Jan 5 2012

Hall Closet Makeover: Mission (not)Impossible

Sweet fancy Moses.

My hall closet?  Appalling.  Absolutely appalling.

The hall closet, just about six feet from the bathroom and visible from the living room, was probably intended as a linen closet back in 1953 when the house was built.  Once upon a time, we had sheets stored in it – for about two weeks in 2001 right after we moved in.  After that, it became a vertical junk drawer.  Whenever we weren’t sure where something should go, we stuffed it in the hall closet.

Pretty soon, sheets were stored in stacks down in the laundry room.  Towels have always been stored in the more than ample cupboards and drawers in our bathroom.  Truly, our bathroom has almost as much storage as some small kitchens.

I was determined this week that I would get that hall closet straightened out.  I’ve become addicted to Pinterest, and one of my pinboards is called “Getting Organized:  OCD Porn.”  It’s just pictures with links to well-organized kitchens, cupboards, closets, shelves, garages, drawers.  Reading through some of the websites and blogs with these pictures, I developed a strategy for my project today.

1.  Decide what the closet is going to be used for.  We don’t need it for linens – we don’t have a lot of sheets and have decided that Rabbit’s spare sheets will go in the top of the closet in her room, and likewise for ours, in our room.  Spare blankets/comforters can go in our cedar chest or in a cabinet/cupboard we’re planning for downstairs in the laundry room.

What do we need it for?  Well, all of our board games have been stored for years on a high shelf in our coat closet – not very sensible because Rabbit can’t reach them to get down or put away.  So I wanted to move the games into the hall closet.

I also have stored my sewing machine in there for years, and until I can find a place in my office for a sewing area, I can keep my sewing machine, box of supplies, cutting mat and tub of fabric remnants in the closet.

We also need a central place for the first aid stuff, as well as light bulbs.  And there are miscellaneous pet things, seasonal party supplies and a few random craft items that had no home.

2.  Empty the whole wretched closet and start sorting.  First I took everything out of the closet.  Dear God.  An old CD player.  Two humidifiers.  Scads of cleaning chemicals.  Party supplies, old pillowcases, Easter baskets, bags of empty plastic bags.  Two plastic rain ponchos.  Light bulbs, felt, spools of thread, candles, curtain rods, bookmarks, bottles of glue. Pipe cleaners, antique table cloths, scraps of paper, a large bag of gauze bandages, several ace bandages, cat hairball medicine, some dog flea medicine, bottles of old shampoo, a hand towel I KNOW we haven’t seen since 2001, some Visine that expired in 2005, old tempera paints, a PVC pipe marshmallow shooter, and on and on.  Here are a couple of pictures.

3.  Set up a sorting system and put things in categories.  I ended up with the following categories:
1.  Sewing and fabric
2.  Healthcare items
3.  Crafts
4.  Parties and holidays
5.  Lightbulbs
6.  Home decor and DIY
7.  Cleaning supplies
8.  Office supplies
9.  Toys and recreation
10.  Pet stuff
11.  Toiletries and cosmetics

I put the  toiletries and cosmetics (curlers, etc) into the bathroom.  The cleaning supplies were put in a large tote and into another closet where I will deal with those later when I tackle the bathroom cupboards and cabinets.  Home decor and DIY stuff went into the top shelf of the coat closet.  Office supplies went into my office.

4.  Find containers to group items instead of having them loose on the shelf.  Start boxing/crating items you have sorted.  As much as I would like to have cute matching bins and baskets and little labels on them, we don’t have that in the budget at the moment and I made do with what I had.  My motto is “Done is better than perfect.”

I found a cardboard box from office paper that I filled with a little basket of first aid supplies (Neosporin, Calamine lotion, chigger lotion, eye wash, band-aids) and the rest of the box holds ace bandages, gauze pads, and our heating pad.   I found a fabric bin where I put all the light bulbs.  A clear plastic tote with a missing lid is holding a small supply of craft items.  I put the Easter baskets and the plastic eggs into a plastic grocery bag and tied the top shut.  Same with party supplies.

5. Put things away neatly and smile.

Here is the after:  

On the bottom of the closet, I have my Rubbermaid tote filled with fabric scraps.  On top of it is my (new for Christmas from my father-in-law) self-healing plastic fabric cutting mat with grids, along with my ruler.  Above that on the next shelf is my sewing machine and my box of sewing supplies, along with the instructions for my machine.  When I sew, I just take everything out and set it up at one end of our long kitchen table – this system works just fine for the time being.

Here’s the inside of my sewing box.  Note the snazzy rotary fabric cutter I got with the Christmas money PC’s mom sent me.  I LOVE THAT CUTTER!

There’s also scissors, thread, pincushion, measuring tapes, extra sewing machine needles, regular sewing needles and some other stuff whose function escapes me.  And bobbins.  I hate bobbins.

The shelf above that is the better done than perfect one:  the containers are kind of lame, but they do the job.  First aid stuff and light bulbs.

The first box is the first aid stuff – eventually it will be in a clear container:
The other box is light bulbs:

PC can no longer say “We NEVER have light bulbs in this house!”  Well, we do.  About 20 of them.

The next two shelves up are devoted to our board games.  I had no idea we owned so many!  The lower shelf is for Rabbbit’s games, with a few of ours spilled over.  Our shelf holds PC’s poker chip set, our games, our cribbage boards and a shoe box full of decks of cards.

There are two decks of regular cards and five decks of Pinochle cards.  I don’t play Pinochle and refuse to allow my husband to teach me.  Early in our marriage we drew up two steadfast rules:  he is not allowed to teach me to drive anything, and he’s not allowed to teach me card games.  Because we will end up divorced in either circumstance.

The very top shelf holds the craft box, a basket with a few pet items (hairball remedy, a cat comb we never use, and a heating pack left over from when Hazel was deathly ill and had to sleep on a heated pillow because she was too thin to generate body heat).  Next to that is a bag full of Easter basket supplies and behind all that is a bag of party supplies, a party platter, and a trick or treat pumpkin bucket.

I threw away a lot of things, and many items simply went into other cluttered closets where they will have to be cleaned out and sorted later.  But for today, I feel like I conquered Mount Everest.  It’s hard to overstate the psychological effect of an organized closet after having one in such chaos.  Life is easier to manage when things are clean and organized. At least for me.

 

Later, I will post pictures of my re-organized kitchen cabinets and fridge, if you can stand the excitement.

If you have a blog and want to tackle a before and after project, please take pictures! Send me a link and I’ll post them here.

Jan 5 2012

Catching Up For the First Week of January

Yes, it is January 5th and I am still at home with my daughter, who doesn’t return to school until the 9th.

JANUARY NINTH, PEOPLE.   We have been doing small activities together in the afternoons to keep occupied:  drawing, doing puzzles, reading together, cutting fabric into squares, craft projects….it’s starting to wear on us.

The other day, Rabbit’s BFF came over for the afternoon and they played fort in the living room.  BFF is allergic to cats, however, and Rabbit’s blankets and the rug had cat hair on them. BFF had watery eyes and a stuffy nose by the end of the afternoon.  While they played, I made homemade tortillas.  Rabbit had one with butter and cinnamon and sugar.  BFF informed me she didn’t like tortillas.  Nor did she like cinnamon cookies, or clementines (the other snacks on offer).  ”I don’t like a lot of things,” she said.  She did, however, say she liked chocolate.  She was eyeing a jar of the last of our chocolate Christmas cookies.  I told her that chocolate was not on today’s menu, unfortunately.

When it was time for BFF to go, she and Rabbit hid in Rabbit’s closet while BFF’s mom and I visited.  BFF refused to come out unless her mom let her spend the night at our house.  I went into the bedroom and opened the closet door.  ”BFF, we do want you guys to be able to have a sleepover sometime before school starts up again, but it’s not going to be tonight.  Rabbit’s daddy is working a long day and will need his rest and this is just too short of a notice.”

Both girls were upset and tried to stay in the closet.  I opened the door again. “And Rabbit, you know you have to behave to get any privileges so if you stay in here and help BFF not do what her mom tells her to do, then you don’t get to have anyone sleep over.”   Well, she practically shoved BFF out of the closet after I said that, and helped her into her coat, and walked her to the door.

I wasn’t kidding when I told BFF that Rabbit’s dad has been working long days.  PC has been working ten to twelve hour days and when he gets home, it’s dinner time and then he lasts about an hour before he has to go to bed in order to get enough sleep before the alarm clock goes off at 5:30.  New Year’s Day was a huge treat for him because he got to sleep until 11:00.  If he came home from a 12 hour day to my daughter having a sleepover, he would have a nervous breakdown.

In other news, I am learning how to knit. I took down the Christmas tree and decorations, changed out the lamps in the living room for the cool round ones that were in my office, have kept the dishes washed and the kitchen counters clean every day this week, and finally cleaned the shower.  It was disgusting and my daughter had scratched a smiley face into the soap scum on the shower floor.

I rearranged the kitchen cabinets somewhat:  I organized all of our coffee supplies into one location and moved some lesser-used kitchen utensils and electric appliances to a closet.  I also cleaned out the fridge and rearranged the shelves into a more sensible layout.  Later today, I am going to tackle the hall closet, which hasn’t been organized in probably eight years.   Maybe I’ll take pictures.  Because I am that interesting.

As a parting gift, here is a picture of Rabbit and PC taken at the wedding reception we went to on New Year’s Eve:

Jan 1 2012

What If Every Day Were New Year’s Day?

I woke up this morning thinking “What if every day were New Year’s Day?”

Why should a random number on the calendar be the only time we feel that we’d shrugged off the regrets, disappointments and mistakes of the past, with a clean slate for the future?

What makes yesterday so vastly different from today for so many people that they make resolutions to change, dramatically, what they do or what they eat or how they live?

For the past few years, starting with the year my dad got sick, the year has ended with the thought “So long, 2009 [or 2010, or 2011] – you sucky year from hell.  2010 [or 2011 or 2012] has got to be better.”

That’s a lot of pressure to put on a whole year.  That’s a lot of setup for disappointment.

What if we treated every morning as a fresh start, the way we do January 1st every year?

“Hello Monday!  Sunday is over and looking back, I’m going to do better at keeping my thoughts to myself, speaking only kindness and being more responsible for my money.”

Or how about this?  ”It’s Sunday – the start of my week.  This week is my chance to let last week go, and move on with what I know I can do better.”

How about “Hello February 1st!  January had some challenges, but it’s behind us now and this month, I resolve to [fill in resolution].”

When I was younger, the first of January was one beginning, but the biggest do-over for me always started on the first day of school.  Even now, the first day of school feels to me more momentous than the first of the year.  It was always a milestone to mark the beginning of a clean slate, a new set of opportunities, a fresh attempt to correct the mistakes of the last year and build something better.

What would happen if we decided to take the pressure off ourselves and this random time in the middle of winter, when things are in transition from the holidays and our households are in chaos from decorating and parties and travel and visitors  - what if we decided to just stop expecting a number that changes on the calendar to make everything better?

What if we decided that it is OUR responsibility, every day, to resolve to let go of yesterday (or last week, or last month, or the entire past year) and start fresh?  Instead of resolutions, we could make plans.  We can decide that each day is a clean slate, a new set of opportunities, a time to build something better.

Today I plan to be more patient with my family.  To keep the kitchen clean.  To make the bed.

This week, I plan to think of five new things I can do to build up my business.  To read at least three books that I haven’t read before.  To clean the bathroom.  To learn the basics of knitting.

This month, I plan to get my office cleaned and organized.  I plan to spend the month getting my garden planned out on paper and making a list of seeds and supplies I’ll need.  I plan this month to try to spend less than $150 on groceries, to see if it can be done.

Don’t make grand plans that defeat you within days.  Break your idea of success down into small achievable goals by the day, the week, the month.  Be kind to yourself.

Don’t think of the past day, month, or year as a defeat or a mistake or an apocalypse of misfortune.  Think of the good things from it, think of the things you learned, think of the motivation it has given you to do something differently.

Let’s not start our year focusing on what was wrong with the last.  Let’s start the new year or the new day focusing on how we can make this one better.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

For one of my favorite posts about doing new things in a new year, visit this post from January of 2009.

Dec 30 2011

Frugal Friday: Time is Money, Time is Free

Lest you think that my frugality is limited to groceries and food, let me remind you that I was raised by  two survivors of the Great Depression and am slowly turning into them.

We were raised on very little money.  We almost never had new clothes, or fast food, or new furniture.  There was no “teen line” in our house the way my friends’ homes had, there was sporadic cable television but mostly two or three channels.  My parents did not have gas service to the house and as a result, from the time I was ten years old, we did not have a working furnace or a water heater.  They heated the house with an old wood cook stove for years until buying a second stove to heat the living room and the rest of the house.

This was in the 1980s, folks.  Every day after school, my sister and I had to carry in firewood and we heated water in pots on the cook stove to use for bathing.

No, it’s not ideal and it sure wasn’t easy, but it was not child abuse, either.  (Although at the time, we might have argued otherwise).

Here’s what we did have, though.  Homemade bread and homemade tortillas.  A big noon meal every day of the week, which we often walked home from school for, with home-canned (organic) vegetables, homegrown (organic) potatoes and meat that was often from my brother-in-law’s ranch.

We had a large yard, a short walk to school and church, plenty of books, lots of family visiting, dozens of nieces and nephews to play with, and the opportunity to earn pocket money by babysitting or tutoring or getting a part-time job at a local restaurant or business.

We had library cards, access to the local college library, excellent teachers (and some terrible ones), nice parks and in the case of my younger sister and myself, we had pretty much free run of the upstairs of the house to do with whatever we liked, provided we got our work done.

My parents were middle-aged when I was a kid – the older siblings got them when they were younger with more energy.  By the time my sister and I were born, the folks were in their 40s and it was the 1970s.  They helped start a natural foods co-op in our small town, subscribed to The Mother Earth News and went organic in all their gardening.  My dad hardly ever threw anything away, which was a giant pain in the ass when he died and we had to sort through his crowded shop and piles of scrap lumber behind the house.

But in his glory days, he was remarkably self-sufficient and I like to think my parents taught us about how rewarding that could be.

For instance, yesterday I was homebound with my daughter. She is out of school until January 9th, and we’re trying to spread out activities so we have plenty to do during her vacation.

We spent the day thusly:  having lunch of peanut butter and jelly on homemade bread, with a side of raisins and clementines.  While we ate, we took turns reading out loud from “On the Banks of Plum Creek,” by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Rabbit was thrilled when Laura got a fur cape for Christmas from the church because Nellie Oleson had been so mean bragging about her own cape.

We tore open three old pillows I’d had stored in the basement, and cut the fabric from an old skirt of mine (black with white outlines of leaves) into squares, sewed them into pillowcases, and stuffed them full of fiber batting.  Then we went through a giant basket of Rabbit’s outgrown clothes (the special stuff we couldn’t give away) and found her Little House on the Prairie sweatshirt. It was about three sizes too small so we cut the sleeves off and sewed it into a snuggly pillow.

Rabbit played in the yard.  I talked to one of the neighbors.  I baked bread.  Later we read more from the book and then lost ourselves in our own books.  Rabbit took a nap.  In the evening, she helped me pick out fabric scraps to try to make an impromptu patchwork quilt. The squares didn’t line up evenly but it was a quick experiment and not meant to impress.  I took the resulting placemat-sized quilt top and sewed it to another piece of fabric to make a pillow for my rocking chair.

We didn’t spend any money on yesterday’s entertainment.  Saving material, getting creative with what is available, spending TIME together…these are the things Rabbit will remember.  This has been a huge revelation to me, the way we’ve spent our time together recently.

Yes, from my childhood, I remember my parents worrying about money. But I also remember my friends being envious of our homemade bread and my mom’s cooking, the nights we played cribbage with my dad by the heat of the wood stove, watching the public TV auction fundraisers with my mom, having TIME with them.

People say time is money – well sometimes it is.  But time is precious and free and valuable all at once.  It is the greatest extravagance, the greatest squander and the greatest gift we have to offer, especially to our children.

Do you spend time, or save time, or waste time, or give time? What will enrich your life the most? If you have children, how do you allocate your time with them?

 

Dec 29 2011

No Need, No Knead, No, No, No

Oh, bread. You fickle b*tch.

Remember when I was all euphoric about that refrigerator bread dough recipe? The no-knead version?

UGH! I have had the worst luck with it since I published that post.  The first few loaves turned out great and then for some reason the next two batches were just abysmal.  First I had too much flour so the loaves were dense and undercooked.  Then I had not enough flour and the loaf stuck to the pizza peel, despite the cornmeal and would not slide off, then stuck to my hands like goop, so I rolled it into pizza dough and it puffed up on the baking stone like a gigantic whoopie cushion made of bread.

I was trying to pre-bake it to freeze, since I hadn’t been planning to make pizza at 3:00 in the afternoon.

The remainder of the dough in the bowl (mercifully, I had made a single batch and not the mammoth double one) was immediately turned out onto a floured countertop and kneaded within an inch of my life.  I must have added 3/4 cup of flour to that S.O.B. and kneaded til it was smooth, elastic and unsticky.

I rolled it into a loaf, pinched each end and tucked them under, and put the whole thing seam side down into a greased bread pan and had to let it rise for almost two freaking hours before I put it in the oven.  Even then, it took 60 minutes to bake into a recognizable loaf of bread with that hollow sound when I thumped the bottom.

I’m not giving up on this recipe, because it does make for great and readily available pizza dough (provided you poke holes in the dough before you put it in the oven, and that you roll it out super-thin).

I suppose it doesn’t help that the seal on our oven is sagging (which you can see in the photo and yes, I know the oven is dirty and needs cleaning but I have to use Easy-Off or the like and don’t want to do that til it’s nice enough outside to open every window in the house, and besides, we might be replacing the whole range if we get our tax refund before the second coming of Christ) and steam pours out of the gap the entire time we’re baking.  I hate that oven.

What was I saying? Oh, yes.  The bread recipe being okay for pizza dough.  Yes, it works for that.

But I think for everyday bread, I’m going to stick with the kind you knead.  Artisan bread is fine for certain occasions, but if I’m going to replace store-bought bread with homemade for things like toast and sandwiches, I’ll stay with kneaded whole wheat and white bread.   Especially with the expense of flour if the bread doesn’t turn out right.

 

Dec 27 2011

Break the Habit, Break Your Heart

I wasn’t going to share Rabbit’s latest problem here on the blog because the poor kid has already had a rough year and the latest affliction she’s had has been particularly trying. But after today, I had to write about it, since it flared up into an issue much, much deeper.

Remember, this is a tiny and beautiful child who suffered EIGHT separate infestations of head lice in 2011.  EIGHT.  The final time, we got a high-octane prescription from the doctor and applied it and the critters disappeared for good.

About two weeks ago, Rabbit had a little flare-up of acne.  She’s had little pimples come and go on her forehead, occasionally one on her chin or up between her eyebrows.  We got her some medicated facial cleanser pads and a little tube of Clearasil and emphasized the importance of getting her hair really clean and keeping her face washed.

It’s such an awkward phase:  a child who is still sucking her thumb but is now developing acne.

Anyway, two weeks ago, there was a little pimple on her chin and a pimple on the bridge of her nose.  The one on her nose got a little bigger, and then swollen and painful.  PC decided one evening that it needed to be “expressed.”  I argued that NO IT DID NOT, and that you just need to leave it alone because squeezing it would lead to scarring and possible infection.  He argued back that you should ALWAYS try to get the infection out and I said ABSOLUTELY NOT.

[PC suffered from acne as a teen. His scarred complexion does not support the benefits of messing with pimples.  I was raised being lectured to leave them alone and have better skin for it.  Not that I'm right about it, except THAT I AM RIGHT ABOUT IT.]

An hour or so later, I was downstairs doing laundry when I heard PC and Rabbit arguing in the bathroom and then she shouted “OUCH!  NO!”  I bolted up the stairs and she was scowling and teary-eyed and he was abashed and cranky.

“Did you squeeze that?” I asked him.

“Yes, but nothing came out.”

::::grrr:::::

Four days later, it was no better.  In addition, kids at school had been asking Rabbit what was wrong with her face, and a few kids made fun of her.  I made an appointment with the doctor, who confirmed my worst fears.  It wasn’t acne.  It was a boil.  (If you need to look that word up, be careful about googling it and then looking at pictures – and don’t watch any of the videos.  Seriously)

I won’t go into detail about boils, but they’re abscesses that if left untreated, can cause serious blood infection and even be fatal in some cases if the infection spreads.  The doctor could not get to the center of the infection that day and wanted to put Rabbit on antibiotics before trying anything further.  Since boils are commonly caused by staph or strep bacteria getting under the skin, she wanted to see if antibiotics would take care of the boil from the inside out.  She told us that if it hadn’t gotten better by Christmas to come back for plan B.

Well, it did not get better.  [For the record, the photos I posted from Christmas were significantly photo-shopped to hide the very large sore on her nose.]  So today we went in, and the doctor announced that she was going to lance it.

Rabbit started shaking and said “I want to go home, I want to go home!  I’m fine with it staying there, I don’t want you to touch it!”

She clutched my hand while the doctor did her thing.  It was so awful.  She drained it (sweet Jesus, that was nasty) and then took a culture for the lab, and got a bunch of blood out of it and some got on Rabbit’s face.  When she got all done, the doctor cleaned Rabbit up and gently placed a fresh band-aid across her nose.

We visited about after-care: hot compresses and keeping Rabbit’s face clean.  Then I asked the doctor if Rabbit’s thumb-sucking could be a problem, since she routinely hooked her index and middle fingers over her nose while her thumb was in her mouth.

“Oh, most definitely,” she said.  ”It’s entirely possible that bacteria on her hands has gotten into a nick or pimple or opening in her skin and caused the infection.  We need to keep those fingers off her nose, even if her hands look clean.”

Rabbit looked crestfallen.  We have been trying to prepare her for the end of thumb-sucking but have not pushed it.  As the doctor says, orthodontia is cheaper than psychotherapy.  But it never occurred to us that thumb-sucking could lead to a skin infection.

On the way home from the doctor, I said “Bunny, you need to try to suck your thumb a little less, okay?”

She exclaimed “I’m trying, Mommy!  I even tied a string but it didn’t work.”

I turned down the radio.  ”You tied a string around your thumb?”

“No,” she said, her voice breaking. “I used a string and tied my arm to my body, behind my back.  But it didn’t work.”

My head was spinning and a terrible weight settled over my chest.  ”You tried to tie your arm behind your back so you wouldn’t suck your thumb??  Who told you to do that?”

Her voice was tiny.  ”Nobody told me. I just did it so I wouldn’t suck my thumb.  But it didn’t work.”

Before I could stop myself, I burst into tears, right there in the car, right in traffic, with my daughter in the back seat.  I sobbed “Oh Bunny.  Don’t do that ever again, okay?  You don’t have to do that to stop yourself sucking your thumb.”

She started to cry along with me.  ”I know I have to stop but I don’t even know I’m doing it when I suck my thumb, because it’s mostly when I’m tired or when I’m sleeping.”

We talked a little more and I pulled myself together so she wouldn’t cry.  I felt a little ridiculous, but the idea that she would resort to such drastic and sorrowful measures to cure herself of a habit that had given her (until now) nothing but peace and relief from stress….well, it broke my heart.

After we got home, I gave her some Tylenol for her nose (“It’s beating like my heart,” she said, worried.  ”It hurts really bad.”)  We had lunch and then I told her I’d like her to lie down on the sofa for a while.  She asked if she could watch TV.

“Sure,” I said, stroking her hair.  ”But Rabbit, try not to suck your thumb.”  We regularly find her sucking her thumb while she watches TV.

“Okay,” she said.

Later, I went through the living room to take laundry to the basement.  There, on the sofa, Rabbit lay on her back with her left hand shoved deep into the pocket of her bluejeans.

“What’s in your pocket?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she replied, her voice high in distress.  ”I’m just trying to keep my thumb out of my mouth.”

And that’s when I went down into the basement and put my face in a stack of clean towels and sobbed for fifteen minutes.  Then I called my niece (Rabbit’s godmother, who had  herself struggled to break a thumb-sucking habit until she was eleven years old) and told her the whole story, and started crying all over again.  Emily was almost in tears right along with me.

“The poor little thing!” she cried.

It just felt so pathetic and sad: of all the indignities she’s had to suffer this year, I didn’t think anything could make me as upset as those head lice.  But this is different: it feels as though, for the first time, Rabbit has decided there is something about herself that is not good, not measuring up, not acceptable to us.  I wanted to go upstairs and tell her to suck both of her thumbs at once if she wanted to, but I didn’t.

She does have to stop: she’s in third grade and nine years old.   She lives in dread of sucking her thumb at a slumber party.  She has gotten an infection on her face that could be worsened by sucking her thumb and putting her fingers over her nose.  Kids are cruel and have said unkind things to her, about the thumb-sucking and then about the sore on her nose.

But, oh.  If I could just make her magically stop.  If I could go back and stop myself from telling her not to suck her thumb today.  If I could break the habit for her.

But I can’t.  I just look at that tiny girl trying to overcome a lifelong habit with a piece of string tying her arm behind her back, or with her hand stuffed deep in her pocket — and I feel my heart crack right in two.

Dec 25 2011

So This Is Christmas

This year, I was worried about Christmas.  I was worried because we have a nine year old daughter and limited finances and all the other superficial and deeper worries that people have in this economy around this time of year.

And then last night, we sat in church at a candlelight service, replete from the dinner we’d just enjoyed (roast beef from meat a friend had given us), surrounded by friendly people who didn’t know us from Adam.  Everyone was singing the familiar Christmas songs and then the readers would get up and read selected passages from the Bible, from Adam and Eve to the Angel Gabriel visiting Mary to Jesus being born in a stable and wrapped in swaddling clothes.

And Rabbit, my daughter whose Children’s Cartoon Bible is in tatters from being read cover to cover multiple times, would light up with each story and whisper loudly “Hey, Daddy! I know this story!”  She sat beside us in the pew, swinging her legs and drawing Christmas trees on scratch paper, and when the next song would start, she’d whisper “I don’t know this one,” or “Hey! I know this song!”

And we went home in the quiet dark to a house lit from within by our Christmas tree.  As I washed the supper dishes we’d left behind, my brother came in the kitchen door to share the evening with us.  We sat in the living room and opened family presents: PC’s dad and mom and brother had sent gifts for us and for Rabbit, and Rabbit had presents we’d made for her, and I had wrapped for my brother a photo of our Grandpa smoking his pipe – my brother had lost all his family photos along his way through struggles with homelessness and was thrilled to have that picture.

This morning, Rabbit ran into our room, breathless.  ”Santa came!” she whispered urgently.

And he had been at our house, to be sure.  A dear sweet friend in another state had, a few weeks ago, sent a previously loved and well-cared-for American Girl doll and stand to my office.  She had also ordered the accompanying book for the doll (Josefina, from New Mexico, 1824), some new moccasins, and sent along extra blouses and a skirt.  Another friend of mine had given us a skirt and boots for the doll.   Everything was wrapped up and put on the sofa for Rabbit, along with her stocking where we’d put a Pez dispenser, a package of earrings, and four pairs of socks.

It was magical.  Just absolutely magical. As Rabbit opened her gifts, her eyes shone.  She spent the morning changing the doll’s clothes and then held her in her arms as she curled up on the floor to nap in the sun.  As far as Rabbit is concerned, Josefina came from Santa.  She is utterly right:  the spirit of Christmas, of Santa, was borne out in the fact that generosity and love made sure our daughter had something to open on Christmas morning.

There wasn’t a huge stack of gifts under the tree, but the amount of love that went into those few gifts could have filled a stadium.

Christmas is about love.  The love that brought a child to save us.  The love that makes us into families of birth and families of choice.  The friendships that sustain us.  The small and large gestures that mean more than the givers ever know.

We should never worry about Christmas, even though it is inevitable that we might connect it with the things under the tree.  And I know things won’t always be so clear, especially as Rabbit grows up and falls under the spell of material things and what her peers have.

Today, though, I felt like a Beatles song.  All you need is love.  Love is all you need.  She loves you.  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dec 24 2011

Coasting Into Christmas

The last of my toughest holiday responsibilities are behind me, and now we coast through to Christmas.

Yesterday, Rabbit and I delivered gifts to meals on wheels clients; I had gotten an email from a member of our Realtor board that the organization in charge was desperately in need of delivery volunteers.  I called and Jim said I was the first one.  In the next 12 hours, they got two more volunteers, which were people I had recruited through facebook.  I guess nobody reads their email.

We took a load of gift bags and the list of names, and set off.  Rabbit would knock on the door and when the person answered, I’d say “We’re from Meals on Wheels and this is a little Christmas gift for you!”  Each recipient was completely dumbfounded, and then Rabbit would say “Merry Christmas! God bless you!”  I swear, she was more excited about giving these elderly folks their presents than she was last year to open any of her own.  It made my grinch-heart grow three sizes, I’ll tell you.  She is a keeper.

Afterward, we were exhausted and took two hour power naps with the cats.

I had been working on a drawing that a friend commissioned, of her nephew.  It was to be a gift for her sister and believing the adage that nothing makes a person more productive than the last minute, I finished it this morning.  I was up past midnight last night struggling to draw hair on this kid, and gave up and went to bed with a terrible headache.  I was back at the drawing table this morning and finally finished, sprayed the drawing with matte acrylic fixative, covered it with tissue paper and put it in a folder made from two pieces of stiff cardboard.

Then I had two hours of panic that the aunt wouldn’t like the picture.  She picked it up, though, and opened the folder and gasped and got teary-eyed.  ”You really captured him!” she said, while I tried not to point out that I hadn’t replicated the exact fall of his hair with my pencils and graphite sticks.  ”He’s so cute, and he’s so naughty!  You can just see it in his eyes!”  So I kept my opinions about my ability to draw hair to myself and thanked her for the check, and breathed a sigh of relief.

I had to make a trip to the Evil Empire last night for last minute gifts and a few foodstuffs: milk, peanut butter, bananas.  Some patching denim for Rabbit’s school jeans.  A denim needle for the sewing machine.  And stocking stuffers.  So I had to go to walMart.

I got Rabbit a pair of pajamas and a package of day of the week undies, as well as four pairs of new knee socks and a variety pack of earrings, including what will be her first hoop earrings.  Oh, and a princess Pez dispenser.  Everything but the pajamas and undies will be from Santa, in her stocking tomorrow.

Yesterday I made regular, knead the dough til your shoulders ache, wheat bread.  I used King Arthur Flour (which they do NOT sell at WalMart) and it was without a doubt THE best and most beautiful bread I’ve ever baked.   Both loaves looked picture perfect, and they smelled divine. The texture of the bread was gorgeous: fine crumb, soft, but not like angel-food cake the way store bread sometimes is.

You can slice bread evenly and quickly with an electric knife, which I did with the loaf above.

Today, I cooked a giant roast for our Christmas eve dinner and am waiting to serve it til after PC finishes watching his football game.  Then we’ll eat, then go to church, and only then (to Rabbit’s dismay) will we open Christmas presents.  She is dying to open them, even though she’s not said one word before today about it.  But she is READY.

Tomorrow will be Santa gifts and then Chinese food for lunch.  My big holiday meal is Thanksgiving. Christmas dinner can’t compete with Christmas presents, so we don’t even try.

May you have a beautiful and happy holiday with people you love.

Dec 23 2011

Frugal Friday: My Food Commandments

A lot of my frugal practices have revolved around food.  Here are some of my favorite  savings tips (these may not be for everyone; they’re just my guidelines):

1. Limit eating at restaurants or eating fast food.  Especially fast food, which is terrible for you. But either way, going out to eat is a budget buster.  If you do splurge and go to a restaurant, don’t order drinks, as this can add significantly to your bill.  We drink water, and often split a dish because restaurant portions are enormous.  And if you can’t afford to tip?  Then don’t eat in the restaurant.  Seriously – waiters and waitresses have families to support, too.

Mostly, though, we eat at home.    One year back when we both had regular and steady incomes and before Rabbit was in the picture, we spent $900 in six months just on restaurant LUNCHES.   Now, we usually have dinner leftovers for lunch the next day.  When we eat at a restaurant it is for a special occasion or rare treat; today Rabbit and I had lunch at a cafe owned by a young friend of ours.  Our bill with tip was $15.  That was a huge splurge for us, but Rabbit and I go to lunch together every year right before Christmas as our own special treat.

2.  Limit or eliminate convenience foods: When I shop for groceries, I try to come home with “just ingredients.”  Especially  now that work is slow and I have a lot more time at home to cook things from scratch.  When times are busier, I’ll make sure to have a couple of convenience meals on hand in the freezer, to avoid the temptation to resort to takeout or fast food.  I have a special weakness for some of Trader Joe’s convenience foods, but have done pretty well resisting the urge to splurge.

One sure-fire method to combat the convenience food trap is to keep a bowl of that refrigerator dough on hand and use some of that for pizza crust on nights when I can’t bear to cook or have very little time.  We always make sure to have a jar of pizza sauce around and if times are especially lean, I make pizza sauce out of tomato soup from a can (undiluted) to which I add onion and garlic powders, crushed oregano, crushed basil, a little salt, a lot of pepper and a little sugar.

3.  Make your own bread.  Honestly you guys. It is NOT difficult.   And I invest in good flour now because even spending $3.50 per bag on King Arthur flour (bread flour and whole wheat flour) pays off big because the bread turns out so beautifully: soft, high rising, great texture, nutritious.   You aren’t saving money if you buy cheap flour and the bread sucks so bad you throw it away.

4.  Make a meal plan for the week and stick with it.  I started doing this a few months ago, and it helps everyone in the family.  I check Rabbit’s school lunch menu to make sure we’re not duplicating (but honestly, everything on that wretched menu is convenience crap) and I try to plan at least two cook-once, eat-twice meals where you can use the leftovers from one meal to make a different meal a night or two later.  For us, this is important because it helps us plan for what to defrost, what to hold back, and what to buy.

5.  Keep your kitchen clean and your dishes washed.  I know this sounds weird as a money saver on food, but trust me.  When my kitchen is a mess, I don’t want to cook. When the sink is full of dirty dishes, I don’t want to cook.  I’m more apt to figure we’ll just get takeout and deal with the mess later.  In addition, by keeping the kitchen clean, I also mean keep your fridge cleaned of leftovers and stuff put way in the back, and your pantry organized so you know what’s in there.

6.  Keep your kitchen stocked with some basics for easy meals.   Not everyone has the same list, but for us, we always have to have lots of spices and seasonings like oregano, basil, ginger, cumin, chili powder, rosemary, thyme, whole black peppercorns, Kosher salt.  We keep baking supplies like baking powder, flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking soda, vanilla.  I always have beef soup base, chicken soup base, rice, potatoes, carrots, celery, onions and garlic.  I always have cans of petite diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, and tomato soup.  And always, we have a eggs, dry beans, a variety of pastas and several kinds of cheese: Swiss slices, cheddar, mozzarella and occasionally gouda.  Of course, we keep frozen veggies and a few kinds of canned and fresh fruits as well.

With these basic ingredients and meat such as ground beef, chicken and soup bones/meat, I can make tacos with homemade tortillas, numerous homemade soups, pasta dishes, chicken and dumplings, homemade noodles, gnocchi, chili, spaghetti sauce from scratch, and the occasional dessert.   I would estimate that this past month, because we already had so many ingredients on hand, I’ll feed our family of three on less than $175.

7.  Don’t get caught up in the “extreme couponing” myth.  This practice works for a rare few people who are willing to commit to obsessively gathering coupons, buying them from the Internet, cataloging them and spending up to eight hours in a grocery store pissing off dozens of customers by hauling up five carts of groceries and painstakingly working through a system of discounts on items I personally would not usually buy:  TV dinners, name brand foods, candy, laundry detergent (I make my own), twenty tubes of toothpaste, or, as in one case, over 200 boxes of tic tacs.   One lady on the couponing show had over 300 rolls of paper towels stockpiled in her basement.

Coupons can occasionally save you money, but my rule is to only use them on things I would normally buy and even then, I don’t get the Sunday paper to cut coupons out and I have way better things to do with my time than spend hundreds of hours scouring papers for coupons and organizing them in three ring binders.

The best way to save money on groceries is to make a list, buy what you need, shop the sales and get out of the store.  I’m not saying those extreme coupon people are wrong: I’m just saying they are the exception to the rule and their results are highly unusual and it’s unreasonable to expect that you can replicate them.  Use that time to bake bread or read to your kid or read a book or something.

8.  Maintain your level of frugality, no matter what your finances are like.  This might be the biggest one for us.  Since my job is commission based, it’s “feast or famine” around here.  But it doesn’t have to be, I’ve realized.  What happens is that we go without for a long time, with no income for one, two or three months (my income. PC continues to earn, but we do need two incomes to survive).  So while I’m not earning, we institute austerity measures and get by.  Then when I get a commission, we get all kinds of extra things that we really don’t need to get (hey, let’s buy five boxes of this instead of just one!) and spend it all up. Then we’re back to the bottom of that roller coaster.

Try spending the bare minimum on food and set aside a little for the occasional splurge (we all need a treat once in a while, like chocolate or a soda or something like that).  Keep up that practice even when times are flush.  Even when you get a bonus, or an extra windfall income.  Put away what you save.   For us, that would help in those emergency times when moths fly out of the checking account.

 

If you’re asleep by now, I understand. If not, share with me/us what you do to save on food, or if not, share where you find yourself splurging or making mistakes that gut your budget.

Dec 20 2011

Whiplash Subject Changes (and Gingersnaps)

Today at the office, an affiliate company that handles title insurance and escrow closing management came in and set up a Nacho Bar for us.  Now let me tell you, after receiving boxes of cookies and plates of cookies, and plates of fudge and boxes of fudge, and candy and candy canes and candy corn and everything but gallons of Maple Syrup, it was a little slice of heaven to walk into the conference room and see little paper baskets of tortilla chips and then a row of toppings:  hot nacho cheese, taco meat, guacamole, salsa, sour cream, olives, jalapenos, onions….

We were practically giddy.  For about half an hour there were about thirty of us just hanging out, trading real estate war stories, talking about our holiday plans, enjoying salty snacks and bottled water  and the incomparable contentment of warm melted cheese on chips that I didn’t have to pay for.

Last night, I had some of our youth retreat Council people over – youth and adults – for a Christmas potluck.  I made a pot of chili, someone brought hummus and pita, there were meat and cheese trays, a giant pan of chicken strips from a local chain restaurant (Rabbit had two) and various cookies and brownies.

Now I’m ready for some apples, carrots, celery and smoked turkey for a few days to detox from rich foods.

Also at the office, our main office manager/executive assistant came in with her 3 week old baby boy, for the first time since she left for maternity leave the day before Thanksgiving. He is precious and we all took turns holding him and fussing over him. He wore little black fleece pants and an impossibly small thermal long-sleeved shirt, grey, with tiny white skulls printed all over them. So CUTE.

By the way, as I skip willy-nilly from subject to subject here…I cleaned the damn house yesterday.  And by house, I mean I cleaned the kitchen, the living room and the bathroom.  My kitchen is so clean that it makes Rabbit euphoric.  I rearranged the bookcases to redistribute the books that didn’t get put into the book tree, and added to the shelves some interesting artifacts, framed photos,  small statues, vases of marbles and other curiosities.  It’s fun to look at now.

I also dusted. Sweet fancy Moses, was my living room dusty.  It was appalling.  It’s clean now and I’m pouncing on any member of my family who puts down a piece of paper on a side table or stacks homework or work papers anywhere on the kitchen table or counter.  I’m just sick of all the clutter.

Remind me of that in three weeks when I am once again buried under an avalanche of unopened mail.  *sigh*

For now, though, it is a pleasure to walk into a spotless house  (if you don’t look real close at  the kitchen floor) and it makes me happy.

Whiplash change of subject (what is WITH ME today?) but I’m on book 87 for the year, I think.  It’s “Doc” a fictionalized biography of Doc Holliday.  I’m only on page 3.  I finished “The Borrower,” and I loved it.

I made gingersnaps Sunday. I’m going to go eat three of them right now, and I don’t care who knows it.