befabulo.us

It's not ALL good.

I'm afraid it's been long enough since I've posted that I'm going to have to do one of those random bits and pieces update posts.  So here's the good, and the not so good.

Good: The weather is fantastic.  Admittedly, there is a pretty serious drought going on, but on a day-to-day basis, it's hard to complain about blue skies, breezes, and high temperatures ranging from 75 to 80.

Good: Since I've admitted that yoga is not agreeing with my foot, it's been behaving beautifully.  I am happily bipedal and only very occasionally bothered by a twinge of nerve-ishness.

Bad: My foot is fine, but my husband has taken over the role of Family Gimp.  Two weeks ago, he broke his big toe in a nasty, nasty way.  I'll spare you the details, so just trust me: nasty.  He'll probably lose the nail, too, which will make for a long, hot summer of looking revolting in sandals.

Good... no, ASTOUNDING: The weekend immediately following the breaking of the toe, I realized that if anything was going to get done around the house, it was going to get done by me.  Cleaning - me.  Cooking - me.  Childcare - me.  Shopping - me.  Laundry - me.  But this isn't the greatest change from the way our lives normally run, so it hasn't been oppressive.  Actually, it had the reverse effect of making me feel quite empowered.  So empowered did I feel that I found myself opening the box that had been sitting in my kitchen for the last six or more months, the box containing the kitchen faucet I bought from Amazon shortly after we moved in.  (I paid less than the price in that link.  A lot less.  More than 50% less, because I ROCK THE SHOPPING.)  There was nothing wrong with the existing faucet in our sink, except it was the boring, bottom of the line builder's special, something like this $15 jobbie, except even less stylish.  It worked, although the low spigot combined with the double bowl sink style meant that it was a challenge to fill pots or wash anything particularly large, like a cutting board.  But it worked, and I thought that changing it would be beyond my DIY skills, so the pretty faucet sat in its box, waiting for some handier person to come along and offer to install it for me.

This did not happen.  Plumbers don't just come riding up on white horses, you know.

So on a Sunday afternoon, I decided to just open the box and read the instructions.  And they seemed pretty straightforward, and I had all the tools (thanks to my brother and sister-in-law, who for Christmas gave me -- ME -- a set of basic tools with awesomely girly purple and fuschia handles) so I went for it. My husband thought I was nuts, but I DID IT.  I took out the old faucet and installed the gorgeous new one, and it only took one hour from pulling all the cleaning supplies and trash bags out from under the sink to testing the new faucet.  No leaks.  It looked great.  And did I mention that I did it all myself?  I did.  With pink and purple tools, wearing leopard print pants.

It's amazing how much fancier a kitchen looks when it has a $350 faucet rather than a $15 one.

Good: My husband's temporary incapacitation has also resulted in an increase in the amount of one-on-one quality time I've spent with my son.  We usually spend our weekends going out as a family (which is awesome, don't get me wrong) so it's been fun to go out just with my son.  Very fun to take him to the library to help him pick out a bag full of novels.  (This itself deserves its own Good: After ages of insisting on only science books, my son's finally learned to love novels.  Thank you, Captain Underpants!)  It's delightful to be able to take him out to lunch and confirm that he really is an interesting person to have lunch with... he doesn't talk about Captain Underpants too much at all.

Also Good:  BzzAgent sent me some coupons for free Guiltless Grill meals at Chili's, so our post-library lunch cost me only $10, including a very generous tip.  The cedar-plank-grilled tilapia I tried was definitely tasty, but I gotta say, I'm so not down with the no-carb lo-carb thing.  I'm pro-carb.  To me, a meal isn't a meal unless it has a starch.  A meal can be all starch, sure!  Bring on the spicy noodles and the bagels!  But no starch?  Nooooo.  Not on my watch.  So the tilapia was delicious, and the accompanying broccoli was steamed to an attractive green (as well as free of parmesan cheese, just as I'd requested) but the plate just seemed to be crying out for some Spanish rice.  I snagged quite a few french fries off my son's plate.  Thankfully he is as generous as he is gregarious, so it was all good.

Good, but Also Really Disgusting: BzzAgent also sent me some goodies from Scrubbing Bubbles, an Automatic Shower Cleaner and those stamp-in toilet gels.  The shower cleaner is working fairly well, although I find I have to adjust the batteries after every few uses, but the gels are terrifying.  I'd heard that they give off a fresh scent, so I put one in my son's toilet, which tends to smell... not so fresh.  (He's six.  Sometimes his attention wanders, and when his attention wanders....) The toilet gels definitely masked the little-boy-bathroom smell, but the chemical-clean scent that smothered it was overpowering.  It rolled out of the bathroom and poisoned the air in the hallway.  I kept waiting for the thing to melt away, but it lasted far longer than the promised week.  Eventually, tired of hearing my husband and son complain about the stench, and tired of choking on it myself, I steeled my nerves and scraped the gooey remnants off the toilet bowl.  Flush.  Goodbye.  And ugh.  (The shower cleaner smells fine, by the way, just lightly "clean" and not at all offensive.)

Very Good: I got some good news about my son, which I'll share later.

Good: I've been taking Pilates classes at the Y, as an alternative to yoga while my foot fully recuperates, and I've been loving them.  The instructor definitely veers off the strict Josef Pilates script, but her classes are so fun.  She blasts music and makes comments about our butts and has us do ridiculous things with rubber playground balls.  It hurts so good.

Bad: The Pilates classes, in this beautifully warm weather, make me sweat.  Unfortunately, I seem to be not so much an armpit-sweater or a forehead-sweater but a groin-sweater.  I discovered this, much to my dismay, while wearing a pair of tight beige yoga pants... in the front row of the class.  I don't think it was too noticable, but it was distressing.  It was just sweat, ladies behind me!  Just sweat!  I was sweaty!  Unless I figure out some sort of miracle solution, I'll just have to wear black pants to class until November.

Good: Speaking of miracle solutions, my friend Rosie sent me an eyelash serum to try after she read about me ripping out a chunk of eyelashes back in January.  And it's working!  Last time I ripped out eyelashes, it took six months for the lashes to grow back in to a halfway-decent length.  This time, they're almost entirely grown in after only three months.  Stunning.  The stuff is from Arbonne, and it's called Virtual Illusion Lash Enhancer.   If you want some, go to Rosie.  She'll hook you up.

Good: It's time for "No Reservations."  Catch you all later.

Yet it would seem wise not to anger the woman with the sword.

Tell me, my fellows, what would you do?

Now that I'm bipedal again, I've been going back to the weekend drum circle at the beach.  The husband drums, I dance, the boy plays with other kids his age.  All well and very, very good.  I still don't know the identity of the man who actually dropped the sword on my foot, so I don't know if he's been at the circle or not, but the belly dancer who owns it is easily recognizable.  Sometimes she brings her sword, sometimes she doesn't.

I'll admit that I am always a bit disturbed when I see the sword come out... just seeing it makes my foot throb.  But I will also admit that the sword-dancing itself is impressive and quite entertaining.  So if she wants to bring the sword and dance with it, fine.

So.  This weekend.  She's in the circle with her sword.  I'm in the circle with my jingle sticks.  My son and a bunch of other kids are in the circle running and dancing and playing.  Some of the kids, including one of my son's first-grade classmates and her 4-year-old brother, approach the sword dancer.  And she lets the kids handle the sword, and puts it atop the head of my son's classmate.  Um.  I'm not thinking this is such a good idea.  My foot is thinking this is a TERRIBLE idea.  I'm thinking I really ought to have a little talk with the sword dancer, and let her know just how badly the sword injured me just by falling a short distance onto my foot, and maybe, maybe she should reconsider whether she lets untrained people handle it.

I didn't say anything.  I can't promise I didn't send some Significant Looks, but I didn't say anything.

I should say something, shouldn't I?  It just crossed a mental line when she let a 7-year-old girl balance the sword on her tiny little head.  Kids with swords.  That can't be good, right?  And yet, I should note that the little girls did a much better job with the sword than the retired dude who dropped one on me.

Good morning.

My son's bus comes at the crack of dawn these days, quite literally.  As we walked out this morning, the clouds to the east were rimmed at the top with a smear of pearl pink, turning pinker and pinker as we waited the few minutes for the bus to arrive.  After I saw my son safely on to the bus, I turned to walk back to my condo, and then changed my mind.

I was fully dressed, I had a cup of coffee and my FitFlops on, and the air was mild.  I decided to walk a bit before I went home, so I walked, my head turned toward the east to watch the clouds change color and the rays of sun reach farther and farther into the sky.

Everyone I passed said "good morning" to me, and every time I repeated back "good morning," I meant it.

I hope you're having a good morning too, and I hope this feeling of peace can last all day.

Vanity backfires.

I don't put on makeup in the mornings.  I work from home, and if I'm not going to go farther than the bus stop across the street, I'm just not going to make the effort. (Yes, I know that Stacey and Clinton would remind me that the other parents at the bus stop HAVE EYES, but for one thing, when I go out to the bus stop in the morning my face is almost entirely obscured by my giant rhinestone-trimmed sunglasses and an equally large cup of coffee, and for another, I am really not all that concerned about impressing the people at the bus stop with my gorgeousness and fashionability.  Consider that one of the dads who is out there every morning does not own a pair of pants.  Seriously.  He told me so. No pants.  No foundation does not compare.)  However, my vanity impels me to put on makeup if I am going anywhere, even if I am just going to the farmer's market or to the Y.  Yes, I put on makeup before I go to the gym, because not only do my fellow Y members HAVE EYES, I also have eyes, and the classrooms where I take my yoga and pilates have very, very large mirrors. 

This evening, a little before 6pm, my husband found me in the bathroom putting on mascara.  "I'm going to go to yoga class," I told him.  "Oh," he replied, sounding very disappointed.  "I was going to ask you if you wanted to go out for dinner, and I came to find you and it looked like you were already getting ready."  Dilemma.  Yoga class, which I really need because I'm feeling a bit sluggish and because this ass is not going to shrink itself, or dinner at a restaurant?

To my credit I resisted the fried grouper basket and instead shared a pot full of steamed oysters, shrimp and corn with my husband.  To my shame, I helped myself to quite a few french fries off my son's plate.

If I was woman enough to go to yoga class bare-faced, would this have happened?

Happy, actually.

It's quite misleading that I've left that gloomy post up at the top of my blog for the last two weeks.  You might think I was off in a depressive funk, or even suicidal, especially if you saw me at the grocery store a few days ago buying 20+ bottles of ibuprofen.  In fact I've been away because I've been too busy using my playtime to play. 

I've been working out. I've gone to the beach. I've been dancing. I've been seeing old friends for the first time.  I've been riding a bike with training wheels through the park.  I've been on picnics, and once a baby almost stole my wine.  I've been happy. 

This weekend turned out to be unexpectedly international and festive.  We took my son to his classmate's birthday party in the park on Saturday afternoon... and maybe it's a little odd, because I'm certain my son's classmates are approaching the age when kids get dropped off at the party, and because the invitation my son got was clearly of the "invite the whole class" variety, but both my husband and I showed up with the boy and had every intention of hanging out.  It could have been deadly -- I actually tucked a package of Russian graham crackers in my purse as emergency snacks in case there was no food for me to eat -- but it turned out to be very cool.  The birthday girl's family is Argentinian, and moved to this country not long before their daughter was born.  I really don't want to stereotype people, but I'd guessed the family was from Argentina before the father told me, just because there was so. much. meat. at the party.  There was a charcoal grill next to the little picnic gazebo, and the table nearest the grill was laden with coolers filled with sausages, packages of hot dogs, trays of massive burgers, and one huge dish filled with slabs of ribs that looked like they were hacked off a mastodon.  THAT'S how an Argentinian throws a birthday party!  My husband had a great time standing next to the sizzling grill, talking to the dad as he roasted round after round of flesh, and eventually, he couldn't resist.  He ate both a chunk of rib and a "chor y pan" sandwich of sliced sausage on grilled crusty bread... and he hasn't eaten beef or pork in probably a decade.  I was too afraid of the Wrath of Belly to try any of the meat, but instead I ate three platefuls of ridiculously delicious potato salad that was thick with vegetables, egg and tuna.  Fantastic party.  All the comfort of being in America, all the flavor of being somewhere else.

The next day, we church-hopped from the Cardinal's Mass to my mother-in-law's pan-Orthodox church to join her for their coffee hour.  She and several of her Russian friends had prepared a vegetarian meal of blini, and they circled the room, dressed in their embroidered clothes, serving us with more warm blini, mugs of tea, and shots of vodka.  Yes, vodka shots, drunk under the knowing eyes of the saints on their golden icons in the sanctuary of the church.  That's a good Sunday.

To clear things up:

The ibuprofen is for a corporate event.  

I rode my son's bike not long after getting off crutches; my husband and I had walked with him as he rode along the trails at the park, and after we'd gotten out about half a mile, he decided he didn't want to ride at the same time I decided my foot really, really hurt.  He walked back, I rode the 20" bike with training wheels.  Win-win.

Technically we're not supposed to have glass on the beach, but it's a rule everyone ignores.  I compromise by bringing (glass) bottles of wine and plastic cups.  My favored cups are curved neon plastic tumblers from IKEA, which you probably have in your cupboard if you live within 75 miles of an IKEA and you have a child.  So I was in the drum circle, my lime green cup of chardonnay on the sand next to my husband's drum, and a baby toddles over, a little girl of about 12 months dressed in a romper exactly the same shade of green.  She spied the cup -- a kid's cup! her big sister probably has one just like it! -- and she zoomed in on it.  My husband's well-trained dad reflexes kicked in, and he snatched the cup away at the last possible moment.  He got sand in the cup, but just a little, and the baby didn't drink any wine.  Yay!