Lion and Magic Boy

Well. I’m so glad that’s over.

Did you know that yesterday was deemed the “Most Depressing Day of The Year“? The fact that it was a Monday notwithstanding, with the alarm coming WAY too early as usual, especially since Nathaniel had requested the night before to “wake him up early” (which gave him time to unload the dishwasher! Without being asked! Woot!) (What’s wrong with that boy, anyway?), what was so bad about yesterday anyway?

Did you feel all depressed yesterday?

Me neither.

Huh.

Oh well.

Eric had kind of a depressing day though.

(Except for the walking thing. Which he is totally into now, and will let go of my hand now just so he can do it by himself. That boy is so cool.)

Last Friday, did I mention? No, I think I was in a cave somewhere. Anyway, last Friday the children had a surprise un-school day because they decided to close the school on account of our first snow of the season, a total of about .5 inches. We had no idea of course that the school was closed, and we all got up early as usual, no, extra early, because that was the first day of Nathaniel’s new campaign to torture me with sleep deprivation, and Nathaniel and Serena gathered their lunches (lovingly hand made and hand-packed of course) and backpacks and coats and mittens and hats and shoes, and trotted out to stand around in the “snow” and await the bus at 7:30 (aka “O’ Dark Thirty”). And I got Eric out of his chair, interrupting some very important bagel and oatmeal consumption (Eric doesn’t miss many meals) to climb up on the bench under the window on which Nathaniel doesn’t practice his cello anymore to wave goodbye to his brother and sister.

And we waited.

And waited.

Finally after 15 minutes of waiting I turned on the TV (that thing must be good for something other than watching DVDs of last season’s House, and this season’s Top Chef), and looked to see if the school district their school has chosen to “follow” (not the one we live in or the one who provides the bus service) was having a delay.

Yes. One-hour delay. I am so glad we got up early for this.

I call them back in, everybody takes off hats and shoes and coats, and mittens, setting lovingly hand-packed lunches down and going off down into the basement to play for an hour , which ruined my hopes of writing that morning or at least that hour because I had Eric to deal with (and his breakfast to help him finish).

No problem.

The hour goes by, they all put on their coats and shoes and hats and mittens, grab the lunches, and Eric and I head for the bench under the window.

And we wait.

And they wait outside, Nathaniel and Serena.

The roads seem very quiet.

After only 7 minutes this time (I am learning), I forego the TV entirely and call the school.

“Hi, is there a delay today?” I ask cheerfully.

“No, the school is closed today.”

“But, I never received a call!”

“Oh, we just now decided.” (“Now” was several minutes after the school day normally begins.)

Ah. Which explains the lack of busses in the neighborhood.

I call the children back in and they take off their coats and shoes and hats and mittens and head directly down into the basement to play some more, dashing entirely my hopes of getting any work done at all for the day.

15 minutes later, I receive the automated phone call from the school telling me that it was closed due to “dangerous road conditions”.

Ah. Okay then.

Not long after, the bus arrived.

I’m so glad they have all their communication worked out.

So yesterday, Monday, Eric and of course Nathaniel and Serena had school again. (Eric had been off on Friday and his bus wasn’t even in that equation).

And, of course, we once again awoke to snow. This time not .5 inches, no! .25 inches.

I dutifully checked the TV for sign of a closure, and there was none, so they got on their coats and hats and shoes and mittens, and Eric and I waved goodbye as they got.on.the.bus.

(Eric’s bus comes about an hour after Nathaniel & Serena’s bus.)

So we played, we finished breakfast, we got his shoes and coat and hat on (mittens in the basket along with his snack, lovingly prepared by….uh, the company that puts applesauce in little containers), and the bus came, he got on and waved goodbye to me as usual.

There. Finally I can get some work done!

About an hour later, I get a call from the bus company, which causes my heart to leap through my eyeballs momentarily until they reassure me that everything is fine.

The problem is, though, that the school is closed. They have a 2 hour delay.

What?

Of course I have no knowledge of this, so I get out the parent handbook (should I have read it when I got it, you think?) and see that Eric’s school follows yet another school district in matters of snow.

The bus people said that maybe some teachers would show up at the school in about half an hour, and since the bus was there waiting, it would just wait some more and then see what was going to happen, whether Eric would have school at all (that 2-hour delay pretty much would eat up his entire tme there in one day) or whether the bus would simply bring him back home.

So don’t go anywhere or anything.

Okay.

An hour later, Eric’s bus pulled up, I went in and helped him off, and he just had a look on his face that was like, WTF???!

So if anybody has a reason to feel depressed about yesterday, I think it is Eric, for having to spend over 2 hours strapped to his seat in a little school bus.

But he clearly had a good day yesterday.

So maybe somebody made up the whole depressed thing? I hope so.

[tags]blue Monday, depression, 2007, school bus, snow, Top Chef, House M.D., [/tags]

There’s nothing like a little toxic smoke inhalation to make you feel really alive, is there?

I’ve mentioned before that burning butter spread over the floor of a hot oven creates thick black smoke that permeates and chokes every lung-cell in the body, haven’t I?

Why yes, I believe I have.

Apparently, the sludge that runneth over the edges of a rather runny Shepherd’s Pie does about the same thing.

I am an excellent cook, really.

The windows are flung wide open, the door is closed to ward off kitten escape plots, and the children have retreated (willingly, I might add) to the room of one of them upstairs, the door of which was thankfully kept closed while the oven belched its blackest and most toxic smoke.

The oven wouldn’t be on at all, except we’re cooking plastic “stained glass” suncatchers delivered in kit form by Santa, damn him.

This is all Santa’s fault.

I am stuck downstairs alone trying to see my way through the haze, nose pressed to one of the open windows, watching the baking suncatchers which I refused to be bested by. I am NOT going to be cowed by a little smoke! So what if we’ll all need oxygen before the night is over? At least we’ll have suncatchers to admire in the emergency room!

I also poured myself a drink.

Two, actually, if you must count.

Happy New Year!

I have to go to the grocery store today. Pray for me, will you?

I vowed years ago that I would never, NEVER, attempt entry into any grocery store the day before Thanksgiving. Ever.

Have you ever been to one on the day before Thanksgiving? No? It’s zillions of people, carts piled high with French’s fried onions, boxes of Stovetop stuffing, cans of sweet potato mush-stuff and Libby’s pumpkin pie filling, milling around aimlessly, blocking the aisles, walking at an abysmally slow pace, and piling up in lines 400 feet long at the overworked cashiers who vow to never work another day-before-Thanksgiving. Ever.

But here I am, going. Again. Like I do every year.

And? It’s 40 minutes away. Because it’s Whole Foods. Because of my coffee.

We live in the sticks. There’s nothing around here. Nothing useful, anyway. 2 minutes away is a convenience store and a spankin’-new pharmacy. Since I don’t shop for drugs often, I avoid the pharmacy. They always have a weird feel to them, anyway, sort of sad and abandoned. Does anyone really buy, say, the FOOD in a pharmacy? And — why? it’s probably months old. There are never any cars in the parking lot. Yet pharmacies keeping popping up on street corners, along with banks and convenience stores. But if I need a cupful of Advil or maybe a lottery ticket at midnight? I’m covered.

5 minutes away is a nasty dirty grocery store that I avoid. 20 minutes away is a nice grocery store, clean and well-stocked. This is where I get my “regular grocery store items”, like paper products and junk food.

40 minutes away, however, is Whole Foods. This is where I get produce and meat, whenever I do get meat, that is if I don’t get it from the butcher that’s 12 minutes away.

In Colorado I lived 25 minutes from a Whole Foods. That was a lot easier to rationalize. 40 minutes is a huge chunk of time, especially when I’m supposed to be doing yoga, running, cycling, and writing a novel.

So all morning I’ve been trying to talk myself OUT of going to Whole Foods, asking myself whether I really NEED organic celery for the stuffing, whether I really NEED organic Brussels sprouts for the Brussels sprouts that rock SO MUCH that the children ask for them! Really! (I loathed Brussels sprouts as a child, but these totally rock. My secret? Bacon.) I’ve already successfully talked myself out of going 15 minutes out of my way in the other direction to get the Special Real French Bread, from the artisanal bakery, that goes into the stuffing, rationalizing that Whole Foods’ baguettes are almost as good, and besides, what did I use last year in Colorado where there was no artisanal bakery? Why, Whole Foods, of course. But then, it was only 25 minutes away.

I was just about innured to going to the Regular Grocery Store when I poured myself a cup of coffee. We’re out of half-and-half. Must have organic half-and-half for the coffee.

[sigh]

Cover me. I’m going in.

UPDATE: There were no organic Brussels sprouts anyway, just tainted pesticide-laden ones that were quite lovely. I bought some:

And, did you know that you can get a Kosher, organic, free-range turkey at Whole Foods? But be prepared to swap your first-born for it. I had no idea that a TURKEY could cost $50.00. Needless to say, we will have a turkey-free Thanksgiving. Again. No one ever misses it. Really.

I almost forgot to buy the organic baguettes. Almost.

I did get to see my “Whole Foods guy”, an Old Soul cleverly disguised as a Croatian immigrant sweeper-upper-guy, complete with degrading navy blue smock. I just love him and I cried when we left Pennsylvania last year for Colorado, because he and the Cheese Lady were such an integral part of our Whole Foods Shopping Experience (which, face it, is a big part of why people shop there, The Experience. And although the Boulder Whole Foods totally rocks and is ginormous and has everything known to man in the way of organic everything, it was a less-fulfilling Experience for me because, aside from the Surly Old Vegan Cashier Guy, I never got to know anyone there).

I witnessed the aftermath of two, TWO car accidents on my drive. If today is bad, what’s Friday going to be like? I studiously avoid all areas within 10 miles of malls on Black Friday.

Waked by his laughter
The smell of diaper contents
My morning begins

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Can’t eat the French toast
She’s too full from the cider
But brings her clean plate

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Basket’s always full
Machines spin and rock all day
Laundry is my life

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There’s no school today
Parent-teacher conference
So why are we here?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We put money in
Most days it’s the opposite
I still hate the bank

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A short appointment
dentists aren’t scary really
next time they’ll do work

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Brief reprieve is here:
we cannot get her x-ray.
No dentist today

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Some days it’s easy:
pasta, rice, or potatoes?
Nightly cooking plight

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What’s joint custody?
Shuttle back and forth each time;
hardest on the kids

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How’s your word count now?
Pressure’s on, the month soon ends.
NaNoWriMo sucks

A while ago I wrote about what we do on our Saturday mornings. (For those unwilling to click on the link, I’ll just say that it involves cleaning, and leave it at that. Otherwise this entire post will make little sense at all. Wait. That wouldn’t be much of a change, would it? Sometimes I think nobody “gets” me but me.)

We haven’t really had our usual Saturdays since we moved back to Pennsylvania (other than Pancake Day, which is sacred), since I haven’t had the heart to make the children clean after they’ve been with The Ex all week. I just want them to relax a bit and take time getting used to being here again.

So it was with delight that I am remembering what Serena said last Sunday, after she realized that we hadn’t had Saturday Cleaning after all, even though we had talked about it:

[disappointed] “Oh, I didn’t get to do the dusting!”

That’s my girl.

It’s become clear to me over the past several weeks that I have a blogstalker on my hands. I thought I actually was the first to coin this term, but entering it into the search function at Wikipedia leads to this post about cyberstalking, which can be a serious and scary thing, not at all like the lighthearted poking-fun-at-myself idea I had. At least I know I’m brilliant, though, if I can keep up with the folks at Wikipedia, who are clearly brilliant, well, some of them may be. One, anyway.

I know the identity of the stalker, too, naturally. It’s (no surprise…ta da!) The Ex. Hi, IP 71.224.41.#, I see you!

[sigh]

Divorce: not recommended. Marriage? Leads to divorce, obviously. Avoid it. Let’s just all live in hermetically-sealed individual pods and avoid all human interaction, shall we?

I think I need a visit to the folks at CuteOverload. Kittens, anyone?

On another front, my iPod now shows Sad iPod Exclamation Point and tactfully suggests I visit my local Apple store for repairs. It may have something to do with having been dropped. I should probably just go on the automatic Annual iPod Replacement Program.

I was totally going to write about something completely different today, but now I will save that one for another day since I am so damn impulsive and reading this post of Sweetney’s made me remember my dream from last night:

So I’m in my house, and it’s not my house really although I know it’s my house, you know how things can look totally different in dreams yet you know they are actually something else, or something in particular anyway? I used to have a lot of dreams based in the house I grew up in, weird pebbly beige kitchen linoleum, wild green and orange walls and all (hey! it was the 70′s! And we had brown, avocado, and yellow appliances!), but I must have grown up along the way sometime because now my dreams mostly take place in the house I live in presently, whatever house that is, except I seldom had dreams located in the haunted 200-year old farmhouse I lived in for 6 years with The Ex before escaping to Colorado. Hmm. I wonder why? Was it the hauntedness?

ANYWAY. (Will you stop distracting me?) So I’m in my house, some house, and it has pink carpet, I might add! I know this because most of the dream has me looking floorward, and this pink carpet is right. there. looking very, um, pink. It’s not a fuschia, not a pastel pink, but is leaning towards Pepto-Bismol pink, and I have seen carpet this color somewhere but cannot right now put my finger on where. Probably in some other dream.

So there’s a cat litter box there (you were wondering how cat litter figured in this dream, weren’t you?), an open box, and it’s my job to scoop out the chunks and put them in the toilet conveniently placed next to the litter box. (When did that toilet appear? Poof! Don’t you love how you can just make things appear and disappear in dreams? Wouldn’t it be great if we could do that in life?). So I’m scooping, and meanwhile having a conversation with some unseen someone not in camera view, and there appears to be nothing there to scoop so I’m about to give up, when I notice that, no, there are a couple of small chunks in one area, so I scoop them up and drop them in the convenient toilet. Then suddenly there are more chunks, and more, and I’m scooping and dropping, scooping and dropping, and beginning to wonder if this isn’t going to affect the plumbing somehow, because suddenly this has become Not My House and although I’m not sure whose house it is, I know that whoever it is probably won’t want their toilet Roto Rootered because I clogged it up with clumping cat litter.

And I’m wondering about the prodigious output of these two cats (somehow I know there are two), and the clumps just keep appearing and I just keep having to scoop, because I can’t stop now and leave the job half done, you know?

So, the Sisyphus of Cat Litter. What can THAT mean?

Here’s some of what I did today:

And now I have my own gallery!* (You can, too, if you like Ikea)

*The black thing in the lower right is not my head, or anyone else’s head, or my hand or finger or anything like that. It’s actually part of Nathaniel’s cello that I was too lazy to move before snapping the photo, thinking I could crop it out later, but when it came to cropping it, it looked even dumber so there it stays. I’m over it now.

My picture-hanging technique:

1. Identify a wall on which pictures need to be. (hint: blank walls are good for this)

2. Sort through available pictures to find the ones least horrifying.

3. Obtain hammer and a nail. Those picture-hangy things are useless (if you’re me).

4. Randomly hammer in a nail somewhere on the wall.

5. Step back to see how it looks.

6. Yep, the nail’s in there.

7. Realize that you’re hanging a Set. Of. Three. and that they’ll need to be sort of, together. In a row. Even. With each other.

8. Although you’re fucked at this point, you cannot give up now.

9. You realize there is such a thing as “eyeballing” which may yield passable results.

10. Use of a ruler, pencils, or any measuring devices at this point would be Cumbersome and would also be considered Giving Up.

11. Quickly hammer in two more nails and then find which way is “Up” on these damn things and hang them.

12. Hmm. Not bad.

13. One looks low. Reposition the nail and rehang.

14. Voila!

15. But either I was holding the camera crooked, or they’re all marching down to the right a little.

16. Must be the camera.

17. I am SO not going to measure.

18. Fine.

Inside my refrigerator are the following:

1. 3 kinds of butter (Trader Joe’s organic unsalted; Kerrygold unsalted from Ireland, and something from Iceland that I fell prey to during a tasting event at Whole Foods)

2. Organic whole milk. The children have turned thumbs down to the raw goat milk we used to get, so this is pasteurized cow milk. We don’t use much.

3. 3 shriveled mushrooms. Oops.

4. Bacon. Mmm, bacon.

5. A partial tube of tomato paste. Did you know this stuff comes in a tube? How handy!

6. 3 bottles of Stewart’s Cream Soda. Michael’s addiction.

7. A carrot.

8. 3 kinds of apples from a local orchard: Honeycrisp (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!); Jonagold, and, uh, something else. Apples are highly prized here.

9. Leftover mole enchilada from going out the other night.

10. Leftover plain pancakes from this morning’s breakfast, a staple food for Eric.

11. Kalamata olives.

12. Half a bunch of celery.

13. A zucchini that shouldn’t be there anymore.

14. About 3 Wallaby organic yogurts.

15. Lettuce (organic, naturally. Green leaf.)

16. A little more bacon. Mmm, bacon. Bring on the nitrites!

17. 2 kinds of Brie.

18. Apple cider, from the orchard that brought us the apples.

19. Fresh cranberries, for making Serena’s favorite autumn offering, cranberry sauce.

20. Pickles.

21. Peanut butter.

22. Wheat germ.

23. “Squeezie” yogurt-in-a-tube, organic Stonyfield Farm.

24. Mozzarella cheese sticks (good for school lunches with #23).

25. About 3 other kinds of cheese.

26. Dijon mustard.

27. Leftover crock-pot chicken-vegetable stuff.

28. Mayo.

29. Organic red grapes.

30. Cream cheese.

31. Free-range organic chicken broth.

32. Leftover brown rice.

33. Organic free-range yada yada yada eggs.

So my fridge is full yet there’s nothing to eat here! What can I make with this stuff?

And, more importantly….what’s in YOUR fridge?

(Tomorrow: The Freezer)

I just discovered the “clean” function of ovens exactly 2 months ago, when I peered in dismay inside the oven of the house we were vacating in Colorado, thinking about rubber gloves up to the elbow and innumerable cans of Easy-Off. But what’s this? “Clean”?? Hmm, I think I’ll try it.

Who knew there was a painless way to have a clean oven? All that burnt drippage, turned to harmless ash, easily wiped away. Yay!

So the other night, after the Toxic Cinnamon Roll Seepage Episode, it was clear that the oven must be cleaned before it could be used again, unless I REALLY wanted us all to get cancer. (Add that to my list of Parental Guilts — Induced Cancer In Family While Baking Cinnamon Rolls).

Clearly, then, the “clean” function must be used. No problem.

Except I forgot, until it was too late and the oven was already locked and loaded, no turning back, that “clean” works by blasting everything inside the oven on high heat while spraying some sort of self-cleaner chemical.

So now we know the smoke alarms work after all.

And I think I’ve finally got the house aired out. No more Easy-Off odor.