Protestant.”

“Me too. Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?”

“Baptist.”

“Wow. Me too. Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?”

“Baptist Church of God.”

“Me too. Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?”

“Reformed Baptist Church of God.”

“Me too. Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?”

He said: “Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915.”

I said: “Die, heretic scum,” and pushed him off.

Personally, I think this one is funnier.

7. 4 words that make me unlikely to read further: “Keith Olbermann’s plea for…”

Spinning the plates

One thing I’ve come to realize over the past few months is that people worry about me when I’m not blogging regularly. If a week goes by with no new posts, I start to get emails from friends and family asking if I’m okay.  Which is nice. It makes me feel cared for. And like my posts matter to some people.  So thank you for that.

So I want to let everyone know that I am fine. I have not gone off the deep end.

But I’ve gotten my ass kicked by Fall.

(I’m probably going to say “ass” a lot in this post, so if you don’t like that word, you might want to stop reading.)

In the Summer, I had myself convinced that I had everything under control. That I could continue to do everything that I wanted to do and still keep all the plates spinning (for those of you old enough to have watched Ed Sullivan.)  Yes, in the lazy days of summer, I was convinced that I could continue to blog regularly, and take piano lessons, sing in the church choir, take care of the kids, and cook healthy dinners. And oh yeah, work full time.

And then September kicked me in the ass.

The arrival of school (including moves from pre-school to kindergarten and from day care to pre-school) brought a cyclone of activities, with curriculum nights (funny, I don’t remember my mother ever going to kindergarten curriculum night. Or any curriculum night. But I digress…) Cross country (for Emma) and soccer (for David.) And let’s not forget the Kindergarten Homework.

Then there are the activities created by the “back at it” nature of Fall.  Hey-we-haven’t-had-book-club-all-summer-let’s-get-together.  That-planning-meeting-at-church-that-we-put-off-yeah-we-should-probably-do-that.

Then there are the Fall birthday parties. I don’t know whether there are more kids with Fall birthdays, or it’s just that every kid with a Fall birthday has a party, but there are a lot of birthday parties (including David’s.)

Then there’s the increased activity (doctor’s appointments, physical therapy) caused by Emma’s back injury, which isn’t Fall-related but happened at a REALLY BUSY TIME. (Note to Emma: no more water-skiing.)

Many days I feel like I’m doing a pretty half-assed job at keeping all the plates spinning.

I have simplified.  I am taking a break from the non-essentials. I’m taking a break from piano lessons. I’m not going to choir rehearsal on a regular basis. And I’m not even running as much as I was. And we know I’m not blogging much.

But we are managing. Actually, we are thriving. We are all healthy (except for Emma’s continued back problems.) Somehow we get to school and work every day. David loves kindergarten and is doing great. Margaret loves pre-school and is also doing great.  Emma is loving her junior year. I’m very happy at work.

Things should get easier when Emma gets her driver’s license next week. (Did I just say that?) And things should calm down after October.  When we’re used to the schedule. And the back-to-school activities cease. And all we have to do is get ready for the holi…

Never mind.

Dear David, I’m sorry

Dear David,

Please accept my sincere apologies for the fact that I did not collect your tooth and leave money last night.  I can only imagine your heart-rending sobs this morning when you looked under you pillow and discovered that your tooth was still there.  There’s so little in life you can really count on, and you’d think that getting money for teeth would be one of them, I know.

What can I say? I had every intention of making my usual rounds last night.  I had my wings polished and my fairy dust replenished in the morning, same as usual.  I was ready to go.  But then the Easter Bunny and I got into this really long conversation about whether Obama should have won the Nobel Peace Prize, and that segued into the state of higher education in America, and the next thing you know, it was 3:00 in the morning, and I had totally missed my flying window.

I realize that my only job in life is delivering money to the children who have lost teeth. I mean, how hard is it to do one thing well, right? And I assure you that this has never happened before and will never happen again. I will write notes to remind myself to stay away from the Easter Bunny an hour before flying time, so I don’t get sucked into conversations and get distracted. (Santa Claus too.)

I’ll make it up to you, David. I’ll bring you a little extra tonight for “interest.” (As I will have to for all the other children of the world. Man, do the math…can you say “cost over-runs?” Maybe I can get a small budget transfer from Santa. Or the Easter Bunny, but he’s so worried about the rising cost of chocolate that it’s unlikely.)

I look forward to inspecting that tooth. I’m sure it’s a fine specimen that will bring me a lot of money on the open market.

Gotta run. Can you imagine how many of these notes I have to write? Luckily, it’s a lot of cut and paste.

Again, please accept my apology and my assurance that this will never happen again, to you or any other child.

Love,

The Tooth Fairy

P.S. Whatever you do, do not blame this in any way on your mother.  She has a lot on her plate.

Breaded Cod with Spinach

I adapted this recipe from one I saw in Woman’s Day a few years ago. It’s delicious.  I serve it with a side of boiled red potatoes or boiled noodles with a bit of parmesan and olive oil.

Ingredients:

4 cod fillets

1 cup panko bread crumbs, Italian-flavored

2 Tbsp. olive oil

2 Tbsp. freshly grated Parmesan cheese

1 lb. spinach

2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced

1 Tbsp. olive oil

2 Tbsp. pine nuts, toasted

Toss  spinach, olive oil, garlic and pine nuts in a large rectangular glass baking dish.

Combine bread crumbs, 2 Tbsp. olive oil and grated parmesan in a bowl.  Roll cod pieces in mixture and place over spinach mixture. (I find it hard to get the bread crumb mixture to stick, so I end up pressing it onto the fish.)

Bake, covered with aluminum foil, in a 450 degree oven for 10 minutes.  Remove foil and bake for 5 more minutes.  Serve immediately.