All Mine

My first real apartment was about 600 square feet. All mine. It was considered desirable because it was a two-room studio, which meant there was a wall between the living room/kitchen portion and the bedroom/bathroom portion. No door, but a wall.

All mine.

For the first few months I was there, I would get up early and sip my coffee from my newly purchased yellow coffee mugs (Corelle outlet). I would sit in my alcove on my inherited chairs in front of my inherited teeny-tiny table pushed up against my bay window. That was my favorite feature of the apartment. Other than it being all mine.

I think about this apartment a lot lately. While I love my little chaotic home life, some days I am wistful about being ALONE. Sipping a cup of coffee, watching what I want on TV, cooking for one and hand-washing the dishes afterward.

Mornings now are spent listening to Wee 'Burb's chatting get more and more insistent until I know she has to be removed from the crib. I get her dressed, and we brush our teeth and hair. Then she plays a little game where she says "where daddy?" until he comes and gets her. He plays with her a little bit while I throw on some clothes to take her across the street to daycare. I come home and either take the dog for a walk if I have a lighter deadline week, or pour myself a cup of coffee (out of my wedding present, a set of glass coffee mugs from William Sonoma) and log in to work.

This chaos? Also all mine. In a different way. In a wonderful way. But in a different way. For now? I am never alone. Also? I am never lonely.

Kitsch-en Window

You guys, I am forcing Lola to do a monthly column here. Here's her most recent post for me. Poor Lola has been in the middle of insanity trying to help her parents move all the while beginning renovations on her own condo. Please to enjoy.

I’m remodeling my kitchen. These words strike terror in the heart of anyone who’s ever had to undertake a remodeling project. I could tell you about how I remodeled my bathroom a few years back, but that’s still something I’m only able to discuss with my therapist. And yet, here I am, back for more, more, MORE! Because I am Lola and I’m a masochist.

But the reality of it is, I need to turn that early-70s dimly lit hell into something that’s passably 21st- century. Of course I don’t want it to bankrupt me, so all the changes are as cosmetic as possible (at first, I thought I could get away with maybe just changing the cabinet handles…or maybe just blind-folding all my guests, but realized that wasn’t going to be enough).

First of all, it has this awesome fluorescent-light drop ceiling with yellowed-out panels that make me want to cry. It also makes the ceiling about a foot lower than it is. Here’s a shot. That ceiling has GOT to go. Unless I buckle down and wait for plastic-panel drop ceilings to come back in style over the next 50 years or so. Hey, it could happen, right? Martha Stewart will SO embrace the look one day! Or Martha Stewart’s floating head in a jar will.

But what other retro horrors lurk in Lola’s freakshow kitchen? And why haven’t the producers of That 70s Show ever contacted me for a shooting location? Let’s take a look. How about the wallpaper that hides inside my nice, white cabinets?! Have you ever seen a more groovy pattern of green and poopish gold paisley? Well, that’s just the TOP layer of wallpaper, people! I’m sure even more psychedelic treasures hide within!

So yes, traveling back in time got me thinking about other faded trends of the past millennium. Who remembers mood lipstick of the 1980s? It always came out kind of beigeish/greenish/brownish on me, but maybe that’s because my mood never changes? And then there were jelly shoes! And speaking of jelly, who was onboard with the jelly roll pens – my favorite was this barely-there pink that was completely illegible to my high school English teacher. Who needs to study when you can just write gibberish in almost-invisible ink?

And how about the slightly more recent trend of the Rachel – that hairdo that looked so effortless yet took hours to recreate? For some reason, I usually have a perfect example of that retro classic whenever I roll out of bed on the days that I work from home. Yet when I actually have to go into the office, it takes me hours to concoct anything decent on my head. Why, oh cruel gods of Friends episodes past?? What have I done to anger thee??

I’m sure I’m leaving a few awesome trends out, but I’m sure you guys can think of some! What were some of your regrettable or perhaps nostalgic trend favorites?

Weekend Wrap-Up

I thought this would be our first appearance of spring here in Minnesota. It lasted about three hours, I think.

I don't know for sure because I didn't really leave the house on Saturday. The roommate and hubs ran a 7k downtown. We'd had a less than stellar tantrum week with Wee 'Burb so I opted to stay home with her. I also opted to stay inside because she had an epic meltdown at Target and I was too gun shy to take her out of doors in her current state.

In exchange for a day full of baby 'burbdom, Scott took her over while I went to my first BLOGGER MEETUP! It's so lame how excited I was to meet Small Town Mommy, her friend from Redhead Ranting, and my blogger bestie Tenaciously Yours. We met up for an awesome buffet at Santorini. I adore their feta and chicken salad, it might be the highlight of my weekend other than hanging out and talking cooking with these awesome ladies. Please go read their blogs if you don't already!

I love to hang out in my jammies in the rain, so as soon as I got home, I jumped into sweats and settled in with coupons. Until all hell broke loose.

Last night, Scott had to work late and at 1:30 a.m. I heard banging in the bathroom. The door had been sticky all week, and it finally held tight. I had to put all my (half asleep) weight into the door to bust him out. So he set out to Home Depot to purchase new doorknobs.

All was cool until he started to do the work. Wee 'Burb wanted to help. I had to stop her from helping. Often.

Cue about 2 hours of tantrums. She'd be fine for a second and then literally FLING herself around the house, sobbing hysterically.

One said fling took her face-first into a drawer on the coffee table.

She immediately grew a goose egg that made her face look like those kids from The Hills Have Eyes. I panicked for the normal Mom I-hate-when-my-kid-is-hurt reason. And then a rather vain reason.

She's supposed to be a flower girl in my little brother's wedding next weekend. As it is, she's not walking. Now she'll be the girl who sits in her flower girl dress with a) a ginormous bruise on her little face or b) a ton of makeup a la Toddlers and Tiaras because I freak out and cover her with concealer.

But for whatever reason, this knocked her into a better attitude. And we even got this far with the whole "on your feet NOW, girl!"



You can't see the bruise, right? RIGHT? Lie to me, people!


That's her standing with no help! Oh, and tearing apart my house in her insane rages.

So how were your weekends? Have you done Blogger Meetups if you have a blog? I was very nervous meeting all these people I read all the time, but actually hanging out with them was even more fun than I had imagined.

Where I Begin to Question if I am Just a Luddite

Lately I seem to be taken over by machinery that’s far too complicated for my simple mind.

It started when we moved in and Scott bought this fancy schmancy washer/dryer combo. All the features he listed by way of explanation of why he had spent a small fortune on said machinery made me shudder: it has a feature where it turns the dryer off when the clothes are done, you can set the water levels, you can set it to do jeans specifically, it has a setting for whites. On and on and on.

What the hell happened to delicate and permanent press? High medium and low dryer settings?

I studied the manual as hard as I studied for the SATs, so afraid was I that I would break the damn thing. About two months in, the washer flashed at me “F-22.” I had to search through the manual to determine that “F-22” meant that I had put too many clothes in the damn washer. I mean, the door closed, nothing was hanging out. But it had done its washer computation and determined the size of the clothing would not work with the water levels I had pre-set.

I am ashamed to confess I muttered, more than once, “eff you F-22” in my investigation.

Also? I’m very resentful that this machine thinks it knows better than me when clothes are dry. So many times I’ve set the dryer and gone out and run errands or something, come home to grab a pair of pants and find out the bottoms are still soaked. And yet the “clothes dry” light is blinking.

Oh my God, you guys, the lights! It’s like an effing NASA launch in my utility room!

It took me weeks to figure out how to disable the beeps, because that about drove me to the looney bin. One beep for when the cycle is almost done, one beep when it is done, another beep if you’ve left the clothes in there for an hour (if I leave them in there less than three days, I consider that an efficient week, never mind a freaking HOUR).

More recently, my mother-in-law bought me a new electric toothbrush. You guys, I’m a girl that gets excited about coupons, so you can guess what something like this did to me. I freaking love practical gifts, and my precious electric toothbrush had broken 6 months ago, prompting me to spend those 6 months complaining about how rough the manual toothbrushes are made these days, and constantly licking my teeth, swearing they felt fuzzy even when I had brushed them multiple times.

So I open the box and there’s like 50 pieces to it! And 3 manuals. One for the setup, one for the toothbrush itself, and one for this gadget that’s like…well, I’m not sure. A GPS unit?

The manual says it will monitor optimal brushing pressure, time how long I brush (which actually would be quite useful, as my concept of time goes out the window at night when I just want to hit the pillow), and locate hidden planets in the atmosphere.

It took me about 20 minutes to set up the actual toothbrush and I am ashamed to admit the extra part sits in the original bag, so afraid I am of somehow rendering the whole thing useless by attaching it.

What do you think? Are machines running or ruining our lives? Or am I just turning into a Luddite in my 30s?

Arm the Dustbuster: I'm Going In!

We are under attack! You guys, it is all out war in Suburbia.

I think I just saw Wee ‘Burb carrying the portable vacuum cleaner and telling her fellow daycare dwellers “This is my ‘Nam, man, this is my ‘Nam.”

It started innocently enough. Since we bought our house a few years ago, Scott and I made the decision to live upstairs, despite their being a really nice master bedroom downstairs. It was born mostly of not trusting the little ones we planned on having not to burst into flames in the time it would take us to get upstairs. Monitors schmonitors, we went for proximity.

So we had no problem giving the room up to my friend who’s living with us awhile. Really we’d only been using it as a second closet and storage area for a ton of crap. Apparently, so had the bugs. My friend was nice enough not to mention it for a few months, but then she finally broke down and asked for a portable vacuum. Our regular one doesn’t have a hose, you see, and she’d been attempting to kill bugs with an old issue of Food Network Magazine, but it wasn’t cutting it anymore.

She had an invasion. I felt bad, and gross, and kind of dirty. But I just gave her the vacuum and let her loose. And left a few new magazines downstairs…the newer ones have more oomph when you smack the spiders, I hear.

Well, the troops moved North and it ain’t pretty. Internet,  meet my enemy!

Wikipedia will tell you it’s known as Boisea trivittata, but around these parts it’s known as the Box Elder Bug. Wikipedia also says “In late spring and early summer, groups of 50-200+ bugs may gather on house siding or brick, usually in a sunny spot. A month or two later there may be pairs of them mating, connected end to end, also in groups of three and four.”

So, let’s review, shall we? These damn things are having a bug orgy on my house, and the single dateless losers are taking shelter in my house…or, well, my vacuum as the case may be. And it’s OCTOBER! That’s neither spring nor early summer. WTF?

I had read a mixture of soap and water can do the trick, and Wikipedia agrees. But, let’s face, it, the man who took Caddyshack-like measures to kill a freaking gopher that was only TRYING to get into the house was not going to take the actual invasion lightly.

All I know is, he came in with a jug of something yellow and poisonous-looking, nodded and walked out the back door. And I’m informed there have been few sightings since.

All Scott is willing to say is “the price of war is eternal vigilance,” but he looks pretty smug, so something tells me nuclear actions were taken.

Suburban Soap Opera

First off, just want to announce I am extending my Shutterfly giveaway until Wednesday. So comment on that post if you want a chance to win some free codes from Shutterfly.

After this post on hiding candy in the broiler from LambAround I had to tell you all about a similar domestic disaster experience. Looking back, the outcome was obvious, but at the time it made so much sense!

After years living in Boston with no dishwasher, I made a short list of requirements for my first apartment back here in MN. One of those requirements was a dishwasher! I was so happy when I got my new place, and sweet sweet freedom from dishpan hands.

For the record, my job at home growing up was to empty the dishwasher, I rarely loaded and I definitely never turned it on.

So about a year in to my awesome dishwasher apartment living, I had a big holiday baking session. I threw all my pots and pans in the dishwasher when I realized that I had no detergent. It was after 10 p.m. and there was nowhere convenient to grab detergent around me.

But I didn’t want to leave the dishes unwashed, either, because I was afraid the baking ingredients would cake on and then it would take forever to clean. See? I knew that much! I also knew I definitely didn’t want to hand wash.

And then a lightbulb went off! I’d hand wash it with Palmolive, so I may as well just shove some of that in. Now, I thought this through. I only used about a Tablespoon of the stuff because I figured “it’s probably a little more potent than my normal detergent.”

Yup, just a little.

So I go in to my living room and watch TV and when I hear the dishwasher shut off, I get up to empty it. I’m responsible like that.

Have you ever just had a break from reality when you look at something? Like you’re seeing it, but you’re not seeing it? That’s how I felt when I stared at the floor and saw 3-4 inches of bubbles covering my kitchen floor. I actually thought to myself “how the hell did THOSE get there” and I’m looking around on my CEILING like somehow it rained bubbles in my third floor apartment and I just missed it.

It wasn’t until I saw the dishwasher puking bubbles, and I opened it to find my muffin tins taking a happy little bubble bath that I made the connection.

So in honor of LambAround and I, share your biggest DUH disaster!

The Troops are Descending!

All of my out-of-town co-workers are coming to Minnesota for a meeting this coming week, and I thought it was a good idea to host a little get-to-know-you cocktail party the night everyone arrives. Two weeks ago when I brought this idea up to my very enthusiastic boss, it seemed like a great idea. A week ago when I finalized plans, it seemed like an okay idea. Today, it seems like a really, really, REALLY bad idea.

What I didn’t know two weeks ago was that because most of my co-workers are traveling from the East coast to get here, they’d essentially be gone for most of Tuesday and most of Friday traveling back and forth. Well, apparently our clients don’t care about that? Can you believe it? I mean they want to sell their wares while I am trying to get ready to host a party. The nerve! And since I am one of the few who doesn’t have to travel, I am the fortunate individual who gets the privilege of handling all the deadlines that interfere with the travel dates. A lot of deadlines. 12-hour-day deadlines. Ripping hair out deadlines.

So, yesterday and today were spent making up for the week of things I was supposed to do last week while I was tearing my hair out and nearing the point where I hit the fetal position and curse the day I ever said “I love entertaining, it’s no problem.” Turns out, it’s not super easy to cram a week’s worth of stuff in two days. Particularly when you have a baby who clings to mommy like a spider monkey on a football. I can barely go to the bathroom without a meltdown, much less clean my house, get the food, plan the food, and clean the entire outside of my house.

Right, the outside of my house. Have I mentioned I haven’t exactly developed a green thumb? Or that we sort of never replaced the patio chairs we borrowed, and then returned? The list of things we’ve been too lazy or too cheap to do all of a sudden piled up, and this is pretty much what our day consisted of.

Thank GOODNESS for my husband and friend, who helped while I dealt with aforementioned spider monkey half the day. Apparently Wee ‘Burb doesn’t love sitting outside while mom plants flowers. Apparently she wants food and attention or something. Rotten kid.

Anyway, so that’s my explanation as to why I haven’t posted, and it serves as a warning to anyone local that if you do hear screams of “what the hell was I thinking??” it’s just me reminding myself to never volunteer again.

Confession and Introduction

Confession: I DID actually grow up in the suburbs. However, being raised by native New Yorkers, I had sort of an odd upbringing in the sense that I didn’t feel a lot of the “suburban experience,” at least as I am experiencing it now. Granted, we knew our neighbors, and when I was a kid I rode bikes with them and did lemonade stands and all those quaint childhood rituals, so I wasn’t totally citified. I just never felt truly at home in the suburbs where I would go to school and hear teachers say to other kids “oh I had your mom in class” or had a mom ask my mom “you’re the black Stephanie’s mom, right?” The second I turned 18 and graduated high school I was on the next flight to Boston, determined never to return to suburbia again.

I kept my word until I turned 30. My then fiancé and I had been living together in a very small condo near the city and it was time to make the leap to a house. We looked at about 40 houses and could not decide what to do. The younger part of us, “Young Hip Urban Us,” wanted a cool starter house in the cities, dreaming of pushing our baby’s stroller through the streets of Minneapolis, getting ice cream at the mom and pop shops, buying outfits at the little boutiques.

Then the market tanked and reality kicked in and we realized a starter house could end up being a 10-year commitment. We began to factor in school districts, resale value, all the adult things we’d been studiously avoiding as problems for “Future Us.”

So Future Us began to explore the suburbs, trying to stay as close to the city as possible. And our realtor kept leading us further and further West. When she mentioned the city we currently live in, we thought, not for the first time, about firing her. Because there was NO WAY we were going to live “out there.” I had heard tales about that city when I was growing up. I recall being jealous of them because they always got school off when it snowed since the dirt roads weren’t plowed fast enough or kids couldn’t get around on their tractors.

Our realtor was determined it would meet all our requirements and more, and we very grudgingly agreed to see a few houses and witness the new highway that supposedly meant we could get to the farm land in under an hour. We were dubious to say the least, but true enough, we did get there in about 30 minutes from the condo. It wasn’t ideal, but it would mean less than a 45 minute commute for both of us, which was one of our deal-breakers.

In addition to the highway, the neighborhood boasted miles of trails for biking and walking, a beautiful new community center, steadily rising schools, and even a Target or two. And once we saw the price tag on a house with a yard, a playground in the back, easy access to the trails, we were sold. And thus began what I have to say has been one of the strangest rides of my life, including wildlife, door-to-door salesmen, and more adventures to come, I’m sure. If you can relate, share your goofy suburban stories, and if you’re one of my city friends, well here’s to you! I’ll always be a little jealous of you, but I have better stories, so there!