Cold Spaghetti

Man, am I in a sour mood.

I want to tell my kids about Santa. Just rip off that bandaid in one quick swoop. It’s too easy for me to rely on the Santa Threat and I hate myself for it. They should act appropriately because that is the right thing to do, not because they want presents from some shadowy character.

*****

We’re facing some big financial burdens, which isn’t unusual for us but these sorts of decisions are just awful — they have to do with two of the most important things in our lives: safety and education.

Our car is unsafe, by my esteem, as it is unreliable. It is un-repaired, but we haven’t decided what to do with it. Paul is home tomorrow night (crossing fingers for no more snow delays) and then we can look at the loooooooooong list of malfunctions more closely. It’s probably time for a trade-in, but not the time to take on a car payment. Until then, we will just risk the inconveniences and potential hazards that I’ve been living all week. Car safety can’t be all THAT important, right? I mean, we don’t drive that much.

We really like the school our kids currently attend. The teachers are great, the curriculum solid, and the classes are small. The administration is attentive, helpful, and responsive. But getting these things in New Orleans is not the norm. It’s a private school and tuition is going up. A LOT. Roughly $300 a month more. The bottom line is that there are other charter schools that offer immersion education (2) and we will re-apply to these programs… but the quality of the experience and the administration cannot be matched. I absolutely hate compromising the kids’ educational experiences because of a financial barrier. So we’ve got some tough decisions. In the meantime, it’s on my plate to scramble for applications, watch dates and announcements, stress over every step, and take full responsibility for any rejection as a deep, personal flaw.

Maybe we should go back to considering just leaving the country?

Going with that theme, our property taxes have gone up. To the tune of $2400 this year, making our contribution to the city’s coffers more than I can actually write out. We continue to shoulder a much more significant tax burden based on our unlucky fate of not being politically connected.

The irony of the two: property/school taxes and tuition for the education we must buy because the one our taxes provide isn’t fit for any child — is not lost.

*****

In the interim, I still have not mailed my Christmas packages. These are the ones holding presents I’ve had for months and had wrapped since the first week of December. Maybe tomorrow, hopefully, I can get it together to re-pack and send. No matter what, they won’t get there in time for Christmas.

*****

Combined with a hundred other things, all of this has just put me in a rough mood. And the icing on the cake? Emmy sent me a HILARIOUS video to cheer me up and it did. And I wanted to use photos of my kids and post it here… my little attempt to show that I am working on the positive. What happened? Well, after an hour of trying to get the faces cut properly, the site won’t work to load the faces into the video. TOTAL WASTE. So there you go. My attempts at trying to be positive are fruitless.

Bah. Whine. Sour. Grouse.

We’re 6 days into the business trip, and here is where we’re at:

Twelve critical car failures
Eleven inside-out shirts
Ten broken pieces
Nine honey-soaked shelves
Eight groceries lost
Seven piles of cat puke
Six un-mailed packages

….Five sections of tree lights out!….

Four flat-tire helpers
Three more days of single-parenting
Two arguing children
AND
One CHRISTMAS SUR-PRISE RUINED!

What is the use in getting worked up? Everything about it is ridiculous. Cans are clanking under cars and rolling into gutters. Milk is dripping off my chin. Pausing for a moment, I realize I can hear my kids arguing in the house, 4 doors down. It IS absurd! I start to laugh.

*****

Something in our household equilibrium went array when Paul flew to Virginia for work at the start of the week. The whole sky had been falling on us for days, literally, so maybe the problems started much deeper? The basic balances of the entire city were off from the deluge.

Car troubles have been the theme of the week. The bottom line is that, at the moment, we do not have a fully working vehicle. We’re limping by with malfunction lights on through a sometimes-rough ride… it’s not clear whether it’s better to just trade the beloved station wagon in or get it fixed, and the work week was just too crazy for us to dedicate much time into thinking over it.

Then, this afternoon, after a wonderful morning, lunch, and playtime at Palmer Park Art Market, we tried to drive home and found that a tire on the still-broken car was FLAT.

Okay, then. I’m plucky and resourceful. So I start the work of changing a tire: moving all the holiday packages-yet-to-be-mailed under the kids’ feet, put the stroller on the sidewalk, and locating the spare tire and various tools. I was just setting up the jack when The Nice Guy walked by. In his early 40s, The Nice Guy knew well what a Man passing a woman with two small children does when he sees her changing a tire by herself. But this particular version of The Nice Guy is probably better suited to, say, assist in constitutional law review or maybe literary criticism. Changing tires? Maybe not. But chivalry is not dead, so just before reaching the end of the street, he spun on his heal and offered help.

To be honest, his outburst caught me off-guard. While I felt that not offering help most certainly presented permanent damage to his integrity, I paused to look around desperately for a burly Cajun man before admitting that I wasn’t in a position to turn away help. It wasn’t that I didn’t think I could change the tire. It was that I knew taking off the tire would be difficult… those big bolts? They are TIGHT. I know this from experience… this was not my first flat tire.

Being The Guy, he had to be the one to use the jack. I tried to show where it was to go, where I was trying to put it when he approached. He missed, the car fell, and took off a piece with it as it came down. *sigh*

When dealing with mechanical issues, how can a woman politely tell a helpful man just where he should help without insulting him?

Eventually the car went up. Then we had to remove the tire.

I ended up flagging down people to come and give a jump on the bar. Eventually all 5 bolts were removed, the spare attached, and the bolts re-attacked. It took more than an hour to change the tire. The Nice Guy definitely didn’t want to spend an hour with me out there, but despite my profuse thank-yous and repetitive assurance that he needn’t blow his whole day on helping me; he stayed to the end. Bless his intact integrity.

We drive away on 4 tires and directly push our luck to make An Incident at FedEx. Peanuts. Multiple trips. Sleepy kids. Bathroom emergencies. Leaving with no packages sent. (Note: this had nothing to do with poor behavior from the children; they were quite good, all thing considered.

Then the grocery store. There was a finger caught in a grocery cart. Then a lady freaked out when Kate stood up to re-position herself in the child seat.

And then, finally home, two bags of groceries burst in the dark, scattering cans of red beans into the night and exploding milk on the street.

Absurd. Hilarious.

*****

The black icing on this day was the loss of our beloved Saints, who seemed to forget up the appropriate start time for the game and missed the first half. Tragic, in the short term.

*****

But it’s okay. Paul will eventually emerge from the Northern Virginia thaw and come home. We have jobs and health insurance (hooray!) and dental insurance (double hooray!) and get to live in New Orleans. If that means that things go all wonky every once in awhile, it’s okay. We’ll survive it. Even with milk in our hair.

20,480 1×1 plate bricks.  20 base plates.

Last week, my Dad flew back from PA to spend a few days around the Fourth holiday in Mobile and see Will and Kate. Paul and I took the opportunity to outfit the office… which involved a 350 mile trip to IKEA Houston.

Here is the car while we were packing it up and watching the back end of the car go lower and lower and lower… this photo is NOT the finished packing. A mattress, another big box, and a ton of other little boxes (not to mention us, our computers, and overnight bag) also fit in. We had to sit one in front and one in back for the drive to fit it all.

Paul rocked the installation. Here is some video of the cluttered mess while we were in the process of getting everything in and up.

He made some custom adjustments with cords and attaching computer equipment to the back of the rolling shelves to keep it off the desks (not shown) but it’s helped to put away much of the mess. Our chairs (Swoopers!) arrive tomorrow — FINALLY.

This is my desk.   Please don’t think this is in anyway a DONE or AFTER or COMPLETE sort of thing.  Just one more step…

We used the BILLY bookcases, with height extension.  Mounted to the wall, they are quite stable, but these aren’t the sort of shelves that you can take with you, so to speak.

We actually wanted the glass doors, but there weren’t any left, so we went with the solid white.

Here is Paul’s desk.  Also, a painting of Will’s is framed behind his chair.  We brought back several frames for kid’s artwork to go on the walls.

Our favorite item?  The ALEX shelves in between the desks.  Actually, we wanted matching ALEX drawer units (smaller ones) to go under one side of each of our desks.  But they were out!  So we settled with the big one.

We’re still figuring out the organization of things, but it is a much, much improved work space for both of us!

When I poured water over her head last night to wet her hair in the bathtub, I noticed that Kate was really overdue for a trim.  As in, her bangs were actually getting caught in her eyelashes.  What kind of mother would I be to allow my daughter’s eyes to sustain an injury from the uncooperative hair I am guilty of giving her?  I grabbed the scissors.

My caveat here is that I do this often.  Yes, in part it’s that I’m being cheap to save money because Kate’s hair is so very, very straight that she needs her bangs trimmed more than once a month.  And in part it’s because finding the time to get her hair cut is a tremendous challenge.  I’m not great at it, but considering the circumstances of my grade-school issue scissors, the bathtub location, and the moving head of my child, I figure I do okay.

And then last night.

Oof.  The mullet with uneven bangs, choppy ends everywhere and even a strand in the back of her head chopped a completely different length (must’ve gotten mixed up with another part of hair).  It was bad.

This afternoon I took Kate with me to the mega-mart to stock up on beach food (we’re going to the beach this weekend with friends… 3 room condo, 6 adults, 7 kids).  I realized that a lot of pictures would happen this weekend and cringed.  I was desperate.  So I took her into the family haircut station in the mega-mart…

… where I told them her older brother had cut her hair and asked if they could help me fix it.

Yup.  I tossed my first born (who knows better than to even THINK about cutting his sister’s hair, sohelpmegod) under the bus.

I guess I could argue I had to.  I mean, it was BAD.  How bad?

When the hair stylist started, she asked me if I wanted, “to keep the mullet look.”

First, there is only one answer to that question.  So if someone is asking you to clarify your mullet intents on your 3-year old daughter, it sounds more like an assessment of child endangerment than personal preference.

So the kind Mz Connie cleaned up Kate the best that she could.  Her bangs are still uneven (much shorter on Kate’s right side) and very choppy.  (Shown below.) She took a good 2 inches off the back to help stop the mullet.  Now she’s working an almost bowl cut.

As for me?

Well, I guess I totally deserved it when we finished the cut and Kate peed all over the floor in the middle of the sunscreen isle.

I leave tomorrow morning for 3 1/2 days in Boston.  I figure since Paul can do almost anything I can (and better) that by the time I get back, he’ll have Kate playing piano etudes, Will writing verse in Spanish, a half dozen herb plants thriving on the porch, the rain water harvesting barrels up and catching, and two week’s worth of dinners frozen for future meals.

The meeting days are long and there isn’t much free time, which means I will have plenty to feel guilty about when I get back.  Because just by virtue of being out of the house, shouldn’t I be writing around the clock?   Chemical support is looking really tempting; I’ve gained a new appreciation for why cocaine was initially a suburban drug popular among Moms.  ’cause If I could just cut out sleep, I would be able to keep my self-imposed, mostly unrealistic deadline.  (Hi, NIH?  Just kidding!  I’m TOTALLY going to be done then.)

Please be sure to send Paul some support this week.  Because now?  Kate has decided she is potty trained and does FUN things like take off her pull-up and pee all over the floor and half her toys.  OOPS.  Paul has a much harder time with the whole accident scenario.  And?  I want him to feel rested this week.  Because when I get back Friday night, I’ll have just enough time to sleep all day Saturday in preparation of going out  Saturday night with the girls (Indigo Girls at Tipitina’s, whoo-hoo!)

P.S. I’m missing the kids already.

Somehow over the last two months we’ve carved time for Paul to work on the outbuilding.

He finished the siding (all except for that top header in the front) and the siding along the back and sides.  FINALLY.  The piles of hardie in the backyard are gone.

This is what the back of the outbuilding looks like from the roof of the shed that belongs to the house behind ours.  Close quarters.  Let’s hope they have a termite contract, too.

Then Paul got to work on barn-style doors.  So that we could stop the rain from coming into the opened section of the building.

Here’s a newly hung door.

Ah, who I am kidding?  This is totally a beefcake shot.

Here are the doors.

And here is the question: what color should paint them?  (Or, should we stain them?)

(Note… I’m partial to paint because we’ve had bad luck with stain.  But I’m easily persuaded otherwise.)

The caveat.  This is the back of the house with the color that will eventually, one day, cover the entire house.  And outbuilding.  At least, this was the plan.  But, like I said, we could be persuaded by particularly fetching arguments.

Oh, and the color is more blue than aqua, despite what the photograph tells you.

Anyone have ideas or suggestions?

I’ve been trying to come up with some sort of creative, literary fancy-pants-writer way of recounting all the random craziness going on here.  Listing has felt too random, too quick.  Instead, I’m taking a page from Jim Croce, who famously used music to express emotion.  Borrowed, of course, from the Internet’s favorite Helena, TPM with 80s inspiration from Mad.

Here it is, the soundtrack to our lives as of late, 80s style.

— Friday, girls night out at The Bead Shop, followed by drinks and hey, Let’s Dance to the Sultans of Swing, ’cause Girls Just Wanna Have Fun but also, we need to prove that we, Mamas?  Yeah, we still Got the Beat.

— That Sweet Child O’ Mine, Baby Kate, turned 3.  A bunch of our friends came over and we had fun while 13 kids ran around our house, beat a pinata, and screamed “I Want Candy“!

— Tomorrow morning, I’m going to Photograph the Abeona kids for a school fundraiser.

— The social work class I’m teaching starts tomorrow night.  I don’t expect anyone to be Hot for Teacher, but it would be cool to form a Cult of Personality.

— The uncertainty around my parents’ move has us feeling helpless, but I guess That’s Why They Call it The Blues.  Explaining to Will why his Grandparents are moving means a lot of Sad Eyes.

— I got a Visiting Scholar appointment at a big Northeast college which is cool and wonderful and awesome because the folks there took me as What I Am.

— My SMA conference proposal was accepted and I’m Walking on Sunshine that at least an abstract of the dissertation is of interest.

— Next week I go to Boston for the Schweitzer Fellowship.  I have to leave a day early to be there on time because we live In a Big Country.  The program director’s retreat is a 3-day all-day event, yet I am hopeful to have some quiet time to myself to write.  My greatest dream is to have a full, uninterrupted week alone in a place that isn’t my house to work on nothing but my dissertation… Save a Prayer for me.

— Two friends and I have made a walking pact for regular exercise and stuck to it now for over a week.  When I feel like there is too much going on and I can’t manage to get away, I Whip It.  Not that this is helping me look at birthday cake and manage not to Eat It.

— The firehose went from bone dry to full blast, as Paul is Back on the Chain Gang (or maybe the Morning Train?) with several projects and overtime.  Combined with my income and his guarantee of at least 10 weeks more of work, we’re fine.  There is no more Livin’ on a Prayer.  And yes, New Orleans is still tough place to live and work but it’s our American Dream and we love it and there’s no place like it and I Still Believe that it’s worth sacrifice to raise our kids in this amazing place.

_______________
This has been a Monday Mission.

About two weeks ago, my friend Magpie posted a recipe for “Eggs in Hiding,” which she had come across while nostalgically flipping through old cookbooks.

EGGS IN HIDING

1 T. butter
1 can condensed tomato soup
½ pound American cheese, diced
6 hard-cooked eggs
1 cup cereal flakes, crushed

Heat butter and soup in top of double boiler. Add cheese and cook until melted, stirring constantly. Arrange halves of hard-cooked eggs (cut lengthwise) in buttered baking dish. Pour cheese mixture over eggs. Sprinkle with cereal flakes. Brown under broiler. Serves 6.

I know.  Awesome right?

Mag challenged folks to make it.  A few jumped to the challenge in an instant.  Me, well, fast is relative during Jazz Fest season but I managed to think ahead and make preparations over the weekend.  Tonight’s experiment almost failed between the kids stealing cheese while I’m trying to peel eggs, Kate’s diaper explosion and necessary immediate shower, Will coming in covered in mud, and Paul coming in covered in mud AND insulation… all while I’m suppose to be stirring continuously and/or watching a broiler.  But, I pulled it off!

I even took pictures.  (These were taken with one of the point-and-shoot cameras from the Photovoice project — I’m trying to get more familiar with them and the more I use it, the more fantastic a camera I think this is for the price.  But I digress.)

The recipe calls for American, but I used a domestic Cheddar (sounds fancy, huh?)  Also, I used two cans of tomato soup.

I didn’t want leftovers, so I only used 4 eggs.

Here’s the soup and cereal on top.  Will ate the box of corn flakes before I had a chance to make it, so we actually had to go and buy a second box for the recipe.

It’s under the broiler now.  Considering all the running around I did while it was cooking in there, I was surprised it didn’t burn.  Also, the eggs were made Saturday and had been in the fridge since then — but everything was warm through when it came out of the oven.

The finished product!  It had started to brown a tiny bit in the top center.

FINAL REPORT: They loved it!

No, really, they did.  And this is really saying something, as my kids make a point to try to starve themselves at dinner time.  But you don’t have to take my word for it…