There's a New-Fangled Com-Pyoo-Ter, But Otherwise, Place Looks the Same

We got a library at our house this weekend. The Girl took her books and categorized them. She labelled the shelves and distributed the books by section.

Our household was invited to sign up for library cards, and we could all choose books to borrow for three weeks.

(Her calm librarian's exterior was quite ruffled when no one came to the library, even though I protested that I had come twice to get books. She mournfully lamented that no one cares about libraries anymore these days, and restricted the borrowing period to three hours to try to drum up some more traffic.)

Now replace "this weekend" with "the Peitash house circa 1983" and "The Girl" with "Peitricia Mae" and you've got a fairly accurate picture of some golden moments in my childhood.

Seriously, the only difference is that her library is part of the computer age and we swipe our cards instead of waiting for the librarian to painstakingly write out our due date slips.

She's even got the same books in there, for goodness' sakes, as I've hung onto most of my favourites from those days. There Pippi, Five Little Peppers, and The Boxcar Children, for a start.

This certainly isn't an isolated case. I've seen lots of make-believe games from my past resurrected, usually without any prompting from me. Playing school runs in our DNA, and directing plays seems to be part of the gene pool.

It's spooky sometimes, how much she's like me. From the reading to the irrationality, the long body that ensures clothes are either too short or too wide to the love of routine that leaves us both whining if someone springs a schedule change on us. In some ways, it's great - I can understand what drives her and I know what will push her over the edge.

At the same time, parenting a mini-me presents a lot of challenges. I'm far too quick to impose my own limitations on her, assuming that just because I can't handle something, she won't be able to either. (Hello, swimming lessons!) I far too often try to step in between her and The Husband when I think that he's pushing her too hard because I hate being pushed. But lo and behold, a little push and she's often on her way.

Speaking of pushed, here's my not-mini-me, demonstrating just how very unlike his mother he is by embracing one of life's challenges. The Girl, no surprise, has yet to accomplish this feat.

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Battle of the Bicycles

I hate going fast. So very much.

I'm the first person to stomp on the brakes in the car if it feels like we're taking a corner too quickly (even if I'm in the passenger seat), and I keep my feet firmly outstretched whenever I'm on a toboggan (which, if I ever am on one, is The Last Time I'm Letting You Talk Me Into This) so that I can immediately put a stop to any hint of careening toward a tree.

[Aside: I also hate wearing a bathing suit. And getting water in my nose. Which makes waterslides a trifecta of Pure Evil.]

So it probably comes as no surprise that one of the reasons I love my cruiser bike is because it does not go too fast. It's got great brakes - which see a good deal of use - and its steel frame and rudimentary gear system guarantee a low top speed.

But the main reason why I heart my bike is because it looks slow:

Ain't nothin' speedy about this baby. Look at her - all stylishly sedate. Nice big, comfy seat... a bell (purely for show - it's not like I'm passing anybody)... and a basket to hold important things like MomTeddy and Pokemon cards.

Sigh. I love this bike.

But The Husband does not.

Oh, it was fine when we lived in Winnipeg. As in middle-of-the-Prairies -can-see-the-horizon-for-eleven-miles Winnipeg. This bike's a cruiser and it's perfect for stately and leisurely rides up Wellington and through Assiniboine Park.

But Minneapolis is a little bit hilly. Not Vancouver hilly, by any stretch, but we get our share of slopes here - a lot of up and down-ness.

(Which, if you ask me, is quite silly. Why should I go up and down like a sine wave when I end up at the same altitude as before?)

The oh-so-frequent declines are fine. It's the inclines that have caused some consternation. Not only can I not go fast up them, but I also somehow can't seem to go up them at all. As in, I have to get off my bike and walk it up.

The lack of gears - so much a part of who my bike is - renders family bike rides at best, difficult, and at worst, filled with anger and tears and complaining (mine) and frustration (The Husband's).

So he's been after me for awhile to get a new bike. One with lots of gears so he doesn't have to listen to my whining every time we hit a slope of more than one degree.

In theory, I was okay with this idea (although I did feel a tad Benedict Arnold-y - I've loved my bike for years, and at the first sign of mountainous trouble, I abandon it?). However, in practice, this quickly became a difficult prospect.

The problem lay in the fact that I have a very specific set of criteria for what constitutes a good bike: it must Look Good.

And by "Good," I mean it must look as though someone whose favourite piece of punctuation is a semi-colon owns it. It must have a basket. And a bell. And fenders. And a large-a$$ seat.

Above all, it must look slow.

So, it's been a bit of a battle. Lots of [whiny] "but I liiiiiike my bike"s countered with [frustrated] "but you never ride it and you hate going up hills and I hate hearing you complain all the time." Which is followed by [catty] "well, fine, then, you find me a bike that has gears AND Looks Good."

Shockingly, it is difficult to find a bike that has many gears that also looks slow. Anything fancy enough to have gears looks fancy - like its driver buys clothes at MEC and uses clipless pedals and owns a camelback. Anything that Looks Good is usually a cruiser (awesome!) with only five gears (exactly what I have now, so less awesome).

But after much searching and me rejecting almost everything he found ("look how fast that looks! It looks like a ten-speed or something!"), The Husband actually managed to find one that met the stringent requirements - mostly because he found biking blogs devoted to posting pictures of people looking cool on bikes [aside: seriously?!], and showed me ones with girls who looked suspiciously as though they love semi-colons riding this one:

It's a little diamond-in-the-roughy at this point - I need to swap over my bell and find a better basket than the one they had at the store. It's also missing some old-school headlight action.

But it's got 21 gears, which makes The Husband happy, and it looks Awesome, which makes PM happy. Everybody wins!

(Except the Cruiser. But I'll make sure to save my very slowest rides for it.)

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Vendredi V - The Grass Has Riz Edition

Just in time for spring, a resurrection of that former famed Friday Feature!

And it is indeed spring in Minnesota. I love this time of year, mostly because I know it's six months before I have to think about winter again. April is definitely not the cruellest month - it is, in fact, the Friday of months wherein the slog of the work-a-day winter is left behind for the weekend that is months-without-an-"R."

[Aside: did your mom have that rule? We were only allowed to wear shorts in months that did not have an "R" in their name. The poor Peitasch kids in April or September heat waves.....]

Anyway, the reminders that it's that time of year are everywhere:

Top 5 Signs It's Spring:

1.  The farmer's market has returned to Nicollet Mall downtown. Never mind that all of the produce is shipped in from elsewhere seeing as how there's no possible way that there's any locally grown stuff since there was snow on the ground two weeks ago. Nothing says spring like buying Mexican bananas on the street instead of at the grocery store!

2.  The buskers are out. Nobody can play the trumpet/saxophone/flute/tambourine/guitar when it's -40.  So nice to have everybody back to play the background music for my Mexican banana-buying.

3.  The panhandlers/homeless people are out. I always feel a bit happier (or, perhaps, slightly less sad) for homeless people in springtime. If I hate winter (I of such wealth that I can waltz from warm house to warm car to warm office), what do they feel about living in The Icebox of the Nation? I can't imagine how much it sucks to be homeless, but I imagine it sucks more when it's cold.

4.  My lawn needs mowing. Which is very exciting for me, since we have a lawn service and I get all the benefits of the smell of fresh cut grass without any of the actual cutting.

5.  Summer car. Love, love, love it when I get to my car in the afternoon and it's all stale and hot and sweaty in there.

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Washin' My Hands and Sneezin' in My Sleeve

I totally thought I had swyne flu today. (And yes, I totally know that's not how you spell it. But I live in America now, and it's a safe bet that Big Brother is watching and tracking bloggers that refer to possible outbreaks and, if they found out I had it, there'd be guys with hazmat suits on my doorstep and then it would be all plastic tunnels and E.T.-phone-home, and the basket on my bike is just not that big.)

[Aside: no. I'm not delirious from my bet-it's-swyne-flu at all.]

But I did have other symptoms today:

* Aching body (which had nothing to do with yesterday's yoga class)

* Headache (entirely unrelated to the Stephen-King-sponsored sleeplessness of late)

* Meager appetite (last night's late-hour chips and dip? Coincidence, I say)

Felt pretty grody when I got home, so I betook myself to bed and had a nap and, hey, presto, my symtpoms were gone. So you can call off the hazmat guys.

But I do need to acknowledge The Husband, who has tremendous self-preservation instincts loves me so much and knows it's best to let sleeping wives lie cared enough to get supper for the kids while I slumbered and then entertained them with YouTube versions of "Thriller." (Did you know there's one of 1500 Cambodian prison inmates dancing? Awesome.)

I tell ya - who needs chicken soup when they've got such a one?

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If A Tree Falls in the Forest, And Somebody Blogs About It, Does It Become Less Boring?

I've got nothing, folks. Ho-hum, hum-drum, same-old-same-old here.

No complaints from me on that front, of course. But it does make it difficult to drum up anything interesting to post. Hence the absence.

But, if a million bloggers can somehow turn straw into gold (or, at least, write down whatever comes to mind), then who's to say I'm not one in a million?

Fairly kid-centric these days. Actually, I've been feeling like a bit of a cliche lately. I'm one mini-van and two pairs of soccer cleats away from being Suburban Mom, it seems. Chauffeuring kids to playdates/birthday parties, yelling at them to do their chores, taking them to swimming classes, walking them to the bus stop - all those things that are undoubtedly good for them but don't do a ton for my self-image as Sassy, Smart, Sophisticated Mom. Doesn't help that I'm usually wearing yesterday's jeans and a shirt with only one stain as I do it all, I suppose.

The hours not taken up by munchkins are still diving headlong into the black hole that is Stephen King, I'm afraid. I'm on Book Five now, so the end is in sight.

Aaaaand, I'm out. Plus The Girl wants the computer. When exactly did my children become computer-literate?

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The REAL Reason I Need to Grow My Savings Account

Guess how much I just spent on birthday presents for other people's children:Almost $80. That there total, my friends, is more than half of my weekly grocery budget. It is three times as much as I spend on kids' haircuts (for both kids). It would fill up the fuel tank in my car almost four times (whoop - diesel's sure come down!).

Am I the only one that thinks this is crazy?

But, you are all thinking, isn't *she* the one who is purchasing these presents? Doesn't that mean she ultimately has control of the amount she spends?

Yes and no. "Yes" in that I'm the one who helps my kids choose what they want to bestow upon their friends to say Many Happy Returns, and I'm the one who whips out the credit card. I'm the one who says they can go to the party, and I'm the one who faithfully RSVPs each time.

But what are my options? Tell my kids they can't attend because I'm cheap? That seems a bit harsh - they are already subject to my whim in every other area, and I say "no" ten times more than I say "yes" as it is.

Tell my kids they can attend but they can't bring a present? Yeah, that'll make them super popular.

Try to reduce how much I spend on each present? This option certainly has merit, but have you tried to find something for a child that is a) not a piece of crap and b) might actually be fun for under $15? Plus, I'm that mom - it has to be edu-ma-ca-tional - or at the very least, require the quickening of some brain cells. Ideally, it's a) a craft that b) requires creative energy and c) takes up very little space in terms of the end product.

So, I end up at the fancy kids store, doing my darnedest to find the cheapest items in the store that still meet all the above criteria.

Honestly, I'm not sure that I can do anything differently here. It's certainly not my kids' fault that they've been invited to five birthday parties between the two of them over the next three weekends. They love going and, while I get that often the entire class is invited, I still think the receipt of invitations demonstrates some level of success in terms of that oh-so-desirable skill, The Making of Friends.

Besides, their favourite food is macaroni and cheese "from the box" - this coincides nicely with the fact that if their social calendars remain full, my grocery budget will permit only KD by the Costco case.

Or am I just being cheap? I've been known to pinch pennies, and I still labour under the impression that I should be able to purchase a complete outfit for under $20 and any more is an attempted highway robbery. Virtually every purchase leads to sticker shock, so maybe it's just me. Maybe I just need to join the twenty-first century and say, hey, this is the price of modern living. What do you think? Understandably grumpy at this ongoing assault on my pocketbook? Or outdatedly curmudgeonly and confusing of "thrift" with "lack of generosity"?

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