Suburban Bliss:: Birth Control Via The Written Word

Last Year I Couldn't Spend All My FSA Cash. This year? Not a problem!

There are a few unfortunate things about breaking your face on your birthday.

The cost of having your teeth replaced is a lot more than you want to spend on your teeth, given that you'd rather not spend any money on my teeth. You know since you're already spending thousands of dollars on your kid's teeth.

It's like paying ten thousand dollars for a new sewer line.
"Oh great! Now we can...flush...the...toilet..."

Additionally some of the things you'd earmarked money for...like a tax payment, a replacement camera, a television with a screen that shows the entire picture...are now in your face. (Sorry about the tax delay Obama!)

But maybe that's just me, maybe you'd enjoy paying to replace your teeth with porcelain. Everyone's different. 

The other unfortunate thing about breaking my face is that every time I venture out in public I feel it's a personal achievement when I make it back to the house with my entire body intact. Like there should be a little workplace ticker in my kitchen that reads, "It's been __ days since our last accident!" 

Or maybe, as a friend suggested, I should have a sticker chart...one star for each day I manage not to be hit by a car or bash my teeth in. After 10 stars I could get a Silly Band!
Or maybe a camera!
Or a TV!

Or....my porcelain replacement teeth. 

Meh.

Life List: Hand Knit Baby Sweater

I added "Knit Sweaters For All The New Babies In My Life" to my Life List. I did this because I enjoy knitting but blow it off a lot of the time and when I had Maddie I got a couple of beautiful hand knit baby sweaters and they were some of my most cherished gifts. I've saved them to pass down to my grandchildren. 

The last baby sweater I made was for Mary, who started kindergarten this year. It was time. 

Our friends Adam and Deidre had a baby about 6 months ago. I made a baby sweater for them, actually pretty quickly. But then it turned out I expected their baby to be born malformed with one arm much longer than the other. 

They had a normal baby with perfectly proportioned arms so the sweater was wrong for them and that's on them. Way to take your prenatal vitamins and avoid radiation during pregnancy guys. 

I redid the sweater and I actually like the color combination better than the original. (Sorry about the pictures...stupid phone pictures. Waaaaa I miss my camera!)

Also the appropriately sized arms. 

I'd never made a hooded sweater before and this one is cute with a little umbilical cord at the top. Well it's cuter than an umbilical cord.

And look, a tag. Logan gave these to me about 8 years ago and I still have approximately 2000 of them. I should make more stuff. Maybe I'll start putting them in Max's lunch box every day. 

I used a pattern found on Ravelry. It's called Duck Soup by Jujube & Lolo.

It was very simple to make (aside from the inevitable mishaps I always have when knitting). But remarkably I found the knotted buttons and fasteners to be the most frustrating thing. The sweater sat in my knitting bag almost complete for over a month because the fasteners made me so furious. In the end I rigged up buttons and closures.

Here's another piece of advice if you're planning to make something for a baby. When babies are newborn they grow really fast. They're also curled up like tiny shrimp most of the time so the sweater you spent hours and hours on will not only fit the baby for about 8 days total, they'll also be all curled up on it so no one will see it. 

If you knit a sweater in a 6-12 month size (or bigger) your gift will be worn for longer and be more comfortable for the baby. This particular pattern is meant to be a little big so one season it can be worn as a light jacket and then, toward the end of the winter, as a regular cardigan.

This is good because after the amount of time I spent pulling out stitches, redoing sections and those stupid button closures, that baby is going to need to wear the crap out of that sweater.  

File Under: Duh.

I am 37 years old and have never developed a coffee habit. This is not because I'm Mormon, or allergic, or particularly concerned with "clean living". Some of my friends don't drink coffee or other things like aspartame because these things make them feel less than well.  I have a steel lined stomach, I rarely, if ever, have a reaction to the things I eat. 

And yet, I've never been a person who makes coffee in the morning to get my day going.

I have wasted valuable years of my life in this way.

This school year I decided I didn't want to feel exhausted all the time. I wanted productive days and when I dropped the kids at school I wasn't going to be thinking about cuddling back into the sofa for an hour or two. 

For years I've tried going to bed earlier so I could wake up bright eyed and ready to face the day at 7am. And it seemed no matter when I went to bed I was tired and unable to really process the thought of getting out of my bed. If I had six hours of sleep, eight, or even....twelve, I was always a bleary eyed mess in the morning. 

I decided this year to develop a coffee habit. And holy hell all those pop culture coffee references and all your Tweets now make sense to me. I don't know how I started my day without coffee. I'm not sure I was even alive. 

I was given a french press coffee pot for my birthday. That AND shattered teeth? How much better can my birthday be!? 

At this point however I have four small coffee mugs that came with our dinnerware. These coffee mugs hold about 2.7 ounces of coffee. I'm new to coffee but like I said, I've got the metabolic makeup of a steel tank and 2.7 ounces of coffee does nothing for my nervous system. 

I've been shopping for coffee mugs as a result. 

Educational Mugs @ Pedlars
Pantone Mug @ Velocity
Monogram Mug @Anthropology
My Mug @ Pedlars
Sugar Bowl @ Ninainvorm

I'd be remiss not to mention the allergy medicine I've also started taking daily. It turns out that pain in my face was not a non-alcoholic hangover, or just my way of being, it was my sinuses filing for emancipation from my face. 

In a year I'll be mainlining the coffee, I know. But for now let's just enjoy this new morning routine. 

To Remember:

When Max was 3 his favorite book was Are You My Mother?

At the end, the baby bird finds his mother and says, "You are a bird and you are my mother."

That's how Max used to say good night to me. 

Miss Poodle & Mr Rock And Roll Hair Make A Baby

My friend Jean sent a birthday gift that wasn't my broken teeth. Thoughtful, yes?

She made a card with a picture of me and her oldest back in the 80s. 

In the 80's I enjoyed perming my hair. Also, by all appearances I liked resembling a poodle. 

Max saw this picture and said to me, "Wow, that wasn't your real hair was it?"

"No it was something called a perm."

"Thank goodness that wasn't your hair because Maddie and I would have some bad hair if two people with that kind of hair had babies."

And, Oof! He's right. 

Not Enjoying This Narrative.

Lucy couldn't sleep last night. She was up and down...roaming through the house. Her nails on the wood floors click-click-clicking. Up on the bed, off the bed. Up the stairs, down the stairs. She'd lay down, she'd get up, she'd jump off the bed. Over and over. We didn't sleep very much. 

They say dogs can sense when things are "off". 

You could say things are off around here. I'm frustrated to say this but it's just the truth. 

Logan woke up yesterday with a terrible throbbing pain in his foot. So bad he could barely walk and even worse, he couldn't run. Logan is the type of person who runs until his toenails fall off and thinks of it as "just part of the deal". If his foot hurts too much for running, I get a sick feeling in my stomach. 

He's at the doctor getting a shot in the joint of his toe. As you can imagine this is less than pleasant for a person with a foot that's already extremely painful.

Yesterday I got replies from three of the nine resumes I've sent out. They were all "No, thanks" notes. The timing was phenomenal. 

Sunday was my birthday. I was invited to brunch with some friends who are, for the most part, much younger than me but let me hang around anyway. Two of the girls were also celebrating birthdays. One her 26th and the other her 30th. When I celebrated my 26th birthday I was pregnant waiting to have Maddie. 

Wow. 

We had brunch at La Dolce Vita out in the courtyard. There was a band with a french man with braids and someone playing the bongo. They played happy birthday for us. I ate eggs benedict. Lisa had a bagel with lox. Carrie had a scrambled something with smoked salmon, Amy had french toast and so did Lauren. Kate was wearing a hat and spoke a little french to the frenchman with the tiny braids all over his head. It was lovely except for the bees. 

After brunch I left with a couple of the ladies to go shopping. At Kohls. I don't have anything against Kohls, but I never really go to Kohls. Everything was fine, I checked out the Vera Wang collection and the Dana Buchman things. Everything was fine. I sent Logan a few texts back and forth telling him I was having a great time. He pointed out I was going to miss the Dog Swim at four o'clock. It's okay, I said, why don't you guys go ahead.

We were in the parking lot, my friends in front of me, so they didn't see what exactly happened. I tripped and fell, breaking my teeth. Or perhaps I fainted, fell and then broke my teeth. I assume shock took over because I don't remember anything. 

Not until around 8 o'clock that night when I was suddenly in my bed, hysterical, wondering what happened to my mouth. 

The next day I hid from the mirror, terrified of seeing my face. I didn't see my face until around 4 o'clock Monday when the dentist unveiled my new temporary teeth. My shorter-than-before, more-crooked-than-before temporary teeth. 

Ironically, I've always hated my front teeth. I felt like they were jutting out of my face and were too huge in relation to my other teeth. And now I'm grieving losing them (and the $2000 out of pocket I'm going to pay to replace them).

Since this happened friends have been telling me about losing their own front teeth in various mishaps. Almost all of these tales involve a really great night that maybe turned ugly at the end. Things like, "Well..it was in Tijuana....." Or "The details are fuzzy but I do remember a girl named Exxxtasy, most of the x's were silent though." 

No one has a story about a lovely afternoon brunch and a quick jaunt through Kohl's, ending with a face plant and crushed teeth. 

So in that way, I'm an original!

I called a Do-Over birthday for Saturday. I'm going to celebrate by not breaking any of my teeth.

Life List: River Float

This summer we went on a river float. This is an item on my Life List. The best way to tell you about our very first river float would be to show you some colorful, slightly tweaked photos. They'd put you right there. Give you the sense of how great it was. 

I'd show you the cooler full of juice boxes, I'd show you the other cooler full of very light beers (practically water) and the other adult concoction Logan whipped up for the event.

I'd show you the sweet Rottweiler who lived at the place we went to. I'd show you how dirty our car got finding the place we rented our tubes from. I'd show you all the times we turned around and passed the other two families who went with us because all three of our GPS's told us different ways to get there. 

I'd also probably have a pretty good picture of me falling into the water not even two minutes into the float, trying to save the cooler tube from floating away to Canada...(Pro Tip: Ask if they have rope where you rent your tubes. If they don't and you're floating down a river with ten kids and six adults...bring some rope.)

I can't show you these things because someone dropped our camera so this entire summer, my Best Summer In A Long Time, will forever consist of crappy iPhone photos taken with my 3g phone. Sigh. 

We went up north again this summer with some friends, like we did last year. This year there was another family with us and another couple of kids thrown into the mix. 

I'd mentioned I wanted to do a river float before we headed up, everyone was into it, sounded like fun. So we prepared to do it the day before our family went home.

LIFE LIST!

Two of the kids had a traumatic experience with a rain storm a few weeks prior and it threatened to rain at several points during this day. The result was these poor kids were scared the entire time that it might rain. Like two tiny terrified meteorologists...from Texas. (Where rain is considered a state of emergency.)

LIFE LIST!

As we waited to get on the road one of the kids in our group decided the van we would be travelling in to be dropped off up the river to start our float was not suitable. And I'll grant her that. It really wasn't suitable as anything other than a giant rapist van. It was only missing curtains on the windows and maybe some sort of airbrushed eagle. Or angel. But we went on anyway.

LIFE LIST!

One of the older kids told the littler ones there were snakes in the water. Ha ha ha! ...... So those little kids were pretty excited to get in the water. 

LIFE LIST!

We get in the water and the two littlest floaters are, in a word, petrified, though they'd done this before in Florida. I almost brought up the gators in Florida, they should have been scared then not now! But one look at my friend's face as she held the hand of her terrified child told me it wasn't a good idea.
So we floated down the river with a bit of a soundtrack, a soundtrack I'd entitle, "I don't want to do this." One of the kids cried for so long he actually fell asleep. Or maybe he left his body and went to his happy place to endure this particular level of hell. [Enter adult beverages here.] 

LIFE LIST!

A little ways down the river one of our party gets stuck in the branches on the side of the river with one of the really terrified children. As we try to talk them out of their predicament, she screams so loudly I thought to myself, "Holy Crap, the kid was right about the snakes."
It wasn't a snake but an enormous spider. Her husband jumps off his tube to rescue his wife and child who we think are being attacked by a water moccasin. When everyone is safe he realizes...he's lost his wedding band at the bottom of the river.

LIFE LIST!

This is the part of the float where we regrouped. We got our everyone's tubes together, all 10 kids and 6 adults. We got everyone a beverage, the sun came out so the Terrified Meteorologists could relax, the little kids either passed out or started to relax. We came up with a plan for keeping everyone connected and started floating down the river.

Life List!

Keeping all our tubes connected was a little like a giant game of Twister. You grab that persons ankle and another person's hand. Then you switch and someone's holding your ankle and you're grabbing another person's hand. But don't let go without telling someone you're doing it and making sure they're holding onto someone else!

Life List!

Sometimes we ran into trouble, A couple kids stuck on a branch. Or someone accidentally letting go. By that time Maddie had gotten used to walking along the murky river and we'd send her against the current to help collect people and reconnect them to the group. Or more importantly distribute beverages where needed. (Everyone got two!) We started calling her our "River Otter". As in, "River Otter! Help!" I don't think I've ever seen Maddie so happy to help anyone. Even her brother.  

Life List!

One of our friends likes to yell "Hey Oh!" Maddie thinks it's when someone says something inappropriate. I think of it more as an all-purpose exclamation. We started a Call and Response halfway down the river. One person yelling "Hey" everyone else yelling "Oh!"

Life List!

By the time we arrived at the dock, with the big friendly rottweiler waiting to greet us, we were all relaxed. Everyone had had fun (except maybe our youngest travel companion who was happy...it was over).  We were all in sync. 

We were a team. 

Life List!

Back To School Gift

Maddie forced me to go to the mall on Labor Day. I have strong feelings about going to malls, shops or restaurants on holidays. I think everyone should have that day off, color me communist/socialist/unAmerican. 

Additionally I just plain hate the mall. 

But I was nearly 12 once and I know the thrill of walking around the mall BY YOURSELF with a friend. It gets me a little giddy remembering the first time a friend and I walked downtown after school to her mom's office to drop our back packs off and then, the freedom of roaming around all the stores totally free of our lame parents. So, I made myself scarce while Maddie and a friend made their way around the mall. 

I filled my time spit taking coffee every time I looked at a price tag. 

I remember telling my mom, "Moth-ER, $29 for a sweater (skirt, shirt, jeans) is nothing."

And Mom? I hope you're happy because now I'm stuck in the same hell of explaining to my daughter that twenty-nine dollars for a sweater you're going to outgrow in about 6-9 months is actually a lot. 

You wished for this, don't deny it. 

Still, while at the mall I came across this cute note pad at Urban Outfitters (not on their site). I paid $6 for it and sent it with Max as a back to school gift for his teacher.

  

Voila! I just saved you a bunch of money. 

2 for $3.89! 

PS: I can't guarantee your kid won't be labelled a suck up from now until forever. (Oh, sorry Max!) Maybe save this idea for teacher appreciation week and make it from the entire class!

Back in the Saddle

We woke up at 6:30 this morning after a summer of lazy mornings lounging in bed for longer than I'm willing to admit publicly. Lucy looked around and said, "What the hell is going on?" 

We are still working with one car, though I'm sure very soon I'll lose my patience with the situation now that there are no more busses. When this happens I'll probably steal your car. Sorry. As of now I'm running a literal chauffer service just like the most cliched cliche. 

When I drop Logan at the office I yell as loud as I can, "Make sure you're waiting for me after school! I don't want to have to find you!!!!"

He's loving it. 

I think I'm going to see a movie all by myself today. It's the kind of thing I always mean to do but never really do. 

Since I am still just an unemployed nothing, I'm thinking I need to do more of those things I always mean to do during the day. Mostly so I don't sit around the house wishing I was being more motivated to do things. 

Which brings me to my School Year Resolutions:
Find a shared work space. 
Build routine into my day, everyday.
Conquer the several painting projects I have around the house. 
Repaint the entire first floor and upstairs hallway.
Nest the hell out of my house. 
Get back to cooking for a bit.
Buy a new camera. 

Do you have any resolutions for this school year? "Eat Frosting Naked On The Kitchen Counter"? Or "Finish That Thesis"? 

Show off.