Suburban Bliss:: Birth Control Via The Written Word

The last time I had a week long vacation was 2006

I realize I've been incredibly absent from this website. It's the daylight burning......not enough time to sit around thinking funny things.

Here are my pictures from my fun trip with Maggie Mason to check off "Swim with BioLuminescent Plankton" from her Mighty Life List. 

Bad: I lost my luggage on the way down and on the way back and faced buying a Puerto Rican flag string bikini if my things did not show up.

That changes a person.

Good: Swimming with water that sparkles off your fingers is one of those things you didn't know existed a few months ago and yet, you got to do it and that is amazing.

Oh Internet, you expand my tiny world. And I'm not just talking about the porn.

....and the winner is me. And Buffy.

Oh hey. I'm just sitting around on Vieques having my mind blown over and over and over.

I'm lifting my head out of my Midwestern Mouth Gaping (Lizards? Bats!?) to announce the winner of the Sandisk Slot Radio contest.

The winner is #37 Buffy!

Hooray! I will have your radio in the mail just as soon as I get home.

When they drag me off this island by my hair kicking and screaming.

Sandisk Slot Radio Giveaway #2

Remember last month when you told me all about your dads? It's time for my second Sandisk Slot Radio Giveaway.

The slotRadio™ player is a small, stylish, portable music device that comes bundled with a slotRadio™ card preloaded with 1,000 handpicked songs featuring artists from Billboard®'s charts, and professionally arranged into a variety of genre-themed playlists.

The die-cast aluminum player also features a 1.5” OLED screen for viewing artist and song information, a FM radio and even an integrated, handy belt clip for hands-free listening.

Additional 1,000 song, genre-specific and themed slotRadio™ cards. Digital music has never been this easy – just feast your ears!

"Feast your ears...." nom nom nom nom.

For this giveaway I'd like you to tell me about your summer travel plans in order to enter and since Summer Travel doesn't rub any salt in the wounds of my tragic childhood, I thought I'd share my plans with you.

This summer we have some budget savvy travel plans, like most everyone. Right now I'm in Puerto Rico with Maggie Mason checking off an item on her Mighty Life List. (Thank you frequent flyer miles!) Logan is heading up north to a friend's parent's place for a guy's weekend where he will mostly eat his favorite wings at Peegeo's and play video games. 

As a family we're heading up to the cabin of a friend where we've been going, well since I was 15 and babysitting for my pseudo-family. It's up north on Grand Traverse Bay and one of my favorite places on earth.

We're going camping with a bunch of families from our elementary school in August. We did this trip last year and survived, in spite of the rain. PS: Rain ruins camping. I am hoping against hope that rain will not be a part of our trip this year.

We're also going to stay up with our friend's Tom and Leslie at their parents place up north. The place we stayed last year and were nearly mauled by a bear. Not really but if that bear figured out how to open the door and climb the stairs and find us, then we would have been mauled. It was a close call!

Tell me your summer vacation plans, even if you're staying close to home. Your comment is your entry, here are the rules.

You can enter until 12am EST Friday July 10. The winner will be selected randomly from the entries and announced later that day.

Thank you to San Disk for sponsoring this giveaway!

Life List: Rough Draft Volume 3

Please see Volume 1 and Volume 2.

1 Take an annual picture of each of the kids with some sort of prop or cool setting, starting this year.

(I need to think on this more.)

2 Go horseback riding

(This is one that I don't necessarily love. But I just think it's stupid I've never been on a horse. At the same time I'm never going to add Learn To Ski to my list because, skiing is for assholes. You know what I mean.)

3 Grow sunflowers

(I've tried, bugs always eat them. I will persevere.)

4 Host an annual party everyone wants to be at.

(Some of the items on my list are party ideas, I don't know which one will spark interest but I want one to be the one everyone thinks about and looks forward to each year.)

5 Knit Baby Sweaters for every baby my friend's have from here on out.

6 Find a babysitter we can have stay for the weekend

7 Plant a small garden with the kids.

8 Make our backyard into a bird refuge.

(I have a really weird love of birds. I've named some of the ones in our yard, like Robirda (the robin!) It's scary, I know.)

9 Get new wedding bands we both love.

10 Spend a day shopping with Maddie and buying her a lot of the clothes she thinks are "cool".

11 Sew some lovely things.

12 Take the kids to the candy store and give them $10 each to spend as they wish.

(Their heads will explode)

13 Take the kids to Storybook Gardens in London, Ontario.

14 Do karaoke as a family.

15 Ride the swan boats at Belle Isle

16 Find a perfect black dress.

17 Buy a house our grandchildren will visit us in.

18 Go to a U Pick Orchard

19 Visit the Sting Ray Lagoon at the Grand Rapids Zoo

20 Learn to use knives

(for Cooking!)

21 Make tamales with friends

22 Make new Christmas stockings for the whole family.

23 Plant a garden of succulents

24 Throw a memorable baby shower.

25 Have a sleepover party for Maddie's friends with Root beer Floats.

*I should really add visit Puerto Rico and swim with bioluminescent plankton to this list because that's what I'm doing next week. But alas, that was not on my life list. How lucky am I to get to tag along on this amazing adventure?

"There are just so many wines for under $15!"

On Saturday Logan and I went with our friends Joe and Cari on a Taste-full Tour to explore Ann Arbor.

We explored several spots in Ann Arbor, this picture was taken at Everyday Wines in Kerrytown. ("For days ending in Y")

Joe is a photographer and here's the thing about photographers, even the pictures they take with their iPhones make you feel a little envious. 

Joe took this picture of Logan and I, I've dubbed it "Taste-Full Tours Is For Lovers"

*On August 8th Taste-Full Tours is heading back to Ann Arbor for a full Zingerman's tour. If you like food, you MUST visit Zingerman's.

No Wire Hangers Organizing

Growing up my sister and I had this friend, Julie Naylon, who was very entrepreneurial. She didn't just have a Lemonade Stand, she ran a Lemonade Corporation. She didn't just babysit, she offered "Babysitting Club" involving several kids, crafts, games and shows in her basement.

She also liked to organize things. She'd come to my house and start playing in the room I shared with my sister only to be overwhelmed by the desire, no, the need to organize our stuff. I know this will sound like a bit of a cop out, or maybe projection. But my sister and my mother are both incredible pack rats, I am not.

My sister's collecting involves a lot of clothes she doesn't wear, along with various small items she may not "need" but they make her smile and so she keeps them. Like a Clash of the Titan's lunchbox, or a collection of Japanese stickers, or a box jammed with 500 pieces of costume jewelry.

I shudder to think what could happen to my sister if she ever decides to have children and/or her dog starts creating art projects.

It's possible all this has changed now that my sister lives across the country and pretends to be an adult. But back when my friend came to play at our house, the bedroom I shared with my sister was a disaster area of massive proportions. A disaster Julie would spend several hours trying to weed through and make sense of.

A little over a year ago Julie, decided to open an eco friendly organizing business based in Los Angeles called No Wire Hangers, and that's a great name for her business for a couple of reasons, not just because it instantly makes me think of Joan Crawford screaming at her children with cold cream all over her face. But also because about 3.5 billion wire hangers are dumped into landfills each year, that's equivalent to 60,000 cars. (Please see Julie's article here for more information.)

Back in March Daily Candy featured her business and since then business is booming. She offered to come to my house while in town for her mother's birthday this weekend to help me organize something in my house.

I honestly feel pretty organized. I don't collect clutter, I wear all my clothes, I buy what I need and use it up before I buy more. However there was kind of an issue with my upstairs front hall closet and I thought I'd have Julie help me with that. As we started to go through what I had, I mentioned I could move some things to the basement. And the minute I said it, I regretted it, because the next words out of her mouth were, "Can I see your basement?"

Logan was outside so I was able to show her the shame that is our basement. If Logan had known what I was about to do he would have stopped us by creating a distraction, like driving our car through the back door. Or setting himself on fire.

A tale of two landlords.

Since we last visited the topic, I have collected $1569 of the $2030 our ex-landlord owes us. It has not been a terribly traumatic process for those of you arriving here after googling, "Ex Landlord is holding my stolen money how do I get it out of his aggravating clutches."

I walked to the courthouse, filled out some garnishment paperwork, for banks we knew he had accounts at (he deposited our rent checks into them), then walked to the banks and delivered the news. The bank then sat around, farting I presume, and then let us know how much money he had in his accounts with them.

The first bank held around $165 (disappointing) and the second a little over $1400 (more satisfying). The biggest expense of this process has been the emotional one where I'm so annoyed I can't just walk around the block and knock on his door every day asking for the rest of my money.

Then again it's been kind of fun to think of him going to his checking account and realizing, "Wait a minute....I had $1400 in here......where did it go??? SUMMMERS!!!!!!!"

Also fun: talking to a lawyer who knows a guy who arranges to have deputies come to the house to seize property. If it comes to that you guys? I will be out there with a lawn chair and a video camera. Jesus, I'll hold a party right there on the sidewalk.

But it hasn't come to that. After you win a small claims judgment you can collect money via garnishments of bank accounts, salary, and income from rental property. So we tried the banks, our ex landlord is self employed as far as I can tell...however, he has new tenants in his house in our dream neighborhood.

So today, for summer fun, we're going to the courthouse! The kids are SO EXCITED! We'll get our garnishment paperwork then on Saturday I'll deliver the paper to the new tenants and they will then be forewarned of the landlord's difficulty in following the law.

Logan's been consulting with a lawyer from work on this issue and in his last note he said, 'For a guy like me, this is the best part of practicing law. Making the bad guy pay." [paraphrased] And I was all, "For a girl like me too!"

I hate bullies in all forms.

Fake It Till You Make It.

Okay so most of us are in agreement, entertaining kids for 12 weeks straight is kind of a drag and some of us really love all those weeks and want more and then others of us would like you to know that you shouldn't have even HAD CHILDREN AT ALL if you weren't going to love every second of summer break.

Let me tell you this. I didn't know I wouldn't like summer break when I had them. I swear! If I'd known I would have ripped my ovaries out and worn them around my neck to drive potential mates away. But here I am, on summer break, and you know the kids realize this isn't my favorite time of year. They know I feel guilty about working when they're bored.

So, let's just make the best of this. You either cheer on my efforts and commiserate or (quietly) judge me (when you're not busy soaking up all the summer fun). Wooo!

The kids are hardly in purgatory over here. They've played with friends, gone to a Tigers game, spent the day at the beach and gone to a movie. And we're just 6 days in.

Imagine what can happen for the next 2.3 months! We'll probably be having tea parties and craft fairs by the end of the summer!

On Friday night we went to the Tigers game with a bunch of other families.

Between all of us we have 14 kids, not quite the Duggars but still a spectacular sight in my kitchen.

The weather report called for rain pretty much every hour with a varying 'chance of' percent of between 50% and "My Goodness You Are Screwed"-% and sure enough about an hour or two into the game the sprinkles turned to full blown rain and then lightening and thunder. The stands cleared out pretty quickly and our enormous group met in the hall.

We decided to make our way out of the stadium, with about 1 billion other people. From where I walked through the insane crowd I could see Logan, Max and Maddie, my friend's son Daniel and my friend Leslie and her little girl. Logan had my friend's four year old on his shoulders. I kept count of my two kids and my other friends son.

A few times Daniel looked back, wondering where his mom and dad were, but being pushed along in the crowd there was no way to find them without possibly getting lost. So I told him to keep walking with us and once we were out of the stadium we'd find his parents.

As we made it out of the stadium into the street, I had this sudden feeling of comfort, knowing that I have the kinds of friends who trust us to keep their kids safe. Even if I didn't have my own kids in sight, I'd know my friends have them and are bringing them up behind us.

Parenting as a village task is something amazing.

Evaporated Milk

As part of a media buy on Suburban Bliss, The American Cancer Society asked me to write about one of the ways cancer has affected my life. Unfortunately cancer has come into my life in many ways, but this one seemed most fun to write about.

Growing up, my mother had this habit of buying the same thing over and over. Sometimes that item was a loaf of bread. Every time she drove past the market she'd have to run in and grab a loaf or ten of bread. You just never knew when you'd need to make sandwiches for the entire state of Rhode Island, she liked to be prepared.

Other times she'd get it in her head that she needed something you very rarely have a use for like, evaporated milk. And for a couple of months, she'd grab a can or two each time she ran to the market. The evaporated milk, sat in the cupboard for months, years. In fact I don't even know how long it was there. Could have been from 1973 and no one would have been surprised. That can was just a part of the pantry landscape after a while. Granola bars, flour, salt, cereal, evaporated milk.

My grandpa got cancer in his late 70's. I don't remember what kind of cancer it was, it really didn't matter all that much. Like all the kinds of cancer, it was the crappy kind. He got increasingly sick over time, and eventually required a nurse to come live with him.

One day while my grandpa was particularly sick, my brother and I were at home while my mom was at work. My brother had the can of evaporated milk in his hand, and we pondered why it was there. Could we even remember a time the evaporated milk was not in the cupboard? Why were there three of them in there? Had we ever seen our mother use evaporated milk for anything?

Each question resulted in more questions. My mother is a little jumpy and in our family we like to prey on the weakest one. It's how we love.

We do little things like put rubber snakes in the microwave or hide someone in the back seat of the car to scream "Boo!" while she drives. Just funny little tricks meant to toy with her heart and keep her, you know, aerobically healthy.

My brother called my mother at work. "Mom! The nurse just called from grandpa's house. They're having an emergency! They need 6-10 ounces of evaporated milk immediately!"

Without skipping a beat my mother went into what I call her 'Crisis Mode', this is how she gets whenever something really bad happens, when there's an emergency of some sort. "Okay," she said, taking a long cleansing breath. "Go in the cupboard next to the oven. On the middle shelf, next to the cereal and near the flour, there are three cans of evaporated milk. Take them out and tell me how many ounces each can is. There should be enough there."

Apparently, she didn't pause long enough to consider what kind of cancer-related health emergency could possibly be addressed with 6-10 ounces of evaporated milk. But for a few shining moments she believed she'd bought that evaporated milk for a good reason. All the teasing we'd done about the evaporated milk would all be worth it now. She was having the last laugh, now that we were facing a health emergency and her evaporated milk would quite possibly save my grandfather's life.

For those moments, before my brother and I started laughing hysterically, my mother thought she cured cancer with three cans of evaporated milk.