• Alpha+Mom post,  artsy fartsy,  Bug,  crazy stuff,  Family Matters,  instagram,  mettaprints,  Shop Talk,  The Zoo

    Your Monthly Update, WhamBamCram SAJ style

    I don’t know if you know this but every month I try to make a new banner for my blog. This is silly since I rarely ever post here any more but I continue to attempt to do so because it’s a good exercise for me illustratively and it comes in handy when I make up my yearly SAJ calendar (that I really need to get a hop on right about now.) I updated my banner and I wanted to show it off on instagram but I had this really old moldy Japan post up! That means it’s time to blog. And what do you blog about when you haven’t blogged in a month? A mish-mash catch up of instagram photos of course.
    back-from-japanLet’s see… what happened in the month of October. I came back from Japan. It was great when I first came back with the dregs of jet lag still hanging on. For about two days I was not a morning person and I could stay up until midnight watching tv. That was fun. While it lasted.

    The girls loved all the presents I brought back for them. They’ve worn their costumes for days on end, as costumes and as pajamas. I wish I had bought more yukatas. Isn’t that how it always is? When you’re in another country you feel bad spending so much money on souvineers and wasting all your time shopping but when you get back you wish you had gotten three times as much as you did! Oh well. I guess that’s what makes imports so special.

    25th-Reunion-Bust

    The weekend after I got back from Japan I attended my 25th high school reunion and it was a big ol’ bust. But it was fun to spend a weekend in Palm Springs with my main man. I was looking forward to showing him off to all my old classmates but only 15 of them showed up. It was fun still. Not worth what I paid for in tickets and dinner and a hotel room but oh, well.

    And THEN! the next morning I woke up to a cockroach on my pillow. I kid you not. Four inches from my head a small brown beetle stared me back in the face, his antennae wiggling as if to say hi, good morning, welcome to the desert! This was not the romantic luxurious morning I had planned, especially since it happened at 7am. So we packed our bags in a dramatic rush and checked out. They comped us our room, which was nice but I’m not too excited to stay in JW Merriot any time soon.

    kids-will-be-kids

    Then back home to a week of single-parenting! Payam had a business trip for a week in the bay area and I was on my own. How did I do it? Of course one kid is easier than two but I swear it’s my kid who wore me out the most. It was drama drama drama with these two. Nothing too terrible just constant bickering and challenging me on every decision I ever made. I can say that I’m glad there is no real underdog in this group. They both stick up for themselves loud and clear. No kid is getting ignored in this family!

    pumpkin-patch-2015

    We made the most of our time though. We hit not one but TWO pumpkin patches and then ice skating too when Payam got back. Boy was I glad to see him. I underestimate how much of a support he is in just handling decisions alone. I love my kids and I love parenting but it’s sooo nice to have someone else back you up once in a while. I didn’t realize how mentally exhausted I was until he got back and I could just sit and let him answer all the questions for a minute or thirty.

    coloring-for-days

    Then it was mettaprints coloring week. We landed a big job for candy company and part of their display included our 3-D snowflakes and christmas trees but they didn’t like the white edges. So for a price we manually colored every single edge with black marker pen. For days and days and days and days. I am now officially an expert at coloring gator board with marker pen. Too bad I’ll never need this skill again because we are never taking on a job like this again, ever!! It was a pain in the butt! It’s pretty impossible to color edges black without screwing up. I had to have a crew to help me. We colored for days. Fumes were inhaled.

    Please keep your eyes out for these displays if you live in Chicago or New York. I’m anxious to see how they turned out.

    done-with-csa

    How goes it with the CSA boxes you ask? It doesn’t! I am officially over CSA. I joined because I thought I would get the best of the best produce in a box monthly, forcing me to eat and cook more healthily. I thought it would be local and fresh and challenging. It was all of the above BUT not so fresh! The last straw was last months beets. I love beets but these were not sweet and I’m tired of getting old beat up produce. I have a feeling that instead of giving CSA members the best they box up what won’t sell and get rid of it that way. I’m sorely disappointed. It could have been such a great thing. So instead I’m saving up my $22 and forcing myself to spend it at the Farmer’s Market on what I want instead. Bah Humbug.
    halloween-catchup

    I hate posting old pictures of holidays past but I just can’t be one of those bloggers that posts things ahead of when they happen. That’s too much like work and I do that over on Alphamom instead. Which went OFF this month, by the way.

    Merengue spidersEmpire State Building and the Chrysler Building costumes! The Space Needle AND The TransAmerica Building costumes. AND skull planters for succulents! It was a busy month. I do love this time of year though even if I don’t love spooky things that much.

    I made some bat garlands and some spooky trees for mettaprints. We used them for the school Halloween parade and that turned out pretty well. I’ll probably package them up and put them in our Etsy shop for next year.

    day-o-the-dead

    Of course I can’t leave out my Day of the Dead costume. This was a really fun, though not-so-original, costume. It was challenging and fun to do my make-up but it took entirely too long and we were so late to a Halloween Party at a friends house that I had no time to take proper pictures! Isn’t it frustrating when real life gets in the way of all this documenting we need to do?  Bloggers, man. It’s a tough job.

    We dressed up for two nights. The first night (a school parade event) Bug went as a pineapple which I thought was really really cute but she refused to let me do her hair up on the top of her head like a spikey pineapple. Nope. She wanted it down, hippie style, sprayed green. We went around and around arguing about it but she was stubborn. In the end, I called her dad and even he got in on the argument and we all decided together to let her have her creative license even though it MADE NO SENSE. That’s what happens when you have a family of creative people. Sometimes they don’t agree on their creative vision and you have to respect it even though IT MAKES NO SENSE!

    She went as a sad spike-less pineapple. We painted a yellow shirt with pineapple texture and she wore her pineapple shorts over some neon orange leggings. Just like I predicted, nobody knew what she was because she had no pineapple top so the next night (actual Halloween) she dressed us as a cute wolf and was adorable and got all the candy in the world.

    Moral of the story: Listen to your mom. But all in all, I’m glad that she had a vision and she executed it in the fashion that she wanted. I love that she has a strong vision and follows it even if it isn’t entirely successful. Pineapples have been her thing for a few months now. She has two pairs of pineapple shorts and Payam even bought some pineapple socks for himself just to make her day. It’s cute and funny.

    However, I am the pinterest queen and I’ve been following this pineapple trend for a while now. I predict llamas are next. They’ve been showing up for a few years now but I think winter 2015 is going to be the winter of the llama. And that is why I have a llama in my November banner. Now you know.

    cat-drama-rama

    Oh, the cat drama! I almost forgot about it even though while I’ve been typing this, one cat has ran over my laptop three times and successfully typed the number 8 across my screen while yowling and trying to kill the other cat who she can see through the window on the other side of my desk.

    Here’s the nitty gritty: The cats are NOT getting along. Still.

    While I was in Japan, Payam set up a baby gate between the girls hallway and the rest of the house. This has sort of kept my cats on the girl’s room side and his kitten, Lucy, safe on the other. The reason for the gate is the three am chase-Lucy-to-the-death all-out brawls that have been going on. They play nice in the daytime, everyone sleeps peacefully in their spots but then when all the people are  asleep, the cats all suddenly get wild hairs up their butts and think they have to have World War Three. It’s been bloody and blood-curdling. We tried all the tricks. The smelly plug-in thing with the special cat pheromones that are supposed to keep them calm, cat trees and cat boxes in every room…it’s all a bunch of bunk. These cats will NEVER get along!!!!

    The baby gate worked for a while but Aqui figured out that she could jump over it. At three in the morning of course. So now we have a schedule. Aqui gets to be an outside cat during the day (which she loves) and Fiesta and Lucy are somewhat civil to each other as long as they aren’t too close to the dividing baby gate. Then at night I put Aqui and Fiesta in Bug’s room and they spend the night there. It’s not the best solution but it’s better than Aqui getting eaten by coyotes and better than everyone waking up at 3am.

    Of course there are kinks to this plan. Fiesta thinks she can get attention by opening cupboards with her paws. So that’s why there are big fluffy blue arm rest pillows propped up against the linen closet. And we still have fights between Lucy and Aqui at the windows but at least nobody is getting their eyeballs clawed out.

    Lucy-Lucy-Lucy

    Yeah, cute little innocent Lucy. How could Aqui want to hunt her to the death? I don’t know. But I have a feeling if the tables were turned and Lucy was the bigger cat it would be the same.

    couch-potato-update

    That’s it! You are officially all caught up. See you next month. Maybe.

  • Bad Mom,  BIG news,  Bug,  Family Matters,  instagram,  Life Lessons,  spilling my guts

    Blogging for No One

    no-readers

    I logged into my wordpress account today and was shocked to see I only had one reader.  Stats don’t really matter anymore since I don’t have ads on this page and I never blog anymore anyway but I have to admit it took me and my ego a minute to digest. Really? Only one reader has clicked on this site today? What about all those google searches for ninja costumes and painted butterfly wings or chore charting printables? Where did those people go? Surely Pinterest sent over one or two people.

    I thought about this sudden lack of traffic a little bit. It’s not a big deal but it’s on the heels of work being slow and generally feeling like a failure, even though I know I’m not one. It’s usually during my hungriest times that I invent the my best work so this is not a bad thing even though my anxiety in the middle of the night would like you to think otherwise. And then I realized, I love blogging when nobody is reading! This is when I can ramble on and say whatever I like and I don’t have to think about this Aunt thinking this or that Uncle thinking that or that one lady who called me a cat murderer or my ex… etc etc.. you know, all the people you think about when you write publicly about your personal life on the internet. They’re not reading! I can write whatever I want to! I have a few things I really want to put out there in nether space.

    youmighthaveadrinkingproblem

    Like maybe I have a drinking problem? Just kidding. I’m pretty sure I don’t but I have to admit the worry has crossed my mind, especially since I come from a tee-totaling up-bringing.  But I think my drinking problem is related more to unnecessary calories than getting drunk. Which brings me to my next block of instagrams.

    stepping-up-my-game

    I have gained quite a bit of weight in the last year or so of happy-dating-life (Too many dinners out, too many tasty drinks, too many lattes, not so much working out…) so I’ve been trying to up my game by dressing fancier (earrings! make-up! new clothes!). I’ve been doing Stitch Fix for half a year now and I love it. It’s not the best if you are on a budget but it is GREAT for someone like me who hates to shop. I feel like I have my own personal stylist and she is AWESOME. She gets me better than I get me. None of my stitch fix outfits are pictured but I’m going to try and take more pictures of them in the future.

    mothersday

    Next random subject: Mother’s Day. If I’ve learned anything in my life of forty-some years I’ve finally learned that if I want something to happen I have to take the initiative.

    It’s funny how family dynamics change as you get older. When you’re a kid you’re always getting carted off to some relatives house for big dinners and festivities and you take it for granted thinking it’s always going to be that way. And it is for a little while. You have your own family and you cart them off to your parents or your grandparents but then at some point the grandparents die and the parents are too tired to throw dinners and family gatherings. If you want your family to get together YOU have to make the plans. If you don’t nothing happens.

    This is kind of a big deal. I sat in my favorite gold rocking chair and it dawned on me: I am the matriarch of my family now. I have to make the plans.

    I day-dreamed up a lovely brunch with Smitten Kitchen’s boozy baked French Toast and then I made it happen. And guess what? It was awesome. I just need to step into this new job and plan like a mother.

    After brunch we all went to the beach and I sat next to my mom on the sand without any wifi-connected devices and we talked for two hours. It was the best.

    buggalicious

    Which brings me to my kid. Oh, Bug. Where should I start? She’s a gamer. She can play minecraft for four hours straight if I don’t watch her and force her to log off. She also loves these little shopkin characters that I call “squigs.” They’re pencil toppers in the shapes of grocery store products and apparently they are all the rage. Or maybe they were all the rage. Who knows.

    She wanted them for ages and begged for them but I didn’t know where to buy them and it just wasn’t top of my list of things to do. Then one day I discovered they sold them at Michael’s, a destination I seem to end up at every week (much to my chagrin) so I picked her up a couple mystery packs as payment for modeling for my alphamom projects. She was overjoyed. She devoured their packaging, reading every line of mouse type and discussing it with me while I listened half-heartedly. She couldn’t wait to take her little characters to school the next day. I think she even slept with them under her pillow.

    The next day we were in a mad rush to get to school, as we often are, and somehow she accidentally dropped one between her bedroom and the car. When we got to school she was in a panic. Where was Waffle Sue!!? Her distress was palpable.

    I wanted to be the tough mom and make her deal with the consequences of being late but as we stood in the crowd of parents and students during the weekly pep-rally, I just couldn’t do it. They were handing out awards that day and it was going on FOREVER. I know this is bad parenting but as they read off name after name after name, my eyes glazed over. I looked over at Bug mischievously and said, “Do you think going home to get Waffle Sue is worth a late notice?”

    She nearly jumped for joy. Waffle Sue was SO worth a late notice in her eyes. She hasn’t had a late notice all year so we snuck off to the car like two delinquents. I know some people would probably shake their heads at this but hey, nobody’s reading!

    We drove like the wind back home. She stayed in the car and I busted my butt up the stairs. I figured I’d retrace her steps and probably find it faster than she would. Sure enough, there was Waffle Sue, face down on the top step. I didn’t even have to unlock the door. I raced back to the car and drove as fast as I could safely back to school.

    The whole trip probably took us less than 10 minutes and when we got back to school, kids were still milling around and not even in their classrooms yet. Bug probably could have snuck into class and nobody would have even known she was gone but she opted to take a late pass anyway. I thought it was kind of cool and she felt special.

    After school I couldn’t wait to hear a full report on how much fun she had with her squigs. Did her friends have Waffle Sue too? Did they invent new games at recess? How did it all go over?

    Poor Bug. She just looked down at the ground and said that her friends decided that Shopkins weren’t cool anymore. What?!!

    Pfft! Kids, man.

    But I’ll always treasure that memory anyway. Waffle Sue will always have a special spot in my heart.
    whatsinmycsabox

    And that has NOTHING to do with the picture above but I’m just going to let all my blogging rules go out the window because nobody is reading and I don’t care! Wooo hoo!

    I’m signed up for my local CSA box that comes to the farm across the street. It’s the best thing ever. Except I can’t always keep up with all the greens. I’m struggling with what to do with cabbage. I’m not really a big slaw fan (though I do like it) and I seem to have it coming out my ears. But I love the box as a whole because it only costs $22 a week and my fridge is always bursting with the best of the best fresh vegetables. The other night I made myself a dinner of just pan-friend green beans in butter and nothing else and it was delicious!

    I wish I could be on one of those shows where a chef comes to your house and cooks with whatever you have on hand. Somebody could cook a badass meal in my kitchen. Why can’t it be me?! But I’m trying. I’m getting better at cooking (besides burning things constantly with my electric stove). I’ve been cooking a lot with Payam and that always works out well.

    Speaking of cooking and Payam and showing the people you love that you love them with food…I have some really big news that I’m a little scared to share but I’m really excited about too.

    I’m moving in with Payam in August. I know. This is big. Living in sin and all that… But I’ve been married before and I don’t want to do it again. I feel one hundred percent committed to him and in my struggling-with-faith eyes, staying in this relationship every day feels like a bigger honor than a piece of paper. It’s been a long journey to this decision with some twists and turns that I can’t write about on the internet (even if nobody reads) but it feels right and I’m super excited about it. Both of our (conservative) families know and surprisingly, they are letting us go right on ahead and make this decision with less struggle than I expected.

    Payam has a nice house with an extra bedroom for Bug so we are all very excited about blending families. We are also super excited about blending the pet famlilies. Three cats, one dog, YAY!  And cooking together and just generally being a family. Tag-team parenting is so much better than single-parenting. I’m just scared for the teenage years but maybe it will be better with a partner.

    I’m thinking so.

    *I know some people are reading. (And I love you very much.) I think the latest wordpress update I did messed something up but I don’t care because it’s a good thing to write for yourself and not worry about who’s reading. Maybe I can keep it up.