Suburban Bliss:: Birth Control Via The Written Word

Thoughts after a long drive home.

I always start out a journey in the city thinking how I could live in a city! I could be happy in a city! Then, after a couple days among the crowds I remember how much I hate people. Especially slow moving people. I start out only thinking, "MOVE IT!" and I end up actually saying often audibly, "MOVE IT!" Which means I'd fit right in in New York, but my midwest/catholic-ish upbringing would make me feel like an incredible ass hole every day of my life.

Over this trip Max reminded me why the years 2-4 were so incredibly difficult with him. His overtired-ness mimicked with incredible accuracy his entire toddler hood. Wild mood swings and an inability to move past disappointment. Thankfully he was not constipated like he was as a toddler.

I've always had a thing for men in uniform. I was shocked to learn this (entirely harmless) attraction extended to the gun toting, handcuff bearing security guard at The Rock and Roll McDonald's we stopped at on our way out of town this morning. No one is more stunned and horrified than me. Well, maybe Logan.

Logan has to go to the bathroom a lot. I've always liked to tease him about it, sometimes I've even been annoyed by the many hours the kids and I have waited for him while he makes one, three, eight trips to the bathroom on our outings. Of course when we came home tonight I checked in with Dr Google and was confronted with a great many things this particular symptom can relate to.

I've decided Logan's dying.

Which has now become my New Year's Resolution:

"Make sure Logan doesn't die."

I am only half joking.

We leave tomorrow, and I'm not sure I'm ready.

Chicago, you're like an old friend. You're like New York only I can understand how you work and your accent is a lot like mine.

I wish you charged less for parking, but you can't have everything.

We're having a wonderful time but I've taken a short break from the fun (kids swimming with Logan in the hotel pool) (putting a bathing suit on my body after this month of indulgence is about -10 on the enthusiasm scale) to start formulating plans for our next big party on Monday. You can read some of my ideas over at The Buzz Off.

I hope your Christmas was wonderful and your New Year is happy.

Different stress, better stress.

It's kind of funny how you'll have a big party and feel like that's Christmas and so you throw all your organizational skills at it and then, blam-o, it's the week before Christmas and you're scrambling to put together something reasonably magical for your kids.

It's especially great to do that during a week when the school needs lots of help and you bash your car into the garage.

TIP: If you hit the side of your car on the garage door opening, don't think to yourself, "Well, I already hit it, I'll just finish it up real fast."

Because then you won't just scratch your paint to hell, you'll also pull the bumper up making the passenger door inoperable. You will also waste the rest of your week saying things like, "What are you? A Moron?"

And you're talking to yourself.

The funniest part though is the part where you save 75% of your Christmas preparations for the last day of school before break and then your daughter wakes up throwing up all over the house.

Oh life, you're tickling my funny bone today.

I did get somethings done this week, like making candy balls with the kids on their (lame!) snow day Monday and I put together 12 boxes of homemade peppermint bark. The peppermint bark was very simple, so simple I could do it while berating myself for driving the car into the garage.

I was wondering if I was this stressed out last year and I suppose I was, but it was covered up by other stressors. Like the Long Haired Swinger* on the playground at Max's school.

Suddenly I'm glad I'm stressed about Christmas.

*I saw Freaky Long Haired Swinger making a woman uncomfortable at the bottle return of my local market.  Predator.

Suburban Bash: Holiday Progressive

This weekend was our neighborhood's Holiday Progressive dinner. They've been doing this for many, many years but since this was our first year I jumped at the chance to serve the dinner course. Then, when there wasn't anyone to host dessert I said I'd do that too. Then, I said, "Why don't you all just move into my house for a week! I'll buy you Christmas presents and fill your stockings too!"

Because that's how happy we are to be living here.

I asked veteran neighbors what the downfall of hosting dinner and dessert would be and they said, "Well, if you're the last house, people usually stay for a longer time."

Which is funny to me because Logan is always the last one to leave a party, usually after the hosts go to bed and turn out all the lights. So this would be perfect for us.

I love having parties and since moving we don't entertain more than we used to, but the act of doing it is a lot more pleasant. There are lots of ways to make your party smoother and less stressful, some you can afford (using paper napkins instead of cloth) and others you can not (hiring a caterer, wait staff, bartender and a separate venue). But after thinking about this for a while I think the only way to have a really fun party is to enjoy the process of throwing a party.

Logan and I both happen to love throwing parties, I like parties because I grew up in a house where I was ashamed to have people over. It was often dirty and smelled of smoke. Also there was that man who was more than likely drunk in the living room. Embarrassing. Having people to my home and making it warm and welcoming and feeling at ease with the chaos and mess of it all is my way of appreciating all we have.

Logan likes parties because he loves wearing a lampshade on his head and mixing cocktails which put people into jolly comatose states.

Here's how we made this party work, complete with pictures.    

A Trip With No Running!

We've been toying with the idea of taking a family trip the day after Christmas coming back in time to take down the Christmas tree and get ready for our New Year's Eve party. Because there just haven't been enough parties this year we need another! This one will not require seating for 20 and 14 pounds of beef so that's a relief.

Last night we finally decided we'd take a trip to Chicago, something we've been meaning to do with the kids for the last two years but since Logan didn't want to run the Chicago marathon we never did it. (Oops! I almost forgot I'm done being bitter.)

I shouldn't really write about it because it's part of the kid's Christmas surprise. But I'm pretty sure Madison finds this website really boring and dumb and never reads it so I'm mostly sure we're safe. I could also block this site from her account but if I did that I'd have to block all the porn too and how else is she going to learn about S-E-X?

I'm starting to poke around looking for lodging and other information and because I know you're all full of good advice I want ideas, opinions and places to look into.

Even though this is our family gift, we're still going cheap. Mostly because that's who we are, cheap people. Ideally we wouldn't spend more than $400 on lodging (for three nights). I'm not sure how big a deal our location is, we'd love taking the El and the subway with the kids because they'd love it and Maddie could use the experience to have under her belt. We usually prefer staying out of downtown because everything we like to do (shop, eat and drink) is in the neighborhoods. But, with kids we'll be doing less shopping, eating and drinking so I'm not sure that's a concern.

In my fantasy we would stay at a place with a separate room for the kids so we don't have to go to bed at the same time as them every night. Something like this would be great except it's way too big and too expensive for this cheap family. Also I might never come home if I stayed there.

We'll be doing a lot of touristy things like the aquarium, the Field and Science & Industry museums. We'll probably have to visit Michigan Avenue. Other than that we're open.

All suggestions are more than welcome.

Too late!

Many months ago the kind people at Donors Choose contacted me and offered me a $100 gift certificate to contribute to any classroom project proposed by a teacher which tickled my fancy. I looked through all the choices and felt incredibly overwhelmed so I....did nothing. Which is what I generally do whenever something overwhelms me.

Currently overwhelming me: the returnable soda cans in my basement and the other ones in my garage. I'm ignoring them. What cans?

Max's teacher asked our class to donate to a charity instead of giving her a billion "#1 Teacher!" pieces of "art". I immediately thought of the Donors Choose site. I love that these are small specific needs we can help fill with our small (or not small) donations.

We chose a project in a neighboring city (Hazel Park, for the locals) which is a school district with a 72% poverty rate. This teacher was looking for a document camera that allows many eyes to see one piece of printed material. I'd planned to share our project with you, in case you wanted to chip in for Mrs. Mac's class gift (not her full name, shockingly!).

But guess what? The entire project is now fully funded so you can't donate, even if you were dying to. No, no, no! It's over, closed, done. They're getting their document camera which allows all eyes in the classroom to see the same piece of media (a textbook, a newspaper....).

You could donate to another project though. I love the idea of this site, it's like a gift registry for teachers and their classrooms.

In other news: My sofa is in my dining room and there are three folding tables in my living room waiting for the big party Saturday.

Having a sofa in your dining room feels a little like you're living in a lounge. A very hip lounge where there's a sofa instead of tall tables and bar stools. Every time I pass by the sofa in my dining room I feel like I'm not cool enough to be there. I can almost feel the hand of the bouncer ushering me right on through to the family room where the people wearing black t shirts and black pajama pants should be.

I made a second edition of the Anti Gift Guide at the Buzz Off yesterday. I hope you enjoy and have hard earned words of wisdom to share.

Time to have the good touch/bad touch conversation.

I went away this weekend with two of my dearest friends and a newish really dear friend from the new school. The idea was to get some Christmas shopping and sleeping done. We exceeded our goals by not just Christmas shopping and sleeping (9+ hours), we went the distance buying ourselves some lovely garments and having various spa treatments performed.

It feels surprisingly good to say at this time of year, when a sales clerk asks if you need a gift receipt, "No, it's for me."

At dinner after our spa treaments, I compared notes with the ladies.

Me: "Did your [also female] masseuse touch your butt?"

Her: "No."

Me: ....

Me: ....

Me: "Wait, was I just molested?"

In my case it holds a lot of useless data.

From Max's homework:

Did you know? Your heart, brain, and stomach are organs in your body.
Pretend you are one of these organs. Describe your job.

"I am your brain. I hold your nollege [sic]."

Did They Eat It: Chicken Casserole Edition.

This is a casserole my friend Jean used to make for me to serve when I babysat for her kids or for dinner when I lived in their basement in my early 20's. ("Hi, I'm Melissa....I live in the basement.") I love it and, when Max was a baby I used to make it for he and I to share because he loved it too.

Logan does not like it, you see it contains 1/4 cup of mayonnaise. If you divide a 1/4 cup of mayo into an 8 serving dish, that means you're eating like 1/2 a tablespoon of mayonnaise and that is enough to kill a man.

Logan is out of town though, ha ha! So I decided to mix it up for the kids and I. I thought, given Max's babyhood love of this dish I'd get at least a 2 out of 3.

This is the sort of dish which would be easiest to make if you had extra chicken from another dish and 2 cups of rice leftover as well. I had neither of these things so I made the rice and used cooked diced chicken I purchase from our school's fund raising food place, Market Day.

2 C. cooked rice
1/4 C. The Devil's Sandwich Spread AKA Mayonnaise
1/2 C. chopped onion
1 T butter (if sauteing your onion first)
1 pack frozen spinach
Cream of something soup (chicken, mushroom, celery...it's a wild card!)
1/2 t. curry
Cooked diced chicken (what ever you have)
Cheddar cheese (to sprinkle on top)
Salt to taste (about 1/2 tsp - 1 tsp)

Cook and drain spinach. Combine rice, onions, soup, mayo, a little salt, curry, chicken and spinach in a bowl. Put in casserole and sprinkle cheese on top. Cook to warm through at 350 for about 20 minutes.

Here is a picture of it before I put the cheese on top. It tastes better than it looks in the lackluster light of my kitchen.

DID THEY EAT IT!?

Me: "I love this. I love this. I love this. I'm going to bath in it. I love curry. I need iron. I love this."

Madison: "What (fake gag) is (fake gag) this (fake gag)?" She ends up eating 4 bites of chicken after I separate it from the rest of the casserole. She gags it down drinking a 1/4 of her milk in between each bite.

Maxwell: Our conversation: Me: "You used to love this when you were a baby. I'd make it for you and I and Daddy and Maddie would have boring peanut butter sandwiches for dinner." Him: "Ha! So I liked this when I was a baby? I can't wait to try it."
At dinner: "What is this green stuff on it? Bleh (flick) Bleh (flick) (Spinach flies every where.) I'm not eating anything but the chicken but first I'm going to wipe all this gross green stuff off it with a napkin.

Verdict: 1 out of 3 people at our table enjoyed this. Which means I better enjoy it since I'm going to be eating it for lunch and dinner for the next 3-4 days until it's gone.

I used cream of chicken soup this time and I think I'd go back to cream of celery to give it an extra flavor. I also sauteed the onion this time and enh. It didn't add much so I'd probably skip that step as I always have in the past.

A favorite artist.

When I was pregnant with Maddie my sister gave us the full collection of Mr Lunch books. Little did we know we were contributing to our daughter's obsession with dogs. (Christmas List this year: Dog or iPod)

Still, we've been in love with J Otto's illustrations since.

This week I came across J. Otto's work for sale at Thumbtack Press.

We also pulled out our Olive snowglobe this week which got me thinking about where this artist has been and he's on Flickr and he's not just drawing dogs. Of course he is. 

Still, not on Twitter.

Also Maggie and I have a great collection of travel plates up at our Etsy store. You should look at them because they will tug at your heart and you'll want to put them on your bookshelves right next to a very simple ceramic vase.

She's Omnivorous

We're at Eastern Market to buy our Christmas tree. We walk past a meat vendor who is offering pig's heads for purchase.

For a moment I think to myself, "How hilarious would that be to serve at the neighborhood holiday dinner?" (Very, very funny.)

Maddie sees it, her eyes fall out of her head and she says, "Whoa. That was gross. Ugh, I can't even think about it. I am not eating any more meat, especially not bacon. At least for a little while."

About an hour later, we stop for lunch. Maddie orders pancakes.

And a side of bacon.

Hopefully the 'Other Places' category will be smaller now.

After thinking a lot about what I want to be doing in the next five years, I decided I needed to pull in a little closer to Suburban Bliss. So with that said, please read here for a smallish announcement.

At the Buzz Off I made you something you can download and use at your next party.

And here I didn't really make you anything and I'm sorry for that.

The other day Logan asked me to write something which is not about how much I love living here.

And I'm trying, I really am.

Except we have a garage and our cars sleep in there and then? In the morning? You can just get inside the cars and you don't have to brush off the snow or scrape off the ice.

What can be more riveting than that?

Here's a secret: I am afraid if I don't spend every day reminding myself how much I love it here, it will be taken away from me because I'm not grateful enough. Just like, as a kid, I believed they canceled Joanie loves Chachi because I didn't watch it enough.

Or maybe he's singing, "They think it's candy but it's SNOT!!!"

I just used this image in the school's newsletter.
I laughed about it for 20 minutes.

I'm honestly still chuckling, which is why I'm posting it to this website.

I picture it singing show tunes or something.

I'm also picturing me maybe giving this newsletter a little more, uh, style.

She's a yankee doodle dandy.

My third grade teacher wore red, white and blue every single day. I don't know if she was incredibly patriotic or just very practical with her wardrobe.

However, I realized this week I think she is to blame for my very practical and very boring wardrobe.

Which isn't fair since sometimes this teacher would wear a neckerchief or a beret and I have never worn a neckerchief. I wore a beret once in 1985.

I will probably never wear a neckerchief.

Probably.