sweetisu

So there’s a high school reunion coming up in the near horizon. It’s at a bar / restaurant type setting, on a Saturday night and it will only be 3.5 hours long. My drive to the location is approximately 2.5 hours, one way.

I will be attending, no doubt, accompanied by my hottie husband. I am very excited to see a lot of people whom I haven’t seen since graduation!!! I missed the last two reunions and I’m not going to miss this one, especially now that we live closer to the location.

However, I cannot dismiss the feeling of uncertainty. Firstly, I don’t know how it works or how it is organized, since I have never attended one. Secondly, it’s at a bar, for 3.5 hours. The setting and length of time leads one to believe it’s more of a “tweetup” than a high school reunion.

I can just envision it: casually walking into the bar, greeting people awkwardly, and engage in small talks with a few people about what you do for a living, how many children you have and before long, you’ve had a couple of drinks… and then it’s all over. 3.5 hours can go by real fast.

You didn’t meet or talk to a lot of people. You didn’t even have the opportunity to get an overview of how many and who, out of the 400+ kids who graduated with you, all came to the event, let alone do any catch ups. The rare few that hangs around after it’s long over are laughing and talking amongst themselves. Obviously already in a clique and thoroughly engaged with each other. Leaving little room for you to join in.

Just like old times.

I AM excited! At the same time, I don’t want to have too much expectations.

Maybe I’ve watched too many high school reunion movies, and am expecting to see a live band, ex-geeks rolling up in a fancy limo, frocks of the 80’s, rolled up sleeves / pant legs, and party until dawn. Or at least until our big sprayed hair loses its form.

I snapped this picture in Chicago over Labor Day weekend. It’s BEGGING for a cool caption. Go wild!

Note: there are 4 different things on the yellow shirt.

I thought it would be cool to talk about how we got rid of all the leaves in our previous old house. That, and it’s nearly midnight so my brain isn’t at its peak performance right now.

Many moons ago, we moved into our old house in the middle of November. Being first time home owners, we didn’t know what to do with all the leaves that were in the yard before closing, and we requested the seller take care of all of it! It was a bit over the top I suppose, but really, we didn’t know what we had to do with all.those.leaves.

Second autumn comes along, we raked until our fingers grew callouses and the palms of our hands hardened. We even invited a non-home-owner friend to come and have fun. There were 140 some bags total! I have a picture of that somewhere - only 1/3 of it because we couldn’t possibly have gotten it all done in one setting.

Third autumn - repeat, rinse, lather.

Fourth autumn, we smarten up and started building a compost bin. In the height of season. Very smart indeed. Towards the end of the building project, over a weekend, our fingers and noses were nearly frozen. By the time we started gathering all the leaves, it was unbearably cold (I should mention, this house was in Minnesota). The reason we started with the yard work kind of late was because, we were new parents to a chubby new baby boy and sleep were not to be had by anyone.

Fifth and sixth autumn went much smoother. Rake, gather, and dump all the leaves into the compost bins we had built. All 3 big compartments of it! Our garden benefited as well as our budget. We didn’t have to buy mulch for a long while, and it didn’t look or smell bad at all. Our then-toddler even helped with the raking, gathering and dumping!

Lesson learned: if your residence produces a lot yard waste, build a compost bin that’s big enough to hold all the yard waste (or buy a ready-made one, but those are usually hardly enough for yard waste). Your budget will thank you (no yard waste bags to buy), your garden will thank you, and most of all, Mother Earth will thank you.

Honestly though, thank goodness we don’t have to do much of that for quite a few more years yet.

I’m a glutton for punishment, and went ahead and signed up for my 3rd yr in a row for NaBloPoMo. I may drop out early, I may skip a day here and there, and I might not cross the finish line for the first time, but it’s the effort that counts isn’t it.

What’s NaBloPoMo? It’s a promise to blog every.single.day. in the month of November, started by a great woman named Eden 3 yrs ago. All you have to do is post something at least once a day. Substance is not required, so here goes!

The other day as I was driving home from work, I saw a man raking leaves and bagging them into giant paper yard waste bags (there were at least 20 of them already full). I was feeling quite happy that we didn’t live in an older house anymore. The only real tree we have now is a little tiny red cherry tree (not bing cherry, darn!) that’s about 6 feet tall and produces very little leaves on the ground. At our old house we had a gazillion trees and even had one with locust beans that would fall every single autumn. It’s a job that we would have absolutely no time for right now. We might end up being one of those annoying neighbors who leave their leaves on the ground until the first snow, and just let the snow buries it hoping it would decompose over the course of winter. Naturally most of the would blow and spread throughout the whole neighborhood.

Truthfully? I don’t think we could actually do that.

Are you an incessantly busy garden keeper who mow every other day, or one who would finally gets going with the mowing because you’re afraid your lawn is feeling left out since all the other lawns are all groomed? I would say we’re kinda in the middle, but leans toward the latter slightly.

Never mind mowing. Snow is coming soon!

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My post yesterday is password protected. If you’re a regular reader and would like to read my ‘enlightened post’ about Election 2008, please send me a note / comment / email. I just didn’t want it to be out there since this blog is directly linked from our business’ website.

Every now and then I create silly stories with the kids, and it usually starts with me providing some basic structures and they fill in with imaginative objects / names / actions. Here’s the story from tonight, between our 5-yr old Sebastian and Mom (that would be me).

Mom: Once upon a time, there was a _____

Sebastian: Poop

Mom: and his name was _____

Sebastian: Stinky

Mom: and he liked to _____

Sebastian: go swimming in the toilet. And he likes to get flushed away. And then he walks out of the toilet and jumps on the floor. HA HA HA HA HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

The kids were on my Mac this morning as I slept in a little longer (1). The two of them came to get me later on, and the older one proceeded to tell me “Mama, I forgot I should not draw on your computer.”

Raised eyebrows, groggy puffy eyed, I said “Draw on my computer? Where and why?”

“I forgot I should not!” He pleaded.

Decided it’s no use to argue without seeing the damage.

Minutes later, I’m very upset. The screen has several long RED LINES across it. I tried to remove them with my dry fingers - nothing.

Frustrated. Stew by self. Sit and read emails, eat breakfast.(2) Still frustrated, having to read through the RED LINES on the screen.

Kids on the floor playing with some toys. “Guys, please take it upstairs to play there” is met with silence. Typical. (WHY do kids not hear us / respond when we need them to???)

I lost it. I went down and cupped his face with my hands “DID YOU NOT HEAR ME?(3) TAKE. THIS. UP. STAIRS. TO. PLAY!”

Traits of Worst Mother:
(1) Sleep in while the kids run rampant.
(2) Eat breakfast at the computer instead of eating and talking to them.
(3) Shouting at the kids.

When we were living in the previous house, we had a very nice mail delivery person. Our house was on a dead-end street and everyone knew everyone else, mostly. It was an older neighborhood, the houses were much older and the yards were big. We played outside whenever the weather was nice. Often times we’d see the mail truck coming and we’d get the mail from the mailman. He’d drive slow up to the end of our driveway, and hand us the mail. And never fails to say hi to us.

Since our move to this house last spring, when the weather was still nice we played in the backyard most of the time. The street we’re on now is a very busy through street and a lot of traffic pass by our house all the time. It’s not as kid friendly, and it just doesn’t feel very nice to be outside when cars are zooming past. And for the past 2 gazillion months we’ve had sucky weather. Outside time is next to zilch. That’s the long explanation to say, we don’t know our current delivery person very well.

What we DO know is, we can hear her from 3+ streets over. The truck/van that she drives is SO LOUD and she presses on the gas so hard, we can literally hear when she’s delivering mail in our neighborhood. She goes from mailbox to mailbox, and in the short 20 feet distance between houses, she has to accelerate on the gas pedal from 0 to 50 and back to 0 mph.

I find it interesting how the two drivers are so different (or is it simply her truck is just REALLY loud??) and how the two neighborhoods exude such different energy.

Cut a few holes in a box, it suddenly becomes a house with windows! And now it’s time to paint them rooms!

My little artists hard at work:

With paints from this selection. After it’s all done and tattered from playing with for days, recycle the boxes.

I have always resisted buying cake mixes in a box. I’m not a big cake person to begin (cookies on the other hand.. yum!) and I’m pretty sure there are some preservatives that comes with cake mixes from a box.

The other day I brought home a box of cake mix. Velvet cake mix by Duncan Hines. Instead of making it into a sheet of cake, we made them into cupcakes. I substituted with half milk and half water instead of the whole 1.25 cups of water. It turned out really well. I’m surprised by how easy it was, and so tasty, especially with some frosting!

Now we’ll probably have to live with the consequences of having those preservatives in our system for a while.

But really, how impossible it is to get away from preservatives - it’s in almost everything.