Dear Home Buyer

May 7, 2015May 7, 20151 Comment

Dear Prospective Home Buyer,

Yea! You’re home shopping. Good for you. So fun. Just wanted to point out one thing to you; you know that cute house you just called and asked if you could have a last minute showing? Yeah, there’s a family that lives in that house. I know! Who knew. Well, that family is busy. Like crazy busy. And when they have to show their house, they have to spend an extra hour or so stashing kid stuff and vacuuming dog hair and making it look like they don’t live there despite the fact they do and pretty much losing their minds to make sure the house looks amazingly unlived in.

So, when you schedule that last minute showing the one thing should never, ever do? Is not show up to said house showing. And you should definitely not not call when you know you’re not going to show up. And then when the realtor calls you and says WTF, you should absolutely not not apologize and then reschedule for the weekend. Because when you schedule a last minute showing and then you don’t show and you don’t call you risk pushing the mother of the previously mentioned family over the edge. And when she gets pushed over the edge, she’s going to hunt you down and give you lice. And make you step on Legos. And while those things don’t sound awful, they are. They’re annoyingly awful. Much like cleaning and stashing and straightening and then fleeing a house for NO ONE TO SHOW UP.

Anyway, best of luck on a new house! Keep your eyes peeled for Legos!

Beth

The Mac Attack

May 5, 2015February 14, 2017Leave a comment

We all know I was not such a big fan of getting a dog. I love dogs, don’t get me wrong. But a 4 year old, a 1 year old AND a puppy?? It was a recipe made for a nice little rehab in Tucson.

Flash forward almost two years and I’ll give you one guess who this dog loves the best (I mean, besides Auggie). That’s right, yours truly. And secretly…I really love him too. I even kicked a kid out of the jogger for him.

And I’ve learned a lot about Labs. Like the fact that they have iron stomachs and can eat anything. Literally anything. I’ve picked up more poop with remnants of things that should never go into a dog, let alone come out of a dog. I’ve discovered that he’s eaten liquid ant bait, twice. And not so much as a vet visit. BUT. And there’s a big but…Labs have horrible skin. I realized the first summer we had him, he itched all the time. Like ALL THE DAMN TIME. It was loud. It was annoying and it made for extra dog hair everywhere.

After consulting friends, the Wag ‘N Wash and the internet, I found a great blog that recommended a brand of treat/vitamins called Cloud Star. They have a blend that is great for skin, especially Lab skin. After changing his food to totally grain free, adding coconut oil to his meals and trying to get him to drink water with nothing really working on the problem, I was skeptical to try the treats. But much to my surprise, they really worked! His fur was shiny, the scratching and itching was way down and the shedding seemed better too. Mac seems to be happy about it too.

You know, just having a lazy Saturday, watching the Masters

Do you have any good dog skin tricks to try? Let me know – there can always be less hair around here!

Stinky and Winky

May 4, 2015May 4, 2015Leave a comment

A conversation with Baylor in the backseat of the car:

“MOMMY!! Don’t blow [roll] my window up!!”

“Babe, it’s hot. Could you please roll it up?”

“I didn’t blow it down, my toe did. So if you want it blowed up, you’ll have to ask my foot.”

“Ooookkk. Baylor’s foot? Could you please roll…”

“STINKY! His name is Stinky!”

“Stinky, could you please roll the window up?”

“Mommeeeee. He’s a foot. He doesn’t have ears! He can’t hear you ask him to blow up the window!! But I can do it if you ask me nice.”

Que the sound of the wine bottle opening….

Also? Winky? Is her other foot. I asked her why her feet were boys and she just rolled her eyes at me. We’re in trouble.

Lemonade Like Grandma Made

March 23, 2015March 23, 20152 Comments

On a particularly slow Friday afternoon, I had the ingenious idea to set up a lemonade stand with the kids. Our neighbors were having their biannual enormous yard sale (wooo….) so there was lots of foot traffic on our street.

Baylor kills me. She insisted on tongs for the food and asked if we had plastic gloves for “safe food handling”.

We were doing well, until Peter got a look at our stand. “I can build them something better” he said. And build he did.

In one day we went from this:

To this:

Complete with a hidden shelf for extra supplies and their money box. Between the foot traffic to the yard sale and the social media outreach, they made about $5! But the fun of decorating and using their new stand was priceless.

I snapped this picture during the building process…

I always get the credit for the kids. I’ve had parents I don’t know spot Baylor across the playground and know she was mine just by looking at her. But this picture is so perfect because Auggie is a dead ringer for a little PW. Peter’s a little older in this picture, but those cheeks are the giveaway.

All the Feels

March 18, 20151 Comment

While eating her dinner, watching me make lunches for the next day, Baylor asked

“could you please cut my cheese into a heart shape?”.

WTF? My first response was an incredulous “whose MOTHER is cutting their cheese into heart shapes in your class??”. Because clearly someone is making all the other moms look bad. It’s not enough that I A. remembered to pack a lunch B. it was something you liked and C. it was reasonably healthy…now I have to cut shit into hearts too?? Gah! I can’t keep up. Why is just making a nice meal not enough? Why does it have to have fireworks and hearts too?

When I found out who the culprit was, I was knocked back down a bit. I actually really like this mom. So if she was taking the time to cut hearts, I could too. And it turns out, I’m pretty good at free handing hearts in dairy substances with a butter knife.

The next day when I picked up Auggie from class, the first thing his teachers said was “he loved that cheese heart so much!”. All smiles, he ran up for a hug. It was a good reminder – the little things count. They get noticed and they are important. Yes, healthy delicious meals are important too, but that little extra thing makes a big difference.

I got all inspired and found a three pack of cutters that were made for sandwich. Dolphins, dinosaurs and of course, hearts. I surprised the kids with dinosaur shaped grilled cheese that night for dinner. Baylor was thrilled. Auggie, not so much. It turns out he’s not such a big fan of eating dinosaur heads. Or dolphin tails for that matter. So back we go to free handed heart shaped cheese. And peanut butter cups. Nothing says love like a peanut butter cup.

Ladybug Ladybug, Welcome Home

March 6, 20151 Comment

This growing season has been a tough one for my lettuce table. Normally by Christmas we are out cutting fresh leaves for salad every day. This year the hot – cold – hot temperatures in the fall made for some rough growing. I finally got the right combination of morning sun, umbrella shade in the afternoon and a weekly hit of a 20-20-20 fertilizer and boom! Lettuce for days. Weeks. Months!

As I was cutting the first good crop, I noticed black bugs on the leaves. Like a lot of black bugs. aphids to be exact. It dawned on me later that we’ve always had a praying mantis in the garden. He (she?) reappeared sometime in the fall and apparently she (he?) was working to keep the aphid population in check. But this year he/she didn’t come back so when the mantis is away, the aphids will play.

And play those little bastards did.

I want the lettuce table to be organic so I didn’t want to spray any pesticides. I used an insecticidal soap which is safe for humans, but allegedly the aphids don’t like it and they should leave when you spray it. I swear to God, those little assholes laughed when I sprayed it on the leaves. I saw one pretending to take a shower with the soap while he laughed with his friends. All the while eating my plants.

When I gave my mom a big bag of lettuce, I told her to make sure to wash it well to get the bugs off. “Don’t worry.” she said. ” I just serve the salad with poppy seed dressing so in case I missed any bugs, you can’t tell.”

It’s amazing I came out as normal as I did.

Anyway. I decided I couldn’t take it any more and after several phone calls to local nurseries and Google searches, I found a retailer that would ship me some ladybugs asap. Ladybugs are natural predators of aphids and they won’t hurt my lettuce. Not to mention they are adorable. Yesterday when the little ventilated box arrived, it was like Christmas. No one should get this excited about a box of bugs…and yet there I was, sprinkling ladybugs onto the leaves of the lettuce saying go! eat, my pretties! eat them all!!! while laughing manaicly.

The kids were entranced by the hard work the ladybugs were doing – within an hour of being on the leaves, they were eating to their hearts content. Gone were the sounds of those little jerks laughing. Now all we could hear was the nom nom nom sounds of the ladybug lunch.

Muuuahhhaaahhhhaahhaa!!!

So delicious. Until you notice the bugs…

Workin’ hard!

Parental Punt

March 3, 20151 Comment

Some days, there just isn’t enough time for it all.

Normally, I can schedule my work time around the kid’s school hours and or nap time. In a perfect world, I pack it all in and I’m able to leave my desk and desk top sorted and to do list checked off ad the first sound of a waking child.

For the last 6 weeks, that has not been the case. In addition to a larger than usual work load, there are about 9 other plates spinning above my head perched precariously on little sticks. I look like a circus side show desperately trying to keep all the plates spinning in the air. And when one of the plates is not spinning fast enough – or at all – the mom guilt kicks in. Big time.

And thus, the parental punt.

Yes they eat. They get baths. Their clothes are clean-ish. But they watch more cartoons than they should. Laundry sits longer than I’d like it to. We eat out too much or worse, there are way too many meals of quesadillas without a veggie in sight. I drop them off at the first minute they can be on campus per our tuition bracket and pick up at the last second. There is far too much wine consumed and too few hours slept.

But there is a light. I won’t always be the kicker. Soon there will be enough time, energy and daylight to run the ball in. At least, that’s what I tell myself to dissuade the mom guilt. That and a few carrots on their plates should do the trick.

Oh The Irony

February 16, 2015February 15, 20151 Comment

At the beginning of the school year, I cleaned out a bag full of books from the kid’s collection. Some duplicates, a few that we had out grown, some that we didn’t like, etc. I donated a bag of them to Auggie’s class. They love books and the board books are perfect for little hands to explore.

When I picked up Auggie from school after lunch one day, he was sitting on the little couch, totally engrossed in a book. I realized it was Goodnight, Gorilla or as he calls it “Night Night Monkey”. His teacher told me that it’s his favorite and he gets it every day to look at.

As I pried it from his squishy little hands, I reassured him that we had the very same book at home. We never read it because you can’t read it. It’s essentially a picture book, there’s like 4 words in the whole thing. And because by the end of the day, my ability to cleverly narrate a picture book is lacking so we stick with the books that provide the story for me.

I scoured the shelves at home looking for Night Night Monkey while Augs recited the book, page by page from memory (“den monkey takes keys! den he let out gerrraffe!”). Slowly it dawned on me…the freaking book he was in love with at school was the one I had given away to his class.

Augs then got to learn what it meant to same day deliver from Amazon Prime. Because when a kid loves a book, you buy it. Even if it’s the second time.

Goodnight Gorilla. Thank you for providing sweet, albeit ironic memories for us.

No. More. Mickey.

January 23, 2015January 23, 20153 Comments

Have you read this post from TheUglyVolvo.com? I was dying reading it because of how familiar her rage over the minutia of her son’s well loved book.

Reading, watching or reciting the same things over and over and over and over again (and again) really give us time to dissect every inch of the thing to point of making ourselves crazy. Suddenly we are hyper aware of the message, the nuances and the context.

Take for instance Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.

I don’t really want to admit how much of that stupid show my kids watch….so let’s just say if we collectively sat down together, we could probably recite Minnie’s Winter Bow Show from beginning to end. Hey, we were all sick with the flu. Cartoon binges are real people. Real necessary.

The issue is that the more I watched it, the more I noticed that Minnie Mouse is always looking to Mickey Mouse for help, approval, rescue and advice. ALWAYS. To the point that I wanted to shout at the TV you don’t need him Minnie!! What the f*ck does Mickey know about a small business? What business is he running these days that would give him such amazing insight into where and how you should display your bows?!?

And that’s when we switched over to Doc McStuffins. That’s a chick I can get behind. Poor Baylor. She’s going to have amazing things to talk about in therapy some day…

my mom would never just let me watch a cartoon! She was always saying “you know, you can do whatever you want in the world. You don’t need anyone’s approval or help, you’re perfectly capable all on your own. Minnie doesn’t need Mickey’s help – she may want it, but she doesn’t NEED it”. All I wanted to do was watch a cartoon without worrying about the message. But could she just let me enjoy? No!

This post is probably a really good indication we need to be reading more books…

Avocado Pudding

January 20, 20155 Comments

Just trust me on this one…

I saw the incomparably Martha Stewart on the Today Show last week showing off recipes and dishes from her new clean eating cook book. The last recipe was for chocolate pudding made with avocados….yes you read that right. And judging by the reactions of the co hosts, it was pretty awesome.

I tried to make it this weekend in secret so that I could pass it off to the kids as real pudding. I knew as soon as they saw the green goodness of the avocado, they would run away in terror. But I swear they know the sound of the drawer where the Cuisinart is kept and as soon as they hear it, they come running to help push the buttons. I told Baylor that the only way she was allowed to help was if she agreed to eat the final product. She reluctantly said yes and we proceeded to mix and sample and mix and sample until we got just the right combination of ingredients. When she finally got to sit down with a bowl, her reaction was priceless; “this IS pretty good!”

And this guy? The proof is in the pudding, er, picture.

The best part is that they get a guilt free dessert that is pretty close to a healthy food. Oh Martha, you’ve done it again!

Martha’s Avocado Chocolate Pudding recipe can be found here:

http://www.marthastewart.com/1050437/chocolate-pudding

The Goon Room

A little of everything and nothing, all in one blog

Tag: humor