me, screaming at the tv/computer

I had a little rant yesterday and decided to share it here too ... its about small houses.

Actually, its about advising people on how to utilize their space in small houses better ... when the houses you use to reference aren't small.  Or at least aren't as small/built like mine.

James Young, please come find someone
who actually needs your help!  ME!!!

This rant started when I sat down to feed the baby.  Breastfeeding is a teeny bit boring when the baby isn't pretending to be a Cullen, so I turned the boobtube (so much more aptly named now) on.  It was on the DIY channel and a show called I Hate My Kitchen.  Since I have uttered the show's title a few times I thought to myself:

Self, maybe I will figure out something useful on this show!

And with great hope I started to watch this episode.  The home owners had little sound bites saying things like "Its so small," "Its so ugly" ... I nodded, agreeing and sympathizing with them.  I hadn't seen the full kitchen shot yet, but they showed the cabinets and I thought to myself  with sudden trepidation:

Um, Self, they have more than two lower cabinets next to each other ... that suggests some length in their kitchen ... I don't have that.

Then they showed the whole kitchen.  And my jaw dropped, blood boiled and the yelling commenced.  The baby was much displeased with me.

These people are whining about their "small," "ugly," and "outdated" kitchen while they have at least three times the space I have, about 40 times the counter space, black (and not almond) colored appliances, shiny cabinets ... ugh, I could go on.  Lets just say I would trade them their kitchen in a heart beat.

Reaching to turn the channel, I heard the guy gripe about how you can't walk out the entry way when the fridge door is opened because you get pinned between it and the island.  I had a momentary lapse of logic where I thought to myself "okay, that would be annoying" ... then I realized that you can't open the door to my fridge and walk by at all, not because of an island, but because its basically galley style.

I changed the channel and moved on with my life hoping these people wind up spending $4,000 over budget because I'm spiteful like that.

Later I was reading one of my fave blogs* and there was a guest post titled 5 Tips For Living In a Small Space.

Yay, I thought, I love this blog, there is always practical stuffs here!  I bet I can use this!

So I eagerly started reading.  Tip One: Do not compare your home to other's homes.  Ugh, yeah, that is probably reasonable, but, so not happening.

Creative use of space: Kids don't need rooms!
My shoes do!

But lets give me something to do, not something to not do! I thought to myself.

Tip Two: Embrace the space you have.  Ooooooookaaaaay, I can hug my shoe-box-sized master bedroom closet but I fail to see how this is helping me!

Don't worry, it went down hill from there.

Tip Three: Be creative with your space!  Yippie! Reading on I hoped to hear something uber useful like a way to store kids toys, how to put an extra roll of toilet paper in the bathroom without it becoming a kid toy, or anything another human being would pin and want to do.  What did I get?  Ideas about how you can store things in bathroom vanities ... {insert sound of tires squealing to a halt here} wait hold up, people can use bathroom vanities to hold more than their hair drier?  I don't even have towels in either bathroom because there is no space.  Don't tell me how I can store stuff there, it ain't happening.  Next tip involved a comment about how the author has one whole side of her closet filled with stacked plastic totes.  Allow me to just say that if you can fit even one of those (I assume) big assed 5 gallon muthas in your closet and still put clothes in it AND access any of that stuff I do not want to hear you whine about storage solutions.  

Sheesh, where will I put the Pop Tarts?!

Moving on, and slightly less happy I  read into Tip Four a bit and saw that it dealt with organizing and keeping things clutter free, which I am all for and was okay with.  Until I read this: "One of my nightly goals is to clear off the kitchen island" ... bitch, please.  That is one of my lifetime goals -- to have a kitchen that has an island!  It discussed organizing drawers and stuff, but seriously, when you only have 4 kitchen drawers, and only 2 of them are full sized its not so much about organizing as it is about swearing and not owning much.  

Tip Five dealt with managing your "stockpiles" and I think if you can store extras of anything anywhere I don't want to speak with you anymore, and certainly won't be reading your tips on organized living.  

So here is my goal: I want to either find an actually useful/applicable article that will give me tips I can use or I want to write one myself.  If you have a home built in the 80s when storage was apparently very un-trendy, your backyard is bigger than your house, you have no laundry room but rather a section of your garage with a washer and drier crammed into it, and the biggest closet in your house is actually the shed in the backyard then I want to know your tips for storage and organization!  Otherwise I'm going to mope in my 1500 sq feet of mess and work on a new blog series of my own!

*This is one of my fave mom/money/practical blogs, but I am not linking to the original article (you can search for it if you really wanna) because this isn't exactly a friendly commentary LOL

the time toilet {AKA Pinterest}

I am not your typical bloggie.  I have no earth shattering specialty knowledge or skills, don't homeschool, have no culinary skills to really speak of, have no mantle much less an OCD habit of decorating it and redecorating it every fifteen seconds to reflect the weather, upcoming holidays or my stage of PMS ... so really if someone were to ask me what this blog is about I'd probably have a real genius looking moment where I sound as intelligent as Homer Simpson ... uuuuuuhhhhhhh ...

But I try.  Really I do.  Between swear words, bottles of wine or beer, and continued therapy fodder for my children I do try.  And like all mama's in the blog world I eventually had to cave and try crack.  Er, I mean Pinterest, I had to try Pinterest.  Haven't actually tried crack, but I imagine its similar only illegal.

So I have like seventy gajillion pins already and not a lot to show for it.  If I could become organized, cook well, or make cool shit via osmosis it would have happened already so I guess my virtual pin board is one part foolish hope and one part failure beacon.  At anyrate, I have never in all my thousands of pins jumped up from the computer and said "ohmigowsh I am so doing that now."  I have on the contrary said "ohmigowsh I so wanna do that ... someday ... eventually ... maybe ... better pin it JIC."

Then 20 minutes ago happened.

Yup, I pinned, did, then blogged.  This has to be some sort of freaking productivity record for me. (Note: St Paul has Thing 1 and they are grunting and being men looking at camouflage at Bass Pro while Thing 2 still miraculously snoozes in his car seat following a horrible, horrible trip to Walmart that had Mommy wanting to drink.  Not entering a store until February.)  Enough babble, we're on a time limit:

I can't get a picture of the original on here, so you have to go to a content housewife's blog post in order to see it.  Simple, yet all the cushy goodness that makes me keep up the pretenses!  The original is adorable of course, and no, I don't have any flowers and the yet-to-be-posted-tutorial has zilch to do with their absence.  They'd wind up looking like burlap poop in all likelihood if I tried, and with the boys and the dogs I can't help but develop nervous twitches at the thought of non-cloroxable-easy-to-dust-surfaces actually being present in my home.  I only had an 11 x 14 frame on hand, so mine is bigger ... but so is my family, so I am up for pretending that was planned and intentional! Shhh ...

I know, I know, you are just awed by the picture quality.
Camera phone.  Awesome.

Yes, I even happened to have the same exact scrapbook paper on hand.

So, there it is, finished product. Except that in my zeal to finally do something on Pinterest so I could pretend I am cool like that I forgot that St Paul made me get rid of all my teacher stuff in la purga (but no one can force me to part with my Sharpies dammit) so I have no vis-a-vis pens in the house.

Oh and I also have no idea where in the sam hick I am hanging this beast.

At least I have good intentions, right?  Right?!  {Sigh}

a hybrid like no other

Imagine a little halo hovering above its wand ...

Siting and typing this post out right now is not logical, but it is needed.  This makes exploding Smurfs look like nothing in terms of "you know its a bad day when..."

I have one of those Bissell Little Green miracles.  Two dogs, two kids, a husband ... a worthwhile investment.  Yesterday I lent it to my mother, who's beagle decided to pretend one of her large area rugs was a potty.

Given the atrocities I apparently committed in a previous life the karma fairy came by the house this morning.  To spare you the nastiest of the details I will give the circumstances to you via the text message conversation on my phone.  Before I do, please note the following: St Paul of Bunyan is a wonderful human being who can do a great many things including be a wonderful dad and make a fire using only string and draino while camping int he Arctic circle.  He is however a huge wussypants when it comes to vomit.  The man has the stomach of a 6-week-pregnant-woman.

Me:  Oh. My. God. I am so f***ing glad you are not home right now.

SPB: Why?

SPB: That's rude!

Me: {Insert dog's name here} just vomited a whole, completely intact, really smelly shit on the WHITE couch.  It was so gross that *I* got sick.  Can't f***ing imagine the mess if you had been home.

Me: Did I mention its on the white couch?

Me: Did I mention it still looked like a f***ing turd?!

Me: Did I mention the house smells like shit now?

SPB: Oh good   <-- we will return to this comment momentarily

SPB: What an ass

Me: Did I mention that my mom has my f***ing Bissell and I can't do anything to get rid of the stink?!

SPB: Oh hell, go get it

Allow me to take a moment to answer the most pressing question on your mind right now: WTF, you have a white couch?!  Um, yes, but not on purpose.  And really its not very white, more of a dingy grey now, but I am sure it was manufactured to be a white one.  It came with the house.

I can also assure you that St Paul and I will be having a little heart to heart about appropriate responses because he doesn't seem to have any.  "Oh good?"  Good?  What part of dog ralphing poop that can somehow simultaneously look and smell like both poop and puke is good?!  The part where you weren't home for it?  Yes, true. I agree because I would have been cleaning up after your puke too and been a lot madder, and really who wouldn't be grateful to have missed out on this fun?  But to say it?  Out loud?  Okay he didn't say it, but he had to type it.  At some point there should have been some attempt at filtering that could have happened.  I am imagining the robot with sirens blaring saying "danger Will Robertson!" only he says St Paul of Bunyan's name instead.

So, in order to get appropriate, make-me-feel-better responses, I spoke with my mom.

Me: OMG my dog just spewed.  On my couch. It was poop.  A poop vomit hybrid.  Can I please swing by your house and borrow my Bissell back for an hour?

Mom: OMG, no! You poor thing, I will bring it to you!

When you want to hear an appropriate response, ask a woman.

plastic wrap and dry yeast - two deadly foes

In my valiant efforts to pretend I know what I am doing and am not completely worthless at domesticity I am plugging away at my little list. But to prove that I have the opposite of the Midas touch and remain ever the lucky gal I tried baking from scratch with a recipe* that called for bread flour (took me forever to find that in the store, they have special flour for bread?!) and dry yeast. 

I admit, never used the stuff in my life.  Baking experience up to this AM incorporated soley following "recipies" that were read off of the side of the box and said complicated things like "pour mixture into bowl with water and bake at 350 for 20 minutes." So the dry yeast was supposed to do one thing, but of course, for me, it did another. 

The recipie called for one amount of water, the yeast packaging another.  The yeast package also called for sugar, but the recipie said nothing about sugar.  I am sure actual cooks/bakers who know their shat and have done this before may read this shaking their heads and say something like "oh you poor dear, donchya know you just ..." (I do picture it with a Minnesota accent for the record).

The recipe says to dissolve warm water and yeast.  Then let stand.  Stand?  I do know what stand means, don't ask how because I am really not sure.  For how long?  How will I know?  Why in the sam heck did I pick a recipe that presumes minimal knowledge as my first foray into being a big girl?  After staring at the murky mixture for a few minutes I went to go google it ... ah, damn, computer is doing its dying swan act ... thank the techno gods I have a phone.  It says I'll know when standing is done because I will have a hella poofball of foam.  Okay it didn't say that, I am paraphraseing.  When no poofball happens I read that with some yeast you have to add sugar.  Now that makes perfect sense to me because I either need coffee or sugar (not together though) to get my ass moving in the morning. 

Its a blur what I actually did do here, but ultimately I got a foamy looking concoction in the bottom of the bowl that looked like the foam on top of a a beer you pour too fast.

{light bulb momen: beer has yeast in it!}

Mix in other ingredients ... yada, yada, blah, blah, blah ... its supposed to rise.  Baby wants fed, perfect timing!  Then I realize that my five month old, male baby seems to have an intuative baking sense greater than my own which both alarms and discourages me at the same time.  Moving on I feed him and return expecting dough that has risen, but I find dough that has maybe inhaled a bit.  Give it another 10 minutes, I think it looks a bit bigger, but that may be wishful thinking.

Then the story gets ugly and pathetic.  The beauty of this recipie is that I can freeze it.  This means I can make it and swear at it when only the baby, who can't talk and tell on me, can see.  Then all Betty Crocker punk rocker style I can whip a frozen dough ball out of the freezer and make something uber cool like homemade pizza.  But you have to wrap it all up.  I have gallon size freezer bags, but alas, I must wrap the individual balls in *gasp* cling wrap.

I hate cling wrap.  Ever fiber of my being hates it.  On the cellular level I hate it.  If you were to take a swab of my cheek, whip out a DNA sample, centrafuge the crap out of it you would see right there on the 14th chromosone I have the HatesPlasticClingWrap gene.  Right next to it would be the PlasticClingWrapMakesMeLookLikeAMoron gene.  Someday they will find my body laying on the floor wrapped in this crap like a mummy with a bowl of uncovered food on the counter and the coroner will conclude that I died via suffocation while trying to just cover the damn leftovers. 

In an effort to lesson the complexity I cut the !#$%ing wrap into sections so I would have all 16 sections ready and just needed to put the dough in them, wrap it up, toss it in the freezer bag and *POOF* I'd be done, right? Wrong! Wronger than the wrongest wrong.  Because guess what my lazy assed yeast decideds to do NOW?!  Now, after it has had nearly 45 minutes to rise but hasn't?  Now, when I have predetermined size of cling wrap to wrap the balls in based on their size?!

Yeah, the damn yeast finally gets the memo, and it rises.

Long story and half a box of cling wrap later, I have them bagged and in the freezer. 

Now the really annoying part of this fiasco if you ask me is this: the directions explain how to go about freezing the whole batch for use later.  So I freeze all of it once, I swear it into the too-small cling wrap packaging and proudly stuff it in the freezer while smiling thinking that I might have triumphed after all.  When I recall one little detail ...

Now that I have frozen all of the dough, what in the Sam Hill are we having for dinner tonight? 

Damn.

* Found the recipe at Money Saving Mom, here is the actual recipe if you are a yeast whisperer or something.

what the words "tomatillo salsa" *really* mean

As I bravely face the unknown (to me) world of domestic skills I am trying to make things from scratch. I am doing good, though I know my blogging about it sucks. I am just impressed I haven't given anyone botulism or burned the house down. Hollah!

Anyhoo, I made fresh tomatillo salsa last night because we got a hella lot of tomatillo's in our Bountiful Baskets bundle a bit ago. Didn't know what to do with them, and they hadn't decided to abandon ship in fear of my attempt to cook them somehow, so we found a recipe that seemed too simple to screw up. Here ya go ...

1 lb fresh tomatillos

8 fresh jalapenos

2 cloves garlic

1/4 cup fresh cilantro

salt and pepper to taste

You husk the tomatillos, then roast them and the jalapenos until burned then essentially throw it all in a food processor until smooth.

I dropped the tomatillos and jalapenos in a baggie with olive oil, salt, pepper and a little bit of onion powder before I "roasted" (AKA burned the crap out of) them.

Notice that the recipe does not call for seed removal of the jalapenos. Yeah. That is a highly relevant bit of info if you ask me. Perhaps it should be recommended for future attempts at this recipe.

So I do my thing, and it looks good. I smell it and it made my sinus clear right up. So I took an itty, bitty taste of it ...

And after I got done crying and downing 30 ounces of fluids I decided that I just made a lovely salsa ... for someone else to eat.

So the words Tomatillo Salsa in this case actually translate:

Salsa that will feel like nuclear fusion is occurring on your tongue

and will make you cry like a whiney assed baby.

Next up on my attempts to make "real" food and be better at this domesticity crap ... pizza dough. I can't make that too spicy at least!

me cramming veggies down Jack's ...

A while back I got one of those cookbooks that teaches you how to supposedly hide veggies in yummy foods like brownies in order to get your kids to eat them. I had two issues with this,and the less predominant of them was the whole lying to my kid thing. Yeah, I disliked that, but seriously I felt this was doing irrefutable damage to the brownie's rep.

But I tried it. And if you got over the fact that everything was funny colored, that the brownies left your hands coated in a sticky green leafy looking goo and had none of the sweet chewy goodness that we all associate with this delicious food group, it wasn't so bad to my adult mind. Not worth the work, but not that bad.

To a kid's mind? Pure abomination. And really, I had to agree with him.

Given a combination of things -- my freak out factor at eating animals, Mr. Deaux's health, Thing 2 being an allergic rash/reaction waiting to happen, and Thing 1's flat refusal to eat anything that didn't once breathe and bleed -- making healthy food is a challenge in our house at times.

But we have found an answer: juicing.

Not only because I find it immaturely funny to say things like "I am hitting the juice" but also because you can squish an obscene amount of veggies through a juicer (ours is named Jack) add some fruit and ice and poof, you have a smoothy.

But Mommy, smoothies are a treat! They aren't health food! They are yummy.

Yes, baby, they are yummy and I only added green food coloring to make it look gross! So much for the not-lying-to-your-kid bit, eh?

Anyhoo, you want the healthy low down check out the bottom of this entry. I am a non-proselytizing vegetarian so I won't bore you with the gore of meat and dairy if you aren't interested in hearing it. But if you want yummy juice and pictures read on ...

I made two different juices today, and they can be drank straight, with crushed ice in a smoothy, or make faboosh cocktail starters given how fresh they are! {wink, wink, now you too can mean it when you say "Mommy's hittin' the juice!"}

Usually I mix fruits and veggies, today I did them separate-ish so that I could use these as bases to make a couple different smoothies. (There are fruits and veggies in both, but not 50/50)

The fruit one:

There are 2 pink ladies apples, 2 huge pink grapefruit, and one orange. Also a small hunk of ginger. Ginger is really good for juicing, but when I bought it I got this branch of it. You don't need much for flavor with juicing, so take what you need, freeze the rest in a glass jar.

So I shoved all of that through Jack (remember, that's my juicer's name) with the least juicy thing going first. Ginger, apples, oranges, then grapefruit.

That's what real apple juice looks like. Note how non-urine looking it is? Can you tell I have a deep aversion to store bought apple juice? Now here comes the other stuff ...

I think that's the last of the grapefruit juice and the start of the orange. When I got done with all of this it was tasty, but really tart and citrusy. So I looked in the fridge and I have a bag of baby carrots that could pass for an Oompa Loompa.

Given that we had so many and carrot juice is really sweet I added that.

Because I feel that recipes are merely guidelines or suggestions to start with I tend to not pay super good attention to how much of this I use since I cook by look or taste. Therefore I would love to give you precise measurements or amounts, but alas, I cannot. It was something in the area of 6 huge handfuls of baby carrots that made that juice up there. This illustrates quite nicely one of the biggest perks of using Jack -- I would never, even in my most veggie of moments, want to consume six huge handfuls of baby carrots. In fact, a little secret: I hate carrots. The juice I don't mind, it has something to do with the texture. I am not down with eating branches of off young saplings and I am not a big fan of carrots. Go figure. But all of those branches, er, I mean carrots made that juice. All of the nutrients and vitamins are in there, why eat the rest of it? I would need a ton of ranch dressing to even consider consuming that many carrots.

Low and behold, you have pink grapefruit, pink lady apple, orange, carrot and ginger juice. For now I am just calling it Pink & Orange. And yes, I agree, Pink & Orange is crying out for her long lost friend, vodka.

Now the veggie one, and this is where the things get impressive.

There is a bag of Romaine there, igrnoe it. I took it out and never used it, but the sneaky little bastid got in the picture anyway. So you have 3 cucumbers, a bag of kale and a bunch of spinach. Kale was on sale for like 59c a bunch, so we happen to have a ton of it. Lots of good stuff in kale, but I personally don't want to eat it much. Its a real witch to clean because the leaves are all curly and it stays wet for-ev-ah. Spinach on the other hand is a friendly one to clean.

Again, the least juicy gets shoved through Jack first, ginger and kale. Then spinach. As things get stuck or it sounds like Jack is working to hard, I put a half cucumber through.

Cucumber is one juicey mutha.

After I got done it smelled so green and I know kale and spinach are pretty bitter greens, so I put two apples in to make it a bit sweeter.

While I am sure it sounds gross, I swear its actually pretty good. Now that green mixture is good by itself (it has to be super cold, but I promise it is actually tastey) or it can be poured in the blender with fruits to make it sweeter and thicker.

While this isn't really a Betty Crocker list-worthy moment, I was trying to mimic all the really non-domestically challenged women out there who blog foodie stuff. Frankly, I respect the dedication they have even more because not only is real cooking a lot of work, but respect the pictures man! Not only taking them (without dropping your camera into the juicer!) but also putting them in these dang posts. They always load at the top and I am seriously far too lazy for this crap. Enjoy it, I may never do this type of posting again!

*** The healthy babble: Google "juice detox" or "raw foods diet" or watch Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead or Forks Over Knives or read any of the Skinny Bitch/Bastard series. If you wanna be real hard core, go read the China Study. Seriously, I just made it pretty damn easy for you, just get link clicky!

tootin' my horn

So I am trying to not totally suck and the whole stay at home wife thing. I rock at the stay at home mom part, the baby is still in one piece and hasn't needed therapy (yet) -- what more can you ask?!

Its the domestic crap I am bombing at. So I am trying to get organized, clean out, and set goals.

Today I did a total Betty Crocker thing and made my own recipe cards. Seriously, how lame, --er I mean, how housewifey, organized is that? Quaint, I know. Yes, I feel a little ill too.

But since I am cooking more, (I am, I have pictures to prove it and will post them soonish) I needed to be organized with the recipes. Yes, real recipes, not just the directions on the side of the box. This is a huge departure from my norm.

So I found like 375 different print-your-own-free-template things online and I either had to pick between gagolicious teddy bears or cows and roosters, neither of which were very me. Then I had ones that required a recipe author and this meant I had to come up with a smart ass names for each one which was both time consuming and bound to get me in trouble at some point.

"Mommy did Manuel Labor give us this recipe for enchiladas?"

So I wound up making my own. It took five minutes to make a design that was neither juvinile or creepy then I just had to type the recipes up. That took much longer. Much better, and I have no frightening clown-like dolls smiling at me from the side of the card. Score!

domestic goddess in training

I accept that I am not a casserole-baking-sewing-my-kids-clothes-homeschooling-scrap-booking queen.

I am trying to become some of those things (I would like to scrapbook someday, and casseroles I have nothing against) but, to anyone who actually knows me it is pretty apparent that I am not a natural at any of this.

Before I had an excuse. I worked full time. Who expects someone who pulls 50+ hour weeks to be a Martha Stewart? No one, and we gawk in awe and disgust at those who somehow are, and either fantasize about marrying them or dumping their bodies bedazzled garbage bag somewhere. Those bitches give the rest of us a really bad name.

But now? Now that we decided for numerous reasons that I would stay home now with Thing 2, now am I supposed to be good at that stuff?

Now its almost tacky for me to not have my schmidt together. How disorganized or pathetic do you have to be to mess this up?

The answer is clearly however disorganized or pathetic I am. I actually am very uninterested in hearing the amount that would work out to be because I am sure it would be depressing. But in my defense, I challenge those who would judge to try it. Be an entirely non-Joan Cleaver type person and suddenly try to fit in that apron and heels. Yeah, that is so not happening here.

The other day while on the phone I had to answer what I do for a living. The woman gave me the title of "homemaker." I almost laughed. My husband, when I later relayed this story, did. In his defense, I was laughing when I told him about it.

But now that I "don't work" (that is a hilarious notion indeed) I feel like I should really be a lot better at all this wifey/mom stuff. So I am making a list of crap that I feel I need to learn to do and rock at. The list will be a work in progress. For example, I might try something and swear it off and never do it again, thus needing to remove it and all things related to it from the list. I can also add stuff later as I think of it. I don't want to become a 50s housewife, I just want to have fewer domestic reasons to laugh at myself.

The list has stuff on it that I view as being worthy of my attention or stuff that I have seen other moms/wives do that I have thought "dang, I never do that" before. I won't waste time putting stuff I know I won't do down but I will shamelessly put down stuff I already have started to do before the formal idea of a list popped into my head. Hey, it gives me a sense of accomplishment and this might improve my general chances of success!

Domestic Stuff I'm Gonna Rock At: (catchy title, eh?)

1. Use my Crockpot (for something other than the one recipe I know)

2. Use my Kitchen Aid Mixer

3. Make a weekly menu and actually use it

4. Regularly make weekly menus

5. Try to make something from scratch (this doesn't have to happen regularly and will involve goal #2)

6. Iron (when we aren't going to a funeral)

7. Make a cleaning schedule (I need organization dammit)

8. Figure out how the food processer works

9. Find the damn food processer because its in "storage"

10. Figure out what the hell Mahjong is

11. Use coupons

12. Budget better

13. Wear an apron (I have one, wore it at work or when painting, yet I get filthy while cooking and never thing to wear the stupid thing)

14. Seasonal decorating (this one is already in danger of not happening just because I think putting scarecrows up in Arizona's fall is stupid)

When I imagined my list it was a lot longer, but at least this is something to start with. Lets view this in a positive way, the list is short because I am already so faboosh that I don't need to do much more! Woo hoo!

Oh shut it, I am trying to be positive here!

when good moms go bad

Wrapping up la purga and the house is finally getting to be more like what I want it, but I am a bit stir crazy and sick of cleaning. This is not a good combo for me as being a domestic goddess does not come natural to me. It is not a gene I inherited. So I am acting the part for the time being, fooling no one who actually knows me, and today the facade cracked a bit.


I took Thing #1 and Thing#2 to Bed Bath and Beyond the other day and in between telling T1 to not pop wheelies with T2's stroller and praying they didn't knock over any displays we bought a $40 box of Space Cubes. I knew I had reached a new low in my adult life as I was actually excited for this purchase. Sigh, and to think I used to have that reaction for actual fun things. Anyway, I digress, I bought the bags that claim to be part of a storage evolution and promise to save me space while protecting my crap, um, I mean my really important things.


So when I finally get around to pulling the Jumbo Cube out of the box today I am busy marveling at the sheer size of the thing. Its a giant ziplock baggie. And I think to myself:

Dang this thing is so big you could, like, fit a body in here!

I wasn't really envisioning any particular body, merely commenting that it is substantial enough in size that a person could fit in the thing. But the sudden scurrying down the hallway alerted me to the fact I had apparently made this morbid observation out loud and Thing #1 had overheard me and possessed the good sense to abandon ship and go hide in his room for a little while.


So subtle suggestions about body disposal do not escape his spidey senses apparently. Good to know.


Filing that useful knowledge away for future reference, I proceeded to stuff a bunch of blankets into the Jumbo bag and feel that even though I may not be a domestic goddess appearing to be a potentially homicidal mother keeps the older kids in line.

a smurf exploded

So in the midst of la purga yesterday (which BTW is an ongoing thing, don't come over and sit still too long, I might throw you in the garbage or Goodwill pile on accident) a I had what looked like a smurf murder scene on my hands.

We had one of those huge bottles of Tide liquid detergent you buy at Costco, and apparently it had a small puncture in the bottom of the bottle. Over about 48 hours or so the little puncture allowed an astounding amount of fluid to slowly seep out all over part of the top of the drier, down the side, under it, and in a nice big pool between the drier and the water heater.

It really did look like someone offed a smurf.

While I lost about a third of the big ass bottle, which is a bummer, I can see he bright side in that my garage smells nice and the drier is much cleaner than I think it has ever been before. But it did get me thinking about how things like this seem to happen to me. I don't know if you have ever seen the commercial (I think it is for AT&T) where the guy shows up for the flash mob early and starts dancing and looking like a moron 30 minutes early because he didn't get the text until it was too late? Yeah, if I tried to do one of those that would so happen to me. I am just lucky like that. I prefer to think that it is some divine effort to make me laugh and find the humor in life rather than I just have bad luck, but some days it is a bit harder to convince myself of this.

So with a really clean section of my garage and less likelihood of the smurf mafia striking again, I start today with less laundry detergent and the hope that whatever little trying-to-make-me-smile lessons life has in store for me today they aren't too hard to clean up.

la purga

This week we are having a bit of a house purging.

Trust me, it is pathetically long overdue.

I admit that I am a pack rat, always have been. My husband married me, and my stuff, and its not like he walked into the whole thing blindly. But recently, with the addition of a new family member, our small house has gotten too small and so we have to purge. I don't know if it is a Mars/Venus thing or a Chrissy/Matt thing but clearly I put emotional attachments in things more than I ought to. As Matt so eloquently put it yesterday as he plead his case for me tossing a box of mini ceramic statues from my childhood:

"I keep things that I think to myself 'I can use that.' But you keep things that you say 'Oh, I remember that!'"

Now if I disregard the fact he threw his voice in a painfully obnoxious high pitched way when he said the "I remember that" part, I can actually see that what he said is true. I could point out that he keeps all sorts of weird random things that he feels he can use, like license plates ... but I would be shooting myself in the foot by pointing it out because we DO use those things. (The licence plates adorn our backyard bar.) I do keep things because of the memory they bring back. But I often keep stuff out of guilt.

So I am taking a small break from "la purga" because as I watched my nine year old agonize over a hotwheel because he remembered when he got that one I realized that its not a Mars/Venus thing but in-fact a "Chrissy" thing ... one I clearly passed on to him.

Oops.