Something funny on a sunny Saturday

Nothing like a funny foreign film to make a sunny spring Saturday even better.

the flu beads

This morning I took Emma in to get a sports physical at the walk-in clinic. The waiting room was full of sick people and I imagined the air thick as honey with bacteria and virus particles. I turned to Em and said "Do not touch anything while we're in here." We've avoided the nasty flu bug all Winter and I was not in the mood to join the ranks of the fallen.

We sat, our hands in our laps, not daring to touch the chair arms or leaf through the inviting magazines on the table. In the center of the waiting area was a large toy for kids — a table with a series of built-in wires crisscrossing the top. Colored wooden beads were strung along the wires for kids to move and play with. As we waited a mother and her toddler walked in. They checked in at the desk then promptly sat down on the floor and the mother began showing the little guy how to make the wooden beads twist and move along the wires.

I cringed to myself, imagining all of the feverish, coughing, spewing people who had touched those beads. I turned to Emma and whispered "Here Jimmy, come play with the flu beads." We started to giggle. The more we tried not to smile or laugh the harder we laughed. Thankfully, Emma was called in to see the physician so we jumped up and followed the nurse down the hall. Afterward, as I drove her back to school, Emma and I laughed about it all over again. Oh dear, I'm so easily amused.

My writing life

"Why can't I write?!" I asked the air
When I've finally found a day to spare
Me thinks the house may silence my pen
too much laundry, dust and lack of zen

I packed my bag and sought a chair
at the local Barnes & Noble, where
I thought the words would flow like wine
in the tapas bar on 3rd and Pine

But, hark! I found it worse than home
Distractions lurked like night in Nome
Poetry, classics, mags by the ton
I'd stopped writing before I'd even begun

Then spent the day with nose in book
Browsing covers for a Nook
Reading Oliver's latest poems
And pondering purchasing several tomes

At days end, I'd nothing to show
No letters written in a tiny row
Just a messy house, dishes in the sink
And a caffeine crash (from the latte, I think)

I called the day "a piece of crap"
My writing life is a lot like that.

~ Jenny Scheuch ©

Party til you drop

{or How I survived yet another kid birthday party}

I have a confession (and you know I love a confession session).

okay, here it goes . . .
Large groups of children scare me.

Don't get me wrong or think me evil. I love children, positively adore them — individually, or in groups of two. I'm just one of those people who should not be a teacher or acitivity leader of groups of children. If I had been Fraulein Maria, the Von Trapp children would've completely run me over like a freight train and served me up in pieces on a plate.

When my girls were little, in Preschool and early grade school, I volunteered in their classrooms quite often. I did it because I thought it was a good thing to do. I thought it might make a difference — like they'd be better people in the end because of my dedication. Or maybe my presence would lighten the teacher's load so she could do her job more perfectly. I also thought the teachers would like me and think me a nice person, and I enjoy having people like me. Ultimately I have no idea what effect it really had on any of that stuff. But I do know that the teachers probably thought I was about the worst "helper" of anyone they'd ever met. I was a nervous wreck. And I was really bad at it. I bet they actually dreaded the days I came to help. "Oh crap, Jenny's helping today. Maybe I can put her to work tacking something to a bulletin board or filing papers today."

Ask me to lead three-year-olds in a craft project involving paint and glitter? They'd end the day with paint all over their high-end clothing and glitter in their ears. Plus most of the projects won't turn out at all like the teacher was hoping they would. (true story)

Ask me to take a group of 3rd-graders into the hall and help them with a math worksheet? They will end up running amok in the hallway (while I'm softly calling "Oh dear. Okay kids, let's come back and work on this paper, okay?"), talking too loudly, not cooperating or working on their papers AT ALL. I think their math skills will actually revert a little bit. (also a true story)

Give me a birthday party of 5-year-olds and I will seize up. All those little faces staring at me, waiting for the next activity, the next snack . . . I'll barely pull it off, then crawl up to bed for a long nap once it's all over.

Give me older kids, say a gaggle of wild 12-year-olds and things are a bit better. I don't have to plan activities, but there is the stress of "enough food" "fun music" "cool activities." The last thing I want is a bunch of tween girls (who are by now mostly my size!) thinking the party is "lame."

Whew. . .

In the end Kate's party went swimmingly. Thirteen girls ate a ton of pizza, cupcakes, chips, and soda. They threw a huge dance party in the basement. They opened gifts. They wrestled and screamed and giggled. They planned sleeping arrangements, watched a movie and finally, around 2 a.m., they slept. They woke up before the sun (why? no idea) and ate scrambled eggs and 3 dozen cinnamon rolls.

And then, it was over. I was glad. Not just because it was over, but because Kate had a really great time. And that fact made it all worthwhile.

Later in the day I took a two hour nap (also a true story).

Parent Rap

I think I'm a little late to the party on this but I just had to share. Maybe there are a few of you out there who, like me, aren't up on everything that "trends" on the web and have yet to see this awesome "Parent Rap." It's seriously genius.

Now back to trying to find 101 ways to use leftover turkey in recipes and other creative ways . . .

Pilgrim Dreams

This weekend was just what the doctor ordered. I got lots of R&R and whipped that nasty cold into submission. I'm feeling nearly 100% and rearing to get busy plotting and planning for Thanksgiving. Just a little over a week to go, folks!

This year's Thanksgiving Day Players:

~ Me - the chef (although Gary gets the turkey in the pan because I really hate to touch raw meat)

~ Gary - Guitar strummer, football watcher, turkey slicer

~ Emma & Kate - Macy's Parade watchers, lounge-abouts, chat-n-munch duo

~ My mother - arriving from Texas in just two days. Assistant chef. Crazy laundress (as post-traumatic stress from having 6 kids she is constantly doing laundry. She will wash any swatch of cloth she encounters, short of yanking the clothes off your body)

~ My mother-in-law - lives in town, pie-maker

~ My sister - flying in from New Hampshire . . . and 

~ Her boyfriend

Yippee! Bring it on. 

I've always loved Thanksgiving. The parade, the day spent fussing around in the kitchen, the mashed potatoes, the pumpkin pie, the family, football announcers, laying on the floor like a lump after dinner.

Plus, I had ancestors on the Mayflower so I kinda like to think of myself as a true pilgrim . . . deep down. A soap-making, embroidering, reading-by-candlelight kind of pilgrim.

Of course anyone who knows me knows that I would have made a terrible pilgrim. I think I would've complained a lot and needed quite a few naps. The long, cold winters spent milking a cow, hand washing laundry with lye and schlepping chamber pots outside would've put me right over the edge. I would've either died of exhaustion, starvation (from refusing to eat the salted meat from the barrel) or the other villagers would've taken me on a long walk and "accidentally lost" me in the woods.
 
Lucky for me I don't need to test my pilgiming skills. I just need to make a dinner and eat an excessive amount. Now THAT, I can do.

For now I'm trying desperately to hold Christmas at bay until the last of the leftovers have been stacked in the fridge and the dishwasher is running. It seems such a shame to overlook the holiday of "giving thanks." 

That said, I have a tiny confession (you know I love to confess) I found myself listening to a little Christmas music while I worked today. I love Christmas music with all my heart — Bing, Nat, Ella, Frank, Glenn Miller . . . I can't get enough of that stuff! 

Hope your Monday's been groovy. As always, I soooo appreciate you dropping in. It means a lot to me.

Halloween : A love/hate story

Can you feel it in the air? It’s coming. The time is drawing near. Tomorrow is that crazy, over-done, bizarre holiday. I sorta love it. But truthfully I kinda hate it. It’s Halloween.

Like a moth to the flame every year I get caught up in the whirlwind of it all -  plugging in my pumpkin-scented air freshener, humming an eerie little tune, making spooky crafts, planning costumes. But at the same time I find the actual day, the 31st, a rather chaotic nightmare of sorts. Mostly it just makes me tired.

The season starts off innocently enough. I spend two hours of my Saturday crawling and crashing around in the storage closet trying to find the Halloween decorations, then the kids and I get busy hanging lights with miniature smiling pumpkins and sticking clingy ghosts to the windows. There’s a skeleton for the front porch and ghost salt and pepper shakers for the table (with last year’s salt hardened into a brick inside). We finish with some pumpkin tea-light holders and string up some cotton “spider-webs” on the porch . . . all this, and my husband hasn’t once looked up from the football game (but hey, that’s a whole other joyous part of Fall that I won’t go into right now).

“Can we go to that cool costume store?” my daughters ask. They’re referring to this huge mega-Halloween store that comes into town just during the month of October. I think it’s a national chain, and they move in each year and transform a vacant commercial building into a living nightmare of costumes and decorative paraphenalia. It’s amazing — and amazingly overpriced.

I agree to take them, and prep for the journey with a pair of ibuprofen washed down with a Diet Coke. Once inside, we navigate our way through the aisles. Did you know you can buy extremely realists scabs, gashes and head wounds? You can even get them with maggots munching on the exposed muscle or under-the-skin worm infestations. It's so icky and they are so real looking that I can hardly stomach standing near the displays. 

There are actual walking mummies, headless men holding chainsaws, and severed hands that crawl across the floor. There are full-sized gravestones to decorate your yard (some come with a half-decayed guy crawling out of the bottom), flying bats, screaming skulls with red glowing lights in their eye sockets, and a corpse bride holding a champagne glass full of her own blood. They’re everywhere, surrounding you like the zombie people in the Thriller video. I cannot get out of there fast enough.

When did Halloween become so crazy and overblown? When I was little we just gathered stuff from around the house to create our own costumes. I would put on my robe, a bath cap and slippers, then grab a doll and Voila! I was an “exhausted mother.” Or we’d throw on Dad’s woodworking goggles and toolbelt to go as a carpenter. One year I borrowed my Aunt’s beekeeping suit and clomped through the neighborhood as a beekeeper. Ah, the simple days. Not to mention the financial advantages. But as my kids would remind me, it’s not 1975, and dressing as a hobo isn’t acceptable anymore. Aside from the fact that the days of riding the rails with a knapsack are pretty much over, dressing as a homeless, marginalized member of our society seems terribly distasteful.

So we open our door to the latest trends and watch as hundreds of children become pop culture icons and characters from Disney’s latest endeavors. We host slews of Power Rangers and Ninja Turtles at our door. Last year there was a long line of Dora the Explorers, their bobbed wigs slightly askew. There were princesses in sparkly dresses paired with dirty sneakers, a couple Obamas, a Pikachu, Lady Gaga, and several 1980s girls traveling with a gaggle of Batmen.

Usually the evening starts in mass chaos. I try to fork a few bites of broccoli casserole into the kid’s mouths and take a few photos for posterity while they argue against wearing a coat over their outfits (it’s like 10 degrees outside!), and call all their friends to map-out their route.

My husband is in his element as designated “flashlight finder.” His duties include locating a few of the ever-elusive 50 flashlights we own, then hunting down a handful of working batteries. There is a bit of swearing and fussing involved. “Why are there never any flashlights when we need them?” he yells, at me of course, since I obviously spend a lot of time cooking and cleaning by flashlight light (NOT!). 

The kids head out and I settle in for a night of opening the door to an assortment of kiddos – all those red-nosed children, peering awkwardly through the eyeholes of plastic masks, tripping over their ghostly sheets, and crashing through my chrysanthemums as they clamor off the front porch. It’s like a painting by Norman Rockwell, except for the part where the mom (that'd be me) keeps eating piece after piece of the 'Pal' gum from the candy bowl. Within an hour I’ve exhausted most of the supply and my jaw is making a weird clicking sound from all the hard chewing. If you’ve ever had one of those little gum pieces you know how addictive they can be. They’re so sugarydelicious when you first chew them, it’s like tasting heaven – though I hope the flavor in heaven lasts a longer than the flavor of Pal gum. Within two minutes you have a nasty acrid taste in your mouth and you must IMMEDIATELY spew the gum into the trash. THEN, however, you think about the gum and how tasty it was in the beginning and. . . it starts all over again.

Another part Norman would never paint is the part where the night turns shady. The part where the older kids throw on their camouflage coats and start slinking up to the door in large groups. By this point my own kids have come home, counted their loot, and brushed their teeth extra-hard (per my instruction). Then, just as I plop onto the couch to watch the news and sip my bedtime tea, the real goblins start to bang on the door. These aren’t princesses or robots. They’re . . . (gasp here) large teenagers! Some have stubble, some even look old enough to drive my carpool, and no, they’re not even dressed up. They’re wearing their usual teen garb. They’re holding pillowcases filled ¾ full, and in case you didn’t know . . . that’s a LOT of candy. They have nose piercings and pink hair and wear sweatshirts that say “Kiss my A*$.”

Normally I might be tempted to say something like “Aren’t you getting a little old to be Trick-or-Treating?” but it’s really dark, these kids are the size of giants (I’m a mere 5’2”, and that’s on a good day), and they look extremely hormonal. So I don’t say a word. I just nod cooly and throw a couple Snickers in their bags. They turn without saying a word (occasionally one will grunt) and vanish into the darkness. It’s scary – on so many levels. Oh, and heaven-forbid you run out of candy! That could mean eggs on the back of the car, pumpkins smashed on the mailbox, and probably other shenanigans that I can’t even dream up. To avoid the wrath one year I had to scavenge the house – cough drops, peppermints from the last time we ate at Pizza Hut, a couple Pepto-Bismol tablets. I barely made it, but I had something for everyone.  

The night usually ends with a migraine and jitters from all the Pal gum. I drift to sleep, penciling a post-holiday list in my mind: tear down the decorations, dig wrappers out of the bushes in the yard, eventually use a shovel to scrape the rotten jack-o-lanterns off the front steps. I ponder the issue of candy allotment and distribution that I will deal with for the months to follow. Do you let them eat it at-will, suffering through the sugar highs and lows? Do you dole it slowly, meanwhile risking that you’ll give in to your nightly cravings and end up betraying your child's trust as well as putting on ten pounds? Do you have them binge for a week and toss the rest? Ahhh, the decisions and indecisions of parenthood.

Happy Halloween!

It's Good to LOL

Here's my LOL for the day, click here to watch a gal who's discovered the joys of the distortion camera. Remember the first time you tried it? I remember my whole family was mesmerized for hours and in tears with laughter.

I love when it hits around the one minute mark and she laughs so hard she's silent for a few seconds.

For another chuckle you could read Natalie's post about her sons' preparation for a zombie party over at Chicken Blog. She cracks me up. 

Wishing everyone a good laugh at least once this week. Feels good, don't it?!

Feeling youngish in an oldish body

So . . . this weekend I tried to do this dance move called a "scale" that Kate's been practicing where you grab the toes of one foot and lift your leg behind your head. I could actually do it pretty well and even held the position for a few seconds. Then I tried to put my leg back down and ziiiinnnngg — complete back muscle spasm. Now my back hurts and I'm taking Advil and trying to act like everything's all groovy so Gary won't realize I've injured myself. 

Geez.

Several years ago I did something similar when Emma came home trying to do the "jump-full-turn" they were working on in her kindergarten gymnastics class. Thinking myself a spry, hip mom I decided to provide some instruction . . . "Okay, honey, watch. You just tuck your arms to your chest, focus on an object ahead of you, then jump and spin like this—ahhh, whoaaaa, CRASH, SMACK (those are the sounds of me wiping out and flying backwards, smacking my head on the cupboards as I fall flat on my butt on the floor).

Getting older really sucks. Especially when inside you keep feeling like you're still 12 and completely capable of doing a perfect scale or a jump-full-turn.

It's truly SUCH a monstrous bummer.

(And by the way, this cartoon lady looks a lot younger than I feel right now, but I dig her hair, so I'm using her for this post).

Licking the fire pit

For the last month or it's just smelled like a big ol' camp fire outside, but it's getting worse out there and today it plain feels like you're LICKING the fire pit.

This business of living in a smoke-filled world is getting really old. Warm weather and zero precipitation means forest fires around the state continue to burn and burn, and there's no rain in the forecast. All outdoor sporting events and practices have been cancelled, and people are cautioned to mostly stay indoors. Emma's developed a persistent cough.

By coincidence I'm in the thick of reading the book The Worst Hard Time about the dust bowl and I feel like I'm getting some first-hand insight into how things must have been for those folks. Although, I don't have pounds of dirt blowing in through every crack in the house and I'm not living in a dwelling made of sod (praise the Lord, THAT sounds like a small piece of hell). Also, I have plenty of drinking water and my livelihood doesn't depend on rain coming . . . 

. . . okay, I hear what you're thinking . . . "Jenny, your experience in NO WAY compares to the dust bowl!" 

Yeah, I see that now. Nevermind.

Aaarg!

Just when I feel like things have settled into a nice, easy pace and I've penned a list of what I'm planning to do with my day I find out it's 'International Talk Like A Pirate Day.' What!? Really?!

Honestly I have no idea how to talk like a pirate and it's really far from my personality to do so (I have a brother - Hi Andrew - who is just the kinda guy for pirate talk). I would however LOVE to look like Keira Knightly in Pirates of the Caribbean and possibly even fall in love with a pirate. That could be fun, I guess. But not really because I'm more of the homebody type and I get seasick.

So, I guess mostly I'd just want her hair and period clothing from the movie, although realistically I'd never have any place to wear those dresses.

Well, enough of that . . . I thought you might like to see these photos from this toocuteforwords store downtown Missoula — Noteworthy. This is their "back to school" front window decor.

I try not to go in this store too often, you know, with my paper addiction issues and all.

Olympic Dreams

{or "How I Have Finally Come to Accept That I Will Never Be an Olympian"}

It's been such fun watching the Olympics. I've always loved watching the Games – the ceremony, the peaceful gathering of delegates from so many countries, the celebration of hard work and personal accomplishment. Have you seen those badminton players? It's UNREAL! And the synchronized divers!? WTH? How on earth do they get that synchronized?

My first memory of the Olympics was the 1976 games when Nadia Comaneci did her perfect "10" thing. I was swept up in the hype. I was in such awe of this young, darling Romanian girl – I wanted to be friends with Nadia. Better yet, I wanted to be Nadia.

Our Scholastics book order advertised a book on the life of Nadia and her rise to Olympic perfection. I bought it and read it over and over. I started taking gymnastics and discovered with disappointment that everything was a lot harder than she made it look, and my talent was limited. I was small, but I wasn't strong, and when my coaches said they didn't think I would ever be that great it didn't make me want to prove them wrong, it made me want to cry and give up. So that's what I did.

Thirty-five years later and I still adore Nadia. During this last week NBC has highlighted her successes and even run a few minutes of old footage from that year. Suddenly I am in grade school again, so enamoured with her and so disappointed in myself . . . that I wasn't good enough to be like her.

Sadly, it's not just Nadia that makes me feel that way. Watching Gabby Douglas take gold the all-around made me want to start practicing my back-handsprings again (that would be quite a hefty hospital bill). Then last night I watched those two speedy Jamaican guys run the 100-meter and I decided I wanted to try to run, like really fast. "I've got to get in better shape," I said to my husband and kids, and they just shook their heads and rolled their eyes at each other (Oh brother, here we go, Mom's losing her mind again). Here's the thing about me: when I see others, passionate and hard working, I am instantly intoxicated. I want to be them, to do what they're doing, to work that hard, to reap the rewards. When I don't or can't, I somehow turn their success into disappointed in myself for not being that good.

Today, at 42-years-old, I finally got a grip. I looked at myself in the mirror, and here's what I said:

Jenny, you will never be a gymnast and you will never go to the Olympics - for ANY sport, ever. BUT THAT'S OKAY. It's really okay. You can stop beating yourself up about it now. From now on, you just need to be you. Practice being you every day.

I don't know if it will work or not. I'll let you know. I do know that I watched women's soccer today and I didn't even lament my short-lived, lame soccer-playing days in 6th grade (I was too polite. "No really, you take the ball, you were here first"). Maybe I'm on my way to recovery. Maybe I'm finally growing up. Whew - it's about time.

Wait. A. Stinkin'. Minute.
. . . Did I just take the Olympic Games and somehow make it about ME? Man, I have issues.

The Dirty Pile

Today I vow to tackle the mountain of laundry that grew while I was busy doing all the other stuff I do all week. I have to say that the amount of laundry this family produces seems quite disproportionate to the number of people and the size of our (shortish) bodies. I suspect that my children are actually throwing clean clothes back in the basket, rather than getting up off their lazy summer bums and putting them in their drawers. (My husband may be doing this too, it's hard to tell without sniffing everything – and that takes too much time, plus it's gross.) Either that or the neighbors are sneaking through the window each night and adding their dirties to our pile. Regardless, if I don't tackle this chore today someone is going to be walking around stark naked, because everyone's almost out of undies.

I've been on a purging mission lately (meaning the last five years) to try to cut down on the number of clothes in my closet. Truthfully, there are quite a few things that I just don't wear. Mostly they're things I bought when I saw someone else wearing them and thought I should try that particular look too, but really they weren't my style. I've come to realize that I'm just not really the stylin' type and I really love comfy clothes the best . . . oh, and jeans. I love jeans. And cotton. Slicky material feels weird.

Well, now that you are bored out of your minds after hearing about my laundry I will send you off into your day. I hope your day is filled with joy and fun and adventure. If you think of it, have a little extra fun for me since I'll be waist deep in stinky clothes for the large part of my Friday.

Paper Fettish: A Confession

I've often wondered if I should be Catholic. Why? Because I LOVE to confess. It makes me feel so much better. Something about laying all my dirty laundry out there in front of someone does wonders for my sanity. I bet a priest would either proclaim me his best pupil or he'd start complaining to the other priests about the looney woman who comes in twice daily to confess every neurotic thought or odd thing she's done. He'd probably sit down at his weekly 'Meeting of the Priests' and say "Okay guys, I'm at a loss. This woman is making me doubt my priesthood. I just don't have the patience for people like her."

Alas - I am not Catholic, so I'll just have to confess to you guys when I do something I'm not proud of. Today I am confessing that I think I am addicted to paper. Actually, I KNOW I'm addicted. It's been years since I gave in to that notion. But now I'm trying to rein in the paper monster. I've been knee-deep in the stacks, cleaning up my office/craft space and the more I sort through piles the more I realize the depth of my problem. Let's just say that I have a LOT of paper – scrapbook paper, wallpaper, notebook paper, empty notebooks full of paper, notepads, printer paper sample books, pretty stationery, more scrapbook paper, origami paper. And each piece is so beautiful! So pretty, in fact, that I'm a little hesitant to use it. Oftentimes I'll decide to make something but refuse to use the prettiest of my papers because I can't stand to mar their crisp perfection.

Ugh.

So, my confession here is two-fold. Not only am I telling you that I have a paper hoarding problem but there's a second part. This weekend, in the midst of trying to sort and get rid of some paper in my office, I . . . um,
I . . . bought some paper?

I know! I know! It's terrible! But it was rainy and I was alone in the craft store (if my daughters are with me they will stop me, they're aware of my issue) and they had two entire aisles of the most fantastic new papers. I just couldn't stop myself.

I promise I'm going to try to be better and not buy any more paper for the rest of June. 

For now, please enjoy viewing my new papers. See, I told you they were beautiful.