Category childhood

Random Word Generator Prompts

Lauren

Like a random word post, and it’s been awhile, so figured I’d give it a whirl today. But first- I JUST realized that after I send a post live I often have some editing (misspelled words, etc.) that I correct and update. Those updates do NOT seem to be going to those of yall who get the post emailed to you. I will try to fix that and also be more vigilant with my pre-launch editing moving forward.

Sheep: My brother and I had the odd history of growing up in a city neighborhood with a feral sheep. His name was Stinky, and he supposedly belonged to the young married couple at the end of the street, but he wandered wherever he wanted to. As toddlers my brother and I was terrified of this huge, male, unshaved sheep. One time he trapped us in the garage and we climbed on my Dad’s car to escape him. I prefer Stinky to any religious or political sheep though, boy those are the worst.

Material: Well hmmm, I’m having a hell of a time finding acceptable fabric/material for new curtains in the kitchen. I want something Scandinavian with a white background and multi color print without being too twee or whimsical… or geometric. Hence the “hell of a time.” I did finally find fabric for my slipper chair in our living room. I reversed it so the side showing is actually the back of the fabric, but we like it more like that. I recovered the chair last weekend.

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Wouldn’t have worked for the curtains though…but similar to style I’m looking for.

Warning: Had enough health warnings lately that the husband and I are walking more, drinking less, and cutting back on cheese. Cholesterol. Weight. General weird ailments (plantar fasciitis sucks but is almost cleared up) that it’s time to just commit. Heed the warnings… we’re trying.

Art: I still haven’t finished the 4′ painting I’m doing of my husband… but I hung it on the wall so it didn’t get toddlerized- I better finish it or that will be the picture I’m “almost done with” for the next 40 years. I showed it to my mom and she asked if his hair was supposed to be a bike helmet. Actually its a bandana in the picture I’m working from… but thanks Mom.

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I swear the rule needs to be don’t hang it up until you’re done…

Bullet: At our last house I found a bullet in our hallway once. We didn’t have guns. It remains one of the weirdest feelings to bend down and pick that up of the carpet. Someone brought a gun and bullets in my house. Or didn’t and didn’t realize a random bullet fell out of their pocket. Or… I have no idea. It could be from some totally different scenario I haven’t considered. Weird to think you know so much less than you think you do about what goes on around you sometimes.

Advice: I try to stockpile advice for the girls’ use later in life. Like, if a boy doesn’t seem a little nervous around them, they need to realize he’s trying to play them, not love them. Or that washing you’re face with a face cleanser every night really DOES make a difference. Or that starting to moisturize in your 20s is important. Or that there are no princesses waiting to be rescued in this family- they need to be women who are always capable of rescuing themselves. So far there are only two pieces of advice I’ve ever given them that seems to have stuck. First is that they should try to be the hero of their own stories. And the second is that the thinner the eyebrow the crazier the woman. GOD HELP ME why that last one that I just tossed off without thinking after a couple of glasses of wine should be one of the main ones they remember and cleave to, but parenting is weird like that. I bet you anything they mention it in my eulogy. I SAID IT ONE TIME FOR CHRIST’S SAKE!

Lessons Learned

Lauren 4 Comments
  1. I used to babysit regularly for a family that lived in a haunted house. The TV used to flick on and off, it always felt like you were being watched, and I had a kid run behind me laughing while I was doing dishes once… turned around- nothing. Went to check on the kids I was babysitting… all three in bed and sound asleep. And I mean SOUND asleep- they weren’t pulling one over on the babysitter.
    • Lesson: atheism doesn’t negate a belief in ghosts.
  2. One time in high school I started my period and knew, I mean KNEW, that I didn’t have any supplies… but I frantically rummaged through my backpack anyway. AND OH MY GOD I FOUND A TAMPON I WAS SAVED! I then immediately dropped it in the toilet.
    • Lesson: Sometimes having something and losing it is exactly like never having it at all.
  3. I was running into the grocery store one time in the rain and didn’t realize how deep a puddle was and SWOOOSH, kicked up a huge plume of water (one leg on the backswing) and sunk halfway up my calf in the puddle. A guy running the other direction DIED laughing to see it. (I mean died- stopped, doubled over, grabbing his stomach, the whole bit.) He called out an apology as I ran past him, but I yelled back that if it had to happen I was glad that someone saw it at least.
    • Lesson: With the right mindset the phrase “As long as somebody laughed” will get you through a hell of a lot in this world.
  4. Lice. (Shudder)
    • Lesson: Even if you think you’re so busy you don’t have any time to breath- somehow you’ll find 2 hours a night for weeks on end if you’re motivated.
  5. Steamed King Crab Legs (see here) is the hands down easiest dinner anyone could ever cook. Lentil Soup is the least expensive meal that will feed you for the week for just a few bucks.
    • Lesson: you can have fast… or you can have cheap… but you ain’t getting both.
  6. So this one time… I got pregnant? When I had my tubes tied? (see here) And we proceeded to freak the fuck out for months and months and months and now we all love that child like it’s going out of style.
    • Lesson: Aethism doesn’t negate an in depth understanding of the phrase “Man proposes, God disposes.”
  7. I got up to speak as a sophomore in high school to defend Block Scheduling because I believed in it SO much- I KNEW it was preparing me for the college experience and letting me learn much more in depth. (Longer classes, only 4 a day instead of 7 for the first half of the year with another set of 4 classes for the 2nd half of the year.) I loved that schedule… until the way my math classes synced up and I’d had an entire year between Algebra I and Algebra II.
    • Lesson: Just because you believe something doesn’t make it true.

Cooking with Toddlers

Lauren 2 Comments

Last night I documented (for posterity and anyone considering having a third child) what cooking with a toddler is like.

This first picture is 10 minutes into cooking. I was able to focus and so was able to pound chicken breasts (tenderize and flatten) and get them in the griddle pan and snap the green beans. What’s my secret? Ye old blind eye.

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1,000 piece puzzle in an even film over entire house.

2 seconds later…

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999 piece puzzle

2 seconds later…

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I promise dinner will taste better than puzzle if you just give me a few more minutes, sweet child.

Negative time later… think we moved backwards 5 minutes. Time concepts get hazy in the kitchen wormhole.

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NOT THE SANDWICH BAGS, STAAP!

Time sense totally gone by now. Me revert back to primitive, pre-civilization time concepts. Somewhere between setting of bright sky ball and earth mother sleep in blanket of darkness later…

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Insert soundtrack of desperately sad and hungry toddler crying here.

If it was only 10 minutes later how did I age 3 years?

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YOU’RE F-ING WELCOME

Did I mention she woke up at 4:30am today? She woke up at 4:30am today.

Good thing she’s cute.

Lua’i

Lauren 1 Comment

It was a normal day.

Heading to our niece’s birthday party, we were ALMOST there when the toddler started throwing up. Our eight year old was sitting next to her and gagged and puffed out her cheeks and turned towards her older sister. Monty Python came instantly to mind.

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Accurate Squash Recreation

Screeching halt. Older children pile out of the car. Clean up is spotty and Mcguyvered from a Target bag, napkins of various origin, and an old water bottle from under the drivers seat. How long it’d been there I have no idea, but maybe the leached out phthalates would have a disinfecting property. I have my doubts, but beggars and choosers and all.

Once we’re at the party the toddler gets a bath because of Puke Hair and we chalk it up to a long car ride after a lunch of raspberries and cheese cubes.

It wasn’t the car ride.

After having to borrow not one but two teeshirts for myself from my sister in law, no extra clothes remaining for the toddler, and the other brother and sister in law vowing to take the older girls home later- my husband and I set off for home, over an hour away. Me in the back seat (puked on again at this point, but I’m not asking for shoes this time for Christ’s sake) holding a towel around the baby, and we’re trying to navigate by memory through the neighborhood.

And that’s when this happens.

“Did we take a left on Kaanapali Ln. or was it Kipahulu Dr.?”

“No, no, left on Manawianui Dr., right on Moku Manu Dr., and then another right on Heleakalaka Dr.”

“Man, I don’t recognize Keanahululu Ln., I think we went to far.”

“Does Lamaloa Ln. run into Nuuanu Dr., you think?”

“Crap! There’s Keanahululu Ln. again!”

That’s right, on top of everything else we were now lost in Tahitian Village in Bastrop, where all the streets have Hawaiian names! LONG and difficult and inexplicable Hawaiian names- none of which is “Aloha.” (Someone tell the developer Tahiti isn’t Hawaii)

THIS SHIT ACTUALLY HAPPENED IN MY LIFE.

(We made it out of the neighborhood and the toddler was fine the next day, but it was a confusing and puke filled commute. Commpuke? Maybe. And if you think for a MINUTE that I didn’t google map the neighborhood so I could use accurate street names you don’t know me very well.)

A Vow of Cake

Lauren 8 Comments

We had our middle daughter’s 8th birthday party yesterday at noon. And so when 10:17am rolled around and my husband and I were in bed and instead of getting up he pulled the covers over his head I was so, so proud of him. And I then enthusiastically joined him under the covers. It’s like a fort of delayed obligations… I recommend it. (Yes we still have a baby around. We got up at 6:30am with her and then crawled back in bed at 9:30am when she went down for a nap.)

Now, the house had been cleaned, food bought, and the cake baked the night before- we’re not total monsters over here. But what were the first 2 things I did upon finally getting up and getting ready at 10:30am? Winged eyeliner (HEY I’VE NEVER TRIED THIS BEFORE SURE SEEMS LIKE A GOOD TIME FOR IT) and painting my toenails. THIS is what happens when I don’t make a list, for god’s sake.

We got everything done by 11:54am though, so it all worked out.

And I think we can all agree that cake is the worst. Not mine, I make decent cake- I just mean in general.  Icing is gross. And even the best cake is just nuthin’ special. I don’t tie up a lot of pride in my baking- but I made a promise, many many years ago that I would make every one of my children’s birthday cakes. And they get to pick whatever kind of cake they want. Shark cake? plastic sharks on top. Giraffe cake? Plastic giraffes on top. Dolphin cake? You see where I’m going with this, I think. And I have made each and every one and did it with the hand mixer I bought at a Big Lots at 18 before I left for college and that has somehow made it through about a MILLION moves and that I actually don’t think I used, ever, until I started making my kid’s birthday cakes.

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Image by C. Glass… half full? Half empty? if I was that photographer I’d go by my full first name, honestly.

It’s a weird promise to have made, and I made it only to myself- but it absolutely stands in as a symbol of the mom I want to be. It stands in as a succinct version of all of this- rolled up in my head.

  • I promise to be the mom that can make you dinner.
  • and make you laugh and to also make sure your sense of humor is top tier.
  •  to mend your clothes and sew on buttons and who can make curtains if I have to and gives you a clean house to live in.
  • I promise to call you outside to see possums and hawks and birds and snakes. And point out the biggest earthworm I’ve ever seen in my life holy hell that thing is HUGE!
  • I promise to impart upon you a concept of self that is more than to be decorative.
  • But also to let you see that being a feminist badass doesn’t mean having to deny one iota of the nurturing that goes into home cooked dinners or mending or you know. Cake baking.
  • I promise to give you a chore each and every time you say “I’m bored” and that you’ll get to a point where you’ll open your eyes wide in horror after you say it and say “NEVERMIND, NEVERMIND!” and run off to your room to do something creative.
  • I promise to make you play on at least one team in your life.
  • But I also promise to not overbook you because free time is important to kids, and also your father and I like sleeping in on Saturdays.
  • I promise you’ll love reading.
  • And hell no you can’t get a phone!
  • And I promise to sing you a song at night as often as I can and you know what? You’re 10 and 8. I really should just do it EVERY night still, because how much longer will you even let me? But the baby still gets the Silent Night treatment every night.
  • I promise to have National Geographic in the bathroom and that it’s totally cool if you drop them in the bath, I’m just glad you’re reading them. (hasn’t happened yet, but they’re in there for y’all. Ready for whenever you pick one up.)
  • And while I’ll bake your birthday cake, I promise to never get tied up in the Pinterest-y competition between moms and do all the stupid other crap that isn’t for the kid who’s birthday it is, but to show off for the other moms. I’m looking at you, mom who prints labels saying “Caitlin’s Birthday!” for the goddamn water bottles.
  • Also? No goodie bags, ever. Though we did give out whoopee cushions that one memorable time. That was awesome.

And so, I will continue to make birthday cake, every year, three times a year and neither rain nor snow nor heat nor gloom of night will stay this faithful courier from the swift completion of her appointed rounds.

And the only other promise I’ve made myself that I have never ever once wavered on? No more tequila. Super committed to both. Make kids’ birthday cakes and no more tequila.

Words to live by.

Of Lice and Zen

Lauren

Crap.

So yesterday our oldest put her pet mice (named Almond and Honey) on her shoulder and I cracked a joke about “Oh no! You have head-mice!” She laughed. I didn’t- because holy hell. When was the last time I checked your head for actual lice?!

She didn’t have any. Her sister did though. F*****CK!

So it’s laborious nit picking around here. It’s dousing a small little head in burning lice shampoo made out of flowers. Think I’m making that up? The main ingredient in Rid is pyrethrum, made from chrysanthemum blossoms.

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Flowers of louse-y death. 

“A Chrysanthemum by any other name would also totally reek.” These aren’t roses, but it’s not the very worst smell out there.

And so there will be much laundry and bagging up of stuffed animals, and weeks of staying on top of it… hours a night on nit checks. But, it’s an opportunity to sit and talk for uninterrupted time with my child. And besides, all I want is for her to feel better and to take care of this for her- it’s never had me angry or frazzled or super stressed out about whenever we’ve had to deal with lice. There is nothing to be done except slow waaaaaay down and invest the time to fix it. And that isn’t a bad thing, actually- the brakes getting thrown on life sometimes. So, I know it makes for a zippy title, but it is true, I do get quite zen about it.

And so I’ll go through the next few weeks with hands that smell faintly of flowers of death, which makes me feel like a minor Hindu deity in the Indian pantheon. And that isn’t a bad thing either, actually.

I will try to grab those silver linings as they race by, whenever I can…