Ka-runchy Mama

Jenny Gniadecki, who I had the privilege of meeting at a VA industry conference a few years ago, recently asked, "How are you a crunchy mama?"

I started typing the reply below in her comment box, then realized I needed to just blog it.

Why?
(a) it was getting ridiculously long for a comment
(b) I need all the blog fodder I can find

I am a little crunchy, but not much.

--I've started seeking out hormone-free milk and eggs. I don't like the word games food labels play "No Artificial Hormones" means they can still add all the darn extra natural hormones they want to the food. So I'm going hormone-free on the two products most likely to have hormones added that we consume most heavily, particularly the girlchild.

--I recycle. A lot. Glass, plastic, paper, aluminum... I keep a bin on each floor, one in my office and one in the kitchen so no one has to walk too far to recycle stuff (probably since I know some members of our household will NOT walk far to recycle, lol).

I love this picture! It's somewhere in Europe and there are bins for (L-R)
Paper, Plastic, Glass, Metal, Organic Matter, and Batteries.
The ugly grey one on the end is for cigarette butts.

--I buy green dish soap for the dishwasher. Yes, not using the dishwasher would be greener, but that is just not going to happen. So I buy the soaps that promise a smaller impact when they wash down my drain.

--I buy many of our clothes at thrift and consignment stores. Well, Me & J's clothes anyway. Hers because I can't bring myself to spend $20 on a shirt she'll outgrow in 4 months and mine because I still have delusions of losing weight and it's okay to buy more fat clothes if they aren't new fat clothes. That and fat clothes are ridiculously more expensive for what amounts, often times, to less than a 1/2 yard of fabric more--totally unfair!

--I buy brown (unbleached) coffee filters. I know, it's a stretch, but I'm trying.

--I used cloth diapers with my kids. Not exclusively, cuz I couldn't handle carrying the leftovers around in public and hoping the ziploc didn't leak, but I did use 'em. The baby in the fam is 8 now, so this no longer applies.

In many ways I am ~less~ crunchy than I was when I was younger.

Sometimes this makes me sad, sometimes it makes me feel practical; depends on which side of the coin is up after the flip.

- I used to cut my hair and the kiddo's until the entire family begged me to stop. I'm being literal here--Raidman begged and my other relatives, in desperation, got me a decrepit 70's book called, "The Guide to Home Haircutting." If you're interested I have it on my paperback swap page, lol.

- I used to compost, then the rats moved in. I'm in the burbs near a cow pasture and it's an open compost pile cuz no one told me that open compost here is different than at my old house in the city proper where all we had was squirrels.

Weird, right? I'd have expected rats in town but it's been the other way round. Still have the pile, but won't go near it cuz of the rodents. This one, incidentally, still fills me with guilt. Composting is so simple anyone can do it, and I FAILED. And I hate throwing away food trash.

I was a bad composter, though, possibly the origin of my rat trouble. I figured compost was supposed to be an artificial duplicate of the rich loam and rot from a forest floor, right? Which will occasionally include dead animals, right? I was not too particular about making sure protein scraps/fats didn't go in the compost--baked potato skins with butter & sour cream debris? Sure! Why not!

THe ginormous colony of rodents that moved in under the shed immediately adjacent to the compost bin (another egregious error I realize in hindsight) is the visual aid answer to the, "Why not?" above.

- I use a pest control company. But, I use their organic product/service plan. Do I get, like, half credit?

-I use a clothes dryer. I have hung 3 different clotheslines in our backyard in the nine years we've lived in this house and every one has been a disappointment. The retractable one didn't, the plain one lost tension all the time, etc. Hanging large items like comforters over the open railing on the 2nd floor is more practical than any of the clothes lines I've tried. Sad really, I miss the smell of clothes dried outside.

Rain in Central Texas. Sorta

Woo hoo!

I deleted an old blog last year, lock stock and barrel without backing up my old content in the midst of a personal crisis. I've since regretted the impulse, but it's too late now.

One of the things I thought I'd lost was a short video I shot of Raidman and J singing, "It's Raining Men." Wonder of wonders, I'd used Google Video to upload it and the GV account I'd forgotten I had still had the file. So, without further ado, the mighty duo does karaoke:



PS - Please don't tell him I put this back up. It's just too damn funny, though, and I was unable to resist. It's not my fault, really!

Brings Me Round Again

My husband. He's funny and knows me pretty darn well. That's a good thing, since we celebrated the 14th anniversary of the beginning of the madness last week.

I was in my office being totally useless after the girl was in bed last night, round 10ish--hey, it's Summer, or will be this Sunday. I was randomly surfing--yea, okay, Stumbling--the Internet for writers' sites when I hear the new (to us) Singstar crank up downstairs. When the man isn't trying to hit the weird notes on Rock Band (read semi-falsetto too much of the time) he's got a pretty nice voice and I do like to listen to him sing. But I was ~not~ going to join him.

It's a Freudian thing. I'm totally blaming my mother.

My mom told me from puberty through last month (cuz I haven't sung around her since then) that I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. Casting directors for any of a number of musical theatre productions from 5th - 12th grade concurred, though they were more polite about it, so I don't sing. Not in public and not around other people.

My one public karaoke experience involved so much alcohol that it was a miracle I managed to stay vertical. Two hours and lots of bad bar coffee to sober up after ONE song. Any wonder I skip this particular form of entertainment?

The ironic and cruel twist to all this is that I love to sing. I sing along with music I love for my own pleasure all the time because it makes me happy. (And I play the music loud enough I don't have to hear myself much!)

I was firmly boycotting the karaoke last night in favor of discovering new blogs to say I'm going to follow then fail to follow through on. So what does he do? He starts singing an Elton John song. Does he know me or what? I am such a sad little fangirl when it comes to Elton.

I tried to resist. I may be a little slow, but I know an obvious ploy for my attention when I see hear it. I'm weak. Before he got to the part in Rocketman where it goes, "I think's it's gonna be a long, long time..." over and over, I was downstairs singing along.

And there I stayed for the next two hours. Oh, and did I mention that the painters painted the front door late yesterday evening so we were unable to close it? Yea, I bet the neighbors loved that last night, especially when we dug out the 90s disk for a little "Baby Got Back*" action.

It's a silly little thing, but it tickled me. Incidents like this remind me why I married him and why, after 14 years and a lot more crap than any two people should ever have to endure, we're still HERE. He knows me well, my Raidman.

* FTR -- I may not be able to sing, but I can rap like a mofo when I want to and totally kicked his ass ;-)

Taking it Down a Notch

I'm not a food blogger. Really, I'm not!

But... I had to work on the salsa today so I can take the leftovers to a family birthday party this afternoon. 4 jalapenos is normally not all that much, and turns out I had closer to 5 cups of salsa last night when dh got out of it long enough for me to tell.

I cannot figure out why this stuff is so damn hot. It's hot enough that Raidman, who is generally way tougher than me when it comes to spicy food, didn't eat much after it had been in the fridge for a while. And that was when it was fresh.

After a couple hours in the fridge it was Really Hot.

By the end of the evening last night it was making me cry, literally (I really did try to salsa my infections away--to no avail, sadly).


So today I added two more whole tomatoes, a can and a half of diced tomatoes (but the whole can was Mexi-style and may have actually added more peppers), a couple of rings off a large onion, and more lime and vinegar.

Now it's a tad sweet and just BARELY mild enough to eat without tearing up. I'd water it down more but my food processor isn't big enough and I'm out of 'maters. HALP?

Could garlic be contributing to the heat? I used a garlic minced so fine it was more like paste, but I've used it in other things without this problem. Okay, so I used four jalapenos. I usually use serranos, and about twice that many. Did I get mysteriously super-hot jals, or are we just wusses this weekend?

Dunno, but the birthday party I'm taking it to is for my lil bro and my aunt--both of whom consider themselves conossieurs of fiesty food, so Imma see what they say.

Yum! or Why My Husband Looks Afraid

I am cooking.

This is something that normally makes Raidman look a bit green around the gills. Add to it the raging ear/sinus infection the doc told me I have and the impaired sense of taste/smell that gives me and you start to understand.

His eyes bugged out of his head a minute ago when I shoved a chip coated in thick green goo with tiny red dots at his mouth, but, because he IS a smart man, he ate it anyway. And survived. Then discovered he liked it!

Woot - my first time making homemade from scratch guacamole was a success. I'd share the recipe but (a) I am SO not a food blogger and (b) I didn't use one.

*It woulda been all the way scratch but I had some un-canned diced tomatoes in the fridge I needed to use up, so I used them instead of fresh.

The salsa was not as lucky. Apparently those with unimpaired olfactory organs can smell the garlic from the floor ABOVE the kitchen. RM came to my rescue and we saved it, but it was close for a while there.



And, ummm, it's really hot.

It was funny watching him take a big bite and start to grab another jalapeno to add to the batch--when suddenly the FOUR already in it hit him and his face turned fire engine red. Yes, four--in about 2c of salsa. I'm hoping to clear up my sinus infection with salsa therapy :-D

J has a pal sleeping over and we've got some of dh's work friends coming over for dinner and a little RockBand2 in about 30min, so I better go get rid of the evidence...I mean clean the kitchen.

Tuesday Tirade: Staycations Don't Work!

I despise and revile the bastard pseudo word "staycation," but I understand its genesis. And I'm here to say it does NOT work.

I had the usual 3-day Memorial Day holiday--more sharply poignant this year after burying my grandfather with military honors in a national cemetery two weeks ago. More on the family drama that accompanied that event another time. I have to say, though, that the folks at the hotel were fantastic when we checked out and had to check back in 4 hours later after my dad collapsed at his dad's funeral.

J has been out of school for the last five days. In all fairness to the school, unlike most of the days mentioned in my previous post, this one was our fault. The small person had minor surgery on Thursday morning relating to complications arising from her lymphedema. It wasn't urgent, but needed to be done and we wanted to handle it before our vacation so she'd have a couple weeks to recover physically. I guess technically I was off that day, too, but I'm pretty sure spending half the day comforting an anxious child and the other half being her slave does NOT count.

Yes, I did sneak out for dinner with my mom posse, but not til I knew MY mom was on her way to rescue Raidman.

He, not incidentally, was sent home to be with his kiddo/family around mid afternoon Thursday and hasn't been into the office since. He DID work from home Thursday afternoon (ok, til about 2am Friday making up for lost time spent with aforementioned kiddo) and part of the day Friday, but he's been here for four and a half days.

All kinds of togetherness and time off, right? Stay home, chill out for the long weekend, return to the world rested and recovered... *snort*

Yea, not so much.

I spent my holiday weekend doing too many loads of laundry to count and loading, running, and unloading the dishwasher over and over again. The unloading, incidentally, is theoretically a J job.

I DID do a fair amount of lying about, finished two books, and got blisters from playing Rock Band 2 with the fam (I am the drummer for Hopelessly Outnumbered, lol). But I also did waay too damn many chores, and, if I'm honest, I'm a bit cranky 'cause I am the ONLY one who did so for 3 days.

Told Raidman when we go on vacation in June I'm going to do NOTHING except lounge about, read, and maybe go play in the sand or go fishing (yes, I like to fish) or something. Since we're staying at a rental not a hotel it probably won't happen, but a girl can dream...

Tuesday Tirade: Off Again!

I've been busting my ass at housework (teh suck!) and not doing much else but the 8-5 gig and watching too much tv trying to get the number of shows on the DVR below half a hundred. What I'm saying is that, aside from being sleep deprived and not having/making time to write, I'm almost content just now. Which makes coming up with a Tirade harder. But, for you, my 2 readers, I'll do it!

I've gotten used to the weird schedule. I don't like it, hate it, in fact, a lot of the time, but I freely acknowledge that Raidman and I chose to put J in a charter school knowing it was on a semi-year-round type schedule and only 4 1/2 days a week. It, like housework, is teh suck, but we knew it going in.

What I ~don't~ understand is what all these extra weird-ass breaks during the school year are for. When I was kid you went to school five days a week except for Thanksgiving (Friday only), Christmas/Winter holiday (1-2 weeks) and Spring Break (1 week in March). Now, though?

The kids are off on Good Friday AND the Monday after Easter. My kid's school has a 2-week Spring Break, so she just went back last week and now she has a 4-day week this week and next week? WTF?! Still, charter school...

Except all the Austin-area school districts are doing the same damn thing!

Apparently they are unfamiliar with the concept of two-income families. Or are unfamiliar with the fact that many families, even with two incomes, can't pay for childcare at all.

Please, please stop screwing with the schedule. These out-of-the-blue holidays are a pain in the ass, and, if they happen to line up with an in-service day at the daycare, leave me screwed, as happened on MLK Day. Bosses have kids, too, but telling them you have to stay home because your kid is out of school and the daycare is closed doesn't really fly.

The school is ~always~ hitting us up for money. How's about not effing with the schedule so I can actually go to work and earn some to give ya, eh?

Like Julie & Julia... Only Not as Cool.

A couple weeks ago I took my mom to see Elton John and Billy Joel (also awesome, but not as awesome as Elton!) in the dream concert event for a piano rock junkie like me: the Face to Face tour! This was the 3rd time we got to see EJ in the last 10-12 years and if I could figure out a way to afford it, I'd go see hear* him again at Caesar's before the Red Piano gig closes this month.

*Yes, hear. I am a music fan, and, as a rule kind of prefer NOT to know what the artists' look like (an old Journey video ~almost~ made me have to give up listening to them; Steve Perry's scary hair was THAT disturbing) so all my EJ tickets have been in the nose-bleed section, where no one cares if I get up and dance and sing along. But I digress...

I don't treat myself to things like concert tickets very often, so I tried to hold on to the experience as long as possible, loading up my iPod with Elton & Billy tunes and listening to it loud enough that my office mate threatened to kick me out.

That's what made me decide to pester dh into re-learning the piano. His mom taught him the rudiments when he was a kid, but he preferred guitar and bass and has been asking for a new guitar for a while now. He grumbled about the bad memories (forced piano lessons) I was dragging up, so on March 25th I made a new decision.

I am going to learn to play the piano!

Things like the fact that I am tone deaf (per my mom) and can't read music or tell one note from another will NOT deter me. I think the piano is by far the coolest instrument ever and love to listen to it, have since high school. And I want to learn to play it.

Of course, I am too cheap for a real piano and full-on lessons (don't you people watch the news, sheesh!) so I found myself an online lesson series and ordered a keyboard.

Lessons: I'm not revealing the source of this one til I see how it works out. Even if they totally suck, I only spent $40 so it won't break my heart or my wallet.

I'm trying to keep this new hobby/habit/bad idea on a pretty limited budget in case it turns out to be a disaster or I give up on it. I just paperback swapped $60 worth of books on OOAK doll-making/customizing--a hobby that sounded like a cool plan during my last pregnancy 8 1/2 years ago--and moved a couple hundred bucks worth of supplies for the same into J's giant craft supplies box, so losing interest is not outside the realm of possibility.

Keyboard: I ~so~ want a full 88-key real feeling keyboard, but those suckers are hugenormous and around $500. Since dh is musical I made him help me pick out a 61-key for starters online, then devoted an afternoon to Froogling to find the best price. What I ended up with was this, and this link is where I got it, too (no kickbacks, sadly, so it's safe to satisfy your curiousity).

Free shipping, so I think I did pretty good -- Spent $100 on a nice Yamaha (same brand as EJ's pianos...not that I went all fangirl and looked that fact up or anything) to learn on that will resell decently if I abandon it.



Book: I found a book (still no kickbacks... obviously I don't do this for the money, lol!) on learning piano for kids that had the best of the many different "how-to-read-music" explanations I've read lately. I shredded the dust cover, though, so now I can read it at work and no one will notice I'm 25yrs older than its target audience.



Extras: Last but not least and probably most expensive, I spent $60 at Fry's this weekend buying a stand for the keyboard--because it is as big as my dining room table and was taking up the whole thing--and a stool to go with. The latter is mostly to help me learn proper playing posture; after all, you never see people playing the piano while sitting in a wingback, ya know?

So far in the past two weeks I've managed to learn:

1. How to find the middle "c" on any keyboard, even a short one like mine.
2. That this is going to be a helluva lot harder than I thought.
3. How to get the keyboard back into the box so I could move it upstairs and invade the mancave.
4. Playing (with) said keyboard without the headphones late at night will get me in trouble with my husband and child :-D

Who knows what I'll learn next? Yea, me either. Since I have nothing else to blog about we'll see how many interwebbers are interested in the trials & tribs of a 36yo music novice with ADD learning to play the piano without formal instruction. This should be fun!

PS - Reading sheet music is frellin' HARD.

Review: McDonald's Coffee

Raidman has been taking the small person to school in the morning since he went back to work. This has been awesome as we are all likelier to get where we need to be ~on time~ if I'm not making extra stops in the morning.

I am one of those people whose friends tell her to show up 15-30min before they actually want her there, so that she might actually be on time for a change. Yes, I know. Everyone hates people like that, me included, and I am working on it, honest! I'm just, uh, easily distra... ooh, a cloud!

See what I mean?

Anyway...One of his special treats to get her moving in the morning is to occasionally stop at McDonald's on the way to school for cinna... somethings (no clue what these things are called).

Well, J's morning chauffeur threw his back out yesterday; actually, he probably hurt it Monday but yesterday pain went from 3 to 8ish. Out of a desire for something more effective than Doan's and Tiger Balm, he is headed to the doc this morning and asked me to take the little one to school.

I am SO not a morning person.

I told her if she would get up, get dressed, and make her own lunch while I showered and dressed we'd hit Mickey D's. Yes, I checked the lunch to make sure it had decent nutritional value, I'm not a total loser mom.

We went to McD's and I grabbed a latte (sure there were/are 3 cups worth of coffee in the ginormous thermos in my purse, but, well, you can never have too much coffee!) which got me her cinna-thingys for free and grabbed the kid a hot cocoa (in Austin 43 & rainy is COLD ;-) That's when it got weird.

"Whole or nonfat milk" whoa. At a McDonald's?!

"Nonfat."

"Flavored syrup? We have vanilla, sugar free vanilla, caramel, and something-else-Dy-has-already-forgotten"

"Umm...SF Vanilla?"

Bizarre drive-thru experience. I guess that just shows that when I ~do~ go to the overpriced coffee places I always go in...

Even with free cinna thingys I spent almost $6 for a large latte and a small hot chocolate. Yea, I coulda had a Starbucks for that. I am not a SB pimp and don't think their coffee is ~all that~ , but it IS consistent. I can order something at any Starbucks and get coffee that tastes the same in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Temple, Conroe, Brenham, or any of the other locations I visit.

The vanilla was... overpowering. Sickly sweet, and I have a sweet tooth that has paid for several dentists' boats. Everything smelled overpoweringly strong. The cinnamon smell was overwhelming in my little bug, the hot cocoa smelled like a chocolate store, it was all just too much. (or maybe it's that I'm weaning myself off the wicked tobacky plant and CAN smell things now...?)

At any rate... The coffee was pretty strong; I had to add some Splenda when I got to work--the vanilla was sweet, but the coffee wasn't, if that makes sense... It was okay, but if I go back it will only be cuz I'm bribing the kid.

Oh, yea -- they do get kudos for knowing what I meant when I asked for a kid-temp on J's hot chocolate. Minuses for not actually giving us a kid temp hot cocoa, but at least the person inside wearing the head set knew what I wanted...

Overall, not bad, probably better if you aren't doing the diet version, but not stellar, and not an experience to repeat unless it's a choice between McDonald's coffee or scary gas station coffee...

Tuesday Tirade: This One's for the Girls

(my apologies to Martina McBride for the blatant title theft)

(potty talk alert - sorry ya'll, there's simply no way to avoid it this week)

Yes, it's a gender specific gripe; it's allowed, since I'm railing against my own gender. Hell, it's allowed cuz this is ~my~ blog. :-)

I need to talk about hovering. You hoverers out there, you know who you are... Stop, please, just stop.

For the uninformed, a hoverer is a woman who is obsessed, to the point of paranoia, with the notion of germs on toilet seats in public restrooms. So obsessed that rather than sitting on the toilet she will "hover" over it in some bizarre semi-erect squat and attempt to pee in the bowl without touching the seat with any part of her body.

I gotta tell you: most hover-types have lousy aim.

So women-who-hover, I have to ask. WHY?

• You can't get pregnant from sitting on a toilet seat.
• Unless the skin of your backside is covered in open sores, you can't catch a disease by sitting on a toilet seat.
• The most "eww" things on a toilet seat are deposited there by (you guessed it!) other hovering chicas.

Just sit your butt down ladies!

Failing that, clean up after yourself! If ~you~ don't want to clean up your own urine, why the hell do you think someone else wants to?!

And, and this should go without saying, but I'm going to go there anyway, if you are in the loo to make a more significant deposit, please, please, please, sit down!!!!!!