Just Tell Me WHY…

Why, why, WHY…when I tell my daughter to get ready for church, she pulls a shirt so stinky it is practically smoking out from beneath her bed, where it clearly has been languishing for months and is now lathered in dust bunnies.   Maybe she likes the fur look?

BUT when this same child tries on a CLEAN blouse in the morning before school and decides, “No, I think I’ll wear my blue instead,” the first shirt is deposited instantly into the dirty laundry hamper despite the fact that it has been worn for two and one-half minutes.

WHY?

And why–this question is from my husband, who, I suspect is in a menopause of his own–do kids pour glasses of milk the approximate size of Seven-Eleven Big Gulps, take two sips, leave it, then pour grape juice into a thermos, take two sips of that before abandoning it forever all the while hollering, “Mom, we’re thirsty and there’s nothing to drink”?

As I get older, I seem to crave order and logic, two virtues that held no appeal in my youth.   Why?  Why do I want to impose order and logic on my life now when I am surrounded by children and filled with menopausal ADD?  How’s that gonna work?

My timing’s off.   Assuming I could impose a neat cause-and-effect rhythm to each and every day (or even half of them), what would I gain?  Sure, a kid who never smelled like a stable during benediction, but I’d also lose the hair bands attached to each and every doorknob in the house; houseplants lined up in the bathroom like thirsty soldiers, water and soil draining onto the floor; and the little thrill of the unexpected when I open the freezer to search for dinner and find, instead, a Groovy Girl doll seated between the lasagna and the peas (don’t ask; I have absolutely no idea).

I don’t need logic at this point in my life.  What would I do with it now that my memory’s failing?  And, really, if one is trying to stave off senility, what better way to exercise the brain than to try to figure out how a child’s mind works?

Sign me,

Happy Just Wonderin’

Wendy

12 steps for menopausal motherhood

Wendy and I are starting a support group for menopausal mothers.  This was overheard at our first meeting:
“Hey, Wendy! How are you doing today?”

“Yes!  It is windy today!”

“No.  It’s Thursday!”

“Me, too.  When are those cheap hotmamas gonna serve the coffee?”

I think we’re making great headway.

Car0lyn

Household hints, by Carolyn

It’s shocking!

I just learned the COOLEST hint today from the lady at Costco.  You know how, when you are in
the grocery store and you get shocked every time you touch the freezer case or anything metal?  You don’t?  Then you must not have shopped with my boys.  They love to scuff their feet along the aisle and zap each other.  And me.  And unsuspecting sisters.

 

Anyhow, if you look closely at the bottom of your grocery cart next time you are at the store, you might see this piece of wire hanging off the cart and dragging on the ground?  It’s the cart’s ground wire!  If it’s not touching the ground and you are zapping and snapping up a storm, just bend it down and let it drag.  Problem solved!

Oh!  And another totally helpful hint?  Don’t teach your teenaged daughter to drive.  I am just now learning that one.  More later, should I live so long.

 

Carolyn

Meno Mom Mondays…the things we menopausal mothers say and do

 

Mom to seven-year-old:  “Go to your room right now.  I’m having a mood swing.”

Thanks to my peri-menopausal friend for making me laugh (even if her daughter didn’t )

Have a lovely Menopausal Monday!

Wendy and Carolyn

They ate WHAT in the White House??

As Friday is Fun With Food Day, I thought an interesting bit of trivia might be in order.

I’ve been cleaning out the basement and rediscovered my mom’s extensive cookbook collection.  The First Ladies Cookbook especially caught my eye.  Detailing the food preferences of the presidential families from The Washingtons to the Carters, this book gives some very interesting info on what the commander-in-chief has been eating through the decades.  And may I say, “No wonder these men all look like they have indigestion.”

The Tylers and the Fillmores had some nice recipes (they liked their sweets), but be thankful you weren’t on Andrew Jackson’s guest list.  Meat Jelly?  No thank you.  There was a lot of roasting of entire animals and fowl back in the day, which aside from making me want to run screaming to PETA, is just not pretty in the photos.  I think that’s a cherry in the pig’s eye.

Personal gross-outs aside, those southern-bred presidents knew their cornbread.  Yummy.  And I wouldn’t mind trying Bess Truman’s Ozark Pudding.   But the recipe I am going to plagiarise for you today comes from the inimitable Betty Ford’s White House kitchen.  I’m going to try it–with chicken for my carnivorous family and tempeh for me.  If you try it, too, tell us how you like it.  Enjoy!

The Fords’ Ruby-Red Grapefruit Chicken

2 Ruby-red grapefruit

1/2 C whole cranberry sauce

1 T honey

1/4 tsp cloves

1/4 tsp salt

1 fryer chicken, its little limbs ripped to pieces…kidding, the book says “disjointed”  Wendy says try a nice big package of tempeh.

3 T butter or margarine (I’m going to use grapeseed or olive oil)

Peel and section grapefruit, squeezing all juice from membranes into saucepan.  Add cranberry sauce, honey, cloves and salt, mixing well, then bring to a boil.  Stir in grapefruit sections.  Brown chicken (or tempeh) in butter in frypan, then place in shallow baking dish.  Baste with grapefruit sauce.  Bake in 350-degree oven for about 45 minutes, basting frequently.  Serve chicken (or not) with remaining grapefruit sauce.  Serves 4.

 

 

 

Those Sexy, Sexy Graham Crackers

Sooo sexy

Menopause Symptom #7 is Loss Of Libido, and now Too Hot Mamas is going to share with you the cure!

Did you know Graham Crackers were invented by the Reverend Sylvester Graham to cure “the fever of lust”?  That’s right.  The reverend believed whole, bland foods would cure us of carnal urges.

This is a load off of Too Hot Mamas’ minds and, we bet, off of yours, too.

We are not in menopause, after all, ladies; we have simply eaten too many Golden Grahams.  Granted, the Rev. Sylvester probably wasn’t thinking about slapping a hunk of Hershey’s and a big ol’ marshmallow between his biscuits, like we do, but still graham crackers and other bland, whole or nutritious foods could be responsible for the crash of our libidos.   Also, in Sylvester’s day milk and meat were considered to be responsible for sexual appetite, so you know the top ten anti-aging foods–all those fruits and veggies and lean things you’ve been told to focus on? They don’t seem so helpful anymore, do they?

Girlfriends, we have been sold a bill of goods about our diets.  Salmon, blueberries and broccoli are supposed to kill hot flashes.  Well, they’re gonna kill your libidos, too, sisters, so tell the waiter to bring you that Mississippi mud pie, after all, one fork.

You’ve burned your bras, now open that bag of Lays and don’t you worry your pretty heads about eating just one.

Thanks for the great tips, Reverend Sylvester.  You are our new diet guru.  We’re putting a brisket in the oven, baking up a Death-By-Chocolate cake and digging the 400 thread count sheets out of the laundry, ‘cause love is in the air.  Or it will be, as soon as we’ve eaten the better part of a herd of cattle.

Happy dining!

Wendy

Company’s Coming!

Come on, people! Let’s get crackin!

Ever tried to accomplish a giant task while you have company?  I’m facing that …oh, what’s the word… ‘excitement’ now as I have a book deal for a rather lengthy manuscript on an extremely tight deadline.

So.  My father is turning 80.  On the same day, his brother is turning 82.  On the same day (no, this is not a typo) my daughter is turning 13.
October 9 is a popular day to birth babies in our gene pool.  Relatives are flying in from the four corners of the earth to celebrate.

What with me being in menopause and having the five kids under 18 and all, I’m feeling a tad stressed. However, I am nothing if not organized and I love to delegate.  So, I’m thinking I’m going to ask for a little help.  They say it’s one of the hardest things a person can do, this asking for help business.  To that, I say, “Heeeeeeellllllllllllppppppppp!”

Yeah, yeah, yeah, grandpa is turning 80.  Big whoop.  He can make the spaghetti.  Aunt and Uncle are clean freaks, they can tackle the pantry.  My cousin and her daughters are creative and love to talk/tell stories.  I’m passing out plot cards when they walk through the door and sending them off to enjoy some quiet time and a jolly good writing exercise.  We can discuss character arc at the party, and goal, motivation and conflict over dessert.  After the gifts are open, everyone will get a party favor pencil and go to work.  Scenes for the kids, chapters for the adults.

That oughtta gitter done.  By the time I have to take them to the airport, I should be able to swing by the post office and mail the completed manuscript, therefore giving two birds the old one/two punch with one stone.

Carolyn

No-Labor Day

So, the whole point of Labor Day is to stop laboring, n’est-ce pas?  And yet, I have had three phone conversations already this morning (it’s only 10:17 a.m.) in which already exhausted mothers have told me what they cooking, what they are cleaning and what they are making their husbands do to prepare for the BBQ they are having/pot lucks they are attending later today.  Holiday?  I think not.

We mamas need to practice the art of relaxation.  In countries that honor the tradition of the siesta, they practice relaxing every day.  Then again, I’ve never been to one of those countries; maybe the women are busy fluffing pillows, preparing snacks and drinks and just generally busying themselves while the kidlets and menfolk snooze.  I mean, in England someone’s gotta make those cucumber sandwiches for high tea, right?

I don’t know the last time I relaxed, truly relaxed for an entire day and evening.  Do you?  Today, I’m going to make a chocolate zucchini bread and pasta salad for our block party, sort through my daughter’s clothes and prep our lunches for the start of school (and my school-year writing schedule) tomorrow, file the paperwork that has collected and apparently procreated in my office, clean the nasty bathroom and wash the dog.  My husband is at Home Depot right now, picking up lumber to finish the kitchen remodel we started a year and a half ago.

Labor Day.

Maybe it should be called No-Labor Day, thus avoiding a mixed message and allowing us all to r-e-l-a-x.  What are you not doing today?

Too Hot Mamas wishes you a Labor Day filled with friends, family, laughter and a whole not of nuthin’ else!

Wendy

Sexy Older Women Have Fun With Food

 Wendy wanted to call Friday’s Segment:  Fun With Food.

I added the Sexy Older Women part, because believe it or not, I just read an article where somebody took the time to research the top words in blog titles that people search and the winner was:  SEXY OLDER WOMAN.

Wow.  So, even if your blog is about say, Home-school Curriculum or Colonoscopy or Boy Scouts,  or Federal Agriculture you should try to work these words into the title.  Mind boggling, huh?

Anyway, Wendy has some awesome ideas about helping people with Menopausal Attention Deficit to make simple and nutritious fare.  But, since I don’t want her to do all the blog work, I’m going to share my thoughts on fun food this Friday.

Eat a box of Wheat Thins.  I’m doing it now.  As I type this blog!  Simple.  Nutritious.  Less than 5 seconds to prepare. If the old adage, “You are what you eat” is true, you will wake up in the morning thin and golden brown.  That’s what I’m going for.  Carolyn

Trust Me, I’m Lying

One thing you gotta love about Too Hot Mamas:  When we say we’re lying, we mean it.

See the nifty section to the right that claims “Our Blog Schedule”?  Carolyn and I decided to impose some actual order onto this blog when we realized we were getting more readers and also because we’ve been asked to turn our blog into a book proposal.  So, hey, we ought to actually be blogging on a regular basis, right?  It took us five weeks to decide on the schedule you see and two weeks to completely ignore it.

I mean, “Winning Wednesday: Enter our bi-weekly sweepstakes!”??   Come on.  My husband is still waiting for his Christmas and anniversary gifts since 1998.  (And now that I think of it, honey, so am I.  What’s up with that?)

Let’s be honest here:  Sam, you won the very first drawing.  Have you received your free book yet? I thought not.

Rhonda, you scored a giftcard to Starbuck’s.  Check’s in the mail, babe.

We mean well.  Honest.  But we are menopausal and can’t remember crap, and I think that is way more valid than the Twinkie Defense, I don’t care what anyone says.

I am suggesting that you stop wasting your time here and head on over to The Pioneer Woman blog.  That Ree Drummond is amazing.  Four kids, the blog, a TV show, she Tweets, and I’m guessing that whoever won the Le Creuset pot she  gave away in her contest last week has actually received it.   The woman not only cooks, she finds the time to photograph her dinner.  With four kids!  I have a husband and one child (and usually one or more of her ravenous friends) and if I paused to get my camera out, the dinner would look like road kill before I snapped the first shot.

Ree Drummond is a role model.  But not for us Too Hot Mamas.  No, not for us.  If  Pioneer Women is in peri-menopause (never mind the full meal deal) I’ll eat my red hat.   She’s far too together and organized.  She remembers what she was about to say.  Her mood seems stable.  She has great hair.  Now that I think of it, after you visit her awesome, entertaining and cozy website, pop back here for a dose of reality.  We’ll make you feel so much better about yourself.  No, you may never receive anything you win, but at least then you’ll have a reason for those pesky mood swings.  And, really, don’t you enjoy having a place where you can let your hair down…even if it is chin hair?

I thought so.  We’ll see you here tomorrow then, for Food Friday, when we will discuss the removal of pet hair from furniture.

Wendy

Golden Girls

Blanche:
“I have writer’s block. It’s the worst feeling in the world.”

Sophia: “Try ten days without a bowel movement sometime.”

 

You idiot.

Where's the idiot?

     Do you ever fantasize about what a good time you are going to have on a road trip? I do.

     Oooo! It is going to be SO FUN to cram 9 people into an 8 passenger van and drive for HOURS!  We’ll play the license plate game!  We’ll sing camp songs and make s’mores!  We’ll take pictures!  The kids and the hubby!  And, if that’s not enough, let’s throw grandpa and grandma into the mix! Yep, yep, yep… Big fun.

I should have suspected that we were in trouble when I politely cautioned my husband to remember that my mother (tortoise) does not drive as fast as he does (roadrunner) and to keep her in his rearview because she does not know exactly where we are going.

“Oh.  Like I’m going to go speeding off and leave my mother-in-law in the dust,” he jeers.

You know, like I’m the idiot.  Funny, he didn’t seem as jazzed about this trip as I was.

And so, after five delightful hours in the mini-van, we make it to the magnificent Painted Hills.  It’s a bazillion degrees in the shade, but we gamely get out of the van and hike UP the mountain to the view-point.  I flirted with heat-stroke, but then I love living on the edge.

We took the required pics.  We admired the splendor.  We praised God because we are pious, godly people with thankful hearts.  We headed back to the van.  It was decided that this would be a good time to have Daughter # ONE drive, as she is accruing her 100 hours of permit driving before she gets her license.

She leaps behind the wheel of the van.  Hubby calls shotgun.  The kids all pile in behind her, with the exception of Daughter #2, poor kid.  She and I end up with grandma and grandpa in their car.  The car that has no map.  Because, hey, why should we need a map when we are following the husband who would not leave us?  Forsake us?  Without cell reception.

While they are all buckling up, I open the back of the van to get some water.  Did I mention we were in hell?  While I’m quenching my thirst, Daughter # ONE, in her teenage zeal, doesn’t know (or care) that the hatch is open as she starts the engine and stands on the gas.

I run after them as she tears out of the parking lot.  “THE HATCH IS OPEN!  THE HATCH IS OPEN!”  I’m waving my arms and jumping up
and down.  Several visiting families to the Painted Hills are amused at my antics (but, I must add sourly, don’t help).  Grandma leans on her horn.  Daughter jams on the breaks.  Hubby leaps out, slams the hatch and Daughter # ONE achieves warp speed before I can climb in with Grandma.

“Follow that car!” I shout.  Have I mentioned  Grandma (tortoise) is a cautious driver?  It is not until we arrive at the intersection that I realize the hubby and daughter are gone.  And, THEY.  HAVE. THE.  MAP. AND.  THE. WATER.

What ensues in our car was not pretty.  “Idiot!  Big, fat idiot!  How could I have married such an….idiot!?”  To my way of thinking, my husband—who, if you will remember, I did warn not to abandon Grandma—should be telling the kid to slow down and wait for us.  Grandma nobly reminded me that nobody is perfect and that we all make mistakes and that I should not be so hard on my husband.  I found this exceedingly annoying.

While we deliberate the route, Daughter # TWO tells us she has to go potty.   Grandma pulls over, lets us out at a rest area near the intersection.  She then speeds off to explore where Daughter # ONE and the IDIOT might have gone.

By the time Daughter # TWO and I are out of the bathroom, Grandma roars up in her car and is on the verge of divorce with Grandpa who is now—brace yourselves—an IDIOT!

Much arguing ensues.  MUCH.  ARGUING.  There were tears.  Recriminations.  Accusations. You’re an idiot!  No! YOU are the idiot!

And still, no Daughter # ONE or hubby.  Tempers continue to soar with the mercury.  There is no sign of the van.  We locate a tree and park under its shade and out of boredom, turn on each other.  Daughter # TWO is looking rather traumatized.  And I think, Wow, this is so freaking MUCH FUN!

And then, I start to laugh.  Super hard, convulsive laughter.  Painful, loud, tears-down-the-face-laughing. Must have been contagious
as everyone else joins in.  My father turns around and says to Daughter # TWO, “Honey, never get married.”

I wipe my eyes and tell her, “Nah, get married.  Just remember.  You’re an idiot.”

Carolyn

Wise quotes

We love wise quotes.  Happy quotes.  Funny quotes.  One of the best aspects of menopause is that we get to let go of the old– old beliefs, pre-conceived ideas, limitations, etc., and rebuild our minds. Quotes are great for this.

Here’s a great quote we  heard today:

“I prefer to live the power of  ‘and,’  not the tyranny of  ‘or.’”

Love it.  Hot Mamas’ friend’s son related that one.

Use it, dear friends.  Live it.  We’re going to try to.

Too Hot Mamas

Is it Ever Too Hot to Eat…

Even for a Too Hot Mama?  I think, maybe, it is.  Alas, small mouths want to be fed.  Also, THM said we were going to blog about food about Fridays, and we’re trying to develop a work ethic here.  So…

I’m going to give you my mama’s recipe for Bleu Cheese Biscuits.  They pair beautifully with a salad, and the family thinks they’re getting more than rabbit food for supper.  Enjoy!

Bleu Cheese Biscuits

1/4 C butter

2 T crumbled bleu cheese

1 t lemon juice

1 10 oz package refrigerated biscuits, unless you are motivated enough to make your own.

Combine butter and cheese in a small sauce pan.  Cook over low heat, stirring constantly until butter and cheese melt.  Add lemon juice and continue to stir until slightly thickened.  Pour this mixture into a 9″ round cake pan.

Cut each biscuit into quarters and place on top of mixture.  bake at 400 degrees for 10-12 minutes or until golden. 
If you’re in peri-menopause, you’ll want to double this recipe, because they are very good leftover and very comforting at 3 a.m.

 

How I (Almost) Ruined Our Summer Vacation

Do you have to-do lists for your summer vacation?  Please say you do, and if you don’t, please lie to me, because I don’t want to be the only Type A, summer-killing, Wicked Witch of the West weenie who made a list, cracked the family whip…and didn’t get a darned thing done, anyway.

What is it with me and summer?  I have a friend who takes her kids to the coolest places and does the most interesting things over the summer school break.  They camp out in tree houses, fly to other states to attend fairs, go on field trips to meet rulers of the free world.

I told my family we were going to:

1.) Sand and paint the molding throughout the house.  It really needs it.

2.) Pull down the hall wallpaper, which we started pulling down 2 years ago until I gouged the wall with the Paper Tiger, and we realized we’d have to drywall, too.  It’s time to turn that mess into a proper hallway.

3.) Work on daughter’s spelling, reading and math—just fifteen minutes a day, but we must be disciplined.

4.) Organize all desks, bookshelves and closets so our mornings can proceed in a smooth and joyous fashion.

Of course I planned to reward us for each project we completed.  A long bike ride, a sleepover for my daughter, a night out for the hubster and moi.

I was excited about summer, because I envisioned its conclusion with us toasting each other in our clean, lovely, drywalled home while our daughter rattled off a few dozen perfectly spelled, three-syllable words.

Yeah.  So here’s what happened:

Me, resplendent in my husband’s tool belt, and holding a clipboard:  “Okay, troops, here’s the list of what we’re going to accomplish today!”

Husband:  “Great, honey, but before you read that, we’re going to go on a bike ride.”

Me:  “Well, actually, I was thinking…”

Daughter:  “Yeah, Mom, and when we get back,  (insert name of friend here) is coming over, okay?  Please?  We haven’t seen each other since school and we probably won’t be in the same class next year (she used this same pitch for every friend all summer) and her parents said she could have a play date if you say it’s okay and I promise I’ll learn any words you want me to as soon as she leaves unless you say she can sleepover too can she please?” 

I look at husband, who shrugs, not that he even attempts to follow that kind of run-on pleading.

And there I am, left with the drill sergeant and the pushover debating in my head:

We have to get something done.  The house is a pit. 

 Ookay, but it is summer.

 Yeah, well the hall looks like a still photo from Nightmare on Elm Street.  I’ve seen people tremble on their way to our bathroom.  And if DD doesn’t study a little bit, her brain will turn to mush and she’ll start the school year behind all the kids who are studying over the summer, and then she’ll feel bad when the teacher gives her “baby math.” 

 I know, but it’s summer.

 No buts!  The closets—

 Maybe tomorrow.

 By this time, of course, the husband and daughter have left for their bike ride, and I have decided to do something really useful like vacuum crumbs out of the grooves in the dining table.  And, probably, this wouldn’t be a bad thing (there was roughly the equivalent of a loaf of bread in those grooves), except that the debate continues inside my head and every time I see someone to whom I’m related, I grab the clipboard and ask them to commit to a chore and a time slot.

On a couple of occasions, I got them to join me for entire days devoted to one project or another, and when I wasn’t successful, I talked about all the work we still had to do.  Doesn’t that sound fun?

And then I heard my husband and daughter talking about the fun they really were having riding their bike rides and playing Karate Kid Meets Ninja Turtle and engaging in an eight-year-old version of Name That Tune.

Up to that point, the most fun my daughter and I had was writing her spelling words on the sidewalk with 3-D chalk.  (Well, I had fun.)  So I gave up.  I put the tool belt in the garage (though I thought it made me look kinda butch in a good way), ditched the clipboard and made plans to have a Halloween party in our hallway.

Tonight Carolyn’s sons are having a sleepover at our place.  I walked the dog three miles while the boys and my daughter rode their bikes up and down hills, shrieking like…kids in summer.  We got ice cream at the local store, came home to make giant chocolate chip cookies and built our own ice cream sandwiches.  Now they’re watching Surf’s Up.

They’re giggling.  I feel wonderfully relaxed.  And it finally feels like summer.

Wendy

P.S.  Someone will need to remind me about this next year when that hallway and I are playing “Six Degrees of Separation) from Freddy Krueger.

You WON, You WON!!!!

The winner of our first bi-weekly drawing for a $5 Starbuck’s Gift card is…

RHONDA!!!!!!!

Congratulations.  Pretty dang exciting.  Sure, Pioneer Woman gave away a darling lime-green Le Creuset pot on her blog this week, but that pot costs as much both of Too Hot Mamas’ family automobiles put together.  As Too Hot Mamas always tell their children, “You’ll take what you get and like it.”

Rhonda, e-mail your snail-mail address to Carolyn or Wendy at one of their web sites …or, no, aren’t you related to Carolyn?  She’ll have your addy, right?

Don’t worry folks, it was a random drawing, but we knew all three people who entered.  There’s no conflict of interests on this blog; we’re inclusive and believe everyone has a right to five dollars’ worth of lattes.

Stay tuned for the next Wacky Wednesday, where we will discuss graham crackers and sex.  Oh, yes we will.

Wendy and Carolyn

My writing partner/my husband

I've got it! How about...a lightbulb?

It is so fun to brainstorm story ideas with my husband.  Especially when he’s awake.  Took me a few years to figure out that the best time to catch him is early in the day, when he is sitting upright. Because once he’s horizontal, I can pretty much guarantee that if I’m pitching the Wizard of Oz to him, he’ll be snoring long before I get to the tornado.

The car is good.  If he’s driving, he’s upright.  Usually not snoring.

Today, we had a three-hour commute home from our place at the beach.  I needed to come up with some names for my characters and so I told him he could name some of them.  He likes to do that.  He named a character for me one time that landed an eighteen book deal.  Seriously.  So now, he fancies he’s got some kind of “knack”.

“Who am I naming?” he asks.  I can tell he’s feeling helpful.

“I’m thinking about a young guy who is a body builder/personal trainer.  Kind of arrogant.”

“Sort of a jarhead?”

“Yeah.”

He mulls.  “Got it.  Timmy…Tenderloin.”

“Timmy?  Tender…loin?  I’m not writing for the porno channel.  Do you ever want me to work again?”

He’s screaming with laughter at the windshield.

I’m beginning to worry as he is swerving.  “Forget Timmy Tenderloin.  Let’s move on.  I need a middle-aged woman.  Owns a Jamba Juice shop.  I’ve got to kill her off.”

“Nice gal?”

“Salt of the earth.”

“Got it.  I’m thinking…Mae.  Yeah.  Mae.  Born in May.  Dies in May, right?  Last name…Bury.  A little foreshadowing there, huh?”

“You want me to name the Jamba Juice lady Mayberry?”

More riotous laughter.  “Next?”

“I need a Chinese guy to run the restaurant.”

After we’d established that the Chinese dude was second generation American, the hubby has it.  “Okay.  His name is Miyagi Waxoff.  And his kids are Ashley and Tyler and…they’re ice-dancers.”

More howling.  I’m staring at him. And thinkin’ he’s lost the knack.  Then again…I might be able to do something with the ice-dancers.

Carolyn

Cooking When You’re MADHD

I love to feed my dog.  LOVE it.  She actually eats what I cook.  Licks her chops afterward.  Licks me.  The dog adores salads, sauteed kale, brown rice and quinoa pilaf.  I think she’s my soul mate.

My husband and daughter?  Not so much.  I know they wish our kitchen window was a drive-up.  This week, DD and her friend were in the front yard, saw me standing at the sink and yelled, “Can we have Big Macs, fries and lemonade?”

“No, but I have something so much better!  I made Hawaiian tofu wraps, sweet potato tater tots and sparkling apple juice.”  I waited for the shouts of joy.

My daughter and her friend looked at each other.

“We’ll wait,” my daughter said.

“For what?”

“Dad.”

I loved my mother’s cooking.  Everyone did.  My husband tells me that my mother was able to make even packaged food taste better than the manufacturer ever dreamed.  So that got me thinking…

I pulled out my mother’s personal cookbook, packed with the recipes of my youth.  In her later years, she began altering her recipes to reflect a simpler cooking style, and I think I know why:  Menopausal ADHD–Attention Deficit Hotflash Dissorder.  I don’t have the attention span to make anything elaborate.  We eat raw half the time, because five minutes after I turn on the flame, I will forget that I was cooking at all and burn the whole meal.   HOWEVER…

Here’s a recipe I believe I can do.  We ate it for breakfast or dinner when I was a kid.  I’m going to give it a whirl.  I know the dog’s going to be ecstatic, and perhaps my two-legged family will look forward to eating at home.  They might even lick me.

BUBBE’S BLINTZ SOUFFLE

12 frozen cheese blintzes (use the tofu kind from Trader Joe’s and non-dairy sour cream for a dairy-free version, but don’t blame Bubbe if it’s not as good as the original recipe)

1 large carton sour cream

4 eggs, well beaten

1 tsp vanilla

Your favorite jam

Place blintzes in casserole so they touch, but are not more than 1 layer deep.  Mix remaining ingredients together–pour over blintzes.  Bake in 350 degree oven for 45 minutes.

Dab a little jam over the top of each serving and accompany with fresh fruit.

L’Chayim,

Wendy

Middle-aged Foreplay…Sweet Nuthin’

Maybe this should be menopause symptom number 40 or something: The end of foreplay as we once knew it.

A couple of days ago, Carolyn wrote a tad (forgive me, dear friend), but she wrote a tad too realistically about romance for my taste.  And that’s fine.  She doesn’t pen romance novels for a living anymore.  I do.  So I still BELIEVE, Carolyn (and George Clooney, if you’re listening). I believe in Romance.  Please do not louse it up for me.  If Carolyn is correct, and my husband picks his nose in his truck, I do not want to know it, and I do not want to see it.  I don’t care how long two people have been married; there are things that should be picked only in private.  (The same goes for you in your Beamer, George.  Both hands on the wheel.)

And yet, Carolyn’s blog did get me thinking.  Things have changed around here; I have noticed it.  An example:

When I was forty-one, I was chatting with a group of women who mentioned—several times—how old we were all getting.  I went home and told my husband, who placed his hands, those strong and tender, big latte-toned hands with the sprinkle of caramel hair on his manly-man knuckles, on either side of my face.  He gave me the soul-mate gaze, and he said:

“Just tell them you’re my wine.”

Did he get lucky that night?  Oh my, reader, yes he did.

But that was almost nine years ago.  For eight of those years, I have been a mother and for five I have been in menopause.  Probably so has he.

Skip ahead to last week when I donned a hot pink sleeveless tee shirt to show off the upper arms I have been diligently sculpting all summer.  (It’s hard to sculpt mashed potato, but I’ve made some serious headway.)

“Hi, sweetie,” I said to my beloved, flexing and giving him a seductive wink as I pretended to reach for something on a high shelf (still the only way I can get my delts to pop, and, okay, we weren’t near a shelf, but I think I pulled it off).

He gave me a long, considering look.

Grrrrr. I love that look.  You, sir, are about to get lucky for the second time in nine years.

 “Honey,” he said in his velvet, Elvis baritone, the voice that still makes me shiver, “you could use a new bra.   I don’t think that one is doing what it’s supposed to.”

That is NOT foreplay!

Now he’s going to have to wait another nine years.

And I may need a new career.

Carolyn, you up for a trip to Victoria’s Secret?

Sign me,

Wendy– sadder and, uh, apparently lower than I used to be.

The Best Dessert You’ll Ever Eat…or The Best Kiss You’ll Ever Have? Take the survey and WIN

 

 

 

 

It’s time for Winning Wednesdays at Too Hot Mamas.

All righty, you’re menopausin’–pre, peri, in it, post, whatever–the point is you’re sweaty, a little ticked off in a permanent way, you’ve got kids, a job, you’re tired, so if you could choose only one of the following, which would it be:

THE BEST DESSERT YOU’LL EVER EAT (what is it?)

OR

THE BEST KISS YOU”LL EVER HAVE? (with whom?)

Reply and we’ll enter you in our bi-weekly drawing for a five-buck STARBUCK’S gift card.

Too Hot Mamas will answer this, too, of course.  We’re an open book.  But we want to hear from you first.

Carolyn and Wendy

Scenes you’ll never read in a romance novel

 Call me slow, but I am only just now realizing that the romance novels I’ve read (okay, and written) aren’t exactly realistic.  I know, I can hear you gasping from here.  Why, Carolyn, whatever could you mean?  Well, I guess I mean that people claim they want a real hero, but how real is too real?  As writers, could we be doing a disservice to the reader by painting a less than accurate portrait of a real relationship?  For example, I have never seen:

Stone sat in his sports car at the corner of 12^th and Main, his mind idling along with his powerful engine.  His finger was buried up to its second knuckle in his nostril as he reflected on the short skirt his secretary had worn to work that morning.  She was one hot tamale he mused, as he flicked a booger on his car mat.  Yeah, she had some serious cellulite and a muffin top, but hey, nobody was perfect…

Flooded with relief, Hunter made it to the men’s room just before the diarrhea reared its ugly head.  Oh man, I hope I don’t break the porcelain
he thought as he perched on the toilet, his trousers down around his ankles.  Hopefully, being that this was their first date and all, Lucy wouldn’t leave before the cramps did…

Stag ambled to his motorcycle and straddled the seat.  It was a great day for a ride in the country.  There was nothing like the thunder that roared from between his legs as he fastened his helmet.  Then, he kick-started his bike and revved the engine.  Man, he loved eating at Taco Bell, but he was going to have to ride like the wind to get away from that smell…

As Suzy lay basking in the afterglow of their lovemaking, Rafe’s horrendous morning breath assailed her nostrils.  She smiled down at him.  He really needed a shave.  And about a gallon of mouthwash.  And then, there was the matter of that nasty gunk in the corners of his eyes…

Ah well.  Maybe I’m just ahead of my time.

Carolyn

Moms Say The Darnedest Things

Heard this week from my mom friends:

“If I see you trying to drown your brother one more time…”

“Don’t hit your sister with that lizard.  That is not nice.  That poor lizard.”

“Well, how did you get bird poop in your cereal?  You’ve been inside all morning.”

“Buddy, please don’t rinse your mouth again with that water.  That’s where the geese go poo.”

Your turn!  Share some crazy mom talk!

Wendy

HE LIVES! The fish, I mean.

Okay, for you, Carolyn, grinding little guppies in your Insinkerator.   But our fish, Bluestar, has been SAVED!  His pretty blue fins are unclamped, his I’d-as-soon-kill-you-as-look-at-you personality is back in full force, his appetite…

Oops.

As you all know, the family and I were prepared to go to extreme lengths to help our little Betta friend heal from the multiple fungal, bacterial and depression issues he appeared to be having.  (We change his water regularly, use water conditioner, warm his bowl to the appropriate-for-Bettas temperature, etc., I swear.)  Well, after many a run to pet stores and calls to ichthyologists, we found the right combo of treatments.  And Bluestar, bless his fishy heart, responded.  He even turned to stare at us with what we all agreed was gratitude.

Tim and I high-fived, wiped our tired brows, kissed our relieved and teary daughter, promised not make any more tuna melts lest we inadvertently ingest Bluestar’s cousin (whatever, she’s eight) and got some sleep.  And, uh, you know, forgot to feed the little guy.

For a couple of days.

Maybe that wasn’t a look of gratitude. 

We finally remembered the meal issue after he began ramming his nose into the glass.  This time he looked like he wanted to phone PETA, pronto.

Listen, Mr. Fish, I am menopausal and you are soooo lucky I was able to focus long enough to medicate you.  You are not the first family member whose dinner has been a day or two late.  Just grab a Snickers like the others and chill.

I just gave him a few Top Fin pellets and am now off to find dried worm things or some other Betta delicacy to express my apologies properly.  My husband says we’re too old for any more live things and has asked me to let everything not on two legs die out without seeking its immediate replacement.

We’ll see.  We’ll have to wait and see.

Wendy

 

Fish tragedy, a three hanky tale

Don’t they look like angels when they sleep?…wait…they ARE angels!

Luckily, my mother does not read this blog so I can add my fish tale to Wendy’s aquarium misery.  Plus, it’s been two years and we’ve managed to recover nicely.

Number One Son really, really, really, really wanted a pet fish.

I said, “But honey, you know you are only ten-years-old and won’t take care of it and the poor little fishy will die of starvation.”

“No way, Mom!!  I’ll feed it and change its water and play with it and everything.”

“If I let you have a fish, you must realize that I don’t want it, and its life will be in your hands, got that?”

After he pledged allegiance to the fish, we went to Wal-mart.  Price of fish?  10 cents.  Price of bowl, rocks, food, fish net, special chemistry set to keep the bowl from rotting, exotic housing units and plastic trees and kelp in unnatural neon colors?  $89.50.

Day one was glorious:  Son diligently set up bowl, named fish Alice, fed Alice 3 squares, checked chemical balance, dragged family and friends in to admire how clever Alice was whenever she swam through neon cave and, before bed that night, told Alice bedtime story.

Day two:  Son invited to sleepover at neighbor’s house.  Forgot Alice existed.

Day five: Alice failing.

Day eight:  Alice, near death, discovered by eldest teenage daughter.  “Mom, I’m going to take over Alice’s health care.  Brother is going to be my
co-owner.”

A shame-faced brother agreed to the arrangement and within days, Alice was her spunky old self.  Daughter taught brother that the best way to clean Alice’s bowl was to transfer Alice to a salad bowl and run her regular stuff through the dishwasher to sterilize it from time to time.

Unfortunately, daughter and son neglected to tell Grandma their bowl cleaning method.  And—because my mother is one of those people who cannot stop cleaning for 5 minutes—when she came over for dinner, Alice was inadvertently tossed into the garbage disposal and whirled into the great beyond as my mother hummed Swing Low Sweet Chariot.

We all stared at each other in horror, as Alice had become a rather cherished member of the family.  However, we also knew that Grandma would never forgive herself and would inundate us with replacement fish for the rest of our lives and so, choked back the tears.  Needless to say, dinner was a tad subdued that night.  Now and then, a family member would pause at the disposal and murmur their respects down the drain.

Wendy, hurry.  Invite my mother over for dinner next time you clean Bluestar’s bowl.  Grandma, without fail, will leap up from the dinner table and begin tackling the dishes.  Rest in peace, Bluestar.

Carolyn

Kids and Pets, part 2…till death us do part…

I have this thing about death:  I like to avoid it.  In people, in pets, in the tiny ants my husband tries to send to the great ant farm in the sky while I race around, scooping them up (I have a method) and removing them to the outdoors before he can commit mass ant murder.

If you’re ever ill, call me; I will be right over with an arsenal of home cures.

When my 16-year-old poodle was dying, I begged the vet to do his best to help my puppy.  “His best years are ahead of him.”   As my father’s 23-year-old cat lay gasping, his breaths numbered, I held him on my chest and implored the frail guy to rally.  “We can play with your mousie.  I’ll make fried chicken (his favorite).”

Yeah, I need therapy.

In the meantime, we are still working hard in my house to keep the Betta fish, Bluestar, from turning into Mr. Limpet.

My blog mate is, as many of you undoubtedly know, far more practical than I.  She has  suggested that when the life of a finned pet is hanging in the balance, the parents should make an emergency “vet” visit…to Wal-Mart.

“Wal-Mart doesn’t have vets,” I thought…ohhhhh.

Carolyn (I hope her kids aren’t reading this) has apparently taken many a sick fish to the “vet” at Wal-Mart, where they are miraculously healed and returned to their owners better (and younger) than ever.  I don’t even want to think about what happens to original.

I can’t quite give up on Bluestar yet, so we’re continuing to medicate, and I must say my daughter seems to be more accepting of any outcome.  I think that’s because her friends know best how to comfort her through times like these.

One sweet nine-year-old put her arm around my daughter’s shoulders and offered solace.   “You have to remember, he did a lot of fun things in his life.”

Someone else comforted, “We’ll never forget him,” and another looked in the fish bowl and nodded gravely.  “Yup, it’s his time.”

The best comment, however, and the one that cheered my daughter the most was simply this:  “As soon as he dies, you can ask your parents for a ferret.”

Kids.  So practical.

Hang on, Bluey, the chicken soup is on the stove.

Wendy

Monsoon!

My niece, on monsoon night...

Ever gone camping in the middle of a major storm?  Trust me, you’d remember.  This last week, my family went camping—as we do every year—in paradise.  Think stunning Oregon forest, horseback riding, swimming in the crystal clear river, jumping off the rocks into said river, something called ‘barn-hockey’ for the kids, tons of food and a fantastic friend (Jill, you rock!) with a supercallafragelistic family willing to share interesting (and hilarious) stories of ranch life with this writer.  It was all of that this year, too, but the weather—as it has been around the world—was…different.

One day in particular was soggy, but as night approached, so did a seriously ominous bank of black clouds.

“Oooo,” we giggled, “Looks like we’re gonna get a little wet.”  So naive.

Our family fits into three tents:  the two-man tent for the boys, the six man tent for the girls—sans the 6 men, of course—and the eight man tent for the hubby and me and the dogs.  As usual, the boys passed out the minute their heads hit the pillow.  The girls on the other hand (all teenagers, and my wild woman niece—age 24 going on 13) were all enjoying being nutballs and laughing themselves half silly in midst of this wilderness slumber party.  I decided to let their shenanigans carry on, cuz I’m super cool and, okay, too lazy to get up and tell them to pipe down.

When the first crack of thunder sounded, the girls all shrieked and giggled.  The hubby and I grinned at each other.  Fun, huh?  The flashes of lightning brought some concerned squeaks from the girls, but it was tempered by more laughter.  Then the downpour hit.  And I’m not talking the drips and drabs of Wendy’s shower.  Oh, no.  This was as if a giant cosmic ladle, perhaps the big dipper? yeah, dumped a lake on us.  The thunder got louder, and the lightening brighter and the squeals higher.

Still, I wasn’t concerned.  After all, the girls had been noisy all evening.  I figured the trees all around us would catch any stray lightning bolts and so deluded, drifted off to sleep.  Around 2ish, the boys appeared at our door (flap) soaked to the skin, shivering and mad as wet roosters.

“Our tent is gone!  Our beds are flooded!”

Odd.  Then again, we had cots and a stronger tent.  “Well, come on in.”  I took one ice-cube boy in my bag, the hubby took the other in his.  The girls were still laughing—I thought—as their shrieks started to rival the howls of the hurricane.  After all, if there was a problem, they’d tell us, right?

Wasn’t till the next morning I woke up to find the girls all huddled in the minivan, their tent now an above ground swimming pool, their beds sagging floatation devices, their mascara running, their joi de vivre a thing of the past.  Not laffin’.  No, my niece was snoozing in at shotgun, scrunched and drenched.  Daughter number three was packed into  the middle row and the older daughters slept sardine style in the back.

Took the entire day—and—half a pile of firewood to dry ‘em out.

Thankfully, the remainder of the week was sunny.  And now (after resting for 24 whole hours at home) we are headed to the beach for more life in the old tent, this time with the kid’s high school crowd.  The weather is looking a little sketchy, so I’ll probably be piling into the minivan with a
dozen (or more) teenagers if we aren’t washed out to sea first.

Wendy?  If you don’t hear from me by…say…Thursday?  Call the Coast Guard.

TTFN,

Carolyn

Kids and Pets

I love animals, always have.  My parents said I began petitioning for a pet dog shortly after exiting the womb.  So when my daughter asked for fish for her seventh birthday, it seemed like a no-brainer.  We got gold fish.  Note to future gold-fish owners:  They don’t do well in bowls.  Two days after her birthday, with the three fish painstakingly named and characteristics assigned (Natalie was the shy one; Lolla, the inquisitive one; and Dorie, the happy one), we settled in to watch them frolic amidst the plastic greenery.  Natalie took ill first, followed swiftly by Lolla.  After several frantic calls to the pet store, we determined that a bowl was the wrong environment, that we had purchased the fish from a less-than-adequate supplier and that Dorie, the happy one, was soon going to be Dorie the tragic.

“I suggest a pond for your goldfish,” said the young ichthyologist at the pet shop specializing in fishies.

“We’ve got to get Dorie to a pond stat!” I called to my husband over my daughter’s tears.

Off we went with Dorie in a sterilized peanut butter jar (Natalie and Lolla having been respectfully buried by this point) to the nearest pond.  With all the joy and anticipation of the Adamsons releasing Elsa the Lion back into the wild (“She was born free, and she’s got to live free!”), we sent Dorie off to stretch her fins in Mother Nature’s bounty.  After some reminiscing about all the good times we’d had during our 48 hours together, we walked away, hand in hand, to let Dorie get acclimated on her own.

Suddenly I felt a tug.  “Look, Mom, look!  Dorie’s got friends!!!”

I turned and sure enough there were two ducks zooming toward Dorie.  With friends like those….

We tried a Betta next.  So easy, the pet store assured us.  Well, Bluestar has been with us fifteen months now, it’s true, but easy?  I don’t know.  We’ve spent waayyy more on accessories for Bluestar’s comfort than we’ve spent on our own home this past year, we’ve dropped him twice during heart-stopping (for us) water changes, and now he is ill with ich and clamp.  We’re medicating him appropriately, but it doesn’t look good.  And my daughter, who can no longer hear the words “tuna sandwich” without dissolving into tears because someone, somewhere is eating a fish, may be about to bid farewell once more to a finned friend.

It’s aging me, and we all know by now how I feel about that.

Well, I’ve got to return to the fish watch now.  We’re attending him pretty much around the clock.

What was your favorite pet as a kid?

Wendy

It’s Raining, It’s Pouring…HELP.

I love rain in summer.  The rhythmic tapping on the roof and rain gutters, the glassy droplets bouncing off bright pink rose petals.  The four kids who don’t know what to do in my 1100 square foot house–

AHHHGGGHHHH.  When I said yes to the sleep-over, I was counting on sunshine, the yard, a sprinkler, the banana chocolate chip bread I stayed up till midnight baking last night…and which my husband ate when he came home from work.  How can one thin man eat half a loaf of banana bread?

I was going to deep clean the house today.  Catch up on work.  Bwah-hah-hah-hah.  Obviously God wants me to get to know these kids.  Real well.  In an enclosed space.

Quick!    I need ideas that DO NOT involve the Disney Channel.  (Don’t get me started on Selena Gomez and the pre-sexualization of ‘tween girls.)

I found this on line:

JUST FOR KIDS: PEANUT BUTTER PLAYDOUGH

Read more about it at www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,199,149163-237203,00.html Content Copyright © 2011 Cooks.com – All rights reserved. 1 c. peanut butter 2/3-1 c. nonfat dry milk 2 tbsp. honey Mix ingredients. Add enough powdered milk to make playdough dry enough to handle. Shape into balls. Add raisins to make a face. Or stir in chow mein noodles and make a bird’s nest. Or stir in Cheerios or chocolate chips for fun. Eat and enjoy!

Too little-kid for the nine-year-old crowd?  What if I tell them it’s Peanut Butter Clay?  We could study the world’s great sculptors and turn it into a learning experience.   They’d love that.  (NOT.)  I could have them pretend they’re potters and then fill the “pots” with strawberries or chocolate chips or dollar bills.

It was so easy when they were really little and thought finding shiny wet rocks was as exciting as a trip to The Magic Kingdom.

Hurry with your ideas.  They are waking up now.  My house is shrinking….

Wendy

Carrot Cake Oatmeal Recipe

I promised you this recipe many a blog ago.  Here it is, better late than never…which is pretty much how meals arrive at our dining table.

I made this in an effort to get my daughter to school with something resembling a whole food in her tiny belly.  She loves this breakfast; she loves anything that sounds like dessert at 7 a.m.  I know it’s summer now and cold breakfasts taste better than warm, hearty oatmeal, but we’re in the Pacific Northwest; we can eat this stuff ten months out of the year.

Like Edith Piaf, Je ne measure rien.  (I’m sure that’s what Edith meant. ) Just put in as much as you want of the following.

Oh–one more thing;  If I were Carolyn or anyone remotely able to post a photo, I would.  But I’m not, so you’ll just have to trust me.

Libbi’s Carrot Cake Oatmeal

Steel cut oats–organic.  One quarter cup dry measure equals one serving.  You’ll need four times the amount of liquid.

vanilla rice milk (You can use all rice milk –or soy or almond or coconut or whatever–or part milk and part water.  Or try orange juice and water.  Or all water,  But that’s kind of boring, and you’re not boring, are you?)  Remember; 4 parts liquid to 1 part steel-cut oats.

organic raisins (Pay extra; imported grapes are on the list of most toxic fruits.  CostCo usually has a good deal on organic raisins.)

grated carrots–yeah, organic

honey or agave and/or mashed banana for sweetness

shredded coconut (optional)

chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)

pinch of sea salt

Toppings:  Many options.  See below.

METHOD…and we do have one…

Before you go to bed one night, measure out your oats and the liquid you’re using for the number of servings desired.  I combine these in a PYREX glass bowl.  Add some raisins (the golden kind are super in this), cover and stick in the fridge.  The raisins will plump deliciously and sweeten the cooking liquid.

When you get up the next morning, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Add grated carrots and sweetener to your oatmeal.  Libbi likes a lot of each.  Add your pinch of sea salt  plus coconut and nuts as desired.  Slide this in the oven uncovered and go about your business for 35-45 minutes.   When both it and you are ready, serve the oatmeal as is or with a little more milk, maybe stir in a little nut butter for protein if you want, some maple syrup or sprinkle with chocolate chips and top with a little whipped cream. We’ve tried all that so far and it’s all yummy.

Try it and tell Too Hot Mamas what you think.  Bon Apetit! L’Chaim!

Wendy

Kids Say The Darnedest Things

I’m currently in sunny (scorching) Southern California, visiting my in-laws.  I always love this trip as my in-laws are fantastic people and they all live in one ginormous, bee-autiful home.  I don’t have to travel anywhere in order to see them all, a plus as I was never a California summer-lovin’ girl, even when I grew up here.  The other reason I love this trip:  I have adorable nieces.  This morning, the seven-year-old awoke early to hang out with me and we chatted about vacations.

Niece:  It’s hard to sleep on a plane.

Me:  Not enough leg room?

Niece:  Yeah.  When we flew to Florida there was an old man behind me, and he kept kicking my seat.

Me:  That must have been frustrating.

Niece:  Oh, it was!  He was old.  He should have known better.  And he did it the whole way to Florida.

Me:  Did you ask him nicely to stop?

Niece:  Yeah.  No.  I don’t know.  He never stopped.  He was old.  He should have known it was not right and it was not polite.

Me:  True.  But if he was old, maybe he didn’t realize he was doing it.

Niece:  Maybe.  He wasn’t so old old, though.  Maybe…at least eighteen or nineteen.  Yeah, maybe he was too old to know what he was doing.

She’s so wise, don’t you think?  It just proves nineteen is the new one hundred.
Wendy

Sliding Doors

Steady...steady now...

On the 4^th of July, we had the kind of company you want to impress.  (My agent and her family).  Yet, my hard-working hubby saw the day off as an opportunity to strip the house of every interior door to patch, prime and paint.  I’m sure the bizarre impact of no bathroom or closet doors  didn’t occur to him when he hatched this amazing scheme.  Isn’t the closet where you cram everything when company comes?  The bathroom problem is self-evident.  Anyway, as you can imagine, what with 7 people and 3 dogs at our house, our doors can get pretty shabby looking.

He has a clever way of spreading a giant tarp over the driveway and arranging the doors (think dominos) vertically with supports holding them at the top.  In the past, on a windless day, this has worked beautifully.

Because of the barbecue, he only had enough time to get the doors in domino stance, then he had to go to work for me.  (I love this man).  After the fireworks, we all had a great night’s sleep, but woke to find that the doors had toppled.  Some broken.

Yet, my intrepid hubby (after some pithy verbiage and a moment to sulk in my arms) strode back outside to face the door dragon.  Thankfully, only 2 of the doors were damaged.  He spent the day patching them and putting them back up with reinforcements. Then, off to work to make a living the next day.

While the kids were splashing in the pool, the first row crashed.  The kids started screaming.  “Mom!  THE DOORS!”  They thrashed out of the pool and raced to the driveway only to arrive in time to watch the second row fall.  My thirteen-year-old daughter burst into tears.  “Poor, Dad!”  The boys, (including one of their classmates) all looked on morosely.  “Man, that bites!”  The older girls were mad and verbal.

“Come on, you guys!  Grab a door, let’s get this cleaned up before Dad gets home.”

In no time, the doors were stacked and sorted (only 2 more broken this time) and it was up to me to make the scary phone call.

Stony silence followed by expletives deleted.  Yet, he came home, figured out a new way to arrange the doors (like tables with short legs) sprayed them, flipped them, sprayed them again and now…taaaa…daa…I have beautiful, shiny, amazing doors in my house.

Thank you, sweetheart.  You are awesome.

Carolyn

PS:  If you haven’t seen Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow, it’s fascinating.

We’re Plucking As Fast As We Can

Too Hot Mamas are traveling again, and as we prepare to visit friends and relatives, we must ask this question:

Why is it that we can shave our legs today and not have to do it again until summer 2012, but if we pluck our chins at 8 a.m. we’ll have stubble before we see the bottoms of our coffee cups?

Have you noticed any startling body phenomena lately?

Too Hot Hairy Mamas

Hot Mamas In New York, part deux. “Hey! We’re Walkin’ Here!”

It is a sad fact that if I’d been head pilgrim, we’d all be huddled around Plymouth Rock to this day.  Actually, that’s not true; we’d simply have stayed put until AAA opened, and I could get them to Triptik the journey west.  I like maps.  I like plans.  I like being CAREFUL.  Carolyn and our travel mates?  Not so much.

Exhibit A.)  Our dear friend Darla, who quickly became pack leader of five women with cameras.  Not only did Darla drive an SUV in NYC, laying on the horn when necessary, she strode around Manhattan like a native, crossing on red lights, skirting Taxis while making sure we were all still with her and hollering, “Hey!  We’re walkin’ heah!” at the traffic.  She was fearless.   And focused.  The rest of us were more easily distracted.   “Herding cats,” I heard her mutter on several occasions as she kept us moving through Times Square.  Thank you, Darla.

Exhibit B.)  Carolyn’s last post re: the subway turnstile issue.  She left out a couple of wee details.  True, the rest of us looked worried as she attempted to hurdle into the subway– because half a dozen NYC residents were hollering, “NO!” at her.  “Carolyn, you can get arrested for that,” someone in our party pointed out.  (I forget who…someone law-abiding.  Su?  Ginger?)

Here’s where Carolyn’s recollection of the situation and mine differ slightly.  She remembers attempting to follow the rules, behaving like the proper small-town wife and mother she is.  “Forgive me, officer, but I must squeeze ever-so-sweetly past your barrier here.”  I remember her responding to the you-could-spend-the-rest-of-your-vacation-behind-bars caution by growling, “Oh yeah?  Well bring it,  NYPD!  Bring it!  I spent my last 2.50 on that ticket; I’m getting on that train.  Hold those doors!!!”

She was intrepid.  She became a New Yorker before my very eyes.  I was so inspired by Carolyn and Darla, I decided that I, too, want to embody that New York state of mind.  Typically, I stand politely in line, await my turn, let others push ahead.  I am my mother’s daughter.  Now I have a young woman of my own to raise.  We put a premium on politeness in our house, but maybe we’re a little too…soft.  Shapeless.  Plus, I’ll be fifty in October; it is high time I become bold.

For my personal NY epiphany, I chose…flippin’ the birdie.   It’s not exactly tearing up Manhattan in a Pathfinder or jumping turnstiles while challenging, “Bring it, NYPD!” but it is a start.   I used the birdie many times–always in our hotel room and always with great zeal.  “Su, baby, you needs the blow dryer?  Well, so do I, here’s a birdie for yuz!”  “Ginger, I’ll take that extra pillow from ya, sugar.  Birdie, birdie, birdie!”  The girls didn’t seem to mind; they realize I have a long way to go.  And, no, I do not intend to teach my eight-year-old the birdie.    But I do hope to lead her through the streets of NYC someday, bold as brass, just like her aunties.

Su, Darla, Ginger, Carolyn–thanks for NY!!!!!

Wendy

Hot Flash: Too Hot Mama Crime Spree in New York

Turnstile jumper on track 9! Get her, boys! Which way did she go?

 

Did you know that once you swipe your subway turnstile ticket (the wrong way) it won’t let you on the train?  Did you know that if you are traveling with 4 other women to Manhattan and they swipe their tickets correctly, you get to stand outside the bars looking in at them with horror on your face because you just spent your last cash on the tickets and the ticket machines are all temporarily down?

Did you know that you can push the emergency button at the bottom of the subway stairs and a crackling voice, (the subway authority) will come on and say this (while the trains rumble by), “Kkkkkzzzzzttt, your problkkkzzzztttt?”

“Oh, uh, I am not from around here, ha-ha-ha, and uh I don’t understand what I did wrong, but my friends are ready to get on the uptown train and I’m here, with no cash and the machine thingee’s are down and the turnstile won’t let me get to them and I paid, honest!  I’m an upstanding cit…”

Wendy is rolling her eyes.

“Kkkkkzzzzttt, across the street to the zzzzzztttttkkkkk.  Tell themzzzzkkkk and you can…zzzztt…pppbbbbb….ttttt…kkkk. Okayzzz?”

My friends stare helplessly at me.  Not one to buck the system (unless someone is threatening my kids) I point upstairs and mouth, Be back in a sec!  They nod looking various shades of dazed and confused.

I run upstairs and ask the hotdog guy.  “The subway authority told me to come up here and cross the street to complain.  Where?”

“Soorree.  I doo nut no wut u r talking bout.  Ask her.”

His assistant:  “Subway stairs are over there, honey.”

“I know!  You see, I spent my last cash on… I…forget it.”  Back down stairs.  “This is gonna take all day girls.  I did everything I know how to find someone who works here.  There is no one.  So, stand back.  I’m coming in.”

Wendy glances around.  They all looked horrified.  It was a curious mix of fear and embarrassment because my shoe got stuck on the turnstile on the first go ’round and the bar gave me a pretty healthy spanking.  They train those things well.  The second attempt was successful and I’m proud to say I suffered only minor bruises and humiliation.  Happily, I was not arrested.

Carolyn

 

George Clooney is single!!

If I could only decide between the too hot mamas. Eenie, Meanie, Miney...

I know, I know, I promised that Wendy and I would be updating you
all from the Big Apple. But, we didn’t have time. As we were leaving for the
airport, the news broke that George Clooney was newly single, possibly in Manhattan… and the race was on.

It’s obvious that the boy is barking up the wrong tree with these super-skinny, super-attractive, super-young, super-models.   And, now that he’s 50, we’re guessing he’s
going to realize the error of his ways and start looking for a well-seasoned,
less-than-perfect woman to provide arm candy.
We think a little cellulite and some wrinkles are fine, because hey, we’re
not perfect, either.

So now, the question is, me or Wendy?  We asked our husbands and since neither of them seemed threatened in the least, it’s a horse race.

When we weren’t stalking Georgie Porgie Puddin’ Pie, we took a ton of pictures, visited 5 states, actually DROVE IN MANHATTAN (thank you, Darla, you rock), met with agents and editors, talked book deals, ate waaaaay too much, walked barefoot in Times Square at midnight and laughed ourselves half silly.  We came home speaking with distinct New York accents and are energized and ready to write.

Wishing you all a fab 4^th!

Carolyn Clooney

Sounds good, huh, Wendy?

ROAD TRIP

Start spreading the news...I'm leavin' today...

Wendy and I are hitting the road.  It’s Manhattan or bust, baby.  We’ll be updating you all from the Big Apple, God willing, oy.  We’re taking the red-eye and should be boarding in a matter of hours.  Since both of us have a bit of anxiety when it comes to flying, we will be medicating, hence drooling on each other and snoring in each other’s ears.  I only hope we wake up in time to get off the plane and don’t end up in, you know, Aruba… or…

I’d better pack a swim suit.

Carolyn

My Fantasy Life

Muuaahahahahah! Alone at last!

I have a rich fantasy life.  But, it’s not what you’re thinkin’.  Sorry.  This time my fantasy involves planting the “Family Garden”.  Oh, yeah.  I could just see me in my floppy garden hat and a gauzy white sundress.  The kids, frolicking at my feet, digging holes and planting veggies that they would consume with relish, because they grew them with their own two hands.

(Wavily dream sequence music here).

“Oh, Mother!  Look at the beautiful broccoli plant I grew!  I can’t wait to eat of its
bounty!”

“Mommy, dearest, may I please harvest a zucchini from the lush depths of my little patch?”

“Why yes, darling, but remember, though eating from the garden is good for you, you must include other nutrients, such as sugar, in your diet.”

“Oh, Mumsie, but must we?  I prefer Brussel-sprouts!”

Sigh.  It all started so well.  “Kids! This year, I want each of you can plant your own raised bed with whichever vegetables you want!”

“Yay!  Oh, goodie. I get watermelon!”

“No!  I want watermelon!”

“What about me?  Don’t I get a watermelon?”

Heavy sigh.  “I’m sure there will be other things we might want to plant.”

Blank stares.

“Okay, kids let’s go to the nursery to get your plants.”

“Do I have to?”

“You don’t want to go?”

“If I have to…”

AT THE NURSERY

“Mom, look!  Let’s get this!”

“We can’t eat a flower basket.”

Mutter, mutter,cheapskate, economy, flowers, mutter.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing, Mom.”

“Great.  Let’s load the car.”

“Do we have to?”

AT HOME

“Okay everybody!  Hang tight while I go get my floppy garden hat!  While I am changing into my gauzy white garden dress, you guys take the plants out to the beds and start digging some holes, okay?”

“Do we have to?”

IN THE GARDEN

“Hey, Liv why are you the only kid in the garden with me?”

“The other kids are all asleep.  Mom, why are you dressed like that?”

“Shut up and weed.”

“Do I have to?”

Wavily dream music here.

And so, I spent another afternoon in solitude, planting my garden.  Note to self:  Want much sought after alone time?  Ask for help with the garden!

Carolyn

My carpet is disgusting

Wendy!  Get Rich Quick Scheme number 197,322!!!

I am thinking of calling it Nature’s Carpet, a revolutionary new flooring manufactured with the family in mind.  Envision this in your
own home.  Orange cat?  Nature’s Carpet will incorporate random tufts of orange hair into the weave!  Have a baby?   Imagine haphazard patches of mustard yellow and baby burp white!  For you dog owners, muddy paw prints in chocolate and caramel brown and some ‘oopsie’ spots for the puppy years.  I’m thinking the ketchup and pizza stain pattern is a must for a rumpus room.  And every guy will clamor for the barf and beer stain look for his man room.

Husbands?  Go ahead and take that motorcycle apart in the living room.  She won’t care.  Not with Nature’s Carpet’s “Garage Floor Stain” pattern.

Get that new carpet smell with the user-friendly feel.  No more need to chase that wet pet through the house.  Screaming at the kids over muddy boots is a thing of the past.  Peace and tranquility abound as you ‘go green’ with our bark dust, rabbit droppings and moss chunks pattern.

Your friend’s will turn puce with envy!

Wendy, my family will easily be able to do all of the design work.  You look into the patent deal.  I’m thinkin’ we’re on to something big this time.

Carolyn

Furious R-rated Don’t Read, Pt. 2.

"Make my day, doo-doo head!" This bad boy don't need to cuss.

   Why is it, when you make a decision to rumble with someone, to knock heads (I’m talking Bill Murray’s Ghostbuster rant about “disaster of biblical proportions, old testament, real wrath of God type stuff, fire and brimstone coming down from the skies, rivers and seas boiling, 40 years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria”–okay maybe not that bad), that you end up having to like, I don’t know, sit next to them on a plane, or be their lab partner or neighbor or something? 

Well, that just happened to me.  Remember the kid I was so hot under the collar over several blogs ago entitled Don’t Read, Rated R?  Yup.  Ended up spending a week with him at outdoor school.  (This year, we took on rocks and planets out in Eastern Oregon).

Yes.  I was scared.  I’m guessin’ he was too.

You know that theme from The Good, The Bad and the Ugly that always plays when outlaws are in the middle of a shootout at the O.K. corral?  The one where they squint at each other just before they draw their guns?  Here.  I’ll try a few bars for you:  Doo-doo-doo-doloo, Bah Wah, Wah. Doo-doo-doo-doloo, Bah Wah, WAH!  A big old ball of sage brush rolls by?  Yeah.  That song. 

It’s playing as I get on the bus, where I had to spend the next four solid hours.  And just who do you suppose is the first person I see?  The cussing eighth-grade rap-artist!  He was already seated.  The last empty seat was within spitting distance.  We eyeballed each other, brows a’see-sawin’.  Who was gonna draw first?  As I strolled down the aisle, we never broke eye-contact.  Didn’t smile.  Didn’t speak.  Slid into my seat.  Pulled down the brim of my hat.

Days passed.  Bumped into him every time I turned around.  I didn’t mention the obscene ballad to his mother he posted on Facebook.  He didn’t mention my vitriolic response.

I carry candy.  Lots of candy.  Especially when I’m forced into confined spaces with hormone-crazed middle-schoolers.  One blazing hot afternoon, he was hungry.  I had candy.  He wanted some.  I gave him some.  He said, “I love you!”  I said, “I love you, too.”

I think I got my point across.

Carolyn

Life Is Hard. Now Go Play.

Here at Too Hot Mamas, Carolyn and I have ever-so-humbly dubbed ourselves the Lucy and Ethel of Menopausal Motherhood.  (If you had any idea how many whacked-out schemes for one thing or another my blog mate comes up with on a near daily basis, you, too, would suspect Lucille Ball of staging a walk-in.)

But Carolyn is in Central Oregon roughing it with her kids’ school, and I…well, dear reader, I am not feeling funny today.  Hey, I can laugh at a toothache, but as my hilarious Great Uncle Henry used to say, “Some things ain’t funny, Magee.”

My last blog touched on the extraordinary grace under fire of one of our neighbors.  Since then the nasty stuff hit the fan in another neighbor’s life when she awoke to an intruder who assaulted her, brutally, in her home.  The police caught the guy, but will the judicial system keep him off the streets?  Will she find the peace that defies understanding and feel safe in her home again, or out of it?  Will the children who usually run up and down our block as if it’s Mayberry be allowed to play as freely this summer?

And then, on Tuesday, I went to juvenile court to support a friend who has raised her granddaughter since the child was born while her parents struggled with meth, domestic violence and parole violations.  For five years, this grandmother’s refrain regarding her granddaughter has been, “If I do my job well, she won’t realize [how much chaos and fighting surrounds her].”  Being the eye in the storm can’t have been easy, but the five-year-old is a happy, stable child, as innocent as she should be at her age.

Juvenile court—whew.  Stay out of there, if you can.  For what was probably no more than thirty or forty minutes (but seemed like hours)—we watched this lovely five-year-old’s fate be tossed about by a bunch of lawyers whose chief agenda appeared to be Don’t Bother-Me-With-The-Facts-I-Have-A-Case-To-Win.  I watched my friend attacked as the wicked interloper instead of thanked for her love and devotion.  Yeah, so much for that pesky commandment about honoring our parents.

My Uncle Henry had a tough life.  Thirty-five major operations beginning at age three, cancer more times than I can count, heart disease, went blind for a time, broke his back, yadda yadda.  None of his siblings made it much past sixty.  When Uncle Henry was ninety, a waitress (he loved to eat out) asked him if he’d lived in Los Angeles all his life.  “Not yet,” he deadpanned.

Uncle Henry was the happiest person I’ve ever known.  Like any Jewish fellow worth his salt, he knew how to grieve heartily, how to bemoan the fact that bad things happened to good people.  He was not shy about asking, “Why?”  But he had a philosophy of life that was as much a part of him as his brown eyes, and he taught it to us in everything he said and everything he did:  Life is hard, kinderle.  Now go play. 

A mother dies, leaving three young children….  A woman is attacked in her home in the quiet area she trusted….  A little girl may lose the only stability she has ever known and face an uncertain future….

Life is hard.  Sometimes it’s bitterly hard.  But in the midst of it all, there are people willing to be God’s hands here on earth.  On Sunday night, eighty people gathered around the home of the young mother who lay dying on her forty-third birthday.  With candles lit and their voices raised so she, her husband and children would hear them inside the house, they sang Happy Birthday.

Life is hard.  Now go play.

Wendy

Live Like You Were Dying

Today is Sarah Bach’s 43rd birthday.  Yesterday she was given the last rites after a year-long battle with metastatic melanoma.  A battle that appears to have been grueling and filled with extraordinary grace.  I don’t know Sarah, though I have met her husband and kids a couple of times.  I’ve thought about her every day, though, for months.  Often several times a day, because of the ribbons.  Giant, happy-looking orange ribbons that circle the broad trunks of trees, the thin branches of azalea bushes and posts of mail boxes throughout our neighborhood.  If you live where I do, you know who Sarah Bach is even if you’ve never laid eyes on her.  You know, and your life has been changed.

Sarah is a mother with three young children and an adoring husband who thinks the world of her.  I doubt I’ll ever write a novel about a romance as real and eternal as the one Sarah and her husband have written this past year.

Their family is devoutly Catholic, blessed with a grace that has carried them through disappointment after disappointment as each new treatment failed to halt the progression of her cancer.  Together, last Wednesday, they told their children she was dying.  To me, the situation seems utterly wrong.  Unfair.  Horrible.  Tragic.  I know plenty of people who didn’t take care of themselves and healed.  We all do.  The photos I’ve seen of Sarah before she became ill show a gorgeous woman who is fit and vibrant.  Sarah had a legion of people praying for her.  And yet she’s leaving three elementary-age children.

Her husband and friends tied ribbons around the trees and then a local market began selling them.  More ribbons popped up throughout the neighborhood.  They reminded me to pray every day.  They reminded me it’s possible to care deeply about people we’ve never met and that no matter who we are or where we’re from, we’re all riding the same bus.  Every step outside my house is a visual reminder that communities grow when imperfect strangers become perfectly caring.

In the neighborhood, our children began asking about Mrs. Bach, her illness and whether she would die.  We had conversations with our kids we hoped not to have for a long time; conversations that blessed us and, I believe, them.

It is so easy to trust when life feels like a cleanly cut puzzle, one piece fitting neatly next to its neighbor.  I suppose the deepest trust, the richest faith, the one that works, is honed when it is tested, when we can somehow cry out, “It’s not fair!” and “Thank You,” in the same prayerful breath.

I hope Sara Bach won’t mind that some lady she never met is writing about her.   She’s part of my life now and, I hope, part of yours.  You can read Sarah’s Journey “Fight Like A Girl” on http://www.caringbridge.org/story_bach.  I hope you’ll read it.  And her husband’s blog entry on June 4th.  http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/sarahbach  Let their story change your life.  We prayed for one kind of miracle and got another as we discovered we are all each other’s angels.

Wendy

Cupcake Wars

One of my daughter’s early teachers was called “Cupcake” (not to her face) by the parents, because of her penchant for celebrating every birthday, half-birthday, and holiday, including obscure-in-America British holidays, by serving fluffy cakes with gobs of frosting.  She considered sugar to be, in part, a learning tool.  It was quite effective.  My daughter does not remember the storyline to The Lace Snail, which we read a gazillion times (it’s wonderful), but she still speaks fondly of London’s October Plenty.  Attempts to form letters were rewarded with m&m’s or bits of red licorice.

Why am I thinking about this now, a few years after the fact?  Because I just spent two hours learning how to make a radish mouse to entice my daughter to eat her veggies.   Any veggie.  A no-thank-you bite of cherry tomato.  A snippet of gray green bean out of her Alphabet Soup.

For many years I was a sugar-free vegan (this was before Carolyn and I began entering the Pillsbury Bake-Off, I grant you) and regularly offered collards and kale to my daughter, who ate her greens with gusto.   Oh, yes she did.  In fact, her favorite breakfast was brown rice with butter, tiny minced carrots, nori seaweed and gomasio.  And then…Cupcake.

I love you, Cupcake, I do.  When introducing children to school, it’s a Jewish tradition to dot the pages of a book with honey so the learning will be sweet.   My daughter’s books were smeared with buttercream; I suppose that’s close.  And when she majors in British history I’m quite sure I will remember you fondly.  But I can’t help the pang of regret and frustration I experienced when she saw that adorable mouse staring up from her salad.  Raising it by it’s long radish root tail, she stared ambivalently awhile then asked, “Do I get dessert if I eat this?”

My next attempt will be carrot-cake oatmeal.  I’ll post the recipe if successful.

Wendy

Don’t read. Rated R. I’m furious.

If you are easily offended, stop reading now.  

Seriously.  Go ahead.  Trot off and have a nice cup of coffee and a chat with your neighbor.

And, whatever you do, don’t read the last paragraph. 

Still here?

Okay…here goes.  Last night, I logged on to Facebook, only to find a post on my wall by a charming eighth-grade friend of my children.  I think it should be titled Ode to My Mother, as he claimed he wrote it himself about his ‘explitive deleted’ of a mother.  He says he composed this thoughtful poem because she wouldn’t allow him to have friends and s**t over any more, although it smacks more of one of Eminnem’s masterpieces.  Dude. Word.

Anyhow, I get the feeling Mummy doesn’t alway check in on her little darling’s Facebook page to view his poetry.  People, people, PEOPLE!  Why are we allowing such blatant disrespect to run rampant on Facebook?  Not only did little darling’s post make me look like a white trash bimbo on my wall, it made his mother a laughing-stock.  6 people “Liked” his poetry.  Not one of them was his mother.

Another thing that children and adults alike simply don’t get it this… Your future employer LOOKS AT YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE when they are trying to figure out who and what to hire. At this rate, this kid’s career prospects are limited to gang member, rapper (and I hear it’s super hard to break in to the industry) and serial killer.

I know, a lot of you are thinking, “Hey, why doesn’t this uptight hag simply unfriend the kid?”    I did.  But not before he sullied my wall and the walls of anyone else on his list, including MY kids.  And as an adult, I don’t feel right about not saying anything.  About not hurting/embarrassing this kid’s precious inner-child.  Letting him throw a public tantrum isn’t responsible or self-actualized, folks.  It is cowardly and uncaring.  Why do we all sit around and put up with this crap, all  in the name of freedom of speech?  Hey, if you are a minor in my household, you are free to speak you mind.  But start up with the f-bombs and we’re gonna wrangle and I’m gonna win.

I have a feeling this kid (underneath his vitriolic spew) is probably a nice kid looking for guidance.  Clearly, he’s not getting enough at home.  He’s lucky he’s not my kid.  Because if he was, his Facebook account would be history.  As would his computer, iPod, iPhone, gameboy and Xbox 360 and all the other baby-sitting devices his parents are no doubt currently employing.  He would be assigned a mountain of chores (my toilets would sparkle!) and he would have to spend endless hours sitting with (and getting to know) ME!  his new best friend!  Oh, the ways we’d bond!  He could teach me to rap and I would teach him Ephesians 4:29.  And perhaps, in the future, we could avoid the four-lane car crash that he posted yesterday.

I don’t pretend to be a saint.  Far from it.  I spent waaaay too many years using language that I have come to realize made me look illiterate and low-class.  And, vulgar.  Trampy.  Disgusting.  And, while these things may still be true, at least I try not to give off the immediate impression anymore.

For those of you who hung in with me to the end of this rant, here is the edited version of this post:

&%$-ing slut you look like a mutt you held me in a rutt im done nomore fun we had a good run you too ton timeing #$%@! your a snitch you snaked my heart i dontmean to sound dark i guess it wasnt very smart to trust you in the first place when i got the first taste i got hooked i shouldve booked it when i got to chance no i dont dance or prance for you i stayed true too you oh boo whoo #$%@ you too.

I ache for his mother.  The spelling is atrocious.

Carolyn

 

The Bachelor–Show ‘em how it’s done, kiddo.

I  think my daughter was asked out on her first date.  She’s eight.  He’s an older man–almost nine.  It went like this:

Older man:  “Hey.  You wanna come over for dinner?  My mom will say yes.”

My daughter (who is shy about things like this):  “Um.  I don’t know.  Mom, what do you think?”

Me:  “It’s fine if you’d like to, sweetie.”

Daughter:  “Mmmm…”

Older Man:  “Come on.  Please?  It’s macaroni and cheese!”

Daughter:  “I’m not sure–”

Older Man:  “Macaroni and chee-eeeese.”

Daughter (weakening):  “Well…”  She turns to me.  ” Mom, what are we having?”

Before I can answer, her new boyfriend slaps his forehead :  “Aw, come on!  Mac and cheese!”

She agreed.

I think he handled that well.  I watch The Bachelor and The Bachelorette (so sue me, I’m a romance writer) and I think this kid handled himself better than some of the bigger boys on that show.  He was persuasive.  Emphatic.  Clear about his intentions (eat the macaroni and cheese together), confident about the evening ahead.  I like him.  She could do a lot worse.  And, he lives right across the street.

After dinner, my daughter told me that if they get married they will buy a home down the block, so they can be close to both their families.

Yep, could do a whole lot worse.

Whew, that’s a load off my mind.

Wendy

 

 

 

The Pillsbury Fart-off…uh, Bake-Off

As you know, Carolyn and I are addicted to entering the Pillsbury Bake-Off.  Every spring break from school is an opportunity to corral our kids (plus the offspring of anyone cruel enough to drop their progeny off at Carolyn’s place during this time of year) into one room and ply them with experiment after experiment…er, rather, delicacy after delicacy.  On this year’s menu:

Vermont Maple Cupcakes With Georgia Peanut Buttercream (going with a state theme).  This recipe required several attempts and never really came together.  The kids began eating enthusiastically then quite suddenly looked as if they’d been stricken with a deadly disease.  We gave ‘em a little bicarbonate of soda and got right back in the saddle with…

Meatball Hoagie Bake.  This was not bad, though it was overly complicated and kinda unattractive.  Took three or four swipes at this one over a two-day period with eight children and four adults taste testing.  Final decision:  Nah.

Next up:  Carolyn’s soon-to-be world-famous Sweet ‘N Smoky Baked Breakfast Pancake.  OMG.  Incredible.  We all thought so.  She made it several times–for breakfast, for dinner, for a snack.  We tried other baked pancake variations, too, plus more sandwiches, a couple of appetizers and an entrée.  All together we made seven trips to the supermarket, spent…well, I can’t say on the chance one of our husbands is reading, and sickened eight otherwise hardy children.  I overheard this comment from one of Carolyn’s daughter’s friends:

“Can we stop eating now?  I’ve been farting all morning.”

“Me, too,” whispered Carolyn’s daughter.  “I think they’re getting tired.  They’ll stop soon.”

That’s what you thought, missy.

We kept at it until there wasn’t a creative thought left in our brains.  We kept at it until the smell of exhaustion overwhelmed the smells of butter, sugar, toffee and cinnamon.  And soon, very soon, we’ll be in Carolyn’s kitchen again, prepping for the next bake-off.  Why?  Because there’s a million bucks, new appliances, a trip to Orlando and the promise of fifteen minutes of Pillsbury fame riding on this one.

And because we came up empty when we Googled “Bake-Offs Anonymous.”

Wendy

Work all day to accomplish nuthin!

The following is sung to the tune of Tradition! From Fiddler on the Roof.

Oy! The minutia is killink me!

Minutia!  Minutia!  Min-oooo-shaaaa!  My-new-shoes!

I’m drowning in minutia.  Are you?  Here is a typical day at my house and the time spent on each ridiculous task.

 Wake up.  Determine that today I will get organized and accomplish much.  I will also eat well and exercise.  First, coffee!  (For that added burst of energy).  10 minutes

 Then, a few quick tasks at the computer.  Hmmm. Today I see I must join a Yahoo writer’s group.  How do I pick a name for my new email address?  Spend 20 minutes puzzling out how many ways I can spell my name with dots and underscores.  Now, I must choose an alias?  Spend 15 minutes toying with cute monikers.  How do I get into the chat room?  Spend 12 minutes cussing at my laptop.  Correctly fill out all fields.  Try to type in the wavy code .  5 minutes.

 The group decides to meet on Facebook instead.  Another 20 minutes, figuring out how to find them.

 Once on Facebook and in group, spend half hour congratulating each other and discussing how Yahoo sucks.

Get up to go ‘powder the nose’.  5 minutes

While gone, group moves back to Yahoo.  What was my new email address?  15 minutes spent searching.  Did I use a dot or an underscore between first and last names?  How do I find out?  Who do I ask?  What was my cutsie alias?  After some angst, figure it out, get back on Yahoo.  Find the others in the group.  1 hour total.

Move on to email.  Deal with 12 gogillion Spam mails.  Read all email.  Answer all email, except for the stuff that I don’t know the answers to.  Ignore that stuff.  Make people who are waiting for my answers angry.  2 hours.

Go to real mailbox.  Sort out the junk mail from the real mail. Get distracted by chocolate cookies that hubby brought home from work last night.  Stuff entire pile of paper into the laundry basket with all the other junk mail and bills.  Realize that I don’t have time to go through 17 bazillion pieces of mail because I have to set up the new computer first.  Accrue numerous late fees.  Credit rating plummets.

Take new computer out of box on desk.  Set it up.  New computer crashes.  Call trouble shooting hotline.  Talk to guy from India.  Take new computer apart with a butter knife and a paper clip.  Ask guy from India to repeat every sentence 6 times.  Fiddle with mother board.  Fiddle with wires.  Fiddle on the roof.  Per guy from India’s recommendation, repack computer and take it back to the store. 

No time to exercise.  Oh well.  Rush out (late) pick up kids.  Exchange computer.  Put box on desk.

Throw something into the oven.  Forget I put it in the oven till I smell something burning.  Throw it away.

 Husband comes home.  “So.  What did you do today?”

Me.  “I…well, uh…”  heavy sigh, “nothing.”

Carolyn

The art of the arm fart

Hi, Everyone!  It’s raining–surprise!–in the Pacific Northwest.  Actually, the warm drizzle and gray sky are upping the cozy factor tremendously.  And, hey, who needs more sun spots?

My daughter is home with a nasty cold, so as we prepare for a cuddly day at home, I thought I’d inaugurate Witty Wednesday–a day to share the wacky, wonderful, witty or just plain weird witticisms of our pwecious wee ones.  I’ll go first; you go next.  Here’s what we heard at our house this week:

Daughter:  “Dad, do you arm fart?”

Dad:  “Not since I married your mother, honey.”

Daughter (looking at me and shaking her head sadly):  “That’s such a shame.”

Okay, share:  What have the little people in your life said?

Wendy…off to watch Dora….

Pul-lease

Please:  an adverb, used as a polite addition to requests, commands, etc.

I’m Jewish, but I often attend church with my Christian husband and our daughter, who, although she will gladly participate in Shabbat candle lighting and any holiday involving matzoh balls, has let me know emphatically that her spiritual path is different from mine.

Not a problem.  I believe God speaks to us in different languages and through many different faiths.  In fact, I love our little church with its diverse, devout congregation.  These folks live their lives in wholeness and holiness.  They walk their talk quietly and with enviable grace.

But the Sunday school?  Oy gevalt! 

Young children frequently forget their manners, of course, but what surprises me is the Sunday school teachers’ reluctance to rein in our vilda chaya.  Let me say here and now:  If my child develops a mental block around politeness, go ahead and correct her.

I am sure the disciples used “please” and “thank you” at the Last Supper.   I bet they helped clean up.  And when Jesus spoke, I’m guessing they gave him their attention.  I’m sure no one wants to offend a parent, but better you should offend me than allow my child to offend you.

Yes, “please” and “thank you” are my parenting pet peeves.  Over the years I have doled out a quantity of snacks roughly equivalent to the number of hors d’oeuvres served at Kate and Williams’ wedding.  I’m guessing I’ll double that output in the years to come.  How many thank yous have I heard from the children who are not mine?  Too few, dear reader, too few.

Now, I’m not claiming my precious angel is perfect.  Oh-ho no.  When we’re in Chinese restaurants, she still sucks the filling out of the egg rolls…oh, wait.  That’s me.  Well, her table manners aren’t the best, either.  She learned from her parents, after all, and we’re not on the Queen’s guest list, believe you me.

And, of course, my daughter has a few other habits we need to break.  Like sitting in lectures and workshops, rudely passing notes with her friends and giggling at things that have nothing whatsoever to do with the topic at hand–

Oops.  Me again.

Dang.  But the giggling in workshops thing?  Honestly, that is almost always Carolyn’s fault.  She talks to me and obviously I don’t want her to think I’m rude so I answer.  If you read “Girl Fight” and “Cat Fight” then you know a couple of weeks ago we dragged two formerly polite and gracious women down with us.

Honestly, what is wrong with adults these days?

What are your politeness pet peeves?

Wendy…off to learn some manners.  Thank you for reading.

Goodbye cruel world…

It only takes one complete lunatic to make the entire group look bad.  My kids tell me this all the time.  “Mom.  You’re making us look bad.”

But alas, I’m not talking about me.  I’m talking about Harold-This-Is-It-Camping. 

What? Me worry?

 

Being a born again Christian, I’m eagerly waiting for the rapture because the idea of dying has never been all that appealing.  My youngest daughter is the queen of surveys.  “Mom, if you were going to die, would you rather be frozen to death, or burned to death?”  “Uh…hmmm, I…uhhh…is there another choice?”   “Mom, if you took off all your clothes and slept outside naked, would it kill you?”  Depends if the neighbors mistook me for Sasquatch and shot me, I guess.  “Mom, what snake would you rather have kill you, a king cobra or a rattler?” 

Can ya see why having Jesus take me outta here and plant me in a garden for a feast is more attractive?

Annnyway, if today is the day, cool.  I won’t have to defrost the refrigerator because it will be lying under a pile of rubble and will take care of itself.

Unfortunately, Mr. Camping’s theology resembles nothing I ever learned in Sunday school and, since New Zeland was still standing as of 6pm (their time), I’m gonna go don the Playtex gloves and tackle the kitchen.  Pity.  One of my children was hopeful about getting out of geometry finals.  Tough luck, kid.

The one good thing to come out of all this fear-mongering is that it made me stop and think about how short this life is.  How precious every moment.  Right now, my teenagers are in our backyard tossing horseshoes in a patch of rare spring sunshine.  Think I’m going to skip the cleaning and go whup some kids at horseshoes.  Loser cleans the kitchen.

Carolyn

Dear Cinderella, if you want to go to the ball CLEAN YOUR ROOM!

When my daughter was three, I asked her to please remove her clothing from the dining room floor.  Like a shot–and with a sweetheart smile–she picked up the offending items, uttering this keeper comment:  “Sure thing, sweetie, I’m here to clean.”

Adorable.  Thought I’d never have a moment’s trouble with this one.

Current conversation with daughter, now eight:

Mother:  I asked you to clean your room last Sunday.  It is now Friday.  Please clean your room or forfeit attending your school dance tonight.

Long-suffering child:  I don’t know what forfeit means.

M:  It means that if your room is not clean by five p.m., you will be in there at seven while your friends are enjoying Katy Perry in the school auditorium.  The choice is yours.

LSC:  I’m hungry.

M:  There’s enough food in your room to get us through a subduction zone quake.

LSC:  I don’t know what subduction zone–

M: GO!

Three minutes later…

LSC:  I’m done.  That was exhausting.

M:  You are not done.  I just started cleaning my office, and I’m nowhere near done.

LSC:  You’re slower than I am.

We march to her room (well, I march; she stops three times in the hallway to practice dance moves).

M:  What part of the room did you clean?

LSC:  What part did you want me to?

Obviously she has been watching too much I Love Lucy and I am about to have a Ricky Ricardo meltdown.

M:  Mira caquilla cosa–

LSC:  I don’t know what–

She is in her room again now, the radio blaring very dramatic classical music.  I hear her creating a story to go along with the music:  “I loved you.  Why did you leave me?  If you come looking for me, I will be in the dungeon….”

The Brothers Grimm and Disney have been stringing people along for years, making us believe Cinderella was an innocent victim.   HA!  How much you wanna bet her room was a pigsty, and that’s why she wasn’t supposed to go to the ball?  From now on I’m on Team Wicked Stepmother.

What tricks/ mandates/ bribes/do you use to get your kids to clean their pits?
Wendy