Th-Th-Th-Th-That's All Folks!

Phew - we made it! As threatened promised, 31 posts in 31 days!

Did you have fun? I know I did!

Fun it was, but also tough sometimes. I've often wondered if I'm cut out for scheduled writing like this, so it was enlightening to actually give it a try. And I learned some things:

1. Doing anything every single day is hard. Except maybe sleeping and eating I guess. Anything else - anything optional - gets a bit tougher. Especially when your husband leaves town for 1/3 of the month and you're suddenly adding Husband/Dad duties to your regularly scheduled programming.

2. Writing on demand is difficult. I'll admit that I winced more than once at some of the posts I put up. It was definitely quantity over quality a lot of the time. I have a lot of respect for people who do this full-time and make it seem so easy.

3. I do not want to be a writer. I get asked now and again (given my background), so when are you writing your first novel? The answer is "never." Sure, I dream of being a NYT bestselling author, saying "thanks but no thanks" to Oprah, and going on book tours (if only so that it's finally my turn to do some business travel and let someone else figure out how to work full-time and single parent full-time). But the road between my little Internets corner and the Giller prize is loooooong. And dependent on a ton of luck. And so, so, so much hard work. I am way too lazy to write anything longer than the odd blog post in my spare time, and way too anxious to have a solitary full-time job like "writer."

All that said, I'm definitely not going to give up on PGT. Things won't stay quite at this pace, but I'm going to try not to have single-post months anymore. Plus, we've got the whole house move coming up - I'll have lots of content! So keep checking, and thanks for the lovely comments this past month!

Read more...

Oh Buffy - What Hath Thou Wrought?

So I was in the young adult section of Barnes & Noble yesterday.

(Because someone is having a birthday on Friday and apparently 10 is the new teen when it comes to books.)

I was perusing the shelves and thinking, man, all of these spines are so dark-coloured. And what is up with all the lurid fonts? Where'd all those bright travelling-pantsy books go?

And then I looked up and saw the section's sign:

Teen Paranormal Romance.

Really?! It has its own section now?

Back in my day [cue snow-trudging and wind-howling and bacon-wrapped feet], the library did not give such. It was Elizabeth and Jessica and their Sweet Valley hijinks. (Oh, oh, - will Elizabeth and Todd ever get back together?) Or it was the Girls of Canby Hall fighting racism and bad hair days while studying for their English tests and gossiping about those dreamy boys at the other school. On television, we got the equivalent in those crazy 90210 kids, where the biggest questions were "will Dillon end up with Brenda or Kelly?" and "when will Brandon realize that Emily Valentine is cuh-RAY-zee?!"

Did you ever hear Kelly moaning that Brandon was immortal and it was too, too unfair that she couldn't be, too? No. Did Jessica Wakefield and her perfect size-six body (same as her mother's! They could pass as sisters!) ever snuggle up to a werewolf? No.

Some would probably point to the Twilight series as being the source of all this undead tomfoolery. Now I've read the Twilight books, along with every tween girl and suburban soccer mom in America (in my defense, I had to read the first one for a thesis on adolescent literature I was supervising. I have no defense for the other three). They're not bad. If I had to pick a team, I'd be Team Carlisle - who needs brooding eternal hormones or howling at the moon when you can get forever-hot doctor?

They're not bad, but they're not that good, either. Certainly not good enough to spawn an entire section at B&N. If anything, they're kind of like Bailey's Irish Creme - good enough in small amounts, but ultimately way too sweet and they'll make you sick long before you absorb any of the real badness.

No, the prototype for Miss "I'm In Love with a Vampire" is none other than Buffy the Vampire Slayer who did everything first. And better than anything that's come since.

Buffy was fantastic. Smart, sassy, and she knew her way around a crossbow. None of this infernal lip-biting (lookin' at you Bella Swan!) and dithering about a boy, vampire or not. As the series progressed, it matured into an intelligent, fun, and often moving look at modern life. The episde where [spoiler alert] Joyce dies? Unbelievably heart-wrenching. The episode filmed entirely in silence? Amazing.

(The Dawn years? Not so good. I'm not a fan of "let's introduce random characters and pretend they are the heart of the plot." I've also never forgiven them for sending Angel off to L.A., spin-off or no spin-off.)

Bella and her ilk are nothing more than pale imitations of the glory that is Buffy. And it pains me that this is what is passing for (and greedily consumed as) "teen paranormal romance."

Bah. As soon as she actually is a teen, I think I'll sit her down in front of the TV and The Girl and I will have one of those lovely mother-daughter bonding moments:

"See, darling? That's how you love a vampire."

Read more...

It's That Time of the Month

(Or: Reason #851 Why I Am Spoiled.)

I love working downtown. The hustle (and the concomitant bustle). Target, Barnes & Noble, AND Chipotle all a hop-skip-and-a-(warm in winter)-jump away through the skyways. Summertime farmer's market. Listening to live music at the plaza.

But one of my favourite local amenities is a place I get to visit every month. Because I am a member of:

Know what this card means? It means I am an official member of the super-awesome-chocolate-club. Membership fees? Nope. Minimum purchase? Nope.

For the low, low price of the odd email, I get to waltz in there once a month and pick out a truffle.

For FREE!

Free, that is, as long as you're thick-skinned and can blithely answer "no thanks!" to the inevitable "and is there anything else I can get for you?" The idea being that you'll feel so guilty getting a free truffle that you'll try to pay for it somehow. Heh. No such guilt here.

The real trick is remembering to get your chocolate each month because you can't roll the truffles over, so I have a little "Did you get your chocolate yet?" calendar reminder that recurs on the last Monday of every month. The last one because I like to saaaaave my chocolate. Just in case I have a super bad day - it's like insurance.

(Of course, my job is too awesome to have a super bad day. But one will come at some point, I'm sure. And when it does...my card will be ready.)

Lately I've been stuck on the Red Velvet Truffle. But I've been eyeing that Dark Chocolate Raspberry one.

Which one shall I choose today??

(Sigh. It's been a long month, guys. I'm running out of topics. Sorry.)

Read more...

The More Things Change...

Ordinarily, I'm all about original content on blogs.I'm not a huge fan of recycled material or "hey, check out this YouTube video I found." It's a variation on the "can't say anything nice" saying, except it's more of a "if you can't say anything new, don't say anything at all" rule.

However, in my professional life, the holy grail is single sourcing - why re-invent the wheel and risk saying the same thing in two slightly different ways? It's all about consistency and using the same structure and fonts when telling people which buttons to select.

(Which is why I *heart* it so.)

Perhaps that's why I was thinking about this post and then stopped and said, "hey PM, this sure sounds familiar...."

And then I realized I'd written exactly the same post less than two years ago.

So, in the interest of inventing that wheel only once (in which Michael Ignatieff seems entirely uninterested), you can read this again. Sad thing is, replace "Lebanon" with "Libya" and it's good to go.

(Do I think the Conservatives are running the show fantastically? No. But do I think that when you have a three-party system with vote-splitting the name of the game, you need to demonstrate that you can do more than just say the current leader doesn't know what he's doing and keep forcing elections? Yes.)

Read more...

When *I* Was Your Age

On the way to church today we were discussing my deprived childhood. How I was a home-for-lunch kid and so it was a huge deal for me to stay for lunch. With my Smurfette lunchkit.

And then how we had no on-demand Netflix, no videos delivered to our mailbox, and no cable. The kids sat there in disbelief as I described one hour of kids' programming after school plus Saturday morning and then That's. It.

Then I drove the whole thing home with, "yeah, and we didn't even have a computer until I got to high school. Before that, only fancy people had them and, besides, you couldn't really even do anything with them."

They were pretty stunned.

And, what a coincidence, today is Re-enact Mom's Childhood Day!

Not so much by their choice. More because one of them has turned her brain to mush playing computer games all weekend and the other one is taking an enforced break from screentime after I had to Google "how to remove dried-on grapes from a plasma TV screen" yesterday.

(Answer: with distilled water, old lint-free T-shirts, and two hours of gentle wiping.)

So they've been non-electronic kids today:

Homemade drums.

Pretending to be worms.

Making a fort.

Braiding a bracelet.

Making a gods and goddesses necklace.

Unfortunately, the camera cannot capture the yelling and fighting and crying and cries of "get outside right now, you guys! I can't take it anymore!"

Which I don't so much remember my mom doing. But I'll bet she did.

Read more...

Sleep Is A Weapon

So. Tired.

Sometimes when The Husband travels, I turn into a martyr. That is, I declare "in for a penny, in for a pound" and allow the kids to have friends over.

It's actually kind of selfish in a way. I am such a creature of habit that I'm pretty possessive about our typical Friday night tacos and movie night routine, so I rarely allow someone else's child to intrude on it. But since I didn't have a date last night anyway, I figured I might as well go all in.

The Boy had not only a friend over, but a friend over for a sleepover.

Wow. It was...busy.

(Major, major props to those of you out there with two or -gulp- more boys. By themselves, eight-year-old boys are fairly manageable, particularly the ones who can be calmed down most of the time with a book and a snuggle. But double that number and it gets pretty interesting.)

These two peas in a pod are mostly in love with all things screenish, so there was DS and Wii and a movie to keep their attention. But the transition time betwixt each...so much running...and tumbling...and chasing.... How do they possibly take up all the space in the room like that?

And while they slept fine, it did take awhile to get there. Like, a very long "I just need to finish this level" and "can you please put a blanket over those stickers" and "can we switch beds" and "what if I need the bathroom" while. Despite which, of course, they were up and tumbling again sometime before six AM.

Gah.

I read those Bourne books a few years ago - you know, those Bourne Identity and Bourne Some-such-or-other spy novels. They're one of the only cases I know of where the movies are better than the books, partly because the movies veer wildly from the original plots.

But the one thing that keeps coming up is Jason Bourne declaring "sleep is a weapon" and regaling tales of when he was in special ops and leading his team through the jungle and they were surrounded by enemy fire and his big, bright solution was to lie down for an hour or two while his comrades kept watch.

Seems a bit silly, maybe, but who of us hasn't gone into the battle that is everyday life a little bit sleep-deprived and gotten their butts handed to them?

I'm in no shape to do anything today, much less drag kids to swimming lessons and bully my way into one of the too few family change rooms and drop off at (another!) play date (despite the fact that I've already had to do all of this).

Nope, I'm going to finish up the mac and cheese on the stove and head off for a quick nap.

Cover me.

Read more...

Vendredi V - Packing Tape Edition

Friday already? Yikes, this week went fast!

If it's Friday, that also means it's only five weeks until we close on the new house. We're almost there, but there's still some final paperwork that needs arranging; I'm a nervous Nellie about it and so will worry my way to the finish line, but The Husband assures me there's plenty of dots for the I's and crosses for the T's.

In the meantime, I'm going to help the time fly by getting the packing started. I'm a pro at it, given our many (many, many, many) moves, but I will admit I'm a bit rusty. Plus, we haven't done it for awhile, so there's a lot more stuff to go through than usual. I think I need some incentive:

Top 5 Reasons Why I'm Excited to Move:

1. Purging. I'd like to pin exclusive blame on the kids for this one, but truth be told, the entire PM family is pretty good at amassing stuff, despite our avowal to live simply. (Well, maybe that's just my vow.) There's nothing like having to touch every single item you own prior to putting it into a box to help you decide whether it's worth paying two strapping young men good money to take it to the new house.

2. New bus route. As upset as The Girl is to leave her current bus route, I'm excited to get onto a new one. Or, more accurately, back to the one I had before. I currently have to leave the house no later than 5:45 AM to make it to work on time (closer to 5:35 if I want to leave my car at home). Our new house is closer to work, which means I can still take a direct bus AND get onto said bus at a much more reasonable time of 6:05. That's 20 minutes of snoozing!

3. Painting. I hate white walls. With my whole heart. Years of rentals will do that to you. I've painted the odd rented wall in the past, but knowing that you're just going to leave in a few months gets pretty old after awhile and I get less and less inspired to pull out the ol' green painter's tape every time. But now? My own walls? Better buy some stock in Benjamin Moore.

4. No more landlords. This one isn't really all that fair, as we've lucked out and have had fantastic landlords pretty much across the board. And I know there's something to be said about being able to call someone else when the sink backs up and go along my merry way. But it's wearing always having someone else out there - someone that you have to answer to when your son tries to pry the frost off the windows with a butter knife and breaks a hole in the brand new, restored heritage windows. Now? If something breaks? It's totally my call as to when/how/if we fix it.

5. My dream house. All of this pales in comparison to the fact that our new digs are pretty much perfect for us. It's not huge, but I've always said that I would rather have a good layout than square footage, since I'm not awesome at cleaning but I'm also OCD about neatness. It's got more character than any house I've ever lived in (and I'll take old over new any day, even if it means I've lived in fire hazards and sieves-for-windows). And the location...honestly, I didn't dare dream we'd ever make it anywhere close to that neighbourhood, much less smack dab in the middle of all the action.

Wow. I feel better already. Now where are all those great boxes from the last move?

Read more...

Seriously?!

You know what's more difficult than keeping a promise to blog every day for a month?

Keeping a promise to not complain about the weather.

Case in point - my backyard two days ago:

Same backyard, 24 hours later:

For REALS???

But I promised, no complaining. Instead, how about a timeline of my day yesterday?

Commence documentary mode.

8:00 am - Leave house immediately after getting kids on bus. Since need to be home in time for bus drop-off, decide to take car to transit station. It's a bit snowy, but bus comes at 8:26 and it usually takes 10 minutes to get there, so have lots of time.

8:26 am - Barely one mile from home, travelling 10 mph down the interstate. Oh well, missed the first bus, but there's another one ten minutes later.

8:45 am - Finally make it to the transit station just in time to see second bus leave.

9:10 am - Third bus still hasn't arrived; overhear other waiting passengers comment that buses are running 1/2 hour late. Look at slow-moving traffic on interstate and realize that even if third bus arrives immediately, attendance at 10 am meeting is unlikely.

9:15 am - Attempt to leave transit station parking lot to get home. Stop to try to help push out lady driving what is essentially a Hot Wheels car with shiny no-grip tires. Try to explain what it means to "rock" a stuck vehicle and point out as gently as possible that pressing the gas pedal all the way down like that simply creates a personal skating rink.

9:17 am - Abandon Good Samaritan duties because a) wearing Slippery-Bottomed-Boots-of-Death, b) not heavy enough to get any momentum for pushing, and c) there's no way that car is getting out of there until tomorrow.

10:04 am - Back home two hours after I left, just in time to call in late for meeting.

10:15 am - Phone rings. The Husband's flight home is cancelled. Commence trying to get ahold of hapless air traveller.

12:30 pm - Finally reach husband. Inform him that the evening's conjugal visit (*snicker*) laundry layover is cancelled.

1:30-4:30 pm - Husband works airline magic and manages to beg his way onto two flights home.

6:30 pm - Husband en route home. Luggage is not.

See? No complaining. All very orderly and factual.

(Grrrr.)

Read more...

If April Showers Bring May Flowers...

...then what do March showers bring?

Freezing rain, treacherous driving, and all-around nastiness, it would seem.

So when it looks like this outside:

You really don't have much choice other than to fire this baby up:

And make this:

Homemade broccoli soup? Fresh brown bread made with a stolen possession is nine-tenths of the law borrowed** breadmaker? With real butter?

Yes, please!

**Hi Mom! I'll give it back...someday.

Read more...

Two Days Down, 10 to Go

There was a party at my house yesterday.

A pity party.

With one person on the invite list.

Moi.

Yes, I was feeling very sorry for myself, staring into the seemingly endless black hole that is this upcoming stretch of Husband-less days.

Thinking about how faaaaaar away next Thursday is. And how many kid activities I have to negotiate (two daytime school events this week). And how it's sooooo hard to have to try to fit eight hours of work into the time between school bus pick-up and drop-off.

(Can't you just hear the violins playing...)

So I tried giving myself the evening off. I skipped my workout and drowned my sorrows in (what else?) chips and dip. I tried to take a nap.

And ended up feeling worse than before. Welcome to Grump City, population: 1.

Then it occurred to me - this malaise calls for much more than the usual taking-it-easy and being-kind-to-myself. I need to raise the bar a bit. I need to bring out the big guns (in a pacifist way, of course).

I need this:

Of course! What do I do when my kids are grumpy and grody? Send them to bed early with a book. Does wonders for their spirits and mine.

So I'm going to take my own medicine this time. And who wouldn't feel eleventy-billion times better when reading stuff like this:

Women were expected to have weak opinions; but the great safeguard of society and of domestic life was that opinions were not acted on. Sane people did what their neighbours did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.

Pure gold, I tell you.

Read more...

(2 + 2) - 1 = Totally Outnumbered

Sigh. Know what this means?

It means The Husband is travelling.

[heavy sigh]

See, The Husband isn't a huge fan of spaghetti, so I rarely make it when he's around. In truth, I'm not usually fond of the noodles-from-a-box/sauce-from-a-jar combo myself. However, the kids love it with their whole hearts, and there's something about a liberal dose of the above on it all that turns it from blah into Reliving The Best Part of My Childhood.

It's a good thing I got the extra 10% more for free, because I think I'll probably be using it - The Husband is going on three trips back to back with a brief overnight layover between each at home.

(Knowing that he's going somewhere exotic and fun totally rubs salt in the wound that is single parenting, so we have a mutual understanding that the cooler the destination and the more I would love to go, the more undesirable is the code name we use for it. When he went to Prague, I think we referred to it as "Utica."

This current trip triad is being referred to as "Waco-Grunthal-Calgary," so I'll bet you can just guess how awesome the first two are. [The third one is actually real, though - Calgary requires no pretending that it's worse than it is.])

I will give him his due, though. He spent all day Saturday catching up the kids laundry and cleaning the house (and taking "no one messy lives here, please rent this house" pictures) just so that I could hit the ground running.

So I've got five days' worth of kids clothes, a clean house (except for laundry baskets full of homework and office supplies), and a full bottle of fake parmesan cheese.

We should be good to go.

Read more...

So *That's* What's Just Outside the Frame

After scouring the MLS listing site looking at houses for the past two years, you'd think it would have occurred to me that it is unlikely most people actually live in the house in the pictures.

Sure, it's their house, but what you see on real estate listings is their house, not their home.

When you read house-selling advice, they always say to "stage" your home and to remove clutter and personal effects. Essentially, you're supposed to erase yourself from the picture and portray the house as a blank slate, welcoming yet impersonal, an open invitation to potential owners to put their own stamp on it and not to admire your collection of around-the-world teaspoons.

We're not selling our home (thank goodness), but we are trying to get out of our lease a bit early, so yesterday was picture-taking day. Mindful of the advice, we tried to make our house look as inviting yet clutter-free as possible.

It took us four hours.

And what we ended up with was a series of pictures of a really lovely house that is nevertheless a Through-the-Looking-Glass PM house. It was totally bizarre - ours yet not ours.

Funniest was knowing what was just outside the frame of each picture - laundry baskets full of crap, piles of books that had been temporarily moved, and mountains of homework. In some, there's a whole pile of stuffed animals just barely beyond the camera's reach.

Case in point - this looks like a nice (if sterile) kitchen, yes?

Here is what it really looks like (less than twelve hours later, too):

The detritus of yesterday's Netflix/popcorn date night, the remnants of hurried salad-making as I was getting ready for church, open cupboards, asthma inhaler - there's even one of those infamous laundry baskets filled with office crap hiding under the open dishwasher door.

It's real life, to be sure, but it's not a life anyone looking at renting this place wants, I'll bet. So we shuttled piles of stuff from room to room and put together a pretend life.

(I will admit - it's actually quite a pretty looking pretend life. Oh that my house were really that clutter-free!)

Easy enough for pictures, I suppose - but now I'm going to have to make it reality and actually clean it all up, sigh. Onwards to the linen closet!

Read more...

The Enigma Project

It's somewhere in the high forties outside. I know this, even though my little desktop weather icon says that it's 9 C.

Know how I know?

BECAUSE I CRACKED THE CODE!!

Oh yeah - I'm pretty much like one of those cryptography experts in the wars who sat there poring over intercepted enemy messages, sweating and chain-smoking into the wee hours of the night, and suddenly saw the unintelligible letters morph in their mind's eye into clear directives.

(Well, not so much the smoking part.)

Remember how I said I finally put up a little Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion chart at my desk so I could surreptitiously figure out what the locals meant when they were obsessing about the latest highs and/or lows?

This past week, as I was working, that 90% of my brain that they say we never use was unconsciously processing that little chart. Suddenly it saw a pattern - and it tugged at my consciousness:

Pssst. Hey. Check it out. If you subtract 30 from the F temperature and divide by two, you get pretty close to the C temperature...

Gasping, I looked at row after row on the chart to prove the theory - it works! It's not exact, but it's close enough.

So now, whenever someone mentions an F temperature, instead of a sidelong glance at my chart, they see my eyes lose focus as I mentally check out of the conversation for some quick mental math and then just as quickly I can come back and nod and say, "oh yeah, wow, that's going to be so warm, can't wait!"

Read more...

Vendredi V - SPROING!!! Edition

Well, as much as I did my best "I'm glad winter is still here" Pollyanna impression last week, I can't say that I'm not totally jazzed that Spring seems to have Minnesota since then. Yesterday I went for a walk in the sunshine at lunchtime and it was glorious!

I'm downright itchy with spring fever these days. The extra daylight, the warmer temps, even the gritty, grotty, gravelly roads are all signs of the amazingness to come. And so:

Top 5 Things I Love About the First Days of Spring:

1. New Rubber Boots! Nothing says spring like stomping and splashing through puddles. And The Girl just got the cutest new boots and can't wait to try them. (Also: Look how huge they are! She has size six feet already. Crazy.)

2. More Room on the Bus! I'll need to double-check with The Husband on this one, but I'm fairly certain that the one-size-fits-none bus seats are developed somewhere warm. Somewhere where no one ever wears Michelin-Man-esque parkas. All winter, I get about half a seat to myself and have to give up the other half to my neighbour's parka and I feel all claustrophobic. Come spring, I get a good extra five inches of real estate all to myself.

3. No More Blind Corners! The snow removal down here isn't too bad (although it doesn't compare to the efficient machine that is Manitoba clearing), but what with almost 80 inches of snow this winter, we sort of ran out of places to put it. There are corners I haven't been able to see around since November, and many times has my poor Jetta's front bumper almost borne the brunt of one-creeping-forward-only-to-suddenly-see-the-headlights-racing-towards-me too many.

4. Less Ramp-Up Time for Runs! I'm pretty proud of myself for running outside all winter. But this has only been possible because of a fair amount of equipment. It takes me about half an hour to suit up each week (think Apollo 13 - by the time I've put on my two layers of pants, two long-sleeved layers + jacket, two layers of mittens, balaclava, belt with water bottles and iPod headphones snaked through it all and nestled next to my warm body, I feel like Tom Hanks and I want to pee in my suit). Soon enough it'll be shorts-tank top-shoes-GO!

5. Summer Chipotle! My work friend and I go to Chipotle every Friday, and during the winter we go to the one in the skyways. But nothing says spring like dashing outside and strolling along Nicollet Mall to get to the outside one and then feeling the sunshine and the breeze as I carry my tacos back to my desk!

Read more...

House Hunting Update

So, PM, what's up with your house hunt? I haven't heard anything - you're not totally discouraged yet, are you? Hey, these things take time, no worries. You started off with going to see that one house the other day - did that go okay?

Yep.

We bought it.

Seriously?

Yep.

Isn't that the first house you looked at?

Yep. You know how they console aging singles who have dated a gazillion Wrong Ones that when they do meet The Right One, they'll know it immediately and they can prance down the aisle without any doubts four weeks later?

We're pretty much like that. Except with a house. We've lived in so many other houses in so many different locations that we know exactly what we like, exactly what we hate, and (most importantly), what we can put up with.

Well. This is pretty exciting. But I have to admit I'm a bit disappointed. I was looking forward to tales of multiple open houses, finally finding The Perfect House, putting in an offer, nail-biting, exulting over acceptance; I was pretty much going to live vicariously through you. And now you've gone and done all the dirty work behind the scenes.

Yep. Sorry about that. We actually put in the offer the day after we saw it, and then there was a 48-hour flurry of counter-offers and inspections. There were a few lingering negotiations to get through, though, and I knew that if it didn't work out, it would Break. My. Heart. Into a gazillion pieces.

Plus I knew that if I put pictures up and you saw them and then it didn't work out it would also break YOUR heart. And I promised to use my powers on The Internets for good and not evil. So I waited until it was a done deal.

Well, I suppose that's very nice of...wait, you have pictures?

Yep.

That dining room set? Totally mine. They threw it in with the purchase. Like a free commemorative Olympic glass with a fill at Domo.

My rockstar kitchen. Be still my heart - a gas stove! I lurve cooking with gas.

You'd think this would be a selling feature, particularly for a girl who is upset about not being on her bus route anymore.

Nope: "I HATE pink! Why does everyone think girls like pink?!" So it's first on the list for painting. *sniff sniff* It IS super cute, though.

See all those shelves? My goal is to have ALL toys in the owner's room and that's it. Think it'll work?

Super cute, eh? There's also an attached garage in the back (swoooon!). The lawn is pretty big for the city, which isn't actually our favourite since we're avowed non-lawn kids. But we'll make it work.

The best part is something you can't see on the pictures - the location. We loved the neighbourhood the house-before-our-current one was in, but it wasn't in the school division. As we moved out of that area to where we are now, we often said wistfully, "if only we were on that side of the street," since our old house was literally one block on the wrong side of the boundary line.

So over the past three years as we've been watching the real estate market and driving around looking at For Sale signs and trying to decide where we wanted to end up, we narrowed our search down to six square blocks in all of Minnesota that would be our first choice. Anything else in the school division would be okay, but not our best.

Guess where we ended up?

PM - you know you're the luckiest girl around, right?

Yep.

Read more...

His and Hers Chores

The Husband: Okay, seriously. I do not understand. How is it that certain jobs are just my jobs.

PM: Like what?

The Husband: Like the garbage. I come home, and the cans and the recycling boxes are strewn all over the driveway. And I know you got home before I did and I know you had to maneuver around them.

PM: And?

The Husband: Would it really be soo hard to just get out and put them away?

PM: Yes.

The Husband: And when I go on trips. Seriously - you can't even take it out at all? I am away and therefore we have to miss a whole week?

PM: Yes.

The Husband: How is it okay that it is just my job like that?

PM: I had the babies. You do the garbage. That's how it works.

(Oh yeah. I pulled out the "I had your babies" card. I don't use it very often. But the garbage? Puh-lease.)

Read more...

An Open Letter to the White Bungalow Along Hwy 100

Dear Homeowner,

The wise writer of Ecclesiastes reminds us that "for every thing there is a season" and that there is a time for everything under the sun.

Do you know what time it is right now?

A time for the cracking of sunroofs and the eating of Cadbury eggs. A time for scraping mud off shoes. A time for doffing parkas and turning faces to the lengthening daylight.

Do you know what time it is not?

A time for Christmas lights.

And yet.

Perhaps you meant it to be cheerful. Perhaps you thought that yesterday, the first day back to work after springing forward (a heinous thing, given that the 5:00 am alarm sounded when my body still thought it was 4:00 am), you would try to brighten my commute, slammed back into the darkness as it was.

Perhaps that is why you turned on your Christmas lights.

Now, I have some level of sympathy for season's greetings lasting into the new year. Consider the Ukrainians, for example. Also, January is cold. And dark. A bit of extra light is a lovely thing.

I also recognize that I write this somewhat from my own glass house, given that the vestiges of my Christmas tree still lie brown and brittle at the end of my driveway.

But (I must protest), this state of affairs is not in my control. That tree has been there since the first week of January, when I took it down in a timely fashion. Not so timely has been my garbage pickup, it would seem.

What is in your control is the light switch that you use to turn on (and - please - off) your house's holiday decor.

I beseech you - please let the wee hour morning darkness be. Soon enough our early sunsets will return. I can take a few more weeks of this. What I cannot take is something that mentally slams me back to the first days of winter and upcoming holidays, when I am still supposed to be excited about newly fallen snow.

Additionally, I wonder if perhaps you miss the irony of attempting to brighten my day at the end of a winter with epic proportions of snow with lights that are designed to look like icicles.

Humbly yours,

PM

Read more...

"Doctor, It Hurts When I Do This."

"So stop doing that."

Ever catch yourself dreading a task? Gritting your teeth as you enter the ring once more, just knowing that it's going to be horrid?

And then it IS horrid, and you grumble and complain your way through it, finishing it with no real sense of relief since you know it's going to be exactly the same the next day. And the next. And the next. Until...forever.

Homework is not very popular around these parts. The Girl has really become responsible this past year, and usually only takes a bit of reminding to get going. (Helps that she "has" to do English reading every day. She snickers a bit at that - just like her English Lit major mother - and can't quite believe her luck that she's getting credit for doing something she would be doing anyway.)

The Boy has to be dragged kicking and screaming to the table for his dreaded printing worksheets, but once there, he usually blasts through them both pretty swiftly and bounces back to his Wii game before the TV's gone into sleep mode.

They're both so independent that I don't usually do a whole lot of helping with actual problems. No sirree, my work is of the prep variety.

My job?

Finding the pencils.

GAH! We go through so many pencils in this house. Every time I find one underneath the couch or hiding in a bookshelf, I let out a gasp of joy. We never seem to have enough, despite me putting them on Christmas lists for stocking stuffers and buying a fancy electric pencil sharpener so that we can use all of those non-mechanical ones.

Most days we have to the Laura and Mary Ingalls thing, where we've got one pencil to share between the poor, poor children and they have to take turns doing their homework.

We do this every. single. day. I hate it, but what are you going to do?

How about this:

See that?! It's a box of 50 pencils. Five-zero. Do you know how long it will take us to go through that box? I figure we've got at least a solid month totally free of "moo-oooom - do you know where there's a pencil???"

Sad thing is that it never occurred to me to just buy in bulk and be done with all that aggravation, until I was perusing the Target stationery aisle. I saw the box, and it was as though the heavens opened up and an angel choir sang as a beam of light shone down on it as it levitated up towards my shaking, waiting hands.

Until I saw this box, we did the daily search simply because we've always done it that way. Kinda makes me wonder what else I'm doing that could be solved simply by opening myself up to another possibility. Hmmm...

Read more...

But That Was My Blogging Hour!

As usual, springing forward kicked me in the B-U-T-T.

Sorry.

Doesn't help that last night was (late night) movie night. Or that this morning was "get up early to wash fifty pounds of potatoes for the baby shower."

(If you're reading this, parents-to-be - it was totally worth skipping out the extra sleep, no worries.)

Nonetheless, that extra hour of sunshine sure is nice! Dangerous, though. It's almost seven o'clock and we still haven't sat down to supper. Everyone's frustrated and ornery, and we can't figure out why (hint: it's really an hour past suppertime).

Onwards and upwards, friends! 9:30 pm bike rides are just around the corner!

Read more...

That's How I Got Half of My French Vocabulary!

I came home from work to this. It made me laugh so hard:

Can't you just hear the whining?

He's looking at me!!

Stop it! I can SEE you chewing. OH. OH! It's SO Gross.

Well, don't look at it then.

I can't stop - you're so GROSS and so loud and, DAAAAAAD!!!!

I have a sneaking suspicion that the entirety of most Canadian anglophones' knowledge of French consists of the French words for "high in fibre" and "snap, crackle, pop."

Ah, cereal boxes - allowing for the temporary armistice of sibling breakfast fights everywhere.

Read more...

Vendredi V - Winter is The Awesome! Edition

Man, Winter just won't go gentle into that good night, eh? Well, I promised I wouldn't complain. So let's reverse psychology this thing:

Top 5 Things I Luuuuurve About Winter (Director's Extended Cut):

1. I get to use my parka for longer!

This year I splurged and bought myself a new parka:

Previously, my options were a dressy 3/4 length coat (nice enough, but not very warm) and The Parka (she of the military issue, complete with instructions about pulling the lower drawstring closed when parajumping). I needed something in the middle; something warm yet stylish (as in "Midwestern Stylish" not "Vogue").

And, with an extended winter, my cost per use goes down! Win for the Mennonite!

2. Ditto for my winter tires.

I bought new winter tires last October. (Sorry, no picture. They're black. And round.) Not only does the cost per use go down each day we have residual snow/icy temperatures, but it's one more day that I don't have to update my status on The Face.Book (since the only time I update it is when I swap my tires).

3. It delays the annual Cadbury Mini-Egg gorge-fest.

Mmmm. I love me those mini eggs. And those "robin eggs" (you know, those brightly coloured malted milk balls). When the snow is still on the ground and it still feels like winter, I walk blithely past the chocolate aisle as though it's leftover Christmas candy canes.

4. When Spring does come, it will POP!

Hoo boy, when She finally does arrive, Spring is going to go nuts on us. It'll be the All-Blossom, All-The-Time Channel, with bees buzzing and leaves unfurling and grass growing...it will be Nature's version of fireworks because it will all come in one gorgeous week.

5. And we will LOVE it!

It's kind of a "hunger is the best sauce" thing; when you ache for something so badly, it's all the more glorious when it finally comes. Everyone I know is so desperate for some green, some warmth, and some sun that the eventual arrival of it all in one fell swoop is going to turn us all a little bit batty and a lot giddy.

Read more...

Best. Dog. Ever.

Before we begin our post proper...

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

(Ahem.)

Today is Buffy's birthday!

Yup, March 10 is the day we decided the Best Dog Ever needed a birthday, and what better day to celebrate than on the same day you decide to create the birthday? Why waste time?

See, we had to create a birthday for her because she was used. She came to us pre-owned by the pastor's family, whose move to a new city did not include a dog. Free dogs do not come with birthdays - that's for the fancy ones that you actually pony up a bit of cash for.

In this picture (the only one I can find of her, but holy smokes is it not the funniest one ever??), she is still pretty svelte. This is because when we got her, she was extremely well-trained. She had a little rug for the corner to which she obediently headed at mealtime. People food was verboten. She was used to long, skinny-dog-making walks.

Yeah, that all lasted for about a month.

Within a few days, she was edging towards our chairs (possibly because we solicited her with handouts). Within a few weeks, she was sitting right beside us, waiting for the inevitable broccoli sneak. Within months, she had her front paws up on your chair, nudging her nose beneath your arm and moving it out of the way so she could get closer to your plate.

(True story: After Buffy died, my mom couldn't eat the last bite of her toast for months. It was the "Buffy bite" and it lay untouched on that plate, a mini memento mori for us all.)

The more we loved her, the fatter she got. Pretty soon she was busting out of her little red sweaters.

But she was great. Sweet, gentle, and loving. She could be a bit shy, and when she got a haircut at the groomers, she spent the day under the open dishwasher door because she was embarrassed.

She'd lie beside you on the couch until she got unbearably hot. But she loved you so much, she'd just try to pant herself cool. (Of course, she was so rotund that she just ended up shaking the couch. Which made it a jiggly, dog-breath couch of happiness.)

Buffy died right before I left home, so in some ways, I've often associated her death with the beginning of my grown-up life. She was the only dog I've ever owned. And probably ever will, since I both my husband and son are severely allergic. Also? I can barely take care of my munchkins, and never remember to take them for walks; I'm not a good dog mommy.

But that's okay - Buffy gave me enough doggy love to last my whole life.

(P.S. I think my mom made those sweatshirts. In case you were wondering.)

Read more...

A Conversation Overheard

The Boy: I hate homework.

Me: Hmm...let's see....well, you've doubled the pennies for each day, so that's right, but the question says you need to add up how many pennies he has in total on Sunday, not just how many he has.

The Boy: ARGH! Why do you have to be SO smart?!

Me: Oh, you're smart, too. See, you have the right answer - it's just the answer to another question. Let's figure out the answer to this question.

The Boy: I HATE HOMEWORK!!

(I'll second that motion. Anything that leads to an eight-year-old tantrum on the kitchen floor while I'm trying to make supper is not high on my list of Great Ways to Spend My Day.)

Read more...

"I have CDO...."

"...It's kind of like OCD, except the letters are in alphabetical order like they're supposed to be." ~ Unknown

True story: When I was a kid, I'd accompany my mom on her weekly grocery shopping trip and spend the entire time hovering over the candy displays by the checkout.

Scoping for shopliftables?

Nope.

Determining which cavity bomb to beg for?

Nope.

Rearranging the gum packets so everything was in the correct box and facing the right way?

Ohhhhh yeah.

(I look back now and wonder what those cashiers must have thought. Of course, it was Penner Foods, so they probably all knew exactly who I was and which Pioneer Girl merit badge I'd earned that week.)

When people find out that I'm a technical writer for a software company, they usually take a step back. Their eyes glaze over, and I get the standard, "oh. Wow. That sounds...hard."

The brave few ask what it is that I do each day. Those who know me from my former life ask me exactly how teaching college English led to software manuals.

And you know what I say?

It's pretty much the same thing (except for the whole I-read-technical-specs-and-translate-geek-into-English rather than expounding on Middlemarch. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to).

Fundamentally, what I do (and who I am, let's be honest) is about organization. It's about bringing light into darkness, playing "one of these things is not like the other," and wrapping it all up with bullets and standard headings.

It's the most satisfying job I've ever had. I take the chaos of programmer notes and transform it into easy-to-understand-and-implement procedures. I separate the wheat from the chaff and centre it under bold "What can I do?" headings.

You know, I've always appreciated the Genesis account of creation - essentially, God creates the world by organizing it.

Light? You go there. Darkness - opposite side of the room, thanks. Sky? Up. Water? Down. Land? Um, wherever there's not water, sound okay?

And once everything's where it's supposed to be, that's when the real fun begins.

Okay, let's fill up this space. Fish -into the water where you belong. Birds - that sky's looking kinda empty - you head there. Animals? Let's see...giraffes in the desert, bison in the plains, penguins in the Antarctic...that should do it.

It was Oscar Wilde who said, "Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative."

Bollocks.

It's within the rules that creativity lies. Read a sonnet lately? It's the dancing about and around the ABAB CDCD EFEF GG that makes it ah-MAY-zing. Listened to friend Bach? It's the almost-but-not-quite-bursting out of the confines of the genre that make it grand.

Which is why I love what I do so much. Writing without boundaries gets old after awhile. Nobody says you can't, so suddenly "can" loses its meaning.

But writing with four levels of headings and two sets of bullet styles (depending on context) and specific verb forms for procedures all within a master template?

That's where the magic is, my friends.

Now, if you'll pardon me, the cans in my pantry need to be itemized.

Read more...

It's That Time of Year Again!

Dunh dunh dunhhhhhh.....

It's summer program time!

I didn't know this existed until I became a mom. When I was growing up, summer vacation = sleeping in and then running amok in the neighbourhood, coming in only for lunch and homemade popsicles.

(Made with jello - two kinds - and dixie cups/popsicle sticks. My mom was The Awesome.)

None of my friends had dual income families either, so summer looked the same for all of us. The only alterations to that schedule were my annual trek to summer camp (ohhh yeah - I was Arts & Crafts and Music & Drama girl at Red Rock - totally one of the cool kids) and our yearly family vacation, usually to Falcon Lake, but sometimes all the way out to the Left Coast to visit family.

When my own munchkins were younger, summer didn't look all that different from their usual days - they were in daycare. I'd already made the mental shift from "all kids need to have a stay-at-home mom because I did" to "a family does what makes sense for that family, and in my family, it makes sense for mom to work," so it wasn't a big deal.

Then they hit school (its own mental shift), and we hit our first summer. Suddenly, used to year-round, all-day programming for our kids, we were left staring at the vast expanse of 11 weeks on the calendar with nothing.

It was a total double whammy, too, since we were in America, where they let their kids out of school in the first week of June (and then wonder why their kids are falling behind, but whatever), leaving almost three months to cover instead of a much more manageable eight weeks.

So we discovered the Summer Program. And every year, come early March, we have to discover it all over again.

What are the kids going to do this summer????

I work because I want to, so quitting my job isn't an option. We don't have enough holidays between the two of us to cobble together an entire summer's worth of care. And, more's the pity, the county says we can't leave them alone all day for 11 weeks.

So, it's various clubs and programs and camps. For the past few years, we've done the same summer program that runs their inservice/spring break/winter break care, and it's been fine. This year we're trying something different - an a la carte version where you mix and match various options.

But I don't WANT to do fishing - I don't want to touch a gross fish!!

No. Dad. I do NOT want to do football. For the eighth time.

I want to do archery.

How come I can't do swimming? Why are we ALWAYS gone when I get to do good stuff?

Sigh. We're also trying to mix in a quilting camp (a saint from church has offered to teach The Girl's Sunday School class how to make doll quilts), The Girl's first-ever overnight Bible camp experience, our own family vacation (if only a week for us to find some local biking trails and hang out at the lake), and a couple of weeks for the kids at "Grandma's Farm."

Makes me tear my hair out a bit every year, I'll admit. But since the alternative is handing in my resignation and stocking up on jello and dixie cups, I grab my enrollment forms and a pen and grumble as I go looking for immunization records.

Read more...

Walk the Mile and Bear the Load

In one of those funny little coincidences, I have sung The Servant Song in both of "my" two churches in the past two weeks.

The first time was two weeks ago, in our Old Home Church. We made a quick trip up to MB to celebrate my grandmother's 90th birthday and catch up with all the other relatives who came out. It was a heart-brimming kind of a day, and it started with church in the morning.

(Also: there was communion. I have not remained dry-eyed during communion for approximately eight years. There's something all God's banquet table and community and holiness of the jumble of humanity about it.)

The second time was today at my New Home Church. This time, instead of singing from the pews, looking up at the screen for the lyrics, and catching the eye of smiling old friends, I sang it from the piano, where I played along with our fledgling worship team, sending smiles out towards the congregation as they held their hymnbooks.

My favourite line from that song is this one:

I will hold the Christ-light for you, in the nighttime of your fear...

I know that fear. The darkest, deepest parts of night. The down-in-the-bowels, depths-of-despair, stomach-knotting, oh-God-help-me fear. The kind where the days are one torturous, agonizingly slow minute plodding after another, but they're still preferable to the nights where you're alone with the "what if"s and the "why"s and "now what do I do?"s.

Years ago, I often went to my Old Home Church carrying that fear with me. I wept through many services in the back pew. It was horrible.

But.

It was a church where it was okay to weep. It was okay to be scared.

Because I wasn't alone. I was surrounded by people who loved me, who cared about me, and who did everything they could to guide me through that nighttime of my fear, carrying that light for me (since I had no strength to do much more than take each small step), until we got to the other side of it together.

When we moved to Minneapolis, I felt the loss of those Christ-light holders so keenly. I felt frightened - not the same dark fear - but still, apprehensive. We were this little island, just the four of us, alone in a strange city, dependent entirely on each other.

I've always said that you know you're safe when you have The List. The list of people that you could call at 3 am, and that you know would respond unhesitatingly to whatever emergency warranted a call in the middle of the night. I had to leave that list behind when we moved, and it was pretty scary to not have it.

Days like today remind me that I have a new version of The List. I hope that I won't ever experience that nighttime of fear again, but if I do, I've got a whole bunch of people I can call. Like our church small group, including the retired couple who act as emergency contacts for our kids in case something happens.

It feels so good to have The List again. Everyone needs one; it's a cold and lonely feeling to think you're in it all alone. I've had that feeling, and I don't anymore, which is why I love being in church and singing songs that remind me of that....

I will hold my hand out to you, speak the peace you long to hear....

Read more...

Well, At Least I Don't Have to Take Away His Keys

I'm a total TMI mom. I'm a firm believer that when children ask questions, they should receive answers. No hedging, no lying by omission (unless absolutely necessary to avoid nightmares)...the whole nine yards.

In my quest for "the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," I tend to put an emphasis on the whole part. Questions about the veracity of Santa Claus expand to include the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy - might as well get all that destruction of childhood out of the way with at once. A query as to the meaning of the phrase "September 11th" results in an extended discussion about imperialism and the necessity of looking past heinous acts to the underlying motivation.

And the birds and bees? Let's just say that if we end up with STDs and/or teen pregnancies in this house, it will not be because I introduced the topic of safe sex and abstinence too late.

So I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by this conversation from last night:

The Boy: Mom, can I have some of your beer?

Me: Nope. It's a grown-up drink.

The Boy: But mom! I don't even know how to drive! How am I possibly going to drink and drive? What am I going to do, take your keys and go out to the car and try to figure it out?

Read more...

Vendredi V - "Can I Have $750 to Buy Vegetables?" Edition

Nothing says spring like the return of that favourite feature here on PGT - Vendredi V, right?

Another thing that shouts "SPRING!" is the planning of gardens and anticipation of fresh produce. Since I don't have a garden (yet...), I signed up this week for the next best thing: a CSA.

CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) are basically rent-a-garden (plus bonus gardeners!) for city folks. Someone else plants, cultivates, and, because I am lazy found an awesome one, delivers fresh produce for the entire growing season.

I was a Janey-Come-Lately last year and was only able to get the winter storage share from the CSA I found, but it was fantastic. So I stalked their website all winter and was first in line when they finally announced their 2011 season. Can't wait until June!

I wonder if all this veggie-love is why this time of year also brings to mind something else that for me is pretty spring-y - being a vegetarian. It was in spring 11 years ago that I was eating a delicious chicken breast. I started it as an omnivore and, by the time I ate the last bite, I was a vegetarian. In practice, it took awhile to officially join the team, but in my head and heart, I was done.

And so, how much more spring-y than:

Top 5 Reasons Why I'm a Vegetarian:

1. It keeps me healthy! I gave up the ol' carcass just before I got pregnant with The Girl. (After a year of infertility, but I'm not claiming causality.) People around me worried, but I had a healthy pregnancy, a healthy daughter, and wash-rinse-repeat the same two years later (well, except the daughter part). The past 11 years have been the healthiest of my life. Again, it's not necessarily the absence of meat, but perhaps the concentration on veggies and beans and whole grains, but whatever - I'll take it!

2. It's good for the planet! No proselytizing or condemnation here - y'all can eat what you like. And certainly I have no moral highground - every time I go into the co-op I can just feel the vegans getting all judgey on me for the dairy in my cart. But I do believe that a vegetarian diet helps fulfill God's commandment to care for the earth and all the creatures in it.

3. It keeps me nimble in the kitchen! If you're used to the meat + starch + veg combo, vegetarian cooking is daunting. Gone are the "defrost something from the freezer while you figure out rice vs. potatoes and corn vs. peas" days. Absence of meat does not automatically equal a healthy diet - heck, Old Dutch chips 24/7 would technically be veg. (And be technically awesome!) So it takes a fair amount of creativity to make sure you've got enough protein. I've got three picky eaters in this family, so I spend a lot of time with cookbooks (and hearing complaints). But hey, at least we're trying new things!

4. I'm indecisive! You know that feeling you get when you go to a restaurant and you're totally overwhelmed with the options and it takes you fifteen minutes to decide, going back and forth between your final two dishes until the server finally comes for the third time and you blurt out whichever choice happens to be winning? Well, there's none of that analysis paralysis when you're veg! Unless I intentionally seek out one of those local food/caters to the hipsters restaurants, I usually have two, maybe three choices tops. It still takes me fifteen minutes to decide, but I'm not nearly as lathered up with anxiety by the end.

5. It's dee-lish-uss!! Honestly, going veg wasn't very hard for me. I admire people who lurve meat and still give it up for moral reasons - I don't know if I have that kind of fortitude. I love veggies with my whole heart (except eggplant - we're still eyeing one another with suspicion across the table). I love beans - oh black beans, I heart you so. Truthfully, my diet is so full of amazing food that there really isn't room for meat.

Oh man, my mouth is watering right now - bring on the spring spinach! And bring it directly to my door, you fabulous CSA fairy!

Read more...

HouseHunters International

I'm going to go look at someone's house tonight.

It's not my house.

But it could be.

(EEP!)

Yes, the time has come, the Walrus realtor said, to talk of many things...

...like how many bathrooms. And bedrooms. And which postal codes. And we'll-compromise-on-the-bathrooms-but-we-need-a-fourth-bedroom-because-Hotel-PM maintains-a-higher-occupancy-rate-than-anticipated.

And (gulp) mortgages.

(Well, "mortgage" singular.)

In theory, we are pretty much the best positioned buyers in America right now: rates are low, inventory is high, sellers are desperate, we've got jobs (count'em - two!), and best of all, we've got no house we need to sell first.

Still, I'm pretty nervy about buying a house. It's a big decision.

For those of you keeping score at home, we've lived at eight addresses in as many years (alas, not always together). We're nomads who have become quite used to the almost annual cycle of get damage deposit back/sign new lease/pay damage deposit/get rid of stuff that doesn't fit anymore/buy stuff for the extra spaces.

Renting is quite liberating in lots of ways. You're never more than 12 months away from leaving if you don't like a place. No worries about furnaces. Or roofs. Or other big-ticket items. Little to no maintenance. The buck stops somewhere else, so while your neighbours are out there raking leaves or calling plumbers, you're headed to the beach.

But I've long said I'm a perennial kind of gal, not an annual one. I long for a garden again. And I lurve painting.

(Not so much that I'll paint your walls, though.)

In some ways, I've never really owned a home. Even the Mitchell duplex, although my name was on the title, wasn't really mine since I was always thinking ahead to the next owners.

So this is super exciting for me. Nerve-wracking and nail-biting, too, to be sure, but nonetheless, it's been a dream of mine for a long time. (It was also a condition of the move: I held up my end of the bargain to move to Minneapolis, now someone has to pony up and help me buy a house.)

Just think - this summer I'll collapse all my boxes and for once I won't think, "better put these somewhere safe; we'll be needing them again soon."

Read more...

Running is Mental

Yesterday I related my cautionary "don't try this at home kids" tale of treadmill-falling woe to a coworker who does triathlons. (Or is that a "triathlete who is my coworker"?) I needed to try get some sympathy from somewhere, given that all I get is laughter from The Husband whenever he so much as thinks about it.

As I demurred showing Friend Triathlete my scrapes and only motioned vaguely in their direction (since pointing out their true locations would have a) taken awhile and b) made me blush) while nonetheless assuring him that there is a perfect waffle-weave indentation on my left knee from the treadmill belt, another coworker gave me a strange look and said, "oh, do you do lots of running, too?"

I shrugged and said, "oh, I don't know about lots, but I do some." To which the triathlete responded with disbelief, "you run 10 miles every weekend. I'd call that lots."

My curious coworker gave a dismissive little laugh and said, "oh, wow, that's, um, lots. Good for you...

...I could NEVER do that."

I know that laugh. I have laughed that laugh many times. I, too, have told people who run that they are crazy, that I tried it once and hated every step, that you could never get me to run, that I'm allergic to gym.

Yet here we are.

Lots of people ask me how I got started. I can never tell if they're looking for inspiration or a heads-up on the kind of thinking to avoid in order to dodge the same bullet that got me.

I tell them that my husband started running (which, truth be told, didn't do a whole lot to get me going - he'll be the first to agree that him telling me I should do something or that I would like something is a guarantee that the suggestion goes to the top of my 100 Things to Never Do, Whether Before or After I Die list). And then I saw yet another coworker training for a marathon (for a software company, we're pretty fit). And then I kept bumping into other runners, so it seemed like all the cool kids were doing it.

Then I mention the fit of insanity that gripped me, upon recovering from which I realized I had signed up for a half marathon. And how the fear of that race got me out there, running first 2 miles, then 3, then 4, then more.

But I think what matters more is not how I started running, but why I keep doing it. At first, I did it because it felt so good to stop. Then, I did it because of the sense of accomplishment.

Now I do it because that two hours every Saturday morning (yeah, I'm sloooooow) is my most precious time every week. I lace up my shoes, slap in my headphones, and don't come home until all the grossness and the anxiety of the week has been wrung from my system.

When I walk in the door after those 10 miles, it's like I'm totally empty. Clear. Clean. Like someone hit the reset button.

I know that this entire post is pretty much eating humble pie. I mocked runners for so long; it's a fairly large piece.

But this post is also a reminder to never say never. Since the Grande 1/2 Marathon Experiment, I have realized that so much of what I can't do is simply a don't do. That's kind of scary - makes me wonder what else I could accomplish if I were driven/scared enough.

But it's also pretty liberating to think that so much of it is in my head.

Read more...

Saddle Up, Everyone!

31 days, 31 posts - starting today. You excited?

I'm excited about my new template. It is all spring-y and happ-y and bike-y. In fact, that header pic looks just like my bike.

(I'd like to say the girl in the header looks just like me, but she's got that jaunty scarf thing going on. Try as I might, I am neither jaunt-y nor scarf-y. I do have those shoes, though.)

So what's the plan for the next month? Well, I promise you one thing: no more complaining about the weather. I am rising above my obsessive checking of the forecast, my friends. I am walking blithely down the street, oblivious to the five-foot drifts and the wind that tries (and fails, bwa ha ha) to cut through my North Face.

I'm also going to try for more pictures to liven this place up. I haven't figured out the camera thingamajigger on my fancy new phone yet, so it might be a few days. I did figure out today that simply selecting the unknown number from Tacoma, Washington that called me (why? who do I know in Tacoma, Washington?) actually places a return call rather than just showing more details.

(Five bucks says I'm the only person who has to carry a pay-as-you-go circa 2005 flip phone along with her iPhone just so that she can actually make and receive calls.)

And perhaps we'll see the return of our annual spring-is-in-the-air-and-the-sap-that-is-my-brain-juice-is-running-again feature, Vendredi V. Because who doesn't love Top 5 lists?

So, onwards and upwards, friends. The Husband thinks that a post every day is too much. I retorted that no one actually has to read them all.

Read what you like. Here's hoping you like what you read.

Read more...