Our Life = Turkey Breast?

Sure it's bland and boring to some, but it's also filling, relatively healthy, and can be quite delicious.

This past long holiday weekend was damn-near perfect. No, we didn't travel to exotic or even pretty climes and hike among the sequoias or anything as grandiose as that. But we relaxed, had fun, spent time together, and, yes, relaxed.

Wednesday afternoon was a wash--tidy up the house, lay around, help Stevie get his homework done and out of the way.

Thursday morning was peaceful, focused on the living room and kitchen--the stupid Macy's parade was on low volume, I made too much green bean casserole. We headed over to my mom and stepdad's around 1:00. David (stepdad) fixed a full Thanksgiving spread and everything was delicious. He even cleaned up. We then proceeded to bum around on the couch, completely unrushed, watching some football, a couple of movies (Elf and Fever Pitch), and, mostly, playing with Barbies and "action figures".

That's right--I sat on the couch for HOURS, untangling Barbie hair and cutting off the dead ends. And I was perfectly content. I even got a hot spot (pre-blister) on my hand from trying to brush Barbie hair with little plastic Barbie brushes! My mother has a large tote filled with Island of Lost Toy Barbies. Most of them needed a serious makeover. I used to love Barbies as a little girl (and Darci dolls, too). I spent a few hours on Friday looking at Barbies and Darcis on eBay, bidding on a few (the Dolls of the World Barbies, which I love in all of their It's a Small World glory) and checking out prices on the rest. Did you know that there are modern Barbies that go for hundreds of dollars? I am a feminist, BUT . . . I like Barbies. So shoot me, pig!

On Friday afternoon, we packed the kids up for a night at Grammy's and headed to Cleveland for our anniversary overnight getaway. So far, getting married on Thanksgiving has proven to be an incredibly smart decision. More on the getaway later (I'm coming for you, Burb....).

By Saturday mid-afternoon, we were back in our living room, sitting around with our adorable children. Kevin got my cold, so he was laid up. I took the kids outside to rake leaves and gave them rides in the wheelbarrow atop mounds of brown leaves. At one point I unearthed an incredibly realistic rubber snake right in the place where a real snake might be--nearly under the porch, gliding through a batch of wet leaves. In the few seconds that it took for my mind and a whack of the rake to realize that this was, indeed, a fake snake, I noticed that I had no adrenaline racing through my body. I was totally calm. I felt like such a Mother of Boys.

I will not be rattled!

Sunday was more of the same, only with the unwanted build-up of return-to-work anxiety.

Still, a restful, peaceful, none-too-productive, gorgeous-weather weekend. Just what my old anxiety-steeped bones needed. I hope yours was good, too.

Must . . . Write . . . Something in . . . Blog.

Truth is, there's been too much to write. It's all pushing and tussling at the door, clogging it up. Nothing goes through!

Let's see. Last night I started wrapping Christmas presents. Don't hate me! I also have 99% of my Christmas cards addressed. I even bought special quilt stamps for them. I like the holidays.

Truth be told, I've been buying presents for months, and they're all kinda scattered around the basement, and I felt a strong need to rein them in and figure out what I had and what I still need. As it turns out, I have a shitload of shirt boxes, and I won't even make a dent in my wrapping paper (note to self: need more tissue paper, surprisingly). I'm also almost done with the shopping.

Another reason I started to wrap--besides the above and besides the fact that my holiday time dance card is filling up and making the time to do this very . . . squeezy, is because I needed to separate Stevie's Christmas presents from his "HF Store" incentives, and I was feeling extreme pressure from the lad to do so. The HF, or "Healthy Foods" Store is a knock-off of the AR, or "Advanced Reading" Store, at Stevie's school. All of the AR books are assigned points. Read those books, rack up the points, and you get to spend them on varying-point items in the AR store.

Since we're trying to get Stevie to eat healthier, we took his advice and started the HF store. He eats 5 servings of fruits and vegetables per day (10 points each) and can earn extra points by eating more servings or trying new foods (5 points each). I bought a few toys and games and assigned them points--$1 = 100 points. Now he keeps track of his healthy foods and earns points for toys. He's already been eating better, but this has really sparked his interest! His first goal? 800 points for a Bionicle. He's 1/3 of the way there.

He also knows that this is not going to go on forever.

Let's see . . . what else? My parents-in-law were in town last weekend. The only thing I do that impresses my mother-in law is split wood. She actually deigned to show me an "example" of being a good wife that consisted of serving her husband his eggs and bacon when he was also in arm's reach of it and then saying "Is there anything else I can get you, dear?" before serving herself the scraps. After she told me that she was setting an example (and there was some seriousness there, folks), I said, "I guess it just isn't enough to earn all the money and do half the housework any more" and laughed it off. The judgement vibe is all too apparent, and anything less than me gently popping scrupulously clean grapes into Kevin's mouth while he lounges, wrapped in warm Egyptian cotton towels on a soft sofa that I paid for--and cleaned . . . well, anything less than that, and her baby is being mistreated. Ah, grow up, already.

I'm spent.

I'm Getting Joy-ier

With control of the Congress (don't you dare ask for a recount, Mr. Virginia), we might actually get out of this hateful war.

HUZZAH!

I don't know how to spell "huzzah". I've tried several things and none of them look right. And it's not in the dictionary!

I'm Overwhelmed with Joy.

Not really, but I am happy that the House of Republicans has, once again, become the House of Representatives (of big corporations). It's a step in the right direction.

And Rick Santorum is gone. That guy was a total ass. I'm celebrating in spirit with my not-insane-neighbors-to-the-east. Huzzah, Pennsylvaniah!

I'm glad that there are no casinos and that big tobaccie took a big hit on its ailing lungs. I'm happy that my conservative farmer Neybors finally voted for someone who wasn't a disgrace--though a common one--to our political institutions. "Zack Space! To the future!!!"

So, overall, I'm happy but still underwhelmed. There's still an appalling--appalling!!!--lack of women in power. Not that I want them there if they're Uncle Toms. Most women aren't, though, and tend to introduce bills concerning "women's" issues such as health care and wages and civil rights and families and the welfare of children. Narrow issues, to be sure....

That's all I've got right now. If I talk about politics too much, I tend to get pissed. I'm trying to change my attitude a little.

Hazzuh!

It Takes a Village to Stuff Children Full of Sugar

(I was going to wait until I had pictures to share before I posted this, but that could take awhile.)

Taking the kids trick-or-treating is just plain fun. Taking them trick-or-treating in the town where I grew up and went trick-or-treating is, surprisingly, really fun.

For the last several years, 3 out of my 4 siblings (from this parent group) and all of their many, many children and I and my one, now two, have used our parent's house as a Halloween base. They live in the middle of a fine community filled with people that nearly all of us know and, from their small hilltop perch, the halloween comings and goings are quite visible. My stepdad orders pizza, the final costume fittings are made, and we head out, sometimes together, sometimes not, in various-sized packs. Being that it is a small town, even if we headed out separately we would often find each other on Columbus Street, or Rainbow Ave., or on one-way Morning Street.

This year was different. One of my stepsisters just had a baby and, since her other two didn't know that it was Halloween, she decided to skip it this year. My other stepsister has older, wiser children who understand that the density of new housing developments offers the most candy with the least effort. Plus, that's where they're friends were going. In one fell swoop, we lost four children to the rapid development of Central County. My stepbrother lives an hour away and is in the process of moving 2 1/2 hours away. Too much effort.

Me and mine constituted the Halloween group this year. Out in the town, there seemed many fewer children this year. It rained a little before it all started, but turned into a great night for
t-or-t'ing--a little chilly, dampy, with wet leaves and sidewalks. Each year we make a large loop across town so we can stop in at my grandmother's house. She lives in town, but her road is not good for maximum candy acquirement, and we saw maybe 4 other kids. Curving back into town proper, we finished on Columbus Street, which backs to a cemetery, and those folks know how to do Halloween right. One house has literally dozens of jack-o-lanterns--at least 20 on the porch roof alone--all lit up with strings of lights. Another had a faceless scary guy handing out the candy and two young teens, fully scary-costumed, laying in the grass grabbing at people as they walked by. This freaked Stevie out in the best way--a little spooky, but funny, too.

Stevie makes it fun. That kid is a riot. One woman came to the door wearing an OSU sweatshirt. After getting the candy and saying "tanks!", Stevie said, "I see you're a Buckeye fan." She answered that yes, she was--was he? "Yes, but you can't tell right now because I'm wearing a pirate costume." At another house, a little old lady gave out the candy. As Stevie was walking back towards us, he said (loudly), "She was a nice lady! She gave me a choice!" She was still standing at the door and found this quite amusing. Standing to the side, watching our kid interact with people--it's something to see. I'm not claiming perfection or anything, but we think he's got what it takes to get along relatively well in this world.

Stevie went as a pirate. I expected to see hordes but didn't see any. One guy (on popular Columbus Street) said that Stevie was the first pirate he had seen. The thing that made Stevie's already great costume even better was the large fake parrot that I sewed to the shoulder of his shirt (no, Burb, it didn't flop around). Stevie received many comments on it and, every time, said, "Guess what it's name is!" When the good sports said, "I don't know--Polly?" he would say, in that barely-able-to-hold-back-the-bubbling-up-laugh-way that 6-year-olds have mastered, "His name is Name!" and off he would go, cackling into the night, quite assured that he had come up with the funniest name of all time. The kid charmed pretty much everyone he bummed candy off of.

Of course, he didn't have too much competition. I saw a lot of unattractive children moping about--children who had had quite enough candy, children with the repulsively violent costumes ripped from horror movies they're way too young to watch, even a young teenager skulking around in his "costume," smoking a cigarette. If you can afford to smoke (and do), you're probably too old to trick-or-treat, don't you think?

As for Marky, he dressed for the occasion in a black fleece footed pajama-looking ensemble with a full baby skeletal structure emblazened in glow-in-the-dark paint. You might not believe this, but it was his exact skeletal structure. Surely not green, though, you say. Oh but it IS green. He conked out in his backpack after an hour of staring at all the weird people.

I loved Halloween as a kid--back in the days before Snickers with nougat and razors and CSI-like inspections of bag contents. I can remember receiving--and eating--homemade popcorn balls! I can vaguely remember being shuttled around in the car when I was small--dropped off at one street, canvassing that street, and then being escorted to another. But what I really loved was trick-or-treating when I was old enough to go with just my friends. There are way too many parents around these days. Except for a few creeps (that I never encountered),
Halloween was the community's way of saying, "Let the kids run free." We could cover the whole town, burning thousands of calories only to ingest thousands more in a belly-busting candy-scarfing orgy that would put the Romans to shame. Not that we thought of calories.

It is still safe for kids to roam in my hometown, although today's parents might not buy it. That's a shame, because at what other time are children so appreciated? You might say Christmas, but the neighbors aren't buying my kids any presents at Christmas. Only at Halloween do the people of the village open the door for the children of the village (or the neighboring villages). Halloween is far from the morbid, Godless spectacle or shameless excuse to beg that certain types make it out to be. It is a charming little piece of Americana that I hope sticks around for awhile.

At least in small-town America. I would probably steer clear of Detroit.