01 March 2011

A little peek into how our month is going:

I'm trying very hard not to snap and snarl at her, but I just hate our life here so much it spills out every time I open my mouth. So I find myself annoyed and near hysterics because she needs so much, and destroys so much, and talks so much, and demands so much. The warmer weather means I am in tears every time I hear the thump thump of a basketball on the sidewalk, and that's not her fault. The health insurance is costing us more than we have, and that's not her fault. I despair of ever getting this house in shape to sell, and that's not her fault. Nor is it her fault that the minivan mafia at her school managed to hurt my feelings AGAIN, even after I swore I was done. All of this and more has me wallowing in a pit of despair, and it's not her fault, but we are together so much that she gets to face my fury constantly. It's not making me feel like a very good parent lately.

Life Lessons, Brought To You By Tragically Ordinary

I am miserably sick today with some sort of sinus thing, and since I haven't quite completed my latest knitting project (and therefore can't share it yet), all I have for you is a list of things I've learned. These are things I've been thinking about a lot lately, because we've had some discussions about our future plans for this little family (actually, at this stage, it's more like 'plans to have a plan to make plans') and for ourselves. Friday is my birthday, which I always dread, but I'm trying hard not to get too hung up on it this year. I'm trying to view all the hard knocks and missteps and bumbling that have occurred in my life so far as learning experiences, instead of a list of reasons why I shouldn't be allowed near people and should never be given power tools or a checkbook.

 What I've Learned So Far:

1. Wear an apron while cooking bacon. Do not cook anything while drunk or naked. Definitely do not cook anything while drunk and naked.

2. If you buy your significant other something awesome for their birthday, and the same year they buy you some unwanted, bewilderingly useless kitchen appliance for your birthday, it's time for a new relationship. This is particularly true of college relationships, and quadruply true if the other party doesn't understand why you're upset. If they can't comprehend that you make $7.50 an hour yet managed to buy them an amazing and perfectly-chosen $125 gift, and that their reciprocal $35 newspaper-wrapped breadmaker might be upsetting, especially given that you don't bake, they're probably not The One. If you've been together for two years and get a shrug and a "I didn't know what else to get you," they are definitely not The One.

3. You will  never be able to convince anyone else that their significant other is not The One. It's really something they need to realize on their own.

4. If your baby makes a gigantic mess every time she eats blueberry applesauce, either deal with it or stop giving her blueberry applesauce. Don't try and feed it to her while she's in the bathtub. It's going to make a bigger mess than you ever imagined.

5. If you're moving to another state, some place you know nothing about, RENT for a year.

6. Investigate strange smells promptly. This applies to any and all strange smells in any and all locations. 

7. All mothers are crazy. All mothers drive their daughters crazy. Most mothers-in-law are crazy, too. Everyone's definition of "crazy" is different, so it's all (HA!) relative.

8. Air conditioning, a working dishwasher, and a sense of humor are key components of a happy marriage.

9.Before you buy that extra t-shirt or stack of discount books or whatever trinket you're eying, consider how you feel about moving it back and forth across the country a few times. Doesn't sound like fun, does it?

10. Don't confuse "adventure" with "stupidity." Don't confuse "caution" or "responsibility" with "fear."

So what about you? What have you learned so far?

How NOT to Have a Happy Holiday.

It's not a good idea to go to the grocery store at 8:00 pm 2 days before Xmas with a 2.5-year-old.

It's an even worse idea to do this WITHOUT A LIST.

It's always a bad idea to go to the grocery store without a list, but it's so much worse to go into a store stuffed full! of holiday! cheer! and shoppers who have glazed eyes and flecks of foam coming out of their mouths, while dragging a 2-year-old (who, to her credit, was pretty patient with me) and oh did I mention we hadn't eaten dinner yet? ALL THIS WITHOUT A LIST. I spent $25, I have no idea what I bought, and I know I'm going to have to go back tomorrow. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

LOUD.

This was originally written after I got back from our last visit to my parents' house. I thought I'd dust it off and actually post it, since I am in the thick of Loudsville again.

May 1, 2009:

Piper and I spent two weeks in Michigan, staying at my parents' house. It was two weeks of pretty much constant traveling and bustle, as we careened around trying to see everyone and do everything. I think I managed to hit everything on my list, squeezing in a few hours at Belle Isle on Monday. I was glad I got to go, since a trip out there with my swanky D60 was at the top of my to-do list. I LOVE it there. Practically everything is old and abandoned and crumbling and beautiful. I got a lot of shots of the abandoned zoo this time. I did not get to stop at all the spots I wanted to, since my mom and Piper were with me. It was nice to have my mom along to distract the kid, but she was ready to go after about 45 minutes. My mom, that is, not Piper. Piper was cool with it all, she would've happily played on the giant playground, splashed in puddles, and chased geese until she dropped in her tracks.

It was nice to be around people again, to have friends to hang out with and playmates for Piper. It was also nice to come back to our little house. I needed some peace and quiet because I always feel like my parents' house is so LOUD. The TV is always on and the volume is cranked up. Everyone is always talking, and instead of turning the TV down they all talk over it. And then over each other. The phone rings constantly, and since they got Caller ID a few years ago they refuse to answer the phone most of the time, they just stare at the display and ask each other "Do you know that number?" "No, do you?" "It's a telemarketer." "Well, I'm not going to answer that!" "I'm not either!" while the phone rings and rings and rings.

My mother's younger brother calls at least three times a day. Her work calls at 5:00 almost every morning, and then again at 6:00 to ask if she's really, really sure she doesn't want to come in today (she's an on-call nurse and picks her own days). The phone ringers are all cranked up to maximum volume because my mom says she can't hear it ring when she is outside gardening. Never mind they've just had six months of snow and she told me that since she had no time for gardening last summer, this year she's going to let it all go. Apparently doing absolutely nothing but watching the snow fall or the flowers grow in her back yard still requires a ringer volume of 11.

Her cell phone plays an irritating, hokey country song - also at maximum volume - whenever she gets a text message, which is about every 20 minutes since several of her siblings got cell phones this past year. She learned how to download songs and ring tones onto it, which play at ear-splitting levels whenever anyone calls. Her computer speakers are turned up to max, too, and she is constantly playing YouTube videos of my cousins' Christian band or those crazy animated "You're a great friend!" forwards with the tinny music.

Their next-door neighbor has a machine shop in his garage and mechanical noises issue from it until the wee hours. While we were there, not only was he running loud machines, he pulled up a semi truck with what appeared to be a portable Army barracks attached to it - camouflage and all - and started cleaning out his house. They recently sold it, but somehow get the keep the garage (with noisy machine shop intact).

When the phone isn't ringing, my mom is talking to one of her siblings or her mother or numerous friends, re-telling the same stories (mostly about how much she hates her job) over and over. Loudly, of course, bellowing into the receiver over the sound of the TV, the computer, the stereo, and ten people talking.

My brother comes over and puts on music and cranks the volume up; he shows my dad stuff on the computer, video clips that I can hear when I am upstairs at the opposite end of the house. My sister comes home and watches Food Network, turning the volume steadily upward to try and drown out the rest of the house. Which, of course, makes everyone get louder.

And whenever I say anything, they all act like it's my problem. In the car, my brother put a CD in and immediately turned the volume up to 35 before it even played. Piper and I were in the back seat and nearly got blasted out the window.

"Hey, can you turn that down?" I asked. "It's really loud back here."
"I can barely hear it up here," he said.
"Well, turn the fade all the way to the front, then. We're getting blasted." I showed him where the appropriate knob was, but it didn't make much difference so I asked him again to turn it down.
"I don't think there's anything wrong with it. The fade is all the way to the front now and I can barely hear it up here!"
"And I am telling you that it is too loud. It is too loud for me. It is too loud for Piper-"
"-look at her, she doesn't seem to mind. Your ears are just too sensitive. You have a problem."
"I am her parent, and I think the music is too loud to be good for her hearing."
"Loud music is awesome, I don't know what your problem is. Why are you teaching her to be an old fogey? Turn it down! Psh!"
"Listen," I said, "you claim you can't hear it up there. But you started talking louder when it came on. So at least some part of your body acknowledged that it was beyond normal conversational level. The volume control is at 35 right now, that is more than loud enough."
He made some crack about me being an "old fart" and turned the music off entirely, saying again that I had some kind of ear problem.

This exchange is pretty typical of my family. It's not me, it's you; it's not my fault; I didn't do it; you're the one with the problem, not me.

I was upstairs putting Piper to bed when and I heard the TV blaring from the living room downstairs. Upstairs and across the house, I could still hear every word of the annoying car commercial. I went downstairs and asked my mom why the TV was so loud.

"What?" She said. "It's not loud. I don't think it's loud. I mean, I didn't turn it up. It was just that way. The commercial came on and it was loud. But I didn't set the volume control. I didn't do it. I didn't make it loud. It wasn't me."
"So you couldn't, say, turn it down?" I picked up the remote and turned the volume down.
"Well, I didn't turn the TV on. It wasn't me, I didn't make it loud. I didn't know, maybe somebody wanted it that way or something. But I didn't make it loud, it's not my fault. It was the commercial that was loud."
"Yeah, but it didn't occur to you to maybe turn it down when it got loud?"
"Well, I didn't turn the TV on. It wasn't me. And anyway, I don't think it's that loud."
I sighed. "I could hear it all the way upstairs. I was trying to get Piper to sleep and it woke her up."
"Well, I don't know. It's not my fault. I didn't do it."

This is the way they all react whenever I say anything about the TV being loud. It's the commercials, they're loud, it's not my fault you can hear it from the end of the driveway. I can't do anything about it, the commercials are just so loud. Then they have discussions and complain about how loud commercials are these days. It never occurs to anyone at any point during these discussions to turn it down when a program goes to commercial.

Procrastinating.

Last week, I decided to go to Michigan for a visit. The cheapest tickets were, weirdly enough, for a Saturday less than two weeks away. Which meant that I had about 9 days to prepare for a nearly-month-long stint away from the house.

Because I am a masochist, I clicked "buy."

And promptly spent the entire next day re-organizing my yarn and updating my Ravelry queue. I did not pack, or clean, or do laundry, or any of the other things I should've been doing. I did take care of some book-keeping stuff, but that was mostly because I was already online.

I have also decided that before I go, I will finish two of my three remaining Pay-It-Forward swap packages, do a bunch of blogging, and re-arrange my bedroom.

We leave on Saturday - this Saturday - and I haven't started packing yet. I don't even know where three-fourths of the stuff I want to take is.

Procrastination is really an art, as far as I'm concerned.

Moral Fiber

So, the second part of Cookie Girl's visit involves more moral dilemmas (and moral failings) on my part: After we established that we would not be ordering cookies without more information, it was getting late. It was past dinner time; the meal I had been working on when she rang the doorbell was cooling in its pans on the stove. I now faced another problem: either invite her to dinner, or find a way to shoo her out the door. I told her it was 7:00, and asked her when her mother told her to be home.

"Oh, she didn't give me a time," came the sunny, cheery answer. "She never tells me when I have to be back. She never tells me when to come home."

She could have been fibbing, of course, but since she had previously spent almost seven hours at our house and nobody came looking for her, I doubted it. I didn't think this kid had much in the way of adult supervision. I wanted to be a good person, but I didn't exactly want to invite her to dinner. I tried to tell myself it was because we didn't have enough to go around or she might have food allergies, but really it was because I wasn't sure if I could handle this kid. She's not my kid, so I couldn't exactly put her in the corner if she refused to eat her nutritious meal and asked for more candy, you know? It already makes me mad when my own kid won't eat what I cook and demands other things; how would I handle it if someone else's child did it to me? She'd already gotten a Popsicle and a handful of the mints she saw in a kitchen drawer and then pretended not to know about but specifically asked for. I didn't think she'd be the kind to eat all her vegetables without a fight, and something told me they weren't big on quiet family dinners at her house.

It was also, I am somewhat ashamed to admit, because I didn't want to encourage her.

When I was growing up, my family were always the ones who had extra kids around. My parents fed everybody who showed up at our door, no matter how little we had. We never worried about bringing extra people home or inviting them to dinner. Our friends with less-than-stellar home lives always had a haven at our house; day or night, if someone needed a place to go, they could come to us. My parents treated everybody like their own kids, be it hugs or curfews that needed handing out. And I really do believe that they helped a lot of the kids who hung around. Some of those kids, now grown (and some with kids of their own!) will tell you that for themselves.

I always thought that I possessed this generosity of body and spirit. I thought that I had taken to heart their lessons about helping people because it is the right thing to do. But standing in my kitchen, setting the burners to low in an attempt to re-heat the dinner I'd spent 45 minutes cooking earlier, I knew I had not. Because I didn't want this kid. I didn't want to feed her, and have her show up at my door every other day expecting to be fed, the way she now zooms in and asks for treats because of the one time I gave her banana bread and Capri-Sun. I wanted to pretend that we could be a kind presence in her life, stepping in for her mostly-absentee parents, providing a different perspective and a little direction. I knew the reality would simply involve her showing up at our door randomly asking for cake and Kool-Aid, dragging out all Piper's toys, and forgetting to say thank-you.

And I couldn't do it.

I couldn't invite this kid to dinner, couldn't watch her pass up the healthy foods that I work so hard to make and even harder to get Piper to eat. I couldn't invite her in to occupy my daughter's made-for-tiny-kids furniture and possibly break it in the process; I couldn't watch her boss my kid around and eye Piper's toys with envy. I was not at all the good person I wanted to be, ready and willing to feed and entertain some stranger's child just because my daughter didn't mind (and maybe even liked) playing with her.

I gave them a 30-minute time limit and let them keep playing. It was 7:45 when I finally got the little girl convinced that Piper needed to eat dinner and go to bed. I wondered again where this girls parents were, that she could be in someone else's home at nearly 8:00 on a school night and nobody would come looking for her, or apparently even expect her to be home.

I re-warmed the dinner, and we ate quietly. I felt a pang of guilt with every bite I took, knowing I should've invited her to to stay. I guess I'm pretty far from the good person I want to be, because despite the guilt, a teeny tiny part of me was glad I wouldn't have to share my bacon.

Guilt-Chip Cookies

There's a little girl in our neighborhood who loves Piper. This is great, except this girl is six years old and seems to think of Piper as an overgrown baby doll. She tries to pick her up and haul her around, and while Piper is remarkably tolerant of her attentions, it makes me uneasy to have her staggering around carrying my kid, dangerously close to dropping her on the massive anthills and upthrust tree roots that populate the dirt around here.

This little girl also likes to hang out and play with Piper...which is again, great, except that this means she takes Piper's toys right out of her hands and breaks them and bosses Piper around. She pesters us to bring more and more toys out into the yard. She climbs, sits, and swings on Piper's built-for-kids-under-3-years-old-or-less-than-45-lbs swing set. I wince and try to gently tell her that it's built for little kids, as the plastic swing sags and its support beams start to buckle. The little girl sometimes complies, but a lot of the time, she tells me "No, it's okay, see?" and swings harder, her butt in the swing hovering three inches off the ground. The whole swing set rocks and tips and thumps with every movement.

She is constantly asking for food, candy, or any other consumables she thinks I may have around. I gave out juice boxes and banana bread one day for helping us in the yard when she, her sister, and some other neighborhood kids helped us bury Chick and ever since then she asks for more every time she comes over. It's not a casual request, either; she peers around the back door and scans the kitchen counters for signs of recent baking. If I tell her no, I don't have any today, she asks "Well, do you have something else?" She asks for a drink and I give her water. She looks disdainfully at the plastic cup and says "Don't you have any juice?" If I tell her not today, she will try to look into the refrigerator to prove me wrong.

This little girl came over one day last week selling cookies. Cookie dough, to be more specific, one of those godawful fundraiser things that have kids hawking crap nobody needs to make pennies per item for their school. I wanted to help her out; I really did. But she came to our door first asking if Piper could come out and play, and then absently asked us if we wanted to buy some cookies. We said we'd take a look and she invited herself inside. Piper was finishing up a Popsicle, and the little neighborhood girl asked for one (and when she'd finished it, another). We gave her a Popsicle and while we looked over her sales materials, she started playing with Piper.

She had handed us a three-page brochure and order form for frozen cookie dough which cost $14 or $16 per box. That is a lot of cash for us to be dropping on cookies sold by six-year-olds, and I started to get a sinking feeling. Closer inspection revealed that the envelope into which we were supposed to place our form of payment had no information on it. There were merely blank lines where her school, classroom, and teacher's name should've been written. In fact, all the lines on everything were blank, except for the first line of the order form where someone had half-filled in an order and then crossed it out. The only other sheet she had handed us was a glossy one-page flyer showing all the really! great! prizes! a kid could get if they sold enough cookie dough to feed Western Europe for a year.

We asked her what school she went to, and she told us the name, which was unsurprisingly the school right up the road. When quizzed about her teacher's name, she mumbled something and went back to playing. We asked her when we'd get the cookie dough - there was absolutely nothing on any of the materials about when this "gourmet" cookie dough would arrive - and she said we had to pick it up. We asked her when and where and she said "I think at the school sometime...I don't really know." She couldn't tell us anything else about the cookie sale.

I had been mentally berating the person who had started an order and then crossed out their name, but suddenly I understood their position very well. I did not particularly want to turn this girl loose with a check or cash which may or may not make it to the teacher, for some cookies which may or may not ever arrive, which we might have to possibly go pick up "sometime" from some part of her school.

Eventually we told her to have her teacher fill out the envelope with the correct info or give her an information sheet so we'd know what to do, then bring it to us and we would order cookies. By now I had spent 45 minutes agonizing over this terrible moral dilemma and feeling like an ass for not buying any cookies. The little girl, who didn't seem to care if we bought 50 cases of cookies or none at all, had spent the time nosing around our house, playing with Piper, and rifling through our kitchen drawers looking for candy.

She got a handful of starlight mints, and I ended the day feeling as though I needed to go to confession for not buying some overpriced cookie dough.

Little Boxes (Of Vegetables)

Three weeks ago, we picked up our last produce box of the season. They're still doing the boxes for a little while longer, just not at our usual pickup spot. The logistics of getting all the way downtown (sorry, I mean Uptown) once a week have recently gotten quite complex, and as much as we love the boxes, we have not been able to figure out how to get to the other drop point at the appointed time.

This means that for the first time in several months, I have to go to the grocery store. It's not that I didn't go before; we needed bread and milk every week or so. But this? This roaming the aisles, half-assed list in hand, struggling to figure out what I'm supposed to be buying in order to keep us from eating our shoes some time during the week? It's HORRIBLE.

I had gotten used to starting with ingredients first - looking at our weekly box and going "Okay, I have 6 ears of corn, 2 butternut squash, 4 tomatoes..." and figuring out what to make of them. Now I have to start with an idea or (worse yet) a recipe, tracking down ingredients and trying to use the stuff I bought before it goes bad. Which, since it's no longer the super-fresh local things we had been getting, means I have about ten minutes before it starts to grow fur and bite my hand when I reach into the produce drawer of our fridge.

I find the produce department at the grocery store sort of revolting now - all those piles of over-waxed apples, irradiated avocados, sickly, pale tomatoes, strawberries the size of ping-pong balls (with about as much flavor). All that stuff which seemed tolerable before but is utterly disgusting now that I've had the real thing. All that stuff that has traveled so far to get to us, sprayed with God-knows-what to keep the bugs out, all picked far too green yet it still spoils a day or two after I get it home. It's one thing to be making do with tasteless, grainy trucked-in produce; it's even more irritating to have it rot practically on the drive home.

Pay It Forward: Sneak Peeks

I am working away on the packages for my Pay-It-Forward buddies. I have come to the conclusion that I am the following things:

1. Completely scatterbrained
2. In need of a personal chef
3. The world's slowest crafter
4. Really lousy at a)estimating how long it takes to complete something and
5. b) budgeting my time.

Or possibly I just need someone to follow me around and keep me on task all day. I always feel swamped, but nothing ever seems to get done, work-wise, house-wise, or craft-wise. Why is that?!

Despite my slowness, they are shaping up to be pretty cool. In the meantime, here are some sneak peeks:








Please forgive the small and blurry cameraphone pictures. Our house seems to have inadequate night-time lighting, for some reason. Also, I am on a differerent computer and having formatting problems...sigh.

Absent.

I have not been around here much lately. Partly it's because the cooling fan on my poor litttle Lappy is not what it used to be, so I can't use it for long before it starts to overheat. I solve this problem most of the time by perching the laptop on one of those square Blue Ice freezy-pack things, which cools it down but is not so great for typing. I usually have just enough time to check my email, pay some bills, and glance at my Google Reader before my computer slows to a crawl and I know it's time to either shut down or go get the ice pack.

But most of the reason my Internet time is cut short these days is because my husband is home for the summer. He usually works part-time in the summers, but they haven't had the hours for him lately, so instead of being gone 35 hours a week he's gone 6. You would think that having another adult around here pretty much full-time would result in a spic-and-span house, plenty of Internet time for all, delicious home-cooked meals flowing from the kitchen like a river, and my entire clean/organize wishlist getting fufilled.

However, it's been quite the opposite. I run the dishwasher every day instead of every third day; there are mountains of laundry sitting around, both clean and not; the floor is strewn with toys and clothes; and we seem to be eating out an alarming number of times per week. The Xbox and the Wii are in near-constant use (and I don't play video games). Aaaaaand it has been 90 degrees pretty much every day, except for the two minutes per day when it rains, just enough to crank up the humidity. Then the temperature shoots back up to 90 humid, sweltering degrees. This, of course, means that I have been crankier than usual. And that is saying a lot.

I did, however, get started working on the Pay-It-Forward/swap packages. So far, Cris, Jen, and Emily are getting one. Emily: I need your email address! Shoot me a note at tragicallyordinary at gmail dot com when you get a chance.


The photo above is downtown Charlotte, shot in Spring 2008.

Next Time I'll Just Beat Myself In The Head And Leave the TV Off.

July 1st, 2009: I have to say, although I never watched it on purpose if I could help it and I hadn't watched it at all in years, Entertainment Tonight seems to have gotten even lamer than I remember it to be. I tried to watch it tonight and get the latest info on all the to-do over Michael Jackson's death, but it was the television equivalent of...I don't know, I'm trying to come up with a food analogy here but I can't think of anything. I'd say doughnut, because they are devoid of all nutritional value, but at least doughnuts are pleasurable to eat. Entertainment Tonight was irritating to watch with no payoff. Maybe a moldy doughnut, then. A moldy jelly doughnut with a filling of industrial toxic waste.

They spent the first 7 minutes of a 30-minute timeslot telling me about all the in! depth! reporting! they were going to do and all the amazing! insider! info! they had. Then five more minutes were devoted to commentary about the amazing! insider! info!, commentary from some nameless woman who claimed to have "a source in California" who said there "were rumors about" that X or Y "may be happening" and I would only be able to get the full info by continuing to watch this episode of Entertainment Tonight. Well, thank you. I'll keep resisting the urge to puke and then slam my head into a brick wall, so I can get all that great insider info you have.

Then there were several more minutes of speculation: about rumors on who is getting the King of Pop's three kids, and about whether or not a white horse-drawn funeral coach spotted being trucked down a CA highway will be the vehicle to carry MJ to his final resting place. Speculation, but not one fact, source, quote or reference. There was more chitchat from Nameless Speculative Woman about some trucks and digging equipment seen entering Neverland Ranch's gates were coming in to build a mausoleum, even though "it is illegal to bury a body on private land in the state of California, unless it has been cremated, and Michael Jackson has not been cremated." Once again, thank you for telling me absolutely nothing.

They kept patting themselves on the back for all their awesome reporting, but the term seemed to apply to the broadcast the way "millionaire" applies to my finances. That is to say, bears no resemblance whatsoever. The only "reporting" (and I use the term pretty loosely here) they did was on the dancers that were supposed to be in MJ's upcoming tour. Even that was choppy supposed-rehearsal footage interspersed with grainy 5-second "audition tapes" of would-be backup dancers professing their love for Mr. Jackson.

Then they started an "investigation" piece that consisted of showing choppy, three-second-cuts of footage from MJ's video for "They Don't Care About Us" which was recorded in Rio in...wait for it...1996. Way to be on top of the breaking news, ET. I could feel my brain cells dying one by one the longer I watched. I couldn't take it any more, so I changed the channel to something more pleasant to watch - a documentary about methods of torture in the Dark Ages.

Sweating.

It is currently a million degrees in here. Well, not that many, but a very high number. Far too many degrees to have a child clambering on me. I am slacking, not working and paying bills and balancing the checkbook and all those other Adult things I am supposed to be doing right now.

My parents are coming for the weekend, and I have already asked them to babysit tomorrow afternoon. I told my husband I want to go see a movie. We've had a pretty crap time of it around here lately, what with cat murder, layoffs (oh yeah, it's official), heat, fighting, and crabby child. So I told him "We have babysitters for FREE this weekend. I want you to take me out. We are going to go to the movies. I want to sit for 90 minutes in ice-cold air conditioning, make myself sick eating buttery popcorn, drink a gallon of full-calorie over-sweet carbonated beverage, and laugh myself stupid at the dumbest movie I can find." I just want to forget all our troubles for an hour or two and enjoy myself.

In The Panic Room

My in-laws are coming to visit while Ryan is on Spring Break. They are coming for five days, and they are staying with us.

Yeeeeah.

I know I agreed to this, I know I said "oh, yeah, sure" somewhere during the round (or ten) of conversations that determined when they would be coming and how long they would stay and what season it would be and if it would be okay with us and is Piper excited her Granny is coming and I need to know exactly what to pack and how many hours exactly does the trip take and if we would be properly gratified that they graced us with their presence and where Jupiter would be in the sky at the time of their visit.

I know I said that it was okay if they took up residence in our guest bedroom for nigh on to a week. But really, what else could I say? Because I think "Um, actually, you people freak out my kid and make me so uncomfortable it is nearly physical and say inappropriate things and complain about everything and just generally drive me completely crazy, so if you could get a hotel, that would be great" would not play well.

But I was fine with it, until yesterday, when the following conversation took place:

Steph: Oh, look, a flyer for the volunteer fire department's fish fry. All you can eat flounder and shrimp. You've been hankering for fish and chips, I've been crazy for shrimp. We should go to this. It's on the 4th, next Saturday.
Ryan: Um, okay, I guess we could. But my parents will be here at some point.
Steph: No, your parents are coming weekend after next.
Ryan: No, they're coming the 4th. That's this upcoming weekend.
Steph: Yeah, but that's not Spring Break yet...they're coming while you're still in school?! I'm going to have to entertain them for FIVE DAYS while you're in school all day? What the hell?
Ryan: No, Steph, that's the start of my spring break.
Steph: No it's not. Your spring break starts the week after next week.
Ryan: No, it's the week after this week. This is my last week of class before spring break. It's the end of the month this week.
Steph: Yeah, but your spring break doesn't start until the sixthhh...OHGOD. Crap. OHGOD.
Ryan: You know, I thought you were being pretty nonchalant about their arrival-
Steph: (looking around at cluttered dining table, flour-covered kitchen counters, mountain of dirty dishes, guest room that can charitably be described as "a disaster") OH GOD. They're coming this weekend. Oh my God. What am I going to do? Oh God. OH GOD!
Ryan: -but there she is! There's my girl.
Steph: OHHH GOD oh God OH GOD oh GOD OH NO.

Baby, You Let Me Down

*sigh* I wish I could quit TV.

Just turn it off completely. Just stop watching.

It's broken my heart so many times. Every time I fall in love with a new show, it gets canceled.

Life on Mars is getting the axe - next week is the last episode - they're not bringing Swingtown back. Pushing Daisies is gone.

Maybe next fall I will be strong and not watch any of the new shows.

But probably not.

I am SO COLD.

It is supposed to be 18 degrees here overnight tonight, and while that is not cold for some places it's pretty cold for here, considering yesterday it was in the mid-50's and the day before the high was a warm, wet 68. I was outside in shirtsleeves this weekend, for crying out loud, and now I just want to put on 16 sweaters and crawl under my flannel sheets for about a week.

All this coldness has lit my knitting fire, however. I spent half of Piper's nap (which she actually took today, thank the Gods; I could not do another full day of Crabby Baby Whine Time) adding like 10 new knitting blogs to my Google Reader. I also spent some time browsing various online yarn shops and fantasizing about luscious skeins of handpainted yarn. And if I can keep slaughtering my to-do list, I might actually get to knit some time before Easter.

The Christmas cards are almost all out (email me if you want one, as long as you don't mind it being late), the checkbook is almost balanced, the presents are almost all wrapped. We still have to finish and ship my in-laws' gift (a series of photos in a frame), however. Since that was my husband's bright idea, I will let him take care of it. Okay, technically, the photos-in-frame was my idea first (and they are my photos, I took them this Spring), but I abandoned it due to impracticality (wrapping and shipping a huge picture frame did not sound like fun). He has clung to this as the perfect gift for them this year, despite my pleading to get them something that fits in a flat-rate shipping box, like maybe a book or a photo album. At what point am I absolved of responsibility for this? I know I started it, but I have tried very hard not to finish it. Does that mean I'm off the hook and he can take the heat for what is shaping up to be a VERY late present?

You're Like Fleas

A lot of my childless friends say to me "Oh, Piper so cute and fun! It makes me want one!" To those of you who think this sounds like fun: Here is a warning. Sometimes she is fun, but other times, like tonight, I want to run away with the circus. Tonight I was committing the cardinal sin of attempting to scan through my Google Reader, and she really wanted my attention. She’d already spent the previous couple of hours stomping all over the presents I was wrapping in the living room, unloading the box of Christmas ornaments and throwing them around, demanding food (bananas, peas, yogurt, cookies, crackers, and noodles, by turns) which I’d get for her, then she’d take one look at and scream “NOOOOOO!” before asking for something else. Even though Ryan took her out for an hour or two earlier, I was about at my limit for shenanigans.

However, 18-month-olds are not always the best judges of when Mommy has had enough, so instead of sitting with me and looking at LOLCats or playing in her room, she was climbing all over me, shrieking, pinching me, and hitting me in the face with a copy of Goodnight Moon, demanding that I read it to her RIGHT THIS SECOND. After the third time I deposited her on the floor and she started to climb back onto my lap, I was so exasperated I yelled “PIPER! Stop! For the love of God, you’re…YOU’RE LIKE FLEAS!”

I don’t even know what that means, but at least she got down. She’s unloading the DVD cabinet right now, taking all the discs out of their individual cases and either leaving them on the floor or attempting to put them back in other boxes. *sigh*

Things That Are Annoying Me Today

I was never good at math. At least, I was never supposed to be. I jokingly told Ryan the other night that "the only thing I remember about Math is that I was good at English." Which is true - I was a girl, I learned to read early, I was encouraged from a young age to focus on words and forget about the numbers. There was also the subtle, underlying assumption that girls aren't as good at math, and hey since I had the English thing going, why bother to fight nature?

I wish I'd paid more attention, because today most of my gripes are math-oriented*:

- I got a letter from our mortgage co. saying we owe an extra $300 to our escrow account. As near as I can tell, after half an hour of staring at two pages full of tiny columns of numbers labeled with lots of words like "projected," "required," "comparison," and "previous," when they did the initial calculation for our payments, they underestimated the taxes. Or our taxes went up. Or they're going up next year. Or our homeowners insurance went up. Or is going up. Or something.

- The thing is, we switched insurance carriers and got a refund earlier in the year. Our new policy was $200 less than the old one, but I took the whole refund and put it in the escrow account, just to be safe. I can't seem to figure out what happened to the extra, unless our taxes are going up by $500, not $300.

- It seems like we are paying a lot of taxes. When we were house-shopping in California, I'd always look at the estimated taxes on the houses we liked. What we're paying here seems high in comparision, which doesn't make much sense.

- I would not mind paying extravagant taxes if I got something in return. Like maybe if there were sidewalks beyond the borders of our neighborhood, or a bike lane on a road within five miles of here, or if they ran some buses within eight miles of here, or if they had plans to build an arm of the new and very successful light rail anywhere near here in the next 25 years (they don't; I've combed the CATS website).

- Staring at those columns of tiny numbers has also made me pissed off at how much of our payments go to "mortgage insurance" every month. As near as I can tell, "mortgage insurance" means paying someone to sit on their ass and do nothing. It doesn't help me, and people paying it has certainly not helped banks or mortgage carriers stay upright (Helllooooo, Wachovia, Countrywide, Silver State, I'm talking to you). So how about I keep my money every month and make my payments more affordable? I'm sure a lower payment would help prevent a default more than paying your mob-like protection money "mortgage insurance" every month.

- Also, if you are going to screw up the amounts I'm supposed to put in escrow for my taxes and homeowner's insurance, can I just do it myself? I mean, I can't, under the terms of our loan, etc., but I think I'd rather. The mortgage lender has generously offered to front the money (and charge us interest, of course) or work it into our payments (which means our payments are going up by $20 a month) but personally I'd like things to be all separated out so I can see what's going on with each thing, instead of scrutinizing the jumble of figures currently before me.

- They also seem to have the amount of our last payment wrong. It's only off by a small amount, the few dollars extra I put into principal every month to round the payment up to a nice whole number, but now I have to figure out why it doesn't add up and that is also pissing me off.

Non-math related:

- I just ate my last biscotti. Now I have to make some more, and not think about the fact that I am the only one in the house that eats them (well, Piper takes occasional bites) and that I have been making them once a week, which means that every week I am consuming half a stick of butter and 3/4 cup sugar in baked biscotti goodness form. There's other stuff in there too (like, um, flour and eggs), but it's the butter and sugar that I find most objectionable. And by objectionable I mean delicious.

*Also, I wish I'd paid attention because science and math would've served me far better in life than my meandering Liberal Arts education. I would have a viable career now, instead of wondering if I'm going to have to eventually ask people if they would like fries with that.

I'm about to tell them they can't visit anymore.

My parents visited last weekend and brought another carload of CRAP. They did not bring my bicycle, but they did bring:

- 5 pairs of my old baby shoes, none of which Piper can wear (3 too small, 1 too trashed, 1 with soles so thick and hard I don't know how I ever learned to walk). My mom knew the too-small ones were too small when she put them in there. She brought them anyway.

- An assortment of clothes, baby clothes, books, and toys that I had put in the give-away bag before we left Michigan. I put them in the garbage bags along with the rest of the stuff my mom had designated for her monthly Purple Heart pick-up. The give-away stuff is always collected in the same spot at her house. She would've had to root through all the other stuff just to pick out the sackfuls of useless-to-me things she brought.

- A pile of fairly hideous 80's baby clothes that belonged to my siblings & me. All of which are either years too big or many months too small for Piper to wear.

- A crate of Fisher-Price Little People toys that, while pretty cool (and only partly because they are the old choke-sized ones), Piper can't play with for at least another year. She is too hard on things right now to turn her loose with so many small, fragile parts.

- A stack of baby/kid books, 98% of which I can't give to Piper because they are either too old and completely falling apart, or they are not the thick cardboard-paged kind, which means she will shred them. She's extremely hard on books.

- A crate of my siblings' and my old baby/preschool toys, in various states of crumbling decay. One shape-sorter dissolved into tiny plastic shards when we tried to wash it.

- My old Fisher-Price "School Days Desk," which was a beloved toy of mine, but is made to be used by someone 7 or more years old.

- YET ANOTHER crate of Piper's outgrown baby clothes. I'm pretty sure this is the last one, because it has a lot of things I couldn't find (like the tiny onesies we decorated for her when she was a newborn). If there are any more crates of clothes lurking about, I will probably set fire to them because I am so sick of trying to find storage space for it all and ye gods people bought us a lot of foofy pink atrocities.

- A HUGE crate of Lego Duplos, which I specifically told my mom Piper is not quite old enough to play with. She doesn't have the dexterity yet to put the things together and get them apart; all that will happen is she'll stick two pieces together and then scream because she can't undo it. I don't need any more reasons for her to screech, thank you.

- A random assortment of kid-sized silverware (there's like one fork, 5 spoons, and a butterknife). Plastic bowls bearing cartoon approximations of the characters from Willow. Willow was our favorite movie when we were kids, and my mom dutifully saved UPCs from boxes of Quaker oatmeal to get a bowl and matching spoon for each of us. She could only find one of the spoons, and I don't know what the hell I am going to do with these, but I don't think I can bear to throw them out.

I honestly don't know what the F my mother expects me to do with all this stuff. When I try to tell her to stop bringing it, she only whines "It's your stuff. You wanted it. You asked for it. I didn't do it. You wanted it."

It's all still sitting in mountainous piles in the living room. Piper has managed to scatter a lot of it throughout the house. The house is usually ankle-deep in debris by the end of the day anyway, because she just goes from room to room destroying things and making messes faster than I can clean them up. The debris is knee-deep now, and I am teetering on the brink of a full-scale meltdown because my house is so messy. I have been struck down with a malady that required an actual doctor's visit and medications, and Ryan has had an hellacious school week plus a part-time job, so we haven't had much chance to go through it, much less drop off the stuff we don't want at the Goodwill up the road. Therefore, the piles and clutter and junk have been spreading all week and I have been edging closer to insanity.

The house was spotlessly clean and 85% totally organized before my parents showed up; only three closets (one each in the spare bedrooms, one in the hall) remained for me to divide, conquer, and organize. Earlier this month, my house was so clean and organized that not only did I go to bed at a reasonable hour three nights in a row, I spent one entire naptime reading a book because I had done all the things that I usually try to frantically accomplish during that 1.5-hour window every day. My home was organized and my brain felt wonderful because of it.

Now it looks like somebody is setting up a thrift store in here.

A Post About Knitting

Not that I have knit anything recently, mind you. The closest I've come is working three rows on a fuzzy yellow baby bonnet, three rows which Piper promptly unraveled and then carried the (glittery, chunky plastic) knitting needles off into another room.

I did, however, order a bunch of books during the 40% off sale at Knit Picks. I got three Elizabeth Zimmermann books - Knitter's Almanac, The Opinionated Knitter, and Knitting Workshop. I got a couple other ones,too (a Debbie Bliss baby book and Stefanie Japel's Fitted Knits), but so far I have spent the most time with the Zimmermann ones.

I think I'm sorry I ordered them. I didn't go in expecting to love them, since I am no fan of Fair Isle (I don't care for the way it looks, and why in the hell would I spend that much effort on something I'll never wear?) or cables (ditto). I work with and like cotton, silk, or linen waaaay more than wool yarns, since I learned to knit while living in southern California and now live in North Carolina. Neither of those places have climates conducive to working with, let alone wearing, anything resembling wool. But I've heard people rave about EZ and her methods, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

Maybe I should've started with Knitting Without Tears or something, I don't know. I find her work a largely irritating read. Maybe it's just that the stuff I have is beyond me, but I find myself going "Uh-huh, it's GREAT that you went skiing today and all, but could you please tell me what the hell I'm supposed to be doing here?" The directions for patterns are buried in chatter about EZ and her family or activities most of the time. The details of daily life are charming, but not necessarily what I'm looking for in a knitting pattern. I also didn't know that a lot of her stuff involves knitting something, then cutting it apart and machine-sewing as a means of finishing. I don't have a sewing machine, and I'm not yet skilled enough to translate the directions/patterns into a way that doesn't involve one. And as for her "percentage system?" Fugheddaboutit. I have yet to finish an entire adult-size sweater, so I think I'm just not experienced enough to apply what she's trying to teach me there.

I am a fan of Fitted Knits so far, though. I've been going through it trying to pick out what I want to do first. There are so many cute things! And the patterns aren't given in general "S/M/L" sizes, but rather in the actual measurements (mostly the bust measurement) so you can measure yourself first, then pick the right size. Japel also gives instructions in most of the patterns on how to alter them for a better fit as you go.

Trying to pick a project has reminded me of just what an expensive hobby this is - I wanted to make the sweater-coat from Fitted Knits as a Christmas gift for my mom, but it takes 32 balls of yarn. I priced it out and it was over $280! I just don't think I can conscionably turn my mother loose with $300 worth of hand-knitting. I don't think I'd even trust myself in a sweater that expensive, unless I was standing exactly in the middle of a totally white room with nothing in it, and I was doing nothing but admiring my sweater.

Oh, THAT's Why My House is Full of Crap

I just cleaned off my counter and dining table. It took me all weekend to do it, and I'm not even done yet. Mostly it was organizing, filing, sorting, and throwing away. I have been bemoaning the massive amount of clutter around here lately, and frequently find myself at a loss as to how we could have entirely filled up our house with crap in the not-quite-five months we've lived here. We don't buy a lot of stuff anymore; I just can't figure out where all this JUNK comes from.

I think I have the answer. A HUGE box (seriously, I couldn't get my arms around it to carry it inside, I just had to sort of hoist a corner and drag) just arrived from my parents' house, containing:

- Various pieces to Piper's three baby gyms, but not one actual complete gym. One of the main supports to the gym she used most often when she was little is broken. Whoever packed the box was so busy trying to shove more crap in there, they failed to notice that they had snapped the foam pole in half.

- An assortment of heinous baby clothes I left at the house when we moved because they were either a)heinous or b) heinous and too small. All of them still have the tags on.

- A pink plastic My Little Pony tea set. EDIT: Oh, God, it makes noise. It even sings.

- An outfit which my mom made herself, consisting of a reversible pinafore, two pairs of matching bloomers, a tiny coordinating purse, and a matching hat with a gigantic bow. The whole ensemble is solid blue on one side and the other fabric is yellow with pastel lollipops. She has got to be kidding.

- A set of 4 pastel-plaid placemats. A set of 2 Christmas placemats. 4 mismatched cloth napkins (I mentioned a few weeks ago I was on the hunt for table linens).

- A kit for making this dress, in blue. It's pretty cute, actually, and totally a project I would've picked for myself. There's a note inside the bag that says it's my brother's b-day gift to me. Nice job, D!

- An assortment of tank tops for me, none of which I can wear. They're all either way too big or feature spaghetti-straps and shelf bras, which don't work at all with my current g-cup nursing boobs and tank-like nursing bra.

- A tote bag my mom brought back for me from the Globe Theater in London that has "blood-splatter" on it and says "OUT, OUT DAMNED SPOT!" It's a little scary-looking actually.

- Some old clothes of my sister's which I was going to keep but then returned to the give-away box befoe we moved, after remembering that I had 10 boxes of clothing in storage.

- A play tent from Ikea which I told my mom I was going to wait to buy until the Ikea opens here next spring because we don't have room for it right now and my stupid cats will just pee in it anyway.

- Two pairs of British-flag "women's boxer shorts" which I can only assume are meant for me.

- 4 pairs of Piper's shoes, all of which are outgrown and one of which I threw away at some point because the sizes were mismatched.

- A musical card for Piper, tucked inside which I found an old non-working cellphone and 8 expired/used-up card-shaped things: fake gift cards/fake credit-cards etc.

- Some actually fairly rockin' H&M clothes for Piper. My mom and sister must've gotten them when they were in Europe last month. European babies apparently don't need pink OR giant bows to signify their status to the world.

- A pair of shoes for me, from my sister. Cute black-and-white slip-on tennies, but I think they're a little big.

The last box like this my mom sent (last month) is still sitting in the computer room, mostly still packed. I don't know what to do with all this...STUFF. I've asked her to stop sending/bringing it. She just sends more. When my parents came to visit in June, they brought an entire CARLOAD of this sort of junk. The one thing they brought that I had asked for was Piper's other carseat, which, in the process of cramming into the over-stuffed car, they broke. Snapped the seat-belt clip on the right side clean off, so now we can only put it in the center or on the left. The broken cordless phone arrived safely, as did 6 of my baby tee-shirts in various stages of threadbare decay, a large pink stuffed elephant that records and plays back sound, 16 too-small outfits I had put in the give-away bin anyhow, 3 dozen plastic Easter-eggs with ancient candy inside, 3 more bath-toy sets (to add to the bathtub-full she already has), and several more frog-themed outfits Piper doesn't need.

I have asked, begged, and pleaded with them to STOP BRINGING JUNK to my house. We don't have a garage. The back bedroom is entirely given over to the cats. The computer room is stacked floor-to-ceiling with boxes of books and cd's we have no storage for. Every closet in the houe is bursting with crap. And still, the avalanche of junk continues.

At first, I was polite and merely eye-rolling about this; I figured my mom was just trying to help. But there is also a purposefulness at work here. My parents actually laugh when I ask them to stop bringing stuff. They laugh and they tell me, "oh, it happens. When you get a house, it just fills up!" or the laugh and say how pleased they are to be cleaning out their basement and dumping it off at my house. Erm, forgive me for saying so, but if you don't want that crap at your house, I don't want it at mine, either.

The kicker is that 95% or more of the stuff that my parents claim is mine or which I should be responsible for disposing off my MOM is responsible for. The tiny clothes she saved from my and my siblings' infancies, most of which are now too trashed, have been stored too long, or are too small to be of use to me. Broken toys. The JUNK which she whines that Piper likes to play with - old wallets, broken cordless phones, creaky plastic picture frames, crocheted fun-fur scarves nobody will ever wear, Christmas decorations, a string of beaded tree-garland I had to take away from the baby because it was shedding flecks of green (and probably lead-filled) paint all over her hands and in her mouth. The remains of all those sackfuls of baby clothes I asked her not to buy in the first place. Tiny shoes and bibs I told her not to buy because I'd never put them on the baby anyway. Dozens of stuffed animals and heaps of garish plastic toys the baby never even glanced at twice. Leaky dollar-store sippy-cups; child-size dishes emblazoned with cartoon characters I despise; hats that Piper refuses to wear; mittens that are impractical at best for such a little kid; knitting patterns for an assortment of strange and scary children's garments or toys.

PILES and PILES of this stuff. In my HOUSE. And they're coming to visit again next month.