The Best Post I’ve Read in a Really Long Time

My sister-in-law just sent me the link to this post, and it is the best thing I’ve read about motherhood in a long time, about the nostalgic old ladies who come up to us young mothers in every store, telling us that they enjoyed EVERY moment of parenting.  I literally laughed till I cried when I thought about one day being a nostalgic old lady myself and instead coming up to that young mother with the cherubic hellions in her shopping cart and choosing my words a little differently: “It’s helluva hard, isn’t it? You’re a good mom, I can tell. And I like your kids, especially that one peeing in the corner. She’s my favorite. Carry on, warrior. Six hours till bedtime.”

http://momastery.com/blog/2012/01/04/2011-lesson-2-dont-carpe-diem/

Thanks for the link, Liz!!!

Ikea Trip

We went to Ikea to pick up a bookshelf/room divider for our dining room.  This excursion has been on our radar screen since October so it was no surprise.  We went into the store at 10 am, I told Austin it’d take about an hour.  We left the store at 11:05 am with the bookshelf we wanted and a few other great deals on things I’d been looking for off and on.  The kids had a great time playing in the kids area, and enjoyed hot dogs on the way out.  Successful trip, right?

Austin’s narrative:

How could our trip have possibly been any harder?  It is a good store but Jackie just needs to go there healthy, by herself, for a whole day.  We were going there for ONE thing until Jackie started looking around, leaving me with the kids without a cell phone so it was unclear if we would be able to find each other. We got the wrong cart and had to switch.  Then I pushed a fully loaded flat bed cart with stuff that didn’t fit and had to be precariously balanced, with a baby on my shoulders.  I had to leave the store in the middle of the trip with the kids to deal with an urgent bathroom situation.  Molly ate a price tag and then ate my hot dog. And Ikea doesn’t even give you bags!  To top it all off the bookshelf didn’t fit in the car and necessitated an hour of rearranging at 7 am before we could drive home.

So, who do you believe???

Alice in Wonderland

Last night I led a discussion at my book group about Alice in Wonderland.  I vaguely remember reading it as a child, and after several years of picking bad books to lead, I’ve decided to stick with classic kids lit.  At least it will 1) be short and 2) not be racy.  (Yes, one year I picked a Kingsolver book that involved a lot of fecundity that really wasn’t what I was hoping to discuss with lots of friends from church.)

I actually did not enjoy the book.  I kept wanting to find the point, the plot, the action, the logic.  And that’s the problem, the book has no plot.  It’s entirely character driven, which is a bit hard for this Type-A person to appreciate.  The characters are crazy, and fascinating, but there’s also this somnolent air of boredom. 

It is definitely the best book I’ve ever read in recreating what a dream feels like, with the crazy nonsensical scenes coming one after the other with only vague connection. There are other fantastical dream-like children’s books (Peter Pan, Wizard of Oz) but both are still more more plot driven.  The feeling of the book, the disconnected-bored-slightly crazy-disjointed dream-like state actually reminds me of the feeling I got from reading Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

But, the beauty of book group was that I left having an appreciation for the book.  I went in wondering how in the world this could have been the most popular children’s book in England for years and years and remain popular worldwide even today, and I emerged with the answer: the book approximates how a child thinks.  A child experiences the world as a succession of scenes, with little framework to connect them all, little understanding of why X is happening or past/future.  Instead the child is essentially in an eternal present, enjoying each experience as it comes along without connection to anything else.

I also realized that the Alice stories also are somewhat similar to stories I make up with Tucker.  We like to play a game with his sticker book, where he picks a scene and I start to tell a story about the scene.  One by one he puts down random stickers and I have to include them all in the story.  This delights Tucker to no end, and it IS possible to connect almost any disparate random sticker but it does produce a certain Alice-like quality.

Two Pleasant Surprises: Pingo and HP Customer Service

I have had two really great experiences lately with companies. First is Pingo, a calling card company. I know, no one uses calling cards anymore, except me, but if you do, Pingo's the way to go. It has an easy access number to remember (1-888-YO-PINGO) and it recognizes the phone you're calling from so you can just enter the number you want to call directly. Amazing. They need to do a better job advertising... or maybe the problem is that there are so many other random calling card companies out there advertising it's hard to wade through the junk and figure out which one's actually have a decent product.

My second commendation of the night is for Hewlett Packard customer service. My laptop has been having a power issue, and since it's under warranty, I've needed to be in contact with them. First, I didn't have to call and wait and talk to anyone at any point during my experience. Instead, I just had to email, and tech support got back to me within a couple hours EVERY SINGLE TIME. Amazing. The tech support didn't work and I had to mail it in for a repair (twice). Then they forgot to send my power cord back. Then they only sent half a power cord back. So I'm not saying HP necessarily has great computers, or that they are good at repairing them... but at least they are responsive and it is an easy process. THAT is worth a lot to me. If it was Dell I would have had to be on the phone for hours and hours to deal with these issues. I probably would have just given up.

Sometimes you get what you pay for

Case Study: batteries

Our smoke detectors are always beeping about low batteries. It drives us nuts. They beep intermittently so it's hard to locate the beeping detector until it's 2 am and you can't get back to sleep because a smoke detector somewhere is beeping.

I devised a new system to thwart our battery problems: I would change all the batteries on the same regular schedule, which I decided would be New Year's and the Fourth of July (everything says to replace smoke detector batteries every 6 months). I dutifully replaced all the batteries on New Year's... only to find that one by one they have all started beeping again in the past two weeks.

What does that mean? Our batteries are lousy! They should have lasted at least three times as long as they did.

From now on, as much as it pains me, I'm not going to buy store brand batteries anymore.

What did you do for fun when you were 10 years old?

That's the question Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project blog poses today. Actually, she posted a video on the topic but of course I didn't watch it--one of my cardinal rules is to avoid watching videos online. At the speed of our internet, videos are about as fun as paint drying (possibly more because I enjoy a freshly-painted room.) Usually the only thing that filters up to me wanting to watch it online is the latest video of my niece Emery.

But I digress. One of Rubin's happiness discoveries is that you can choose what you do but you can't choose what you like to do. I've found this particularly helpful in thinking about how I want to spend my time in my new two-kiddo-but-no-paid-work world. Here are the things I loved doing at age 10:
-Reading
-Writing (I think I self-published my first serial novels in kindergarten, about monkeys)
-Making quilts (no joke, I used to march into my parents' room on a Saturday morning while they were asleep, and suggest helpfully, "Let's make a quilt today!")
-Playing with my dollhouse
-Swimming on a team
-Walking my dog
-Organizing things (like quotes, rocks, etc.)
-Playing kick-the-can with the neighborhood kids

The things I enjoy now are remarkably consistent. Give me a free day and what will I do?
-Read
-Write
-Do crafts/projects
-Play with my dolls, I mean, kids
-Go to the gym, preferably a class that recreates a demanding coach barking orders at a group of us
-Snuggle with my dog on the couch
-Organize anything that doesn't run away from me

The only thing I really don't do anymore is play kick-the-can. Maybe it's time to start. :)

I'm interested to know if this works quite so well for anyone else.

Reasons why I love the gym

1) They take my kids.
2) I get an uninterrupted shower.
3) I have 30 minutes for uninterrupted reading if I use an elliptical machine (you might think this is not high-quality reading time, but this is not the case... I've read scholarly articles as well as Mark Twain's Joan of Ark and didn't enjoy either any the less).
4) If I take a class, there are other adults with which to have conversations that go beyond whether they need to use the potty or if they need their nose wiped.
5) They take my kids.

I may well turn into a gym rat.... :)

The Happiness Project

If you haven't read The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, I highly recommend adding it to your 2011 reading list. The author spends a year synthesizing and digesting the latest research about happiness as well as the wisdom of the ages on the subject, and then tries to incorporate the findings into her life.

In case you're wary, this book is not of the self-help genre. It's an interesting, quick read about one woman trying to change her life without substantively changing her life (i.e. moving to a tropical island and retiring).

Some of her insights that struck me as particularly profound include:
*You can choose what you do; you can't choose what you like to do.
*One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy. One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.
*Do good, feel good.
*If it takes less than a minute, do it now.
*And much, much more (of course).

[Spoiler alert.] She concludes at the end of the year that she is indeed happier, and that the single most important element of her happiness project was not any of her specific happiness resolutions but her daily chart to record how she was doing keeping those resolutions. If you manage what you measure, then you have to measure whether you're going where you want to be going, and that very act of measuring will do a lot to propelling you to where you want to go.

I'm not sure if this works for people who aren't type A. Why? I suspect it takes a type A sucker like me to be anal (some might say "particular") enough to make a daily resolution chart and actually use it. But if something works for someone else, I think it deserves a try before you dismiss it: the old if-you-want-what-we-have-then-do-what-we-do philosophy.

So, I've made my own resolutions chart and so far I'm liking using it. Knowing that I get to give myself the proverbial gold star at the end of the day if I do what I aspire to, really is keeping me doing the things I want to be doing. Ridiculous but true.

And if you're wondering about this recent flurry of blog entries that actually involve substantive thought, guess what? One of my resolutions is to write something every day. (Not necessarily on the blog, of course, but until I get a more substantive project I think more will end up here than has been here in awhile.)

Check out Gretchen Rubin's blog: www.happiness-project.com

Coolest Plumbing Gadget Ever

We have one of those old bath tubs whose drain stopper has long ago been lost. This bothers me. The plastic drain plug (we've tried a couple different types) doesn't stay in when the tub is filling and so I have to bend over and hold it down until the water is at least an inch high. Annoying.

Anyway, this is the "Flip-It Tub Stopper" that you permanently insert into the drain and that you can just switch open or closed. It fits most standard tubs (even our old one--nothing in our house is standard...). Plus, it was about $10 on Amazon. I am excited by small things.

Why not to buy a Dell laptop

In case anyone is in the market for a new laptop, I strongly suggest not buying a Dell. I have an almost-two year old Dell laptop, with what seems to be a very common Dell defect that they are not admitting is a systematic defect. This defect also can't be fixed with anything short of a new motherboard.

Fortunately, the defect is relatively minor: the computer tells me it doesn't recognize my AC adaptor and so although it will power the computer, it won't charge my battery.

If you google Dell AC adaptors not being recognized, you realize quickly that you are in VERY good company. Apparently this is a really common problem with Dells, partly because they put special chips in their AC adaptors so that laptops can't use third party replacement adaptors. It seems like this special chip has the propensity to mess up the process of the computer recognizing even a Dell adaptor.

It's one thing to make a faulty product. It's another thing to ignore the issue, even after it's been demonstrated to be a basic hardware problem. I also take issue with Dell's customer service. Although they construct their computers to only be able to use Dell replacement parts, ordering from Dell is a nightmare. Both times I've ordered from Dell they have repeatedly (like 3-4 times each order) pushed back the ship date. I've never had another company do this.

Of course, I did buy my computer for less than half of what it costs to buy a Mac, so I still think I am coming out ahead in the Mac vs PC battle. Just, next time, it'll be Acer or Toshiba or Compaq or Gateway or HP... anything but Dell.

Next year...

It took me until yesterday to feel recovered from the craziness of the snow, Tucker getting so sick, Christmas, traveling, etc. Of course the circumstances were extenuating this year, but next year I want to build in more time for reflection and stillness and not make my way through the Christmas season feeling like I'm just hanging on!

Other notes for next year:
1) Make and eat our won tons on Christmas Eve BEFORE church, and have salad/dessert after, instead of trying to smoosh it all in after. Too busy!

2) Spring roll wrappers can make a good gluten-free wonton alternative, but each wrapper needs to be patted dry before it is cooked or it becomes a goopy unappetizing mess.

3) We need to do better invitations for our New Year's day party, and send them out earlier... the third week of December is too late!

4) Don't let the Christmas tree freeze solid on the porch in a 5 gallon bucket of water. It's a bummer to try to move inside and takes forever to thaw!

5) Pay attention to the weather and the roads in Virginia... they can mean business. :)

6) My stroke of genius for today's party was putting Ben behind the baby gate in the pantry. Everyone's food was safe, and yet Ben could see everyone from his bed we moved there. He got lots of toys and love and didn't intimidate any little ones (and was still lots of help cleaning up afterwards!).

The way forward

Several months ago I started downloading podcasts to listen to on road trips, and I discovered that there are a ton of really interesting free podcasts available online. I love listening to People's Pharmacy from NPR, This American Life is usually pretty good, I'm becoming a sucker for James Dobson's Focus on the Family, and we have a local public radio station that has a great program interviewing various people from around our region.

Hearing the same quasi-country songs over and over again or bad talk radio really doesn't compare to these podcasts available online. However, burning them onto CDs for my car is such a pain. Each CD only can handle 1 or 2 podcasts at a time because I need to burn them in an uncompressed format for the car stereo to read the CD. And you can't use CD-RW discs in a car stereo. What a waste.

Here's the solution for people like me without an iPod or other means to easily play a podcast in a car: Soundfly SD WMA/MP3 Player Car Fm Transmitter

It came in the mail the other day and it's this little device that plugs into the cigarette lighter and has an opening for a regular USB disk to fit into. It broadcasts to the car's radio, so you just need to tune the radio to an unoccupied wavelength, and tune the Soundfly to that same wavelength, and you can listen to whatever podcasts are on the USB disk.

I would be less impressed if this was expensive technology I'm talking about. It's not. The Soundfly was $40 with shipping, and required about 30 seconds of setup/manual reading.

The ironic thing is that I really wanted to have a car ride yesterday so I could listen to it, and it was the only day of the past two weeks that we were in the car less than 15 minutes!

Economizing

I've been thinking lately about economizing. With a failing car and leaking roof and a county that wants to boot us out of land use taxation, we've been getting more serious about trimming our budget, fleshing out what it looks like for us living on basically one income. Of course, neither Austin nor I have ever been known as spendthrifts in the first place, so that makes the challenge a bit more difficult in the first place. :)

1) I've been starting small. Instead of buying the $20 car seat tray for our upcoming road trip I found a neat metal retro one that works at our local thrift shop (while Tucker had a play date with all the toys in the children's section). New water bottle for spinning class at the Y? 10 cents at the thrift store. Tucker's lifejacket at the beach isn't working? Sew on a buckle so it won't ride up. It's actually kind of fun to think creatively about ways to make/find/restore something rather than just putting it on a shopping list.

2) I've been doing a lot of cooking. I've been cooking our own beans rather than buying canned, making our own yogurt, grinding our own sunflower seed butter, making our own pizza, baking our own artisan bread. We're eating a lot of salads, and a lot of summer squash that our garden is blessing us abundantly with right now. Tonight I'm making squash corn soup and squash-potato-parmesan cakes from the latest Eating Well.

3) I've been adjusting my perspective on household items--it's not about what all could we use, but what do we really need. For example, up to now I've viewed my pantry as something to keep stocked at all times... but really, is it a problem if not all the food choices are there all the time? I mean, so the raisins run out for a few days between shopping trips... not the end of the world. Of course, this is not the case for everything (think: toilet paper), but in general it's a good attitude adjustment for someone who is constantly trying to get everything checked off her to-do list.

4) I've been giving myself dollar figures and goals, and also have been tracking the expenses saved through one means or another, which has made everything a lot more tangible and has also turned this into an interesting challenge. Tracking things has also been great to help me see changes... sometimes in the scope of all the fixed household bills it feels like the discretionary items are so small... and yet, of course, those are really the only things that can be changed most of the time.

When I grow up...

I've been thinking a lot lately about what I want to do when I grow up. It may seem a bit late in the game to be asking this question, but somehow I never asked it all that seriously before.

When I was in high school I asked where I wanted to go to college.

When I was in college I asked what I was interested in studying.

When I was out of college I asked who would employ me with the degree I had.

None of these are bad questions, of course, but I think it's time to insert into the mix: what kind of career do I want to have? What do I enjoy doing? What skills do I bring to the table?

Picking a field based on what is fun (or easy!) to read about in college is more than slightly myopic. But what happens when you have a college degree in something that was fun to learn about but maybe not a great career choice for you? What next?

One thing I've been running up against is that my values have changed since the early part of college when I was making some decisions about what to pursue. Specifically, we've chosen location over career. There is lots of potentially interesting environmental work out there... if you're willing to move around to places that are under-served, or are particular hotspots of environmental activity.

But say you've committed to a small Southern town with a major university and a glut of eager young environmentalists? What next?

Yeah, I don't know either. But I'm thinking about it!

Ode to Harris Teeter

I am all for localism. We have a darling local pharmacy where the people know us by name and love Tucker. We have an independent grocery store "Great Valu" where one of the owners calls Tucker "a mighty fine fella" every time he sees the little man.

And yet, I confess that localism has its limits. Last month I finally, reluctantly, switched our recurring prescriptions to a Walmart 20 miles away... and am now saving 2/3 of the cost of those prescriptions. On just those two prescriptions, that simple change will save us almost $500 a year.

A week and a half ago, a new Harris Teeter (grocery store) opened five minutes from our house. The local monthly paper is busy calling names at all the come-heres who are going to ditch the local grocery store for the big box chain. And yet, yesterday morning when I needed to run our for egg whites, where did I go? To the only one that HAS egg whites: Harris Teeter. Will I keep trying to go to Great Valu? Yes. But do I think it's awesome that we have a big (some would say "real") supermarket so close to our house? Of course.

They had non-dairy ice cream for Tucker to soothe his sore throat. They have an extensive prepared foods section which really expands our options on the night when neither of us can face making dinner. It also is 5 minutes closer to our house and on the way to C'ville.

But yes, I do feel like a sell out when I turn into their parking lot.

Voluntary Simplicity

Austin's Aunt Carol emailed me at the beginning of the year, soon after I started this blog, wondering what I think about voluntary simplicity. We didn't have a very long correspondence on this subject, but it set me thinking and I've come back to that phrase several times since then.

I love the idea of voluntary simplicity, of somehow living in a simpler and more intentional way, of seeking to get off the hamster wheel of constant motion and consumption that seems to be the default these days.

Choosing simplicity is like choosing to only buy wrinkle-free shirts, or clothes that don't need dry cleaning. You give something up (in this case a certain clothing choice) but you get something in the bargain (time spent ironing, money for the dry cleaner). Sometimes choosing simplicity makes sense, but sometimes not. Depends if you like wrinkle free shirts, right?

The point is, you don't want to choose simplicity and bypass something you enjoy or is really important. For example, I recently joined the local YMCA. It is far simpler to go for a run outside than to drive 40 minutes round trip to the gym. But I enjoy the pool, and I don't enjoy running. Hence simplicity gets sacrificed and I joined the Y.

So, like life, it all comes down to priorities and a balancing act. I often find it ironic that choosing simplicity in consumption often actually increases the complexity of my life. Take our clothesline. It would be great to use it regularly and opt-out of unnecessary clothes drying, but honestly, when push comes to shove, it's a lot simpler to put the laundry in the dryer. This same scenario works itself out with heating the house with wood, having a big garden, (really the list could go on and on). And it's worth it, at least some of the things, some of the time.

But what I strive for is the type of simplicity that actually saves both (human) energy AND consumption. Like not wrapping presents in a Christmas stocking (no wrapping, no wrapping paper). Like choosing to only have a TV antennae, freeing up the time and money otherwise devoted to cable.

You know, figuring out those areas where less can be more, where small can be beautiful, or where my standards don't need to be quite so high. :)

Best Baby Products Ever

I have all these friends right now who are expecting, and I have been reflecting on the neatest baby products we've come across so far. You know, the things you wouldn't necessarily think of, but are really ingenious.

Gerber Lil' Snacking Bowl - toddlers can put their hand through the flexible lid into this bowl so that snack time in the car isn't always disastrous.

The Nosefrieda - This one is really obscure, but those little nasal aspirators never worked for Tucker when he was congested. This ingenious little device looks a little suspect hygenically (because you actually suction the mucous out with a long tube)... after using it, trust me, it is totally wonderful.

Roebeez - I'm such a fan of those little leather shoes that stay on infants' feet no matter what. NOTHING else does the job like them (the generic brands at Target are great, though!).

Washable bib - This may not seem like brain surgery, but think how many bibs you go throughout a week? A lot. Helen found a plastic bib that you just sponge off and voila, back to new.

Bebe au lait - Okay, I never actually used this, but it's a "nursing cover" and looks great and is definitely something I would get for a baby shower gift. (It's closely related to the Hooter Hider....)

I'm sure I'm forgetting other things, and will add to this list as inspiration strikes me.