Would you burn your diaries?

After my grandmother died a couple of years ago I realized how much stuff we leave behind and how hard it is for our loved ones to deal with it all. And my grandmother was actually someone who made it easy. My grandfather had been a post-depression-era hoarder. He knew what it was like to go without things, so he kept as many things as he could in his basement, attic, and garage. You know, in case of some post-apocalyptic scenario in which back issues of "National Geographic" from 1977 could suddenly be used as currency.

So after he died my grandma got rid of a ton of stuff. Then when she moved to assisted living she got rid of a little more. And then when she sold her house even more, and so on. But we were still left with random things like rulers. She had three rulers. I didn't need one, yet it made me so sad to get rid of them. I want to make sure Tate has as few of those decisions to make someday, so I try to keep things pretty purged as I go.

And that brings me to my diaries.

Blurred lines: how to make yourself crazy trying to sew striped curtains that kind of remind you of Robin Thicke's suit at the VMAs

Our place desperately needed curtains, both from an aesthetic perspective and because I can feel actual gusts of wind blowing through our less-than-stellar windows on cold days. I knew I wanted striped ones, but these from Crate and Barrel are nearly $100 a panel (!), and since I need six to eight panels that just wasn't going to happen.

So I got some tips from the good people on Pinterest, and looky what I made:

Details below the break.

Grab some popcorn and a Snuggie, it's Hallmark holiday movie time!

Remember that craptastic holiday movie I meant to write for the Hallmark channel last year? Well neither did I, but if I had written it why couldn't have it been this one? A young woman tries to escape a childhood spent working on her family's Christmas tree farm only to be forced to return to the biz when she loses her job. Of course, this makes her a little "fir crazy." Ba-da-bum. I am guessing the dude pictured above and kissing also play into the story. Ah, holiday magic.

Are you middle-aged?

Recently we had friends over for dinner and I was describing someone no one else in the room knew. I said "He's kind of middle-aged...you know, around my age." One of my friends laughed and said that I wasn't middle-aged. Which was reassuring, but was he right? If you look at average life expectancy I'm over halfway there. So I searched the 'net and found this British article that helped me figure it out for sure.

How I Unintentionally Marsha Brady-d My Son

Do you remember this episode of the Brady bunch? Marsha is a freshman, and in her rush to do high school right and fit in she signs up for every single club. She ends up overextended, stressed out, and doing a lot of stuff she really didn't want to do.

Well, I inadvertently did the same this to Tate this fall. A lot of his other 3-year-old friends started preschool, but he didn't seem totally ready back at application time, wasn't potty trained, plus did you know preschool in Chicago costs like a bazillion dollars? So with the words of warning from other mothers echoing in my ears---he'd be behind if he doesn't start preschool at 3! what about socialization?--I overscheduled the hell out of him.

And now a Pinterest-inspired project that didn't cause me to lose my mind

When we first moved into this place this is what our kitchen wall looked like:

We would offer to repaint it back to this color when we leave, but I'm not sure if Benjamin Moore still carries or can color-match Kind-of-Peestained-Looking White.

If you don't have a bad neighbor it might be because you ARE the bad neighbor...

Photo via williampaid.com

Are you a good neighbor? Everyone likes to  think they are, right? In fact, I would pretty much have always answered "yes" to this question, but looking back I'm pretty sure our condo neighbors didn't appreciate when, as newlyweds, Brad and I would regularly come home tipsy at 2 a.m. and engage in a good hour of living room karaoke (and no, that isn't a euphemism....we really did come home late and night and belt out a few off-key sets). The duet of  "Islands in the Stream" was a crowd-pleaser, I'm sure. But other than that I thought we were good neighbors, until we had two sets of downstairs neighbors move out of our two-flat in the last nine months.

See Your Folks

Have you heard of seeyourfolks.com? You go to the site, enter a few snippets of information about your parents ages and how often you see them, and it lets you know how many more times you'll see them before they die. Wahhh!  I still don't know the answer since I never pressed enter because I really can't handle seeing the result. But based on Tate seeing us with a frequency of "every day" (presumably forever, but that jibes well with my plan to move into his dorm room), he will see Brad and me over 12,000 more times. Not bad, considering we are older parents.

Many glasses of wine were killed to make this rug (or, how to make an upcycled braided t-shirt rug that takes a boatload of time and costs more than buying a ready-made one)

This project literally drove me to drink.

Quick and Easy Dinner #1: Tortellini with Black Beans and Tomatoes

In the pre-Tate days if we wanted a quick and easy weeknight meal we'd order Thai and call it a night. In the pre-Brad days (meaning I had no witnesses) I'd often come home from work exhausted and have a nice big bagel (or two) or a bowl of cereal for dinner. But now that we have Tate and we're trying to eat better, save money by not ordering takeout, blah blah blah, no matter how tired or busy we are I feel compelled to give him something a little more nutritious than a piece of toast for dinner (at least most nights). So here is one of my super-fast favorites.

You need:

frozen or refrigerated tortellini
1 can of black beans, rinsed
cherry or grape tomatoes, diced
parmesan cheese, grated
butter (or olive oil)

Prepare the tortellini as directed on the package. Add black beans, tomatoes, cheese, and butter. Voila, dinner is served!

I'll be back later with an update on what we've been up to lately. Hint: it involves a lot of half-finished Pinterest projects for our new place.

And now back to Tater

So while I've been ranting about other life events, my baby turned into a toddler and then a 2.5-year-old little boy. Today he took a shower for the first time by himself. Supervised, of course, but how did this happen? His speech has jumped right into sentences, colors, counting to ten (one, two, three, four, five, eightnineten). He even does a Sesame Street Count laugh at the end...AH ha ha. He knows a few shapes and an occasional letter. My favorite of his color words are yellow (yeddow) and purple (purtle). Adorable. Tate still has a ball obsession. We like to talk about ball, play ball, read books with balls in them, draw pictures of balls... Brad is taking him to a park district basketball class on Saturdays. We missed a lot of the session since we were out of town, but he got to go back today and was over the moon. Next session is T ball, which I know he is going to love.

Welcome to the suburbs: it smells like (liquid) ass here

Ok, so normally I am not a big bathroom humor person. Those scatological scenes in the movies that have the rest of the theater rolling on the floor? I'm usually inwardly cringing and waiting for them to be over. I'm pretty sure the reason people get divorced involves a) going to the bathroom in front of each other and b) something called Dutch ovens, so Brad and I do all we can to pretend neither one of us even goes to the bathroom. Ever. But when a friend suggested checking out the reviews for "Liquid Ass" on Amazon for a good laugh, I figured why not. And by why not I mean because I've been stuck in the far suburbs (of Detroit? of Ann Arbor? who knows) in the dead of winter by myself for almost two weeks with a toddler and no cable.

The phone rings in the middle of the night

For a brief period many years ago a late-night phone call was a good thing. I lived near two popular 4 a.m. bars, and it generally meant drunken friends were attempting to rouse me from my futon to join in their shenanigans. But those days are long gone. A week ago Friday movers had taken the bulk of our stuff. Brad and I were exhausted (I'm not sure why...it's not like WE carried all of our crap up two flights of stairs) and sleeping uncomfortably on a leaky Areobed. When the phone rang at 2 a.m. for the the first time I thought it was the alarm clock. But that didn't make sense because it was still dark out. Then it rang again, and again. By the time I found the phone I knew something was wrong. The caller ID was from my sister's place, and my mind was racing. Was it my nephew? He had been sick earlier in the day and his symptoms had seemed worse than your average bug. Was it my Dad? (My parents were in AZ visiting my sister.) Oh God, was it my sister? I hit redial and when I heard my sister's voice my mind was still racing, trying to figure things out (ok, the Bad Thing didn't happen to my sister, since she was talking...so then who?). She told me they thought my Dad was having a stroke and he was headed to the hospital in an ambulance. You know when someone tells you to sit down before they tell you bad news? Now I know why...I actually felt the ground being pulled out from under me. I never expected this. He is only 71 (and now that I'm getting older 71 really does seem young). He has high blood pressure, but doesn't drink, smoke, isn't overweight. I mean, aren't everyone's parents on blood pressure medication these days? With his family history I had always worried more about heart attacks. This just seemed so out of the blue. As Mary Schmich said in her 1997 commencement address column: "Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday." So true.

It was hours and even days before we got more answers, but my Dad did have a stroke. The neurologist said that despite being on blood pressure medication his blood pressure was "too high for too long." (Here's my PSA, if you know someone with uncontrolled high blood pressure nag the hell out of them until they get to the doctor to find meds that work. There are seriously like 20 different kinds, and sometimes it is just a matter of finding the right combo.) The good news is they caught it very early and got him help. My Mom knew the signs and called 911 right away. The other good news is that he started to improve rapidly. Initially he had problems with his speech and couldn't feel one of his hands. But that is all coming back (at first I couldn't understand him much on the phone, which was heartbreaking, but by Sunday he sounded like himself, just tired). He helped my sister come up limericks to try to infuse some humor into being confined to his bed at first (something about a man from Nantucket having to poop in a bucket), so I know his sense of humor is intact.

 He was in the hospital for almost a week, and is spending another week in rehab. After that he'll go to my sister's place and do outpatient rehab if needed. I came to their place in Michigan, partly to keep an eye on the house and cat (who doesn't really like people and mostly hides from us), partly because we needed a place to go while some lead paint issues get resolved with our new place. And it is just weird to be here without him. I never realized how much we all relied on my Dad to do stuff until he wasn't here. The power went out our first night here. Dad would have started the generator, and we all would have slept soundly and toasty warm. But for the 12 hours the power was down Brad and I (and even the neighbor) couldn't even figure out how to get the wonky garage door open to even get the generator, so things got pretty nippy. Fortunately, my Dad gathers and chops his own firewood and we were able to start a fire and keep ourselves from getting hypothermia. And I've wanted to have a fire every other night I've been here. but I'm hesitant to use any more of the firewood since I don't know when (or worst case scenario, if?) he'll have the strength to go back to chopping wood and I don't want to use up his supply. In the past I would have burned through firewood with reckless abandon. Dad will just chop more, right? I feel like I've had to grow up a little over this past week. It was humbling to realize that sometimes part of me is still a selfish teenager who acts like it is someone else's job to take care of things around here.

The crappy thing about strokes is that once you have one you are much more likely to have another within the next 5 years (that is what happened to my Mom's mom).  But I'm hoping with the right medical care my Dad will have decades of wood chopping, golf ball collecting, trash rummaging, arrowhead hunting, and fishing ahead of him. And maybe even a daughter who appreciates him a little more.

It does not suck to be Brad

Today Tate told me I had "wadoo hair," which in Tatespeak means wet hair. I had to tell him that no, it wasn't wet. Just very, very dirty since I no longer have time to shower with all of this moving business going on. And then I begged Brad to watch Tate so I could get a shower. After that he got a call from a friend's hair salon because they were doing a photo shoot and wanted him to come down and get photos taken while he got his hair cut. So Brad not only got to have a free haircut and clean hair, he also got to have someone else wash it. Harumph. And that's all I have the energy to write since I've been having moving-stress-related insomnia. Fortunately, my friend Mt. Prospect Beth loaned me the first two seasons of Monk on DVD so I'm going to go watch those and try to get some sleep. It's a jungle out there.

ETA: Brad failed to mention the manicure until I saw this photo. I'm pretty sure that would have sent me over the edge.