Sprouted What Now??

Have you ever heard of sprouted grain bread? Yeah, me either, until Boss mentioned something about it one night whilst basking in the romantic light of my laptop. Apparently he was quite fond of a certain type of bread called “Squirlley Bread“. It is a bread made with sprouted grains, which according to http://www.organicsproutedflour.net is like the best thing ever. The website has a big ol’ list of health claims most of which amount to “this is both tasty and good for you!”

Boss began waxing poetic about this bread, making me desperately want to try them. At $3.00 or so a loaf I of course was skeptical (and also cheap). So rather than rush out to the Co-Op searching for this bread, I did what I now often do and said “Shit, I can do that. To Google!”

Whilst Googling, I found a recipe for making your own sprouted grain breads, the method for sprouting said grains and the tools with which to grind the resulting sprouts. I had all of the things, shit was gone get sprouted up in this joint.

The recipe for sprouting grains is located HERE  at the mother of all DIY awesomeness, Mother Earth News . The basic principle is to get the grains to sprout little tails, which means they are rehydrated and growing again. You can apparently do this with any unprocessed seeds or grains. Our first endeavor involved red wheat berries. The resulting bread was…damp? but sweet and nutty, also delightful with soup. The next goal was to make a gluten free version of this delightful buisness so we tried our hands at Quinoa sprouting.

Thing the first: Do not use the jar method that is mentioned in the Mother Earth article. Apparently with the smaller grains like quinoa  (and possibly others but for sure this particular grain) it is easier to sprout them, and drain them by laying them flat on a cookie sheet. Please see below for step by step pictorial instructions!

Step One- Pick a grain!

We picked Quinoa becuase its gluten free and  I have a fetish for feeding the starving. A cup of grains will sprout into about a cup and a halfish of sprouts and that will make one small loaf or 8 small rolls.

nom nom various grains

Second: Soak the grains over night in a jar

(this is where the picture would go if I had taken said picture)

Third:

Drain said grains and move them to a flat surface with which to sprout

cookie sheets are flat!

Fourth: rinse the grains twice a day shuffling them about so they don’t congeal and make yicky mold thingys until they start to make tails. This takes about two days. There is not a photo of the tails because I only have a shitty point and shoot camera with no macro setting right now. So..here is a drawing of what they look like with tails.

NOTHING else

Fifth:  After they have the tails, you can grind the ever loving shit out of them. We use the meat grinding attachment for my Kitchen Aid and it works perfectly. I am sure there is an alternative method so you don’t have to go buy a Kitchen Aid…but you should just go buy a Kitchen Aid because they are seriously the greatest things ever in life. I hug mine when no one is watching…Anyway…put the sprouts in the grinder and smoosh them through creating this odd, hamburgery like substance, you can add some flax, some seeds, some other stuff, whatever sounds good to you. When we did the wheat berries, we added flax but when we did the quinoa we kept it pure.

No one knows of our secret love Kitchen Aid...

What Step am I on?

Smoosh the resulting pulpy stuff together to make little balls or a loaf and place on a sheet pan. We also rolled ours in sesame seeds because…why not?

even his hands are handsome...*sigh*

I have completely lost count at this point:

Put a pan of water on the lower shelf of the oven, and the sheet pan on the upper rack. This keeps your bread from drying out. Bake at 250 degrees for…well the recipe said to do it for 2.5 hours and we found that this worked fairly well with the wheat berry bread, but was a bit too long for the quinoa. So, I am going to say check it after 2 hours and push on the top, if it is crusty but springy, its done. If its still fairly smooshy, give it another 10 minutes. There really isn’t an exact time to this. The resulting nibbles look something like this:

wait…I forgot to take a picture of that too… well they look like the ones boss is rolling only cooked.

The judgement:

So, we quite liked the wheat berry bread, particularly when paired with soup. It was nothing like the squirlly bread, we think becuase they not only sprout their grains, but then dry and mill them or mix them with other grains to make flour…basically its more like bread. These loaves taste breadish, but in the case of the wheat berry bread, its very wet on the inside and hard on the outside. We may not have squeezed out enough of the water from the grains before smooshing them. As for the quinoa, we over cooked them but they had this very pleasent nutty flavor that we think would make an excellent cookie. We plan to incoporate some brown rice syrup next time and see what that is like.

Over all, sprouting: successful! Using said sprouts to make bread: Moderately successful and definately boast worthy. I mean, who do you know that is running about sprouting things and making stuff from them? Not enough people that is for sure!

Give it a try, use some other grains and let us know how it goes. What works best for you? Any alternative grinding methods? Next up, sprouted grain tortillas Oh yeah…that is happening!

Tags: DIY, Food Alchemy, Food-Related Anarchy!, mother earth news, nonconformist parenting, qunioa, sprouted grains

Food! F*ck Yeah!

Like many of my generation, I have spent most of my life eating what can only be called “processed food type products.” Everything I learned to cook was either soaking in cream of stuff or smothered in cheddar cheese.

Oddly enough, I have often not felt like the healthiest person in town. Having one time been something of an athlete,  it was right surprising when I became a grown up and doing my own cooking coupled with far less of the sports things, and then found myself exhausted, breathing hard, and often unnervingly sweaty.

I have made many a half hearted attempted at healthy living, and have made a few full hearted attempts at self sufficient living. Usually I have given up after a few short weeks and a couple of misshapen bread loaves.  The reason these experiments fail varies, but overall I think the uniting factor has to do with my reasons behind doing so.  When I would try to eat healthy it was because I wanted to lose weight, go on a trip and look like what I decided pretty was. When I would try to make my own foods it was because I was broke or needed some kind of escape from a crappy life.

When Boss moved in, we both expressed our desire to start living more healthy lives. We wanted to have more energy, be less reliant on processed foods and have a better understanding of what it was that we were putting in our bodies.These seemed like better reasons than any I had had before.

The decision made, putting it into action became something else entirely. As I mentioned, I was raised on mayonnaise based salads and margarine, my idea of eating healthy was buying things full of health claims and shiny photos brought to you by Nabisco and Winston Salem. I was still desperate to find the food loop hole that would allow me to continue eating cheese as often as humanly possible and feel awesome about my choices while doing so. Unfortunately,  that loop hole does not exist, and believe me, if it did, I would have found it. I fucking LOVE cheese.

We went back and forth and in and out of good habits, nothing really sticking for any significant amount of time. We would buy the better versions of boxed foods, skinless boneless frozen chicken parts, and things smacking of Omegas and what not. We didn’t feel any better, our wallets were still pretty damn empty and we couldn’t tell you from one day to the next what exactly it was that was going into our foods. This seemed counter productive.

*Tangent*

As poor people, we have been told again and again that we don’t deserve to be healthy, that we don’t deserve to have delicious, healthy foods to put in our bodies that don’t come from brightly colored boxes. Healthy, organic foods are not affordable, not readily available and not marketed to your “average” family making only slightly more than minimum wage. The shelves at Wal-Mart (where all us poor folk shop) are chock full of chemical laden sugar drinks and vegetable flavored fried corn puffs. As there is no money to be had in actual carrots, rarely will a carrot be seen (the carrot lobbyists are few and far between).

As fat people we are told that its our fault we are fat, that we can’t possibly be both healthy AND fat. Society tells us the two are mutually exclusive. We are told that the only way to be healthy, is to be thin. That the only way to be thin, is to give our money to a diet organization, or subscribe to some new chemical fad that will change our bodies to work in a different way. Does NO ONE see how FUCKED that is? If we give money to someone to make us thin, does that someone benefit in any way from actually making us thin? If we are all thin and staying that way, where will they get their money? Will Jenny Craig just brush her hands off and say “ahhh, now that was fine days work, on to cure cancer!” WHY would we willingly alter the chemistry of our bodies and reroute our internal organs in order to eat less shitty food, but shitty food all the same, instead of leaving our bodies the perfect energy plants they are and filling them with real, actual food that is also fuel? And why can’t that be fun?! and social?! instead of a source of contention and angst?

We as a society have been told that we are helpless slaves to multinational corporations that know what is best for our families and that the food we have always eaten isn’t good enough, or healthy enough. That their lobbyists and scientists know better than our bodies and our ancestors do. Do you see Charles Ingalls eating re-hydrogenated food type products? HELL NO! Charles Ingalls would be like, I want chicken, I’m gonna go get me an actual chicken. Caroline, grind me some flour! You know why? Because Charles Ingalls is THE MAN….

*End Tangent*

SO the point I was getting at is, we got sick of it. We started making changes.

Change the first:

Stop buying what has commonly been referred to as “bread” but is really a mishmash of refined chemicals and flours and a metric ton of sugar compressed into a bread like shape. That one was easy. I love making my own bread. Its this very zen thing for me. I knead the dough and become one with it, there is nothing but me, and the dough. I have begun the search for the most epic of all bread recipes. Stay tuned for that adventure.

Step the second:

Vegetables are expensive and keep spoiling before we eat them, this is both wasteful and annoying. Solution? Don’t buy any meat, then you have to eat the vegetables and also have more money to spend on them! We also turned to the family oracle (Google) and found better ways to store our veggies and things to do with the bits we don’t eat (stay tuned for this also!) So no veggies are going to waste!

Step the third:

Foods that contain less chemicals seem to be more expensive, this is what we in this house refer to as “bull shit”. Solution? figure out how to make it yourself. Again, the family oracle provides us with solutions. Want gluten free bread? Don’t want to pay 9bazillion dollars for 12 kinds of flour? Make sprouted grain breads.  Have a hankering for egg salad, don’t know what “disodium edta ” is and don’t particularly want it to be part of your dinner? Make your own mayo. The internet is literally SWARMING with people aching to share their recipes and tips for making the perfect whatever. This has become what I call culinary truth or dare, and what Boss calls “Food Alchemy”. I have saved about $100 a month by cutting out meat, and making my own everything but vegetables, yeast, almond milk, and flour. And if that grain mill comes in for my kitchen aid at a reasonable price…

Step the fourth and final:

Quit fucking apologizing for being awesome at life. We feel amazing since we have started instituting these changes in our lives. The energy shift in our home is palpable. Pinkone is happier, cleaner, and is far less of a goth kid in training. Boss and I are playing with her again, teaching her how to do the things we are doing and are able to use every meal as a science experiment or math lesson. There are some days where I start to feel silly, or self conscious for going to the co-op buying bulk quinoa or grinding my own oat flour or…whatever. Like suddenly I am one of those people from California Woody Allen makes fun of. Then I stop and think about it. Fuck You Woody Allen! (not really, I seriously love you Mr. Allen) But, really, that kind of thinking is me apologizing to (someone?) for living the kind of life I want to live. Living this way only looks ridiculous and feels like work when I decide it is ridiculous and feels like work and don’t remind myself that not only is being relatively self sufficent super fun, but a great way to keep my brain in shape learning new things. Fuck Yeah Learning!

So basically what I am saying here is that my family is making the choice to engage in food related anarchy and non conformist living. We would like to share that with you, the people of the internet in the hopes that you might find it informative, entertaining, or at the very least, amusing. If you have any awesome ideas for self sufficent living, food related anarchy, or just a general comment or gripe, please feel free to send it to the following address: pinklilybit@gmail.com

Stay tuned for more adventures in MediocreParenting, in which your hero continues to feel less Mediocre by the day!

Tags: Baking, DIY, Food Alchemy, Food-Related Anarchy!, self sufficient living

29 Full Steam Ahead!

This may come as no surprise to anyone who regularly reads my blog, or knows me in anyway, but sometimes I feel like I might be a crazy person. As I age, I care about whether or not this is true less and less, but the thought still crosses my mind from time to time.

Tonight I was reading bits of a blog that Boss linked me to, The Non-Conformist Family. In reading Josh’s familial manifesto, I am starting to feel a bit like less of a crazy person, and a bit more like one of the lucky people in the universe that has managed to start figuring out that our world is actually more than just the next thing on the to do list. Boss calls this tapping into the universal love stream. I love that. We aren’t out here alone being nuts, we are part of the stream of people out here being nuts together!

Over the past couple of years I have made some really insane choices. I decided that living genuinely was more important to me than living safely. While this was not an easy choice to make, and resulted in the end of my marriage, the end of several friendships, and skeptical eyebrow raises from many a family member, I wouldn’t change that decision for anything. In NCF, Josh talks about taking risks, and by coming out, ending a crappy marriage, and taking a flying leap off the love cliff with someone that lived impossibly far away, I think I may have one or two things to say about risk taking.

So yesterday was my birthday, and as is my custom, I looked back on the previous year, looked forward to the next year, and did a little of the “yes this, no that” game with myself. What did my life look like this time last year? quite different for sure. What did I want it to look like this time next year? Similar but better…so as you can see, I’m totally deep.

For my birthday this year, I asked for one thing. Boss and I don’t have any money to speak of, so lavishing me with furs and jewels was not totally in the realm of possibility. Rather, I asked him for a weekend of us time, or as we say, “mantics”. We spent the weekend baking, cooking, talking, watching movies, and just being together. In doing this, not only did we get some prime ‘humpin’ in, but we also managed to really connect on a deeper level. It was super awesome to remind myself exactly why I took the insane risk of moving this person out here to live with us from a foreign land, with full knowledge that they would not be able to work and may possibly turn out to totally hate everything about me. It reminded him why he left a comfortable job, socialized healthcare and a boat load of friends for a capitalist dictatorship populated with individualistic hate mongers, I might be paraphrasing there a bit, but you get the jist. The point is, in my 28th year I took some crazy ass risks, many of which did not sit well with those I love. In the end, the most important thing was that I went in fully informed and came out into 29 the best version of me I can be today.

Birthday List of Awesome Things I Plan to Continue into 29

1) Making as many things from scratch as humanley possible

Cooking has become the ultimate game of double dog dare with myself. Being super poor, but also something of a foodie poser, I like to pay close attention to what I stuff in my face hole and that of my little family. I have grown to LOVE making things that normally come from a box or a can or a bag, myself. There are few things more cathartic than kneading bread. I also love finding vegetarian and vegan alternatives to favorite foods. I feel like I plant a giant middle finger in the face of corporate greed every time I master a new recipe.

2) Becoming more socially aware

There was a time when I was a bright eyed, idealistic little college queerling with lots to say about lots of things. I read newspapers (remember those kids?!) and I had witty and insightful comments to make about the things I read in them. That time passed with the discovery that the amount of weed I was smoking at the time directly correlated with the level of wit that my comments actually contained. Also, I had a kid and stopped caring about anything other than the contents of her diaper for like…5 years. So  I made a pledge to myself at 28 that I would start taking care of myself intellectually and in doing so, be more aware of the world around me. I’m getting better, I learned about the Occupy movement only like, a month after it started so thats better than most of my country men. In my 29th year, I plan to learn about things as they happen and start forming opinions again, this time without the aid of recreational drugs whenever possible.

3) Be the most involved parent and partner I can be

I modified this one slightly because going into 28, i had recently been unceremoniously dumped by my last girlfriend so i wasn’t really thinking in the partner realm at the time. Luckily however, I was e-ogled by a charming young thing  a mere 3 days later which turned out to be the gentleman I am currently sharing my life with. Last year I decided that I would do everything within my power to be the best parent I can be. That means to me, answering questions, taking time for Pinkone and I to be together just us. Encouraging her special brand of awesome, taking time for myself so that I can be better prepared for mommying when the time comes. Also, to be the best parents we can be, Boss and I need to be the best partners we can be. We have both dealt with tons of life altering crap this year, and chances are there will be more in the near future. Our relationship has to be a priority because we have a little person that is counting on us to be together and with it so there will always be two happy people helping to guide her through life. The best gift we can give our daughter is a happy and healthy set of parents.

4) Be nice to myself

I am terrible at this. I don’t like to buy myself things, I say awful self deprecating things about my body and my various issues and I don’t take time to just relax and be. Going into 28 I promised myself I would start to work on this. I would make peace with my body, I would find time and energy to center myself and I would take time to just BE for once. It was really hard, because  I am not good at that kind of thing. Going into 29 I am renewing my commitment to myself. I am changing the way my family eats, doing things I enjoy for not reason other than I enjoy them, learning to say no when I simply don’t feel like doing something and not apologizing for it, and taking time to meditate and reflect on a daily basis.

5) Be the change I want to see in the world

God, so trite, but whatever. I am a person that has always been into the flakey hippie dippy BS that my dad would roll his eyes at. I would get super into energy healing and tarot cards and aura reading for like, 6 months, start to feel stupid and back off. Well, no more. I know that we in this world are all one, we are all apart of a greater, universal energy and if i sound like an idiot when I say that, its only because the person hearing me isn’t ready to hear me. So what this means for me this year is that I am going to live my life knowing that the energy I project into the world affects everyone and everything around me. I am going to tap into the love stream as Boss says, and I am going to throw love out my every pore to everyone around me. I am going to say wonderful things to the wonderful people around me and I am going to find a way to give back to the world in a very real way.

So those are my personal goals for 29, I also plan to learn to sew and master sourdough at last, just in case you were looking for something less abstract. What are your goals for this year?

Nouveau Poor

I have been formulating this blog post in my brain goo for awhile now. The other day, Boss and I were standing in line at the food bank (yep, the food bank) and I was watching the people come and go with their boxes of food. One woman shoved her way to the front of the line, dressed to the nines, entitled as hell, loudly proclaiming without saying a word that THIS (the food bank) was only temporary. SHE was not one of US (the poor). As I silently slam her head against a rock with the power of my thoughts, I start to think. In college, I was like, cute, bohemian poor, college poor. Living on ramen because my education forces me to work shitty jobs poor. Then, i was new parent poor, all my money goes to diapers poor. Then, I was single mom poor for a little bit, noble poor. Now, standing in line at the food bank, I’m like, dude, i am almost 30, and I am just poor. I wasn’t raised poor, so I prefer the term “nouveau poor” I was actually raised quite well off, which is probably why I am poor now, I never really learned how to be frugal or budget. I’m like, dumb white girl poor, which is a totally different world of poor from people who actually suffer.

Believe me, I hear all of the white whine in this blog post.

Because we live in a relatively affluent city with a high population of organic markets and Trader Joe’s, our Food Bank is surprisingly well stocked. Sure, you get your potted beef tounge from time to time, but you also get a large selection of farm fresh produce, eggs, soy milk and a surprisingly wide selection of vegetarian options. So we are quite lucky in that regard. The rest of the time, when we can actually afford to buy food, we try to do so, so that the stuffs at the food bank can be there for those who just plain can’t that week. Here is where we run into issues. How many of you have tried the following:

Being healthy

Eating a predominately vegetarian diet

Eating more organic and additive free foods

Being fucking poor

These things are not congruent. You want to know why (Western Society) poor people are generally fat? Its because food that is healthy, is expensive as hell.

Boss and i were sitting down tonight to discuss the state of our pantry. Its not awful, but it could be better. There is a wide assortment of boxed side dishes, several cans of cream of stuff, and some white rice. The fridge isn’t much better, housing a cavalcade of 80% fat meat product, chicken pieces, and more cabbage than my intestinal tract would care to admit. Also, many beets. We like beets.

Our poor diet has often troubled us, as well as or sedentary lifestyle (but that’s another blog post all together) and so we sat down to make a plan, a list, a budget out next weeks pay check for food stuffs.  In doing so, I did what I always do, and turned to the Internet, our family oracle. When entering in the sacrificial search term to google of “how to eat healthy on a budget” I learned something startling.

Anyone who write for these websites has never been poor, has at least one parent working from home, and has apparently never entered a Wal Mart.

Not every suggestion is bad. Eating at home rather than out, is one obvious, but still valid idea, other than that, I’m just as lost as ever. All suggestions are coming from the same article, because 1) i am lazy 2) i was super pissed after reading it and began immediately blogging and 3) this article is pretty representative of every other article about eating healthy whilst broke. All suggestions can be found here

Suggestion the first:

1) “Skip the processing. Steer away from foods with lots of additives, chemicals and packaging; they’re often not as good for you, and they can drive up the cost of your groceries. Instead, opt for foods that are as close to their natural state as possible. That may mean you have to spend a little more time preparing your meals, but I’ve included helpful tips below on how to make that more convenient.”

Okay, totally. That is EXACTLY what we want to do…but wait. Have you ever looked at the boxes of brightly colored crap that adorne the Wal-Mart shelves? Have you noticed that two boxes of store brand MacNCheeze food product costs you about 75 cents a box, and you use about a half cup of milk  and a half cup of butter to make sauce (about .50 cents give or take), add a can of tuna (89 cents) and half a cup of peas (25 cents) and you have dinner for a family of three, relatively balanced, for under 5 bucks.

As opposed to say, making your own mac-n-cheese for dinner. Noodles, if you don’t use the whole bag, will cost you about a dollar, half a cup of cheese ($1-1.50 i like  a lot of cheese) Cream or in some cases Velveta to make it “saucy” is going run you another 3-5 dollars, and if you don’t use all the cream, you have cream sitting there being all “use me” and you’re like…for what? Mustard powder, becuase that’s regualrly around the house, again with the special ingredients ($2 and you are only going to use like, 10 cents of it so again, its like what else can i make with cream and mustard powder? so already, this one dish has surpassed our processed nightmare of a dinner by several dollars, and doesn’t even have a protein or a vegetable involved yet.  You see where I’m going with this. Shitty processed foods are super cheap because they cost like half a penny to make, contain very little actual food, and can be replicated in a lab rather than on large tracts of land with sustainable farming practices and chickens that are regularly hugged.  Beans from cans are cheaper than beans from bags, are cheaper than beans from plants. The less actual food, in your food, the more of it you can cram in your mouth hole for the least amount of money. Thanks capitalism!

Suggestion the Second:

Demote meat. Beef, chicken, pork and fish often take a starring role in American meals, whereas in less-wealthy countries they’re often supporting players or make only cameo appearances: Think bowls of rice or grain topped with lots of veggies and a few bits of meat or seafood. Or you can skip meat entirely for much cheaper protein sources, such as eggs or beans (a half cup of beans has as much protein as 3 ounces of steak).

She isn’t wrong here, but please also note that in other countries they also eat bugs, which i could totally get behind if only i could catch the little fuckers. Again, we come across the problem where the bulk of foods she suggests purchasing, are not, in anyway, cheap. If I had my own garden full of farm fresh veggies I would eat the hell out of them every day and night. But I don’t. I have the local grocery mart. In the summer, we were able to load the fridge up no problem with local, inexpensive organic produce from our local farmstand. Seriously, we could get a weeks work of fruit and veggies for like 30 bucks at this place it was amazing. It isn’t so easy in the winter months though. Beans and legumes are time consuming to soak and prep and not as cheap as you might think to buy canned, one can is about 1.35 and it takes at least 2 or 3 for every meal, so, again it adds up when you only have say, 50 bucks for the next week. That said, I am fortunate enough to have a partner at home that can spend his days soaking my beans so at least there, I am ahead of many families.She also suggests nuts as a viable source of protien. Go to the store. Price nuts. Come back and tell me about it. Seriously, go. I’ll wait. EXPENSIVE!!! Almonds are INSANELY overpriced, pine nuts are like, 7 bucks for a 1/2 cup! Nuts? screw you nut conglomerates!

Those are the only two I’m going to post for now. Feel free to read the rest of the article and tell me I’m nothing but a privileged white girl who is incredibly lazy, believe me, I’ve already thought it. The bottom line is, being poor in America is a very real thing for more people than ever. Even if we aren’t like, “real poor” or “3rd world poor” we are still getting further and further away from what was once considered to be the middle class. It is harder and harder to find, good, healthy, inexpensive food that will actually nourish your body and not completely deplete your bank account.  The world needs to catch up and instead of throwing more money into cramming synthetic fish oil into everything we eat, how about subsidizing something OTHER than corn? How about working with farmers to grow organically on a larger scale? how about making it the standard to not inject our beef with hormones and antibiotics and whatever else it is they are cramming into our food that is causing 8 year olds to start menstruating? and i’m on a tangent.

The point is, Its not easy. All I want is to keep from getting to my “kill yourself weight” be able to say I am feeding my family the best food I can get, and do it for under $200 every two weeks. Is it really so much to ask?

Also, I tried “how to eat well when you are fucking broke” and that didn’t turn up any better search results.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Quirky anecdotes?

this article is actually useful:

http://www.mainstreet.com/slideshow/smart-spending/where-find-cheap-fresh-produce

Most people’s pantry. Also mine, minus the premium Red Mill flours, we use store brand in this house!

Jason’s Life Lessons

There are a lot of things I have somehow managed to escape doing in my life. I only just learned how to properly use bleach in laundry like, a month ago. For whatever reason, there are a great many life altering happenings that most people take for granted that I, for whatever reason, was not exposed to over the course of 28 years.

Some of the  most glaring, and for some reason, personally insulting to many of my friends and loved ones, ways that I have apparently been living in a bomb shelter, is my lack of exposure to classic movies. i don’t know who to blame for this. It could be that my parents were just not really movie buffs. Though, my dad and I did watch a lot of fantastic mafia movies and cowboy flicks. It just seems that for some reason, I was never exposed to what most of the world deems influential cinema of the 20th century.

Some examples:

Indiana Jones (any of them)

Braveheart

Dances with Wolves

None of the Superman movies

None of the Terminators

I haven’t made it through a single Lord of the Rings movie

Rambo

Rocky

pretty much anything staring Stallone really

and the coupe de gras…the one that nearly gets me dumped every time Boss is reminded of it, I haven’t seen even a single one, of the original trilogy. yes. THE trilogy. We won’t even get into how through a travesty of friendship failings I have still managed to avoid seeing these movies and get to the actual point of this blog post.

Along with all of these other iconic films, I also managed to go my entire life without having seen a single slasher flick. Unless you count Army of Darkness and Evil Dead parts 1 and 2, because I did finally get to see those about two years ago. Throughout the last six months since Boss has been living here, it has been his personal mission to make me less lame in the movie department.  He has taken it upon himself to expose me to the Indian Joneses, Mel Gibson and Kevin Costner’s finest inspirational speeches, and we are working our way up to sci fi any day now. So in keeping with his mission I have now been shown the first two of the apparently 10 Friday the 13th slasher flicks and the first two Nightmare on Elm Streets. Freddy, Jason and I are getting to be BFFs.

So again, slasher flicks are an entirely new thing for me. I have had a vague concept of the mythos surrounding them thanks to pop culture references that I have continuously been exposed to throughout my media saturated youth. So I kind of figured I would get it without seeing it. I was wrong. There are so many valuable life lessons that I had been missing out on! Below, a list of important take aways from new found education in slasher flicks.

5) It is okay to suspend reality

Apparently, I am not a fun person to watch these kind of movies with. Most people, having seen them again and again throughout their lives, usually beginning at a young and impressionable age, are able to just deal with the complete lack of congruence in the slasher universe. For instance, if Jason drowned as a boy, leading Mrs Voorhese to avenge his death, how does he come back in Parts II through X to avenge hers? Is he supernatural? If so, how did he get that way? Was it a steady diet of fish blood and lake water that turned him into a flesh craving monster? How did the guy in the wheel chair get up all those stairs in the first place so he could macheted in the face and fall down 8 flights of them? Why wouldn’t blonde broad number 2 ram the pitch fork inside Jason, set hs corpse on fire and then blow up the camp as she hightailed it the fuck out of there instead of stopping to contemplate her good fortune at the lake after merely bludgeoning him with a lawn chair? Like a lawn chair bludgeoning is going to stop JASON, dude survived like 20 years in a goddamn lake! Also, he seemed to still be a kid monster in part I but somehow became a full blown grown up monster in part II, riddle me that? Anyway, what I learned whilst irritating Boss to no end with my barrage of questions, is that questioning the reality of the slasherverse is like questioning God. We aren’t meant to know the truth. If we do, our heads will explode. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy the gore. This is not an easy task for me as i am sure you will see by the next 4 life lessons.

4) If you are in your underpants, and its raining, you gone die.

In both parts 1, and 2 of both movies so far, there have been multiple scenes of young, sexually precocious women prancing about in their underpants in completely inappropriate fashions. And she who remains fully clothed manages to stay alive if not frightened to death. In both films multiple ladies can be seen wearing rain coats and underpants, and once a sweater and underpants, venturing forth into the darkened wilderness to shut windows, use the bathroom, check a fuse, investigate a noise, whatever. The one thing they all have in common is that they eventually die, horrifyingly gruesome deaths, in their underpants. As a person who went to camp for many years I can not remember a single instance of running about outside in my underpants, and I did a lot of strange things at summer camp. I have concluded that this is the only reason I am still alive to this day.

3) Always listen to Crazy People

You know that guy that is lurking about, ominously chanting “you’re all doomed…DOOMED I TELLS YA” everyone seems to disregard him as “crazy Ralph” the local nut who’s just crazying it up over there. Ralph appears to understand what all of the supposedly “sane” teens in the town do not, Camp Crystal Lake is full of head chopping murder-ness that should generally be avoided. The same goes for Nightmare, where “crazy Nancy”, the one kid that knows the true nature of Freddy’s ability to turn a bed into a teen eating garbage disposal and she is literally barred into her house to keep from spreading her crazy about town. If there is one thing you should always keep in mind, when headed up to a desolate place you have never been, or experiencing mysterious deaths that look like all natural laws have been violated, it might be time to listen to Ralph.

2) Don’t be an absentee parent

The kids that seem to be listened to the least, taken care of the poorest, and have parents with closet drinking problems, all seem to end up fighting for their lives against supernatural villains all alone in the end. Why? because their shitty ass parents either didn’t believe them, shipped them off to summer camp so they could spend the summer doing god knows what or are too busy with their cavalcade of boyfriends to listen when their kids are screaming for their lives in the middle of the night. Kid wakes up with cuts all over their arms after screaming profusely all night long? Looking for attention. Leave mummy alone so she can hump in peace. Parents, don’t let your babies grow up to be victims.  In this same vein, negligent parents and babysitters are also the cause of our beloved killers, not only their victims.  The bastard son of 1,000 maniacs became the man that haunts our dreams, somehow i don’t see those maniacs attending many little league games,  do you?

1) Of course, remain a virgin and don’t do drugs

What are slasher flicks if not morality tales? It isn’t often that the virginal, non grass smoking teen winds up stuffed in a television set or with a machete through her face. I don’t really even need to tell any of you this one, unlike me, you have all probably seen enough horror movies to know by now that if you are making sexy times at camp with your recently stoned boyfriend in your underpants in the rain, you gone die.

As of finishing this blog posting, i have now watched 2 Jason’s and 3 Freddy’s, moving on to Texas Chainsaw Massacre as soon as I finish the Craven trilogy tonight.

What is your favorite horror flick? What lessons did you learn from the slashers?

Apocalypse Training 101

Many of you may remember an internet fueled hysteria earlier this year regarding the inevitability of the fabled biblical rapture singling out all of Gods winners from the rest of us poor saps in an epic game of cosmic dodge ball. You may also remember that come the date of the supposed reckoning, a whopping “not a damn thing” actually happened, much to the delight of atheists and heathens everywhere.

We scraped by that particular threat of global annihilation, but another is on the horizon if you go in for the whole “Mayan Calendar 2012 Dooms Day” theory. In all likelihood, that day will pass just as quietly and with as many twitter trends as the last one. I may sound like someone who is skeptical of these purported prophecies, laughing it and joking at the rapture party with the rest of the heathens, but there is one global threat that wakes me up cold in the middle of the night…one potential societal down fall that gets me prepped to horde food water and guns and plot my over throw of the local Wal-Mart…

Zombies.

Boss and I have never really made a secret of the fact that we are prepping ourselves for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. Boss works on their hand eye coordination and killing speed by playing copious amounts of first person shooting games (though admittedly their training is falling behind due to a negligent lack of gaming system at the moment)  and PinkOne is often found working on her various zombie destruction devices along with honing her ninja skills.

When you watch as many horror movies as we do, and believe pretty firmly that biological terrorism is going to be one of the many downfalls of society as we now know it, its not hard to see the undead walking among us, hungering for brains as a very real possibility.

Are we ready? Not even a little bit, but we’ve started the process, and the process begins with freezer bags.

Zombie apocalypse or no, we are poor, and have started this new habit of hording food for the indeterminate future in which we may not have any. It all started with spaghetti sauce. I had this brilliant plan to buy a flat of tomatoes and solve the household sauce crisis in fell swoop. 60,000 tomatoes and like a bazillion hours later, we had a whopping 8 bags of sauce. Good sauce, but not exactly apocalypse hysteria resolution amounts of it. So I moved on to soup, tomatoes proving to be both time intensive and expensive, not to mention the possible lack of pasta come the day of reckoning. Soup however, needs no vehicle, it is a self contained food stuff.

We made Pea Soup, Chicken Noodle Soup and Red Pepper/Garbanzo Soup, all quite good, though the second batch of chicken noodle has now been re purposed as “cream of stuff” due to a soggy noodle disaster. After the soup, we have sort of gone…some might say overboard. Our freezer is now stuffed with bags of frozen concoctions. From noodles and beef to blanched and frozen fresh veggies, we are going to be sitting pretty when we finally run out of money/food/ability to go to the grocery store and I actually allow someone to eat my precious stores.

I have become the Gollum of the freezer. No one is allowed to touch my treasures. What if we need them? What if the day that the car explodes and we have none dollars and every last scrap of food in the house has been devoured and the zombies are groaning toward us at an alarming rate, and we say to ourselves “all that will fix this is some of Mom’s Red Pepper and Garbanzo soup” only to open the freezer and find that we had frivolously eaten it one day because we were too lazy to cook something fresh. How will we all feel THEN I ask you?

I’ve already gone through my jam from last summer, and I haven’t a clue what we will do with out that when the world comes to an end. Its dry toast for everyone since you didn’t heed my warnings about squandering jam.

This latest bought of crazy is often met with eye rolling from Boss and PinkOne, not that I blame them, we all know in the end, the power grids are going to fail anyway and there won’t be a way to heat my precious soup, but, its always good to be prepared.

Tags: Apocalypse, Freezer Bags, Hoarding Food, Zombie

Grumble

I am getting old. Its official. Not in that, “I am actually closer to death and therefore questioning my own mortality” way, more the “why does everything ache more than it used to, and the didn’t this used to be FUN?” kind of way. I am very nearly 30, an age which seemed impossibly old when I was in high school, but now just seems like something people are as I get closer and closer to it. Yes mom, I know if I feel old, how do I think YOU feel? Probably pretty damn old I’m guessing.

I have never been one to worry about aging. I don’t have a skin care regimen to speak of (despite Boss’s attempts at correcting this) I smoke (I know I know spare the lecture) and I only remember my vitamins when PinkOne brings them to me at night time and forces me to take them. I’ve always figured, old is what you make it, and why fight what’s meant to happen?

While getting ready this morning, I looked at my eyes, they have always been one of my favorite features (next to my boobs which are also not quite as fabulous as they once were) and damn. You know that thing you saw your mom do, where she pulls the skin back on her face to see what it would look like if it were just a bit tighter, just a bit younger looking? Yeah, I totally did that.  I looked like Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s so I stopped, but seriously, these are not the eyes of a young person anymore.

Things are popping, things are cracking, bedtime is getting earlier and earlier and I am starting to resent all of those young whippersnappers out at all hours of the day and night. Who are they to be galavanting?

With the exceedingly stressful events of the last year, I think my age is finally starting to catch up with me.  I think back to what it was like when PinkOne was first born, and all I remember is being exhausted.  Boss and I have discussed the possibility of future multi color headed children, and I wonder to myself, dear god if I was tired at 22, whats it going to be like at 29, 30? I’m tired just thinking about it.

Give me some hints blog-o-verse, what do you do to feel young again?

What they forgot to tell me…

When you have kids, there is this long contingent of people queuing up to let you in on “the things they don’t tell you” about parenthood. From the minute my belly started to show (which was when i was already 8 months along, fat chicks grow wide before they grow out) obscure relatives, strangers on the bus, and every elderly woman that’s ever even heard of a baby was desperate to pat my belly and advise me on all of the amazing and also troubling things that will occur before, during and after the birth of my blessed miracle.

“Your feet honey, they will never be the same, and they don’t tell you that!” says someones grandma

“Your sex life, its going to be non-existent, they don’t mention that one in What to Expect” says great aunt of a casual acquaintance

“Sometimes you poop on the table! bet the OB forgot to mention that!” says the woman at the grocery store.

and so on and so on ad nauseum until i had heard every episiotomy story, every “I nearly died…” anecdote and every philosophical waxing you can ever imagine about poop.

So once the kid was born, I thought that I had heard every version of what may have been forgotten to be mention in the copious books on birthing, rearing and not breaking, my new squirming and confusing infant. I have since discovered however, that there are still things that have not been mentioned.

After doing this parenting thing for 6+ years, I kind of thought that this would stop surprising me, but now that Boss has moved in, from a formerly childless universe, I am starting to see all of those “things they didn’t tell me” once again.

1) Swimming is no longer relaxing

We took Pink One to the local pool today, and I’m not sure what was expected, but I think Boss was a little surprised by the stark contrast of going to the pool as a childless adult vs an adult with a small child in tow. Gone are the days of one bag, some sunscreen and a cool drink with an umbrella watching the pretty girls go by. A trip to the pool with a 6 year old means kick boards, frantic bathing suit searches, knees and elbows in every orifice and watching for the umteenth time as she does a “swan dive” (cannonball/belly flop combo) off the side of the pool drenching every person in a 10 mile radius.  Cries of “throw me! Catch me! Watch me!” accompanied by flailing arms and legs nearly causing irreparable brain damage to the both us highlight the trip. The sheepish hightail to the parking lot as you dodge the kid she nearly drowned is highlighted only by the fact that your bra is soaking wet and you forgot underpants.

2) Snot is just no longer an issue

When you have a kid, there just seems to be a thin layer of slime on like…everything. She will sneeze on your face, directly into your mouth, you will wipe it with your bare hand, and it will likely encrust 84% of your wardrobe. Pre-Pink One, the first person to sneeze in my eye would have been beaten with in an inch of their life and i would have spent the next hour bathing in a 30% bleach solution. Post child, snot is like the morning dew on the front lawn.

3) Hygiene is simply not inherent

The first time you have to explain to a person, albeit a tiny person, that fully wiping their own ass is necessary and important, you realize that the general hygiene you take for granted as an adult is simply inconvenient to a child.  “you mean, I have to wash my hair AND body? UHHHHHH” “well why should i have to brush my teeth?” And for some reason, “because I fucking said so” just doesn’t seem to cut it as an answer. Also on the list of things NOT to tell your child, “Nobody likes the stinky kid” and “I will beat you if you ask me again”. As a childless adult you just assume that every person is born with an innate sense of what is, and is not clean and or healthy for you. Kids just don’t get it, which is why as adults we have to teach them that toothpaste is essential, underpants are worn every day, ALL day, and even though snot apparently tastes delightful, it should never be put in ones mouth intentionally.

4) Genitals are no longer exciting nor subversive

http://www.likalounge.com/monkey-bars-upside-down/

I have seen more genitals since becoming a parent than all of my swinging college party days combined. Every night, a squealing, naked child does her “toodie time” touch down dance on top of the ottoman while we beg her to get in the damn bath already and try not to laugh. Childless friends can not seem to get used to this, and though we often attempt to convey the importance of propriety and reduce the amount of vag flashed at non-family members, every once in awhile someone is bound to get an eyeful. Honestly, I don’t even notice it anymore. When watching other friends kids I have seen tiny hands all over tiny wieners and positions only before seen on late night skin-a-max attempted without hesitation on the front lawn.  The day you wake up with a tiny butt in front of your nose and your first reaction is not “how much did i have to drink last night?” but “Well, it must be Wednesday…”  you have crossed over into parenthood.

5) Things that were once erotic, are simply not okay when done by your kid

Lightly nibbling an earlobe can be fantastic, until your kid is the one doing it, then its just plain skeevy. Pink One regularly insists on 1) tweaking my nipples 2) licking my neck and 3) prancing about in shorty shorts and high heels. How do you explain to her that “if a 22 year old girl were doing the same thing, and it turns me on, its not okay for you” when she just thinks she’s being amusing and adorable? Pink One has come out of her room wearing outfits only the most high class of street walkers would dare to don.  This child has legs for days and her shorts and skirts become too short for comfort in a matter of weeks. She chooses to pair them with tube tops that must have fit at one time, but now create the air of a tiny, pre-pubescent tramp out for a bad time. Once, a friends 5 year old nephew attempted to tongue kiss me for god knows what reason, and all I could think to say to him was “its simply not okay for kids to kiss like that” while I shivered with both heebies and jeebies for the next 1o minutes.

Parenting is always rife with surprise, something that makes it both interesting and exciting in its way. Every day I find some new element to the whole experiment that just shocks the hell out of me. Tomorow, I may think I’ve got this whole thing in the bag, there ain’t nothing that can surpise me anymore, and then Pink One will emerge from our bedroom holding something that is CLEARLY not a children’s toy and demand to know why the flashlight won’t turn on…

http://othejoys.blogspot.com/2006/09/my-daughter-fang.html

What was your biggest parenting surprise?

The Vicious Cycle of Crafting

Boss took it upon themself to clean the kitchen the other day. Not just clean, but CLEAN. While this is fantastic on so many levels, it has let Boss in on a deep, dark secret that I have attempted to hide from all but my closest of kin. I am, something of a hoarder.  *shame*

Not the like, 2 dozen cats and 20 years worth of newspapers appearing on A&E kind of hoarder, but the “I’m totally going to use that at some point…” kind of hoarder.

It all started with my mother. The Martha Stewart of recyclable’s. I like to fancy myself something of a crafty individual, able to create useful objects from various and sundry bits of crap found around the house and the local dollar store. I have NOTHING on my mother however.  Every event was a potential treasure trove of crafting paraphernalia, every recycling bin fair game. Soda cans? a little spray paint and some googly eyes and they become ghosts for a festive Halloween wreath. Plastic forks you can’t seem to unload? No problem, add some lace and spray starch and you have a delightful wall hanging just in time for spring! Plastic bottles, hospital grade plastic tubing, bits of this and yards of that, everything had crafting potential. It all lived (somewhat) neatly, in our garage in the receptacle termed affectionately, “the junk box”. No Camp Fire meeting was complete without Mom pulling out a bag of what one would assume is garbage, dousing it in glitter and tempera and returning with art.

I always admired my mothers ability to both save, and create and I have attempted to model this behavior in my adult years. The saving, that I have down, the creating however, not so much. When Boss began the process of cleaning out the kitchen, this became…rather apparent. The most abundant source of craft-ables (this is my new term for shit I intend to craft with) are plastic grocery bags.  I have saved plastic grocery bags since i began to grocery shop. My mother would save them in artfully created fabric sleeves with drawstring, conveniently placed about the kitchen for use as garbage bags, lunch bags, impromptu over night packs etc. I however, do not have the patience to create artfully designed fabric sleeves with drawstring, and instead cram them in whatever bit of space I can find in my kitchen and bathroom.

When questioned about my hoarding of said bags, my response is always;

 ”I’m saving them” 

“For what?” Boss asks quizzically.

“I don’t know, something….” and I wander off hoping the question will die and the bags will go unmoved. No such luck.

“I googled some ideas for their use”  Boss says helpfully.  Apparently such a thing as “Plarn” or Plastic Yarn can be made from my stock pile of grocery bags. This “Plarn” then can be crocheted into useful objects like reusable shopping bags! genius, I can do all of those things and save the environment to boot! I have a mission, the bags have a use, Boss can no longer justify throwing them away…conversation over…No such luck.

“Will you actually do this?” Boss asks, eyebrows raised.

“Totally!”  an edge of doubt in my voice betrays my optimistic reply and enthusiastic nodding

“Honey, will you ACTUALLY do this? or will they continue to collect here, awaiting your use, until one day I open the cupboards, they fall on my head,  and before I kill you, say once again, ‘honey, WHY are you saving these?’

“Well…”

“I’m throwing them out.”

“Wait! I might do it!”

“I’m throwing them out!”

And this is how it goes. With my bag of dryer lint that I promise to one day turn into fire starters, my 16 boxes of super cheap paraffin just right for making candles with the 6,000 broken crayons I have stashed in PinkOnes craft drawers (never have to buy Christmas presents again!) My vat of almond oil and bags of dried herbs and flowers I’ve procured for making my own scented oils, the 2 dozen egg cartons I inexplicably stash about like a junky hiding from the narc squad and the inexplicably large amount of flower-less plastic stems left over from my frenzied need to create 40′s era hair clips from dollar store silk flowers.

Dude was not successful in liberating me from my treasures, Vulcan had a little more success, getting me to move them over to my friend Monica’s who (luckily) has an equally cumbersome trash fetish with infinitely more space in which to hide them. Boss however, does not accept my plaintive cries of “no really! you should SEE the hair bows I can make out of that!”  and tosses them anyway, like…well like trash.

While I will never take up my mother’s reign as Queen of Recyclable Crafting, I do now have actual counter and storage space in my kitchen. I find it challenging to release my habits. Particularly these sneaky, potentially useful ones. I still dream of a day when my mother will say to me “well isn’t that lovely! Where DID you buy it?” (we are of course wearing Victorian garb and speaking with affected British type accents while sipping tea for no apparent reason) and I can reply, “Why mother! don’t you know? I MADE it!”  (she will then gasp in awe and commend not only my crafting prowess, but my thrifty nature as well, there may be applause involved, I haven’t decided) 

But, as Boss says, “If I let you keep these (insert garbage-esque item Boss is unable to see the crafting potential in), the vicious crafting cycle will continue. You will stash it away, look up something to do with it, stash it away with a plan in mind, forget the plan, and then 6 months later come across them again and say…’gee i should look up something to do with that…” Boss is, as usual…correct

Oooh…2 liter soda bottles….

Tags: crafting, garbage, hoarding, mediocre mama, pinkone, recyclables

House Wif-ery Day 1

As many of you may or may not know, I am now officially unemployed. My last day at work was Friday, and I am now joining the masses of former claims analysts wandering around Bellingham aimlessly looking for something to do during the day. Today is my first official day as a house wife/stay at home mom, a role I have only adapted once before in my life, and to be honest, kind of sucked at. I have never been the “plan a day full of cleaning and activities rife with education and fun” kind of parent. I am more the, “watch TV until you can’t take the guilt any more and then go to the park and read” kind of parent. But ever since learning of my impending unemployment over a month ago, I resolved that this time would be different.

Any historical foray’s into the land of domesticity have failed after a day or two of poorly risen loaves of bread, one super clean room of the house, and an ill begotten field trip to the railroad museum that ends in both of us crying. Within a matter of days we are back to frozen veggies and ICarly.  All of these attempts at active parenting leave me stricken with guilt and feeling inadequate once again. I console myself with lack luster promises of doing better next week, and excuses surrounding my work schedule. Eventually I have myself convinced ALL parents are this inadequate and Parenting Magazine is simply a ploy brought to us by Pottery Barn and LeLeche League designed to convince us that we should be shiny happy soccer moms with perfectly organized organic households to guilt us into buying color coordinated plastic bins and nurse until our kids are in college. Fascists.

I awoke this morning totally ready to execute the plans I’d been making for the last month. We would arise early, do some mother/daughter yoga, make muffins (organic whole wheat of course!), and walk to school. I would then return home and think smugly to myself “what a fine parent I have been! all other mothers simply pale in comparison!” it would be fantastic.

I failed to mention that I rose about an hour later than I initially planned…so that cut into my muffin making time (-5 mom points) but I did get PinkOne up by 8, and for the first time in…ever…she woke without argument and dressed herself (in matching clothes) without complaint. (+5 mom points!) Instead of the delightful dried fruit protein muffins I intended to feed her (-3) she got a bagel with cream cheese, but the bagel was homemade (+2!)  and whole wheat (+2 more!) While she ate, I got started on my muffins, so those were in the oven by the time she was done eating, and we were ready for yoga via YouTube. We did like…20 minutes of awkward, chubby mom and awkward tiny person yoga in the living room before we both decided this was toates hard and we should try again tomorrow. (plus 5 for yoga -2 for not finishing the tape)

So the first batch of muffins are done, (+3) and the laundry is in the washer (+2) and the kid is fed (+3) and dressed with combed hair and brushed teeth (+a bazillion) and its 9am.  Just the right amount of time for us to walk/ride out bikes to school at a leisurely pace whilst idyllicly walking the dog and sipping my coffee. Maybe I’m not so bad at this house mom thing after all…

We mount the bike, the dog is leashed, I have the coffee, and we head out. This is where the trouble starts.

1) my dog is the WORST leash dog in all of the land. Picture attempting to leash and properly walk a drooling, snarfling, snake that weighs 30lbs and wants to smell EVERYTHING. My leisurely walk quickly turned into a brush with death. There was a leash wrapped around my ankles, a pug under the bike tire, a pug on the sidewalk, a pug in the neighbor’s yard, a pug stopping to snarfle every 2 and a half feet, just in case there was some sort of variation in smell from 2 and a half feet before. She also had to pee every 4 and a half feet, and crap at least twice on the 1/4 mile walk (and guess which irresponsible pet owner forgot the doggie bags? sorry neighbors!) Once the peeing, crapping, snarfling and attempted murder by leash was complete, there were still other dogs to bark at, small children to demand pets from and the occasional invisible danger to alert the town to. Once we returned home, Idgie was whipped from all of the activity, and so was I.

2) PinkOne is probably the LAZIEST six-year-old I have ever encountered. Now, I was a lazy six-year-old, despite being into sports from an early age, I was NEVER one to choose movement over more sedentary activities. However, I did enjoy the occasional bike ride, especially short distances. PinkOne was very excited about the promise of getting to ride her bike to school today and was all helmeted and back packed and smiling ready to rock when the pug was leashed and I had my coffee in hand. Fast forward approximately five minutes. We reach the 7-11 parking lot and all I hear from about 10 feet in front of me (while attempting to untangle myself from the dog yet again) is: “DIS IS TOO HAWD!” PinkOne is standing next to her training wheeled pink and purple bike of awesome with a look of utter defeat and irritation, the Disney Princess helmet sitting askew on her head.

“Potato,” I say with love, “you can do this, it’s not far at all to school”

“Its SOOO FAR!! Don’t you SEE? The school is ALL the way up THERE!” she points to the school, which is within sight, and a distance of approximately five minutes away by bike/foot.

Eventually, I coax her back on the bike, having to push it with my foot every ten or so feet, while disentangling myself from the pugsnake monster, as she groans her way through the ride. We arrive at school just after the first bell (-5) and she is safely in the building after a begrudging hug and kiss. I walk home feeling accomplished and relatively happy with myself.

Fast forward two hours. I have completed the muffins, they are pretty delicious, served Boss their morning coffee and begun this blog feeling like, hey, I might be able to get used to this house wife thing, when my phone rings. Boss answers it and its Jolinda, the friendly office lady from PinkOne’s school. PinkOne apparently has crippling stomach pains that will not subside no matter how long she rests in the office and simply MUST come home as soon as possible and be cared for. We run to the school to pick her up, where we are greeted by PinkOne in the parking lot, hamming up the “I’m just so terribly sick I can only be revived by copious amounts of Nickelodeon and Sprite.” What PinkOne did not count on, was that I INVENTED the fake sick so you can stay home and watch TV in my youth. I can spot a fake sicker a mile away. She is relegated to her room sans television to recover as I write this.

So, my first day at house-wifery hasn’t completely failed, but I’m thinking there is still a lot of room for improvement.

 Tomorrow’s goal: get PinkOne to school on time, and keep her there. Also, not bringing snakepug with me, who is happily snoring next to me recovering from her big adventure.

Tags: mediocre mama, pinklilybit, pinkone, pug, stay at home mom