It's Not You, It's Me

Dear blog,

I think it's time we stop seeing each other.

I'm sure this isn't a surprise to you. You've noticed how distant I've been...increasingly distant. Longer and longer between visits. Less to say.

I think we're just going through the motions at this point. Our conversations are just about surface things...who did what and when. No pictures. We've gone from pouring hearts out and daily updates to posts that always begin with "sorry I've been away so long..."

We shouldn't feel guilty. We've tried to rekindle things over and over. I've made pronouncements of "blogging. every. day." and you've spiced things up in the template department. For awhile, things are good again, like the old days. But then, it's back to status quo.

It's like we're just roommates.

Don't worry - there's no one else. The Face.Book and I are just casual acquaintances, nothing more. All those other social media? I don't even know how to use them.

No, I think it's time we face facts. I just can't give you what you need and deserve.

But we've had a good run, yes? Almost six years ago we started this up and things were amazing. We were so connected. There was so much to say...we'd stay up all night talking. So much to share. All the struggles with moving and trying to figure out a new life in a new city.

I suppose you could say that I'm fully transplanted now. I've gone from a bewildered mama with no job, no status, no friends, no house, and no church to a typical mom/wife/woman - kids in the groove, an awesome job, permanent residency, a network of folks, a cute little house on the hill, and a loving church family.

And I suppose that's why I don't have much to say ever. Life isn't boring. But it's just life. And I find more joy in living it than I do recording it.

I won't say "let's just be friends." That's not fair to you - watching and waiting and hoping I'll pop in now and again. No, this is goodbye. I won't be posting anymore. But I'll leave you up. It was good while it lasted and I don't want to forget the fun times we had.

Thanks for always being there. And to my readers (all two of you)? Thanks for everything. It was fun shooting these posts off into the great interwebs beyond and know that friends were still reading and caring about us even after all these years.

Signing off,

Peitricia Mae

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Crying Uncle

I give up.

The view from the skyways yesterday.

I think this is our bazillionth straight day of gray skies. Give or take a day. 

Last week I could see my deck for about an hour. I *almost* got out the patio furniture.

Whimper.

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When The Husband's Away...

I get to go to my happy place.

The paint aisle.

(I can't help it. It's an obsession.)

 

I'm not allowed to paint while The Husband is around. Well, I can do it. But oh my - the whining and complaining. You'd think it was the end.of.the.world. if outlet covers didn't go back on within five minutes of paint drying.

(Pay no attention to the window pulls that have yet to be returned to their rightful home after the painting of the sunroom. It's only been a year and a half.)

So, I have to take advantage of his business trips to pull out the ol' paint chips. And I have to do it kind of on the sly. At least, I have to pretend I'm not doing it and he pretends that he doesn't know that I'm totally going to do it. Last week's exchange:

From: PM@work.com

To: TheHusband@gmail.com

Hi. Question for you. Do you think you could help me move the hutch in the dining room into the bedroom? And maybe the bookshelves? Also, would it be very hard to take down the chandelier?

No reason.

XOXOXO

So this week he's gone for a looooong time - won't see him around these parts until next Sunday. That is SEVEN whole days of pure paint tray and dropcloth bliss. (Shhhh. Don't tell.)

I've never really liked the colour I chose for the main floor. It's too bad - it took me a long time to do. I think, at the time, anything seemed like an improvement.

Can you see the Under the Tuscan Sun fake marbling effect of the previous paint job? Oy. So marbled. So strangely yellowish. It just didn't do it for me.

I went with blue. It's a nice blue. A perfectly good blue. It matches the couches and the wood just fine. And yet....

I didn't love the blue. I didn't even really like the blue. It took me a long time to admit it, but I just never warmed to it. That's not easy to admit when it's brand new. But now it's been almost two years (craziness! We've been living here almost two years!) and it's time to freshen up.

(Or, as The Girl said when we moved the couch and she saw all the dust bunnies underneath, "Mom, there's a lot of dust under here. You should paint more often.")

From your lips to God's ears, darlin'.

It's gonna be good times this week! I've got five cans, a ton of new rollers, and THREE rolls of Frog Tape. And a deadline - oh my, if it still looks like this when someone's plane gets back, it's going to take a LOT of imagination to pretend that there's really still a couch there.

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The Best-Laid Plans

So much for my "I am so awesome and I don't have to shovel my driveway because I don't have to go anywhere" lifestyle.

That ended today when I called home and The Girl answered, sobbing.

"I was running and I was late for the bus and I dropped my phone in the snow and now I can't find it and it's gone foreeeeeevvvvveeeeerrrrrrr!"

Unfortunately, The Girl's school is not within walking distance. And also unfortunately, a day's worth of sun did not miraculously melt the 10 inches of snow on my driveway.

I thought, maybe I can just barrel through. Maybe if I just shovel that bit from the snowplow at the end of the driveway, I'll be good.

But I took one look at it and knew I wouldn't even get out of the garage.

And so, I conquered my fear:

(With a little help from The Husband, who talked me through all the knobs and gears and pull-thingeys and levers.)

It ain't pretty, but it did the job:

(Apologies to the people/cars passing by. I can drive it or I can aim the snow away from you. I chose driving.)

A pathway cleared, we raced off to school to try to capture the last seconds of daylight. Fortunately, Steve Jobs = awesome and the Find iPhone app told us exactly where to go.

But there was a lot of snow. And knowing the area where it is doesn't help much if it's buried.

Double fortunately, the app also includes a "Send sound to phone" feature. So we tried it, and the snow started to ring.

Triple fortunately, the phone was able to pick up the school's wireless network, and it still had 3% power so it was able to call us with its dying breaths.

Lucky girl.

Not one to put my freed car to waste, I decided we needed to celebrate with Noodles and Company. We had our usual:  chicken noodle soup for The Girl and mac'n'cheese for The Boy.

(She's officially vegetarian. So he ate the meat for her.)

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Snug as Bugs

Apparently I am currently living in a reenactment of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie.

Including the whole "Pa is away from home bringing the furs to Independence to trade for supplies and about to get caught in a blizzard in which he will hole up in a snowbank and eat the Christmas candy to stay alive."

(Except it's more of a "The Husband is away on another trip" type of thing. And I don't believe there is candy involved. But I could be wrong.)

Here is the current state of my driveway:

See that trudged path there? That was made by The Girl on her way to school. (The other path on the front yard is made by our poor mail carrier. We don't have a front walk. So he makes his own, poor guy.)

That path also equals the sum total of snow-clearing that I intend to do this week.

For one, our snowblower is an absolute monster. Crazy heated handles, two stage, throw the snow into the next county - that kind of monster. I can't even move it, much less start it.

But more importantly, I'm not clearing snow because I don't have to. The kids bus to school. I bus to work. I can see the grocery store from my sunroom as I type. The piano teacher comes to our house. My French class meets at the high school a few blocks away. In short, we can live our regular lives and we do not need to start up the ol' Jetta at all.

A happy accident? Not a bit. I've been extremely intentional about building this lifestyle. We don't do extracurricular activities that require driving. We made sure to prioritize living in a walkable area that was close to bus routes. And we reap the benefits, particularly on days like today, when The Husband is away yet again and somehow everyone needs to eat and get to school and try to work.

Even better when "work" looks like this:

There's been a lot of brouhaha on the interwebs lately about working from home. Yeah, I get that there's a temptation to slack. And I also get that there is a lot to be said about hallway conversations and just being part of the general hum that is the office.

However, being able to work from home allows me to skip the two-hour commute that awaited me on a snowy day today. It allows me to easily accommodate a last-minute decision by the school division to start school two hours late. It allows me to feed The Boy breakfast while I call in to a meeting in Minneapolis while I instant-message someone in Bangalore while I help The Girl make her lunch.

(It also allows me to blog on my lunch break, woot!)

In short, I'm enormously grateful for being able to sit here in my yoga pants drinking coffee while the snow falls and not have to stress about whether to miss work to take care of the munchkins or whether to leave them to fend for themselves while I brave the commute.

It's definitely a work-life balance I can live with.

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Hibernating

Is it spring yet?

Bah on winter. We're in the worst stretch right now. It's cold. And dark. And flu-tastic. And trip-tastic (the one thing I hate most about the first quarter of the year is that the travel ban at The Husband's work gets lifted and suddenly there's four trips in three weeks).

Truthfully, I feel like I could sleep ten hours a night. I hate how it's dark by the time I get home, so we do homework and dinner at what feels past bedtime. Ack - makes me want to burrow until spring.

But other than being sick and Husband-less, we're still doing quite well. The Boy got his braces off, whoop!

(Must find picture. I have the energy to blog or find pictures. Not both.)

The Boy also turned 10, which is kinda crazy. We're out of the single digits at this house.

We turned the screens off Monday-Thursday, much to the dismay of the munchkins. I'm sure other families can find a balance, but not ours. There just isn't enough time to play Minecraft AND do homework AND practice piano AND have a nice family dinner. So it was computer or dinner.

(The kids are probably just as grouchy as if they skipped meals.)

But I love it. They're much friendlier kids when they don't have to be extracted from the depths of computer games. They fight less. They read way more.

And we're not completely heartless - we said that any video game that makes them move is okay. So there's some epic dance-offs.

Oh! And a New Year's Resolution update. There've been some major failures - I do not score 100% for having slept in my own bed every night in 2013. But I'm getting better! And it's making a difference. I'm less tired at work and I'm not so panicky when I wake up. So yay me!

Now all I need is some sunshine on my commute and we'll be good to go.

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Happy 2013!

Did you stay up to watch the ball drop last night? Did you get all dolled up and go to a par-tay?

I did - if by "dolled up" you mean "put on my nicest yoga pants" and by "par-tay" you mean "went to Target to return the Christmas lights that cacked out halfway through Christmas."

Oh yes, it was a fairly epic ending to the year.

And now, on to 2013! I've got my usual stack of non-resolutions ("non" because they're on the list year-round and because I never really make actual goals around them so *shockingly* I don't get very far).

Read my Bible more. Lose some of those Christmas pounds so I can fit into ALL of my jeans again. Exercise more. Read more.

But this year I have an *actual* resolution, too. It's pretty crazy:

Go to bed.

I'm a firm believer in getting everything ready the night before. Taking a few minutes to lay out some clothes, get the coffee maker ready, pack a lunch, and make sure I know where my bus card is.

I believe it, but I rarely do it. I turn into my kids at bedtime - balking, procrastinating, refusing to go take my shower, begging my brain to let me read one. more. chapter.

Then I drag my tired butt upstairs to put them to bed, only to snuggle in with them and fall asleep because by that point I'm exhausted.

(I've woken up crinked around a 9-year-old in a twin bed more often than I'd like to admit.)

It doesn't help that my job is flexible. There's a two hour window in which it's acceptable to arrive ("acceptable" in that I haven't been fired yet). With older kids who can latchkey, I don't have a time by which I have to be home, so if I get in later I just leave later.

And when I don't go to bed with all the necessaries ready, I spend the next morning frantically rushing around and end up getting to work later. Which gets me home later. Which makes me all resentful that my evening is cut short so I stay up late. Wash, rinse, repeat.

I read once that Madeleine L'Engle kicks visitors out of her house at 9 pm, no exceptions. It's time to get ready for bed, and she allows for no distractions, no "I'd rathers," no "oh, I'll just do that in the mornings."

It takes a big girl to go to bed on time. An adult - one who acknowledges that tomorrow will come, despite my best endeavours to make tonight 22 minutes longer so I can watch one more episode of 30 Rock. One who plans ahead and thinks about tomorrow's lunch while today's leftovers are still on the counter. One who verifies that there are clean clothes for the next day so the next morning doesn't involve a panicked "swimsuit or bathrobe to work" dilemma.

So as much as it pains me on the last day of holidays, I'm going to turn in early tonight. Especially because it's the last day of holidays and tomorrow is going to kick my cookie-and-chip-enhanced butt.

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Christmas(ish) Roundup

Hello friends! How were your Christmas breaks? Presentabulous? Foodlicious? Familytastic? I hope so - ours has been, although not in the way we first thought.

December has gone quickly here at the PM house, so much so that I only realized yesterday that since November has only 30 days, the date on my watch has been one day behind all month - and I didn't even notice.

Our holiday season always gets started with The Husband's birthday. As usual, the day begins with cake for breakfast. Only this year it was a bit of a fail:

The only candles in the house were the "3" and the "5" that were forgotten for my cake last year, so I had to go with those. Eh, he's old now. He doesn't even remember how old he is.

Then, the super snowstorm you saw in the last post prevented me from going shopping, so I had to purchase the ingredients for the cake at the grocery co-op. The co-op is pretty much my favourite place in the whole world, but given its granola-ish birkenstock hipster tendencies, boxed angel food cake mix is not something it carries. So I made that baby from scrrrrratch.

(Yes, 12 egg whites. Yes, at 10 pm the night before. Yes, I am a martyr to the birthday breakfast.)

The cake? Good. The icing? Less good. Apparently you cannot make pudding icing with cooked pudding. And hipsters don't do instant. Except for the tofu kind.

Next up in the holiday excitement was the church Christmas pageant - always awesome. This year, our household contributed two out of three wisemen:

What made our Christmas strange this year was the absence of the Great White North. We're stuck Stateside for immigration reasons (good reasons, mind you) so we're unable to go to the Motherland for awhile. So Christmas had to come to us. First, in the form of a gathering in the Grand Forks Canadinns (which is about as close to Canada as we'll get this year).

My momma put on her event planner cap and we had our traditional Chinese food Christmas dinner:

(She's actually quite happy about her consomme, I promise.)

The stockings were perched on the back of the hotelroom couch with care:

And my momma even managed to put together the standard Buche de Noel for dessert:

Christmas Day found us, shockingly, alone with just the four of us - the first time that has ever happened. Since it was a one-off, we made sure to keep it non-traditional. The Boy and I made Ginger-Dead Men:

And then we joined a surprisingly large number of people at the movie theatre for The Hobbit. In 3D (which explains the weird glasses).

Boxing Day brought The Husband's parents for a visit to our house, including the PM tradition of fettucini alfredo for Christmas dinner. And someone totally brought it dessert-style with peppermint cheesecake:

(Someone also declared Christmas dinner hair-and-makeup-optional.)

Grandma and Grandpa brought hugs and kisses as well as the loot Santa dropped off for us at their place:

(The livingroom might still look like this. No judgment please. It's cleaner than the kitchen.)

And to top off all the cozy merrymaking, we had our first fire ever in our little house on the hill:

(According to our chimney sweep guy, this sucker's known as an "Iron Maiden" and he hasn't seen one in a looooong time. He figures it was added to the house in the twenties sometime. Just think of the generations of children that have burned their hands on this entirely-unsafe beauty.)

And now we're just hanging out and whiling away the rest of 2012. I've read three books in 24 hours, The Girl is lounging in pajamas, The Boy is in his skivvies (not an unusual state of affairs, actually), and The Husband is whimpering with anxiety about the impending Vikings game.

Feel free to come and join us if you don't mind picking your way through the boxes and wrapping paper and dirty dishes. You can wear your jammies and there's leftover cheesecake for all!

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The Weather Outside is Frightful...

...finally!!

We're smack dab in the middle of our first snow of the season, and it's a doozy.

We couldn't even get the car up the driveway after church today. The Husband needs to fire up the snowblower, but first he says he has to wait until the Vikings game is over the snow stops.

As much as I love the milder winters, I have to say that global warming definitely cramps my Christmas style. Finally the outside matches the inside.

(I don't remember hippos watching over baby Jesus in the stable. But we'll go with it.)

Like all the best snow days, this one includes no real need to go anywhere, so we can just hunker down and eat soup and read and drink apple cider and watch football and bring dry clothes to soaking children. Since we've no place to go....

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Look Who's Old

This girl!

(This picture is actually from our vacation this summer. I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand? Relaxed and happy - my favourite way to feel. On the other?

"How long have I had those lines beside my eyes?!"

"Um....I didn't want to mention them."

"You mean you KNEW?!")

Aside:  I just now noticed that I'm sitting in front of a garbage can. Awesome.

Nonetheless, 36 is thus far quite awesome indeed. As per household tradition, we woke up at the crrrrrack of dawn to eat cake.

This is why I'm cackling:

A semicolon cake? Made with about a pound of butter and real chocolate and cream? Be still my grammar gourmet heart.

In other "I am old" news (but perhaps that's not news), we had Hallowe'en last week. The kids went as "old people":

(I asked The Girl whether she needed a trip to the thrift store to get her costume. "No problem, Mom - I found everything I need in your closet." She totally did, too. Pretty sure I've worn that outfit to work. What can I say? I enjoy a good cardigan.)

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Ahhhhhhhh

That sound right there? That's the sound of a mama getting her life back.

As it does every year, Autumn hit our house hard. As I do every year, I underestimate the nutso-ness.

Of course, this year had some new elements to add to the nutso. Particularly this one:

It's been the all-football-all-the-time channel at our house since September. Three practices a week plus a game on Saturday. Which is already a lot when you have two drivers.

When The Husband travels every other week through the entire season? It's a whole lotta lot.

But The Boy loved it. And it looks like they did real football-ish stuff, too:

(Don't bother trying to figure out which one he is. It's impossible. He begged me to stay and watch one of his practices once, so I dutifully did. There were about ten #88s in a field of about 100 fourth graders all wearing the same uniform plus helmets, so the chances of me figuring out which was him were zero.)

We've been full with other stuff here, too. Most notably, hanging out with our intern from France. She is so super fun and amazing. Hilarious, helpful around the house, and oh-my-word-she-can-cook. She makes desserts. With chocolate. Or apples. Or caramel. Basically as long as I keep my fridge full of butter, cream, and cheese, we're in good shape.

In other news, remember how I promised you a mid-life crisis this year? Well it's totally here.

And how come no one told me how much fun they were?

Seriously, I've spent the last month all "what's the meaning of life" and "why am I here" and "why do I have so many clothes in my closet" and "I need to start composting so I can save the earth for my children." It's as though all the stuff that's important - family, relationships, food, health, love, grace - is rising to the surface and the rest of it is all being forgotten and buried.

The house is a mess, but it's okay because I'm eating French chocolate and learning about a different culture. Work is crazy, but no worries because we're all in it together and helping each other out. Football took over my life, but I'm smiling all the way through it because my kid is happy and healthy and loving it. My daughter's in tears (again), but is it totally amazing to watch her negotiate the craziness of puberty and see glimpses of the young woman she is becoming? Yes, yes it is.

Of course, the downside (for you) about all these golden days I'm having is that I don't feel guilty about not blogging. But I do miss it. So now that football is over and we're all gussied up in our fall best, PMT might just get a bit more attention.

But if not, you'll have to forgive me. Because I've long forgiven myself.

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Once More, With Feeling

Look what we did this week!

Yep, back to school. Always a bit of a tough week in the PM house since the littles come home each day mentally exhausted and emotionally spent by all the newness of it, and they do tend to fall apart a bit when they hit the safety of home. Lots of love and lots of limits, I keep reminding myself.

You'll notice that they are not standing together. It's a big year for us, as we are in two different schools for the first time. It means a different start time (a whole hour earlier, have mercy) for The Girl. And a different bus stop.

And this whole middle school thing is quite the brave new world. I had to go school supply shopping for the first time (in elementary, we just pay 25 bucks and the school buys supplies to share). Oh my word - a red composition notebook wide-ruled 180 pages and a black folder with three dividers and a yellow three-subject notebook 100 pages and dry erase markers and erasable colour pencils and and and....

Oh, and a calculator that is a spaceship that costs almost $150. Apparently she can use it all through high school. (But honestly, it's not going to get lost sometime over the next seven years?)

(Thinking...maybe I can get away with buying only one and she and The Boy can share it, Laura and Mary Ingalls-style. They could plan their meeting times in the hallway to make the drop.)

She has to switch classes a hundred times a day. She gets no recess (boo). She only gets half of her classes in French. Although I'm grateful for even that; this is the only post-elementary immersion that we know of in the state.

Still, I think she will love it. Her BFF from her private school days transferred into this school, so they can finally see each other every day. The teachers seem to really get middle schoolers (oh my - it is a special age group and teaching them is not for the faint of heart, i.e. me). All the things that seem so scary now are the ones that will actually be her favourite once she gets into the rhythm and flourishes.

And The Boy? He doesn't even care. We've been getting shrugs and "it was fine" since our very first day of "how was school??"

A special mention of our back-to-school finery. This year we swapped fancy for funny:

They're definitely growing up.

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A Facelift for Hotel PM

So you know how the Super 8 Motel is ALWAYS under renovation? And how the sign ALWAYS says "Your inn for a super stay" (which always makes me hope that it's an intentional pun and not just a comment on the inadequacy of today's education system when it comes to homonyms).

Well, Hotel PM beat the Super 8 - we're updated and ready set for a super stay! Wanna see some pics?

(Note:  A design blogger I am not. A blurry-picture-poor-lighting-totally-not-the-same-angles blogger I definitely am.)

Here is the quasi-before of the quest room. It's actually after a fair bit of work, but I am also of the forget-to-take-proper-before-pictures variety of bloggers. That window? Used to be teeny weeny and definitely not ok if you were any larger than The Boy and needed to get out in a hurry. Also, you can kind of see on the right that the column of shelves continued further down the wall and they've been removed and patched.

And now look how pretty! 

Here you can see exactly where those shelves were. We took them out because there was already a lot of storage space and having them there definitely made the room seem smaller since you couldn't walk there.

Why is there a "bulletin board" made of the backside of a sheet of plywood that is framed for some reason? And a little closet door that leads to the water meter (even though you can totally get to it from the other side)? Good questions! The answer is that this house is 100 years old and we've learned not to ask "why" anymore.

(For example - why is the button to open the garage door located not by the door to the garage but instead tucked beneath the shelf in the closet in the laundry room so it took us two weeks to even find it? Again...we don't ask.)

But there's no "why" that can't be solved by a bit of paint:

Now I must ask you to oooh and aaah with me in surprise at The Husband's mad DIY skillz. I knew he would do amazing things with metal (RIP, sweet, sweet Jetta), but wood? This I did not know. And yet, who whipped out a built-in desk in a couple of hours? Yeah, I pretty much have that Carson the carpenter guy from that HGTV show living at my house. Who knew?

And now onto the room that would totally win all the votes if we were playing "what is the strangest room in PM's house" - the downstairs bathroom.

AKA - holy how-many-trees-died-to-make-this Batman?

AKA - huh - who knew that you could cover an ENTIRE bathroom in wood panelling.

AKA - this bathroom is bigger than most bedrooms but features an airplane-sized sink and squishes ALL the fixtures up onto one wall.

THIS bathroom:

Seriously. Every time I used it I would shake my head and say, why??

But now I go in there and I smile:

Is it still kind of crazy? Yes. I mean - what is this?? Some kind of dry sauna sans doors? Some kind of grow-op? (You know I'm totally starting my seedlings in here next spring.)

But add a bit of white paint and suddenly it's much more worthy of pretty new towels than of greenhouse comparisons.

So. Much. Paneling.

Still a crazy amount of paneling. But now prettier! And brighter!

You'll notice I went with classic white. I am NEVER painting this room again, so I didn't dare take a risk with any colour that might go out of style in the next 50 years. See those grooves? All those little corners? Ack - it took me so unbelievably long to paint. And so much oil-based primer to cover the wood. I lost a lot of brain cells. But so worth it!

Now you're possibly wondering why Hotel PM downgraded to a single bed guest room as there typically aren't many reservations for that type of room. I'm pleased to announce that we are at 100% occupancy from now until after Christmas - we have the sweetest, most wonderful young woman from France living with us who will be working as a teacher intern at The Boy's school. We're loving getting to know her and practicing our French while she is being very patient with us and working on her own English skillz. And hopefully she's feeling cozy and homey down in her new super stay digs!

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