Pumpkin Spice Your Life

I’m getting a little squicked out at how many flavors are paired with pumpkin spice this time of year (whatever the hell pumpkin spice is anyway… pumpkins taste like squash, pumpkin pie is full of spices, and trendsetters couldn’t care less).  In the past few days I have seen pumpkin spice white chocolate mochas, pumpkin spice cheesecake, pumpkin spice cream cheese, chocolate pumpkin spice muffins, pumpkin spice pecan cake, pumpkin spice puppy chow (for humans, not dogs), pumpkin spice whiskey (okay, that might actually be good), and pumpkin spice and lavender air freshener.  Now, I like pumpkin pie as much as the next person, but I like mine unadulterated.  I’ve never had a pumpkin spice latte, I’m sure they’re delicious, but why do you have to add caramel to it (as I’ve seen advertised on the not-Starbucks coffee stand signs)?  Flavor overload.

 

It must be an American thing: more is better, so let’s add this good thing with these other good things and see if we get something six billion times better!  Often, it’s not better at all.  Most of the time, when it comes to cooking (and art, and clothing, and accessories, and highlights, and landscaping, etc), more is not better.  It is just more, and sometimes it is worse.  But then again, I have never been a huge fan of those cookies that have a million things in them (coconut! peanut butter! chocolate chips! oatmeal!).  I do love plain cheese or just good old-fashioned chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.  Maybe I’m the weirdo.

 

Well, it’s Friday, so I thought I could maybe rant about pumpkin spice for a bit and call it a day.  But then I stumbled upon this (someone who has much stronger feelings about pumpkin spice than I do), and I think you should read it: http://enid.craigslist.org/cto/4119280944.html

 

Now I have a lunch meeting with my accountant (sounds more professional than saying I’m going to on a lunch date with my husband) and then to Costco for a massive shopping trip.

 

Happy Friday!

My Brain Goes Kablooie

Charles’s birthday is coming up and I’m having feelings.  This is the first birthday of his for which we are doing what he wants and not what I want.

 

When Charles turned one and two, we had parties at home for him (he was teething and angry about the whole thing for his first birthday, and I was early pregnant and trying not to look sickly for his second birthday) and then we went big for his third birthday at a local indoor jungle-gym because I had an infant and couldn’t handle the idea of a party in my house.  Which was covered in burp cloths and smelled faintly of baby poop.  Then we had a movie party at home last year, to which we invited all of his friends and all of our friends.  We burned the pizza, but everyone pretended not to care, and the kids had a blast.  And now we’re having an expensive party at an ice skating rink because ever since last January, when he attended an ice skating birthday party for a friend of his, he has wanted to have his party there.  Okay.  Hard to say no to your oldest when he is stuck on something for literally months and he’s cute and not quite as much of an asshole all the time like he was a few months ago.

 

So, after dragging my feet hoping he would forget the idea of a skating party (he didn’t), I booked the party.  And now I’m kind of dreading it.  I want my kids to have these lovely, fun parties at home, ones where I bake the cake and I invite people over and I have a glass of wine and you have a glass of wine and everyone leaves happy and much too late.  Ones to which we can invite everyone.  All the friends.  All the relatives.  All the siblings of friends.  I was left out of birthday parties as a kid, mostly because I was a total nerd and not at all cool, and it sucked.  At the skating rink, we are limited, and I hate it.  It’s in a town about 30 minutes away, so not everyone can just pop over.  We can’t afford to pay for everyone’s skates, so we’re asking adults to rent their own if they want to skate, and that feels wrong, somehow.  Like being asked to be a bridesmaid but then buying your own dress that you will never wear again (“I love you so much that I want you to stand up for me on my wedding day, but you have to pay for the privilege”) (I bought my bridesmaids’ dresses).  We can’t invite every one of our friends and all of Charles’s friends and all of their older and younger siblings.  They won’t fit in the party room, the party comes with skate rentals for only twelve… this is really cramping my “the more, the merrier!” style.

 

And goodie bags!  Oh my God, you guys, when did we decide that every kid had to go home with presents?  But it’s what you do, so I already bought puzzles for everyone at the dollar store.  After all, every party we’ve been to has had a goodie bag, and the kids love them, so there.  Done.  I’ll tie a ribbon on the puzzles, I guess.

 

I have to let this go, and I know that.  My children’s parties are about them (even though I truly believe that I should be receiving presents for making it through another year of parenting them), not me.  After Charles’s skating party, we will go home and there will be no cleanup (how am I supposed to feel useful without cleaning up after my horde of boys?  Besides cooking and cleaning, I hardly serve a purpose).  There will be no one at our house to say goodnight to the kids except me and Tony (the kids’ grandparents don’t come to their birthday parties anymore, perhaps because I am neurotic).  Since his party is not on his actual birthday, maybe I can get away with baking two cakes.  After all, if his skating party is what he wants, then on his actual birthday, maybe we can celebrate the way I want.  With more food.

What I’m Wearing

I’m determined to forgo all clothing shopping for myself this fall/winter.  I have enough clothes.  Well, okay, I might have to grab a couple of things for my Halloween costume, but those will be sourced at Goodwill or Ross.  But not today, because I don’t shop on a Tuesday if I can help it.  Tuesdays are senior days, and I get it, if retailers offered me a day to get a 10% discount based solely on my age, I would take it.  But since there is no incentive for me to shop on a Tuesday, I’ll leave Fred Meyer, Ross, and all the other stores to the AARP crowd.

 

Bottom line: no more clothes.  Saving money is the main goal, but the side benefit is that it is fun to find new ways to pair up the pieces I already have in my closet.  Like this outfit, which I wore on Friday:

 

Photo courtesy of Charles

 

A basic black pencil skirt and a cowl-neck sweater I bought last year joined by a skinny black belt and my old patent-leather pumps.  This outfit accentuates my curves while at the same time drawing the eye up to my neck and away from my hips (which you probably can’t tell because my son is four feet tall and was standing below me on the hill in our front yard).  All good things.

 

Here is what I’m wearing today:

 

 

That’s right, a photo in the office bathroom.  Notice that there are no tiny fingerprints on the mirror.  It’s the little things.

 

I’ve had that skirt since junior high.  I’ve had the sweater and tank top underneath for a long time (though not that long), too.  I bought the tights last year and you can’t see them, but I’m wearing those trusty patent-leather pumps again.  I think I got them at Target a couple of years ago.  I’ll be sad when they fall apart.

 

Notice how I’m wearing jewelry!  The necklace was a Christmas gift from my dad last year and the bracelet was a Mother’s Day gift from Tony.  Progress!

 

My mom recently cleaned out her jewelry box and passed on a lot of great stuff to me.  It’s like getting my inheritance without my mom actually having to die, which is a pretty great deal.  One of the items was this necklace, which I adore:

 

 

I need to figure out how to pair it with some different shirts – I don’t wear gold a lot and the necklace is a little short, but I’m sure I can come up with something.

 

My skinny jeans bit the dust last spring (I washed them with a vitamin in the pocket, a vitamin that apparently had fish oil in it because the smell NEVER WASHED OUT), so I might have to splurge and find a pair to go under boots again.  The only problem with skinny jeans is that they look great as long as I’m wearing boots to balance them out.  But as soon as the boots come off?  HORROR.  It’s a love/hate relationship.

Places to Be

I often think about how much I love where I live.  Western Washington State is one of the most beautiful parts of the world, and Skagit County is home to amazing natural beauty and abundant agriculture.  We don’t eat out a lot, and we don’t go to the movies, but we do go biking, running, and exploring all around us. 

 

I yelled, “Charles!  You’re King of the Mountain!” and then some kid came over and tried to push him off.  Whoops.

 

This past weekend was the Festival of Family Farms, an annual event for which local farms open their gates and invite the public inside.  We couldn’t visit all of the farms if we tried, but we set off on Saturday under clear, sunny skies and visited two.  We plan to visit another next weekend to pick pumpkins.

 

 

 

 

 

We visited a berry/pumpkin/other fruit and veggie farm as well as a dairy.  One had tires and swings, the other had cows and tractors.  And ice cream, so I think the dairy was the winner.

 

 

 

And free milk!

 

 

And face painting, so Jamie got a yellow spider and Charles got Spider-Man.

 

I got to pet the calves, you guys!  One of them nuzzled me!  Oh!  I wanted to take it home!

 

It was a busy weekend outside of the farm visits.  On Saturday morning, Jamie and I went to Baby Boot Camp while Charles and Tony went to T-Ball.  Tony and I went to an auction Saturday night.

 

I wore my Grandma Lorna’s fur stole… it’s at least twice as old as I am, if not more.

 

We looked good.

 

Sunday we went to church, watched the football game, went to the Y for Bitty Open Gym, I went grocery shopping (ah, a mother: someone who sees a chore she does alone as a “break”), I went on a run while Charles rode his bike, we made dinner, and we had a dance party.  We are not slouches.  

 

This guy learned how to pedal!

 

There is so much in this amazing world to see and do.  How fortunate we are that our backyards, so to speak, are so full of life and excitement.  Oh, how important it is to get off our duffs and go experience it.

 

On a hay ride

 

 

It was a busy weekend, and we all went to bed early last night.  For once, I am in more than just a few of the photos (evidence I exist, hooray!).  My favorite photo of the whole weekend, however, is this one:

 

 

They hold hands in the car all the time.  It’s heart-melting.

Irrational Little Monsters

When I got back in the car after safely delivering my two children to preschool, I wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, but it just wouldn’t come.  The only thing positive to come out of our morning is the probability that Jamie will not try to climb up and touch the stove anymore.

 

It started with Charles screaming and crying when he woke up and found me already in the shower.  Without him.  I have to get up pretty early to shower alone, and apparently, 6:30 is not early enough.  Then, Tony tried to toast an English muffin for Charles, but Jamie grabbed at the muffin and broke it.  A broken muffin effectively ruined Charles’s life, and after a screaming fit, he ended up in timeout in his room.

 

Then Tony left for work, but not before informing me that the coffee pot stopped working after six years of loyal service.  I boiled water for tea and then, after pouring my tea, moved the tea kettle away from the hot burner (and closer to the edge of the stove, but not, like, hanging off or anything) because I couldn’t deal with the loud whistling.  A whistling kettle is convenient, it keeps me from forgetting that I have water heating, but I was in such a hurry that instead of refilling the kettle with cold water to stop the steamy whistle and then replacing it on the hot burner, I just moved it.  There are consequences to every action.

 

I ran back upstairs and explained to Charles that little brothers are the worst.  Their whole reason for existence from about age 1 to 22 is to frustrate and annoy their older siblings.  “Charles,” I said, “when you’re in college, your brother is going to call you at 8 am on a Saturday morning, maybe every Saturday morning, even though he knows you will have been out late partying the night before.  Hell, he will do it because he knows you will have been out late partying.  You can’t give him the satisfaction of going ballistic every time he pushes your buttons.  Instead, be happy that he loves you enough to call, even if it is on a Saturday morning after a rager of a frat party and all you want to do is curl up and go back to sleep for the next decade.”  My parents used the same logic on me and it didn’t really sink in until high school that the best way to deal with my brother antagonizing me was to ignore his efforts, but maybe Charles will catch on earlier in life.  I probably should have told him (for the millionth time) the story of how Leland would crawl over to me when I was playing with my dollies, grab one, rip the head off, and throw it across the room and giggle.  All, presumably, to make me cry and scream.  But Charles thinks that story is hilarious, so the lesson isn’t really clear to him.  Regardless, he calmed down and we went downstairs to make breakfast.

 

But then I put Charles’s new English muffin on an orange plate.  NOT THE CORRECT PLATE.  He flipped out again, at which point I removed myself from the situation.  You see, I have three ways to deal with things like this: yell and scream, which generally accomplishes nothing but making my kids cry harder; cry, which generally accomplishes nothing but ruining my makeup; or walk away until I am calm enough to find a reasonable way out of the emotional mess that is a bleating, angry, four-year-old (Fucking Fours, man).  I told Charles, “You have lost your library privilege for this afternoon.  You need to calm down and apologize or you won’t be allowed to go to T-Ball tomorrow, either.  I am angry and frustrated and I am going to take a timeout!”  And I shut my bedroom door.  Then I finished my makeup.

 

Jamie tap-tap-tapped on my bedroom door a few minutes later, so I wiped the jam off of his face and changed his diaper, got him dressed, and read him a story.  By the time I finished that, Charles had calmed, so I went downstairs (to the immense dismay of Jamie, who loudly and shrilly expressed his desire to have me read more stories) to assess the damage.  Because there is always damage with Charles.  I hadn’t heard dishes breaking, so I hoped it would be relatively minor.

 

He had torn apart my breakfast and made himself another new English muffin and was eating at the table.  We had a rather one-sided talk about how we don’t waste food, how some kids don’t get to eat breakfast at all, how mom and dad work hard to provide food for him and it is disrespectful to treat us and our food this way.  (Am I the only one who does this?  Who immediately makes the leap to “lots of kids in the world, hell, in our community, would be so happy to have a regular meal and my kids are shunning their dinner for no reason whatsoever.  Last month they loved this dish!”  I swear, you cannot escape your past.  I am totally a product of “there are starving children in Africa!” admonishment from the eighties.)

 

I made a smoothie because it was already 8:15 (nearly two hours into the morning; we are super efficient) and I figured I was not going to get to sit down and enjoy breakfast.  I was right.  I went upstairs for something, called down to the kids to get in the bathroom and brush their teeth and when I met two angry, screaming kids in the bathroom, it was all I could do not to let my brains explode out my ears while I brushed Charles’s teeth.  When he was done, I turned to Jamie, who kept saying, “Hot.  Hot, mommy.”  He was holding his poor baby finger, which had a red, irritated blister on the end.  I sent Charles to put his shoes on and take a time out in the car and I grabbed an ice pack.  Jamie admitted, in his way, to climbing up the stove and touching the still-hot metal tea kettle.  I managed to get some ibuprofen in him and brush his teeth.  Nothing like your baby getting an actual, real injury to make you feel like a worthless parent.  Which is what I was all morning.  Totally worthless as a parent.

 

I cradled Jamie to the car, holding the ice pack on his finger.  I grabbed my smoothie and rummaged in the fridge for something, anything, to take for lunch.  I grabbed the paper (which I hadn’t read) and the school bags.  I picked up what was left of my dignity and sanity and I got behind the wheel and tried to sound perky, telling the boys that the rest of the day was going to be great!  Great!

 

When I got to work, I realized that I hadn’t brushed my teeth this morning.

Our Triumphant Return to Whitman

Thanks for indulging my pity party yesterday.  You want to know why I was so tired after that weekend?  I am old, that’s why.

 

During the Whitman Reunion, I woke up early two days in a row to run several miles with old friends, drank pretty much continuously all day long (wine and beer, beer and wine), and stayed out until all hours of the night, laughing and carousing.  So basically, just like college, but without schoolwork and with much better booze.  Also, I can’t seem to pick up and get to work the next day like I used to; recovery takes a lot longer now than it did ten years ago.

 

I think that one of the biggest pre-reunion fears people have has to do with the “will they remember me?/will they remember the wrong things?” conundrum.  When we’re in college, young and idiotic, and especially those of us who went to high-academic-pressure institutions where it was considered normal to study all the time and then blow off steam on the weekends big-time (in a society of extremism that is unmatched after college), we make mistakes.  We do dumb stuff.  None of us wants to be remembered for the stupid shit.  Like the time a sorority sister of mine and I tossed back far too many shots after being stood up by our dates and then made total asses of ourselves at the function we were set to attend (the My Tie party of 2003 – if you were there, you remember it better than I do; I think most of the downward spiral happened in your room, Julia).  Or the time I… no, I’m going to stop there.  There are many things, suffice to say.  The point is, some people remember all that, some don’t.  Not a single person commented on anything crazy or boneheaded I might have done back then (at least not to my face).  The cringing was kept to a minimum last weekend, for which I am forever grateful.

 

But what if they don’t remember me at all?, I thought.  In a class of 450 students, there are some I never truly met.  But there were so many that I did.  And people remembered me and I, though I am terrible with names, remembered many as well.  As my friend Allison put it, I kind of “lived my life out loud” in college, and one of the happy results of my, erm, exhibitionism we’ll call it, is that I share many great stories with a great many of my former classmates.  And it is just so fun to reminisce about one of the most vibrant and ridiculous parts of my life.

 

I had such a wonderful time.  I wish more of my friends had been there.  I think the more insecure of them might find that memory is an amazing thing: it filters out a lot of the bad and keeps most of the good.

 

Sometimes I Need to Whine, Too.

I’m so tired.  Still.

 

I was so tired on Sunday that I threw a mini tantrum of my own because Jamie wouldn’t nap and Tony was watching football and no one could take care of me.  Not even me.

 

Sometimes I feel like that, when it all gets too overwhelming.  When the days are long and I do everything everything everything for everyone else and even though I know that my brother was working and picking up slack so that I could take a couple of days off and that Tony was dragged to my reunion and not his and he watched the kids while I ran 5 miles with friends or wine-tasted, still, I feel like it’s not a balance.

 

I struggle with that.

 

And it’s stupid, really, because there is no balance.  There never will be.  Tony works all day and sometimes all night and I work part of the day and take care of the kids and the housework and everything else.  He will never do as many dishes as I do.  Never.  I will never work at my job as hard or as long as he works at his – and he’s paid well for that dedication (whereas the only payment for dishes is a clean sink for 20 minutes).  Leland works all day and shouldn’t have to do me favors just because I am forgetful.  I have learned not to ask for favors (though I still do sometimes) because nobody has time and nobody cares.  I don’t get it, because I really like doing favors for people.

 

And other people, my husband and kids included, will never think of me first or probably even second.  We are all self-centered, so even though other people’s lack of consideration for my needs feels like an insult to me, they didn’t mean it that way.  It was just neglect or ignorance.

 

Maybe moms are just wired to think of everyone else to the detriment of their own selves.  I certainly do.  I don’t sleep enough or eat enough or get regular exercise, but it’s my fault because I put others before me.  At least until I break down and I just can’t.  But I am self-centered in that I take it all on as my responsibility to make sure everyone else is okay.  I’m not really in charge of the well-being of anyone except my children, and even that burden is shared.

 

I am still paying for the indulgence of treating myself to friends and wine and laughter and reminiscing all weekend.  No wonder I don’t do things for myself very often. 

 

***

 

I’m really tired.  I promise to be wittier and pithier tomorrow.  I have photos to share and stories about the reunion.  I’m just so tired right now that I can’t sort it in my head.  And recovery-mode-Amelia is pretty depressing.  I’ll go take a nap and feel better.  Maybe some cookies?  Yeah, I’ll make cookies.