Surviving Parenting

We have a fourth-grader and a sixth-grader, as of yesterday, Internets. Can I just tell you that I was more ready for them to go to school this summer than I was last summer?

Before I launch into this post about what exactly this means to me, I'd like to call upon Momastery, which I read religiously, and who tells me (and tens of thousands of other people) that this is not only okay, it is how I am supposed to feel. This one talks about how different moms feel capable and comfortable with their children at different ages, and there are ages that are just not our favorite. I talked about some of these challenges in this post. To get a sense of what made Momastery the informal expert on the downside of parenting, read this post, which launched her mainstream and helped her get a book deal. It's amazing to read, and I check for more from her every day. She's also long-winded, as I am. 

Spring Pinterest Challenge: A Chair Makeover

I love reading and writing blogs. I love Pinterest. I wish I could do both more. Four times a year, the two marry into a joyous occasion when two of my favorite bloggers issue the cattle call for the Pinterest Challenge.

You actually do something that you pin and then you write a blog about it, and link up to the hosts on their pages. Katie from Bower Power and Sherry from Young House Love created the challenge and each season they recruit two other bloggers to participate with them. The summer edition has Kate from Centsational Girl (another daily read) and Michelle from Ten June.

I went down to the St. James Infirmary

Thankfully, I do not go to the emergency room often. I have very healthy, sturdy kids. For my own health, I have been less than ten times in my 32 years, and most of them were for food poisoning or some other intestinal atrocity. When I do have to make an ER visit, for whatever malady I've found myself stricken by, I cry at the realization that I have to go, in full-on titsackery.

I went once in college because my back hurt so bad I had trouble sitting through classes, and was treated by a chiropractor for years for a pinched nerve. I'm familiar with that pain, so when it returns, I use some Advil, a muscle relaxer and some Icy Hot to relieve it. It was under these conditions that I found myself in last Thursday, only the drive home from New Orleans in the car that evening had made whatever inflammation was occurring more severe. I took a muscle relaxer and put a hot pack on it. An hour later I could no longer sit comfortably, so I took some Advil to reduce the swelling and went to bed. Within another hour, I was in excrutiating pain in stasis, and I was so afraid of the electrifying pain that occurred with deep breaths that I was breathing in shallow pants and crying steadily. I took a narcotic painkiller and called a 24-hour nurse line, which directed me to the ER for trouble breathing. Corey was worried that because the pain was off-center and not directly on my spine, something could be wrong with my kidneys.

At 11:00 we called my sister to come home while the boys slept so Corey could take me to the ER. After the muscle relaxer/Advil/narcotic regimen I'd taken, he did not want me driving myself. By 11:30, we were checked in and seated in the upright chairs of the ER waiting room. Within an hour, I was in a room, sitting on a bed. The medicines had relieved the constant pain, but it still hurt to breathe.

At this point the story gets fuzzy, because I was high, so I recollect it to the best of my ability. Also, we're going to talk about ladyparts, so leave now if that scares you.

I'm going to call the physician Dr. Baywatch. HE was young, tan, with bright white teeth and blue eyes, and his dirty blonde hair was long enough to sweep across his forehead and show the lines from his baseball cap. He came in and began asking questions, poking around on my back, making me yelp and asking "does this hurt?" Then he said

Are you experiencing any anethesia in your vagina?

This is like when I had an attractive OB/GYN in college and had to break up with him because his attractiveness made me very uncomfortable when he was clinically fiddling around down there, and I really did not expect, nor was I comfortable with, Dr. Baywatch asking me questions about my Business, so I looked at Corey, who repeated the question.

He wants to know if you are experiencing any anethesia in your vajayjay?

Because I find that word takes the sting out. This still did not register with me, because in my narcotic-induced haze I had heard Dr. Baywatch and my husband ask me if I was experiencing any amnesia in my vagina and I could not wrap my head around how one's vajayjay could forget things and why that information would be pertinent if I was experiencing severe back pain. And my confusion registered still on my face, so Corey again jumped in to help Dr. Baywatch.

Is your Business numb?

OH! No, it's not numb, thanks so much for asking. Dr. Baywatch said he was going to order some Xrays and a urine sample, and people would be back. After he departed, I told Corey I was very thrown by having obnoxiously attractive doctors ask me questions that have the word "vagina" in them. And by thrown, I mean wishing I was dead or invisible.

Xrays were uneventful and then Nurse Wratchet (who was really around 13 years old) came in an announced it was time for my urine sample. I asked for the cup and directions for the bathroom, and she then told me that she would need a sterile sample. There are probably people in the medical field reading this blog, or people who have had more exposure to medical procedures with which I am unfamiliar, so you probably know how one goes about collecting a sterile sample. I did not, and was expectedly horrified when she held up a syringe with a little tube attached to the bottom of it, and I heard the word catheter.

The next part of this story horrified people I've shared this with, and not because of the procedure itself. Because I gave Corey the Death Stare, told him that I was so very mad at him for making me come to the ER and then directed him to the OTHER side of the curtain. Apparently this amount of modesty is unusual and nonsensical to other married women I know, but.....no husband of mine is going to watch me go bare from the waste down while someone puts a tube in my ladyparts. I would expect the bloom to fall off the rose en masse, all at the same time, leaving a rather unattractive flower, and that vision would be tough to shake at very opportune times in a marriage.

I argue that since Corey and I have not yet experienced childbirth together, he has not been privvy to my bottom in various medical procedures, and I'm just not sure a couple returns to The Way Things Were after procedures are performed on the business. This is the same logic I use for not inviting Corey to my yearly Pap smear. And why we've already agreed that he will remain by my head for the birth of our future child, coaching the pushing, while an appropriately-sized tarp shrouds the lower gruesome activities from tainting the Fanciness that is Me.

So, on the opposite side of the curtain he remained during the donation of my sterile sample, all while I remained indignant that he had forced me into an ER visit against my will. I am positive this directive did not cause him any insult. Junior Nurse Wratchet did ask me if she was hurting me, and I assured her that while she was causing me no physical pain at the moment, I was certain the injury to my dignity and pride was irreversible.

After all of these indignities were finished, I was diagnosed with completely healthy kidneys and a muscle injury to the back, given shots of muscle relaxer and anti-inflammatory and prescriptions for both and sent on my way at 3 AM.

This means that the next time I am coerced into an ER visit to seek medical attention for something that cannot wait for my regular female physician, I will remember Dr. Baywatch's invasive inquisition and the humiliation of the sterile sample, and feel completely justified in reverting back to childlike indignance while crying and declaring "I don't wanna!"

Secretary Revealed

Remember how I've been going on and on about how I needed wanted a secretary and how that was my original plan for my home office until I got the wild hair and bought a desk for the guest room and then my sister elected to come and live with us for the summer and I decided to vacate that room so she could have it all to herself and bought a secretary on craisglist that same day and made Corey drive me an hour to get it? Whew. Otherwise known as this post and this post.

Yeah, so I finished it. It took me the equivalent of three entire weekends. There were times when I had to crawl inside it to paint it. The only time I really ever intended to work this hard on something is when I give birth one day (to a little curl with black hair who comes out already wearing a bow and singing "I'm the Greatest Star.") 

We started with this, fresh off the truck from its trip home from Metairie.

And after priming the whole thing and putting three coats of BM's Snowfall White on the outside and two coats of BM's Grassy Fields on the inside, she looks like this:

Corey had to remove part of the shelving to fit our TV, but I kept it to bracket back on one day should I decide to sell it or use it somewhere else. He also put holes for cords in all three sections of the secretary, for power, printer and TV cables. When we moved it in Tuesday night and I mentioned selling it one day, he told me that it had to stay right here because he was never moving it again. This secretary is by far the heaviest thing we own and I thank Baby Jesus that we have furniture moving feet that Corey bought because I am famous for making him rearrange furniture with me.

Once we got it inside, I filled it up with Items That Will Likely Rotate Out to fit my fancy. When you look at these pictures, you are not allowed to comment on the wingback chairs or their current state of being stacked high with crap.

Once we put it in here, I sat on the bed and stared at it for ten minutes. What this has really done is create a list of additional tweaks that need to be made to the bedroom in order for the "secretary area" to be cohesive in design and inspiration with the "bed area."

1. It does not make any sense for this piece of furniture to be flanked by wingback chairs. It worked when there was a bookcase there, but now it just looks odd. I am thinking one chair can scoot over into the corner (with a small seagrass table like the headboard) and the mate can go into storage. These were gifted to me and are quality furniture, so I want to retain ownership of the pair.


2. The khaki/green color of the wingbacks looks dull next to the bold green of the interior. The most cost-efficient solution to that, since I cannot sew my own, is to buy a slipcover. For this, I'd like to contrast the green with an orangey-coral, which is a prominent color in our bedding and drapes.


3. I shall bring pattern to the silhouettes hanging on either side by covering the mats with fabric that I have leftover from making the new drapes.


4. I need a chair to sit in. This chair was my grandmother's. It's usually in the sunroom and the chair the boys use to play on the computer. I need something with arms, and something that can stay in this room. I also want to stay away from upholstery, because there is a LOT of fabric in this room. I may brave the heat to schlep down Antiques Street this weekend.

This bamboo armchair is from Home Decorators, and is on sale.

Or I could browse flea markets and antique stores for something I could make over, a la Eddie Ross.



Or this French armchair with a padded seat that Centsational Girl upgraded.

I am crazy happy with my new desk, and find that my work life is just as productive downstairs as it was upstairs. Working downstairs makes it easier for me to throw clothes in the laundry or take a break to do some food prep for supper later. If I get a work call, I'm footsteps from my command center. I am bummed that it creates more work and more expense while I finish tweaking the room, but I got this for a steal and sold the other desk, so the overall project has been relatively low-budget, considering a major furniture purchase was involved.

However, I cannot be convinced that this thing did not try to kill me. Do not ever again let me think I should take on a furniture project that is taller than I am.

Lorraine, You B!t@h.

I'm a recipe hoarder. There's actually a limited amount of things some members of my family eat, so really it's the same ingredients added up in different ways. I love cookbooks, but I also pin food on Pinterest and have some go-to blogs and websites with recipes I'll try. It's very hard for me to trust recipes that do not come in books, so I, like my mother taught me, end up adding a little something to everything. It is the "Tim the Toolman Taylor" approach to cooking. I re-wired it. Usually it does not end up disastrously, because I know what I am doing in the kitchen. It's My Room. Except for this attempt to make quiche Tuesday.

Recipe and photo from Williams Sonoma.

During the week, it is hard for me to spend more than an hour cooking a meal. That's an amount of time I can devote only if I managed to get a little prep work done during the day. And you can only serve Oven-Baked Chicken with Crockpot Macaroni and Cheese or shredded chicken for tacos so many times before people stop getting excited about it and walk to table like they are approaching the plank.

I decided that I was going to make Quiche Lorraine, my first endeavor at quiche. They like eggs. They love bacon. We all eat cheese. This is the making of a successful entree. The boys and I even went to Sur La Table to get the right tart pan. And I decided to cut corners because I'm a working mom/servant and use a pre-bought crust. It was too small for the tart pan, and when I pre-cooked it like the recipe said, it shrunk and got poofy. But a dish doesn't have to be beautiful to be delicious, so I advanced as if the crust was perfect.

It was at this point that Corey, wandering through the kitchen because he smelled bacon, told me that "everyone f**ks up their first quiche." Like he knows this, even though he has never made quiche and certainly did not understand why I had to buy a special pan.

The eggs overflowed the crust, ran under it and seeped out the removable bottom of the tart pan. Before I put it in the oven, like immediately upon pouring them into the tart pan. The worst part was that I bought Fancy Irish Cheddar from Whole Foods, and that whole block went to waste. It was a holy mess, and we had Chinese for dinner. Corey said I handled my first Kitchen Disaster like a champ, because he would have been really mad and there would have been cursing and slamming of items. All I did was one slow "motherf***er" and declared Chinese food was for dinner, like that had been my plan all along.

I did not tell Corey at the time that it is actually the third time I have delivered an Epic Fail in the kitchen. The first being in college when I tried to fry chicken at his apartment and set a grease fire on the entire stovetop. And instead of yelling at him that there was a fire! in the kitchen, I ran out of the house screaming. The second time was a little over a year ago when I tried to make white chicken lasagna with a sauce made from evaporated milk, got distracted by the phone and let the sauce boil, and ended up with something that resembled oatmeal. I called the China Bear that night too.

So here I go again last night, making Quiche Lorraine. I made my own crust, like the recipe said. I gently poured the eggs in and it just barely did not overflow. I could have cooked it three minutes longer for the custard to set a little bit more, but it was deemed successful by 75% of my family, Jake being the one who was offended that I would make him eat custard and filled up on baked french fries, canteloupe and the bacon he picked out of the pie.

When I told Corey that I was serving Quiche Lorraine last night, he said "Okay, but you're paying for the Chinese food tonight." And then when it came out looking like culinary perfection, I sent this picture to him, captioned "Boo-yah."

So yeah, I owned this quiche. And if you're brave enough to venture out on your inaugural quiche adventure, please do what is best for your sanity and PRIDE, and follow the directions exactly. Because it is very shaming to declare to the entire family with absolute confidence that you will be serving Quiche Lorraine for dinner and send your husband out for Chinese a half hour later.

PINNING!

I've stepped up my Pinterest game lately. I am looking to be inspired in all aspects of life. And, if you really sit down and start digging (say, while watching Sister Wives, which no one in your house wants a part of so you get at least an uninterrupted hour), you can find so much of it there. Here are my favorites from the Looks I Love board this week.

The May Lonny magazine has a feature on Jamie Meares, who is a Southern designer who blogged and then opened a shop. Her style is extremely layered with eclectic, traditional and industrial elements in most rooms. I love it. All of it. Corey tells me it is too busy, but he's a guy and he has no creative vision.

From Furbish Studio.

This room makes me so happy I could piddle. It has watermelon walls! With those blue and white curtains and a couch the same color as mine, if I lived in my own half of a duplex, I could do all of this. I have that mirror in the boys' room. I have a porcelain animal (turtle) under a table in my house. See that blue and white box on the coffee table with the dragon on top? I have that exact box by my bed!

You can see more pictures of this room, and others, by visiting her website, but here are a couple more I pinned this week.

From Furbish Studio. This is the bar area from the same room above. Now there are ZEBRAS on watermelon wallpaper (Africa) with Asian accent pieces (pagoda lamps and ginger jars) and industrial elements. It's genius. You don't see it? Also, there is wine. There must always be wine.

From Furbish Studio.  My office has to move out of the guest room and it will likely not go back in there. But I am thinking about how to incorporate desk space, especially as Jake gets older and needs more privacy for his work. This parsons desk is not styled as a workspace, but could certainly accommodate the need for one.  

From Furbish Studio. I have a little guilt for kicking Corey's bookshelf full of books out of the bedroom to make way for my new secretary. I love these semi-floating shelves, full of books and accents to break up the monotony. Corey vetoed anything involving attaching things to studs, so it looks like his books are exiled to storage until we get another house.

You know that uncomfortable feeling you get when you stick something in a spot in your house because that is where it needs to go, but it never feels right? I have this afflictive relationship with my laundry room. It is not really a room on its own. You pass through it to get from the kitchen to the sunroom and out the back door. The storage is nice. There is a window. And the appliances are pretty. But it's an area I walk through 27 times per day and I wince when I do. I tore this photo out of a magazine once and now I have added it to my Pinterest this week.

From This Old Property/Southern Living.

It's a curtain, trimmed in poofs (a favorite since college) with a countertop! Not just any countertop, but a BAR on top. We do not have good flow for entertaining, which we do not do, but having an extra counter is never a negative. The tops of the washer and dryer have become a makeshift tabletop to drop all sorts of odd items. I actually have a cabinet and a window above the appliances, but a counter, some curtains and a flashy light fixture, and I could be living with a space that has just as much form as function.

Lastly, I troll Pinterest until my eyes are dry looking for the Aha! for what to put above the boys' beds. There are pictures beside their beds, so I'd like something with some depth to hang above them. This would silence the ache I've had in me for two years about where and how to accent a wall with one of these, even though my aunt tells me "Careful, your roots are showing" when I've asked about them. But they're BOYS, and they obviously need humane versions of slaughtered animals on their walls.

The picture is from Restoration Home Baby and Child, but I do not think they sell the deer.

I must excuse myself now to go search Ebay maniacally looking for "deer heads" that are not actual dead deer. Actually, by the time this blog posts, I've finished a mulligan in the kitchen and am in my chair with the iPad in my face, having shown Corey so many pictures of faux animal heads that he has moved to another area of the room.

High Five for Friday!

Last week, I did not high five myself on Friday. This week, I seem t have it more together and will from this point forward forget that last week happened, or didn't. So, here are my five favorite things from this week:

 

1. Baseball is almost over.

Do not misunderstand me. I love that Landen is a sports kid, and I have a ridiculous amount of pride watching him play his Saturday games. But, it's been every Saturday morning for six weeks. I do love my boy enough to wake up to an alarm six days a week for his athletic endeavors, but I love my sleeping Saturdays to be happy when this is almost over. Plus, it's starting to get hot, even in the mornings, and shade is harder to find. Our last game is this Saturday. Then we are in a sports break until football starts in the fall.

2. Lonny magazine, especially the Furbish spread.

I finally sat down and read this month's Lonny magazine.  Jamie Meares's spread in the magazine makes me green with envy that I do not have more money to fully style my house immediately and that I live with boys for whom I must restrain my desire to totally glam out my house. On these pages alone, she wallpapered a corner cabinet for the purposes of displaying two of my favorite things - blue and white porcelain and coral. And then this giant Jackie O flanked by those lamps. Do you think if I showed up on Jamie's door, she would let me in to take pictures in a non-creepy way?

3. This is one of the best TV weeks of the year.

All the season finales have been stellar. I always cry in finales, and this week has been a true purge for me. Desperate Housewives, Smash, and Grey's Anatomy kicked my ass this week and it was FANTASTIC! Plus, the off-season shows that carry you through the summer have started, like The Real Housewives of New Jersey and Sister Wives.

If you are not watching The Real Housewives of New Jersey, you are missing the craziest, most fabulous hour on television.

4.  I cooked this week. The real stuff.

I did not cook a single night last week. Shopping and menu planning was a level of coordination I not aspire to last week. This week, I cooked white chicken enchiladas on Tuesday and cream cheese smothered pork chops on Wednesday. It's an extra hour of activity in a work day, but it feels so much better to be tired from feeding your family fresh, balanced foods than full from the Chinese food or pizza you fed them.

5.  The Secretary makeover continues through the weekend.

Earlier this week, I formally introduced you to my biggest furniture makeover project yet. Today I am going to get my paint so that I can make this sumbitch (I love you) pretty and me by the end of the weekend. This has actually become a functional necessity as well, because I am selling my desk this weekend. So if I do not finish this monster this weekend, I will have no place to work on Tuesday.

As always, don't forget to go see what Emily is recapping this Friday. Something about beer and makeup. And she travels. You can have experiences on her blog you will not get here, because Emily is a jet-setter, and I am stationary.

Let's switch it up this week, by ending with a gratuitious photo of my non-dog, whom Jake believes with his heart and soul is his dog, and not Aunt Cydney's.

An Ode to Blue

When I was in college, living in my first apartment by myself, I started collecting blue and white porcelain. It began as a small basket for potpourri (did you not potpourri in 1999?) or a small dish for earrings and change. Now, in 2012, it could be described as a full-fledged addictive behavior. It's in almost every room of the house, save the boys' room and upstairs bathroom. Although, the purchases have been curbed since we bought a house and I spend money on rolls of drapery fabric and paint for furniture. And because they closed Bombay and Company, which was like the FAO Schwartz for people who loved blue and white.

There have been a couple borderline obsessive pursuits to collect it. My friend Arkansas Emily had two sets of blue china monkeys when we met in 2003, and the search for a set of my own "hear/see/speak no evil" monkeys went bicoastal for severl years, with searches extending from the DC area to my mother in Louisiana, her mother in Arkansas and the high-end decorator shops in southern California, until that prized California Aunt sent me some for Christmas in 2006. The monkey fondness expanded from there and now when I see a blue china monkey, I buy it. No questions asked. 

In truth, some of the blame must be placed upon Arkansas Emily, for not only was the family torment for the monkeys inspired by her, but I also successfully scoured the internets for blue china dog bookends after not absconding with hers one spring visit.

I also left a store with Corey once cradling a blue china lamp, having conned him into purchasing it for me by declaring that leaving the store sans lamp would mean I would never be happy again. This was during the courting phase. He would not succumb to that appeal today. In fact, he regular threatens to take a hammer to my collection.

I now have almost one hundred pieces of it, and I say that with more shame than pride. I get rid of it when I absolutely have to can. I install pieces in my sister's apartment when she needs a little something. It does not need to be ALL you see when you come in our home, so at least one box of it is packed and stored upstairs. When I buy a new piece, I retire another. I no longer buy animals or candlesticks, but a good planter or jar priced as a steal from an antique mall is just too much serendipity for me to walk away from.

Why do I not get rid of it instead of letting it take up valuable storage space in our cottage dwelling, you ask? Because this is my starter home, and one day I hope to have a bigger house offering built-in shelving and large walls for the prominent featuring of hutch-type furniture. And in those shelves and behind those glass doors I endeavor to cluster my collection.

At night when I cyberwander around Pinterest, I am drawn to pictures of this porcelain candy, and I now have an entire board devoted to it.

From prettystuff.tumblr.com

From 1.bp.blogspot.com

From paloma81.blogspot.com

From prettystuff.tumblr.com

From thatschic.net

From chinoiseriechic.blogspot.com

 Are you tired of it yet? Do you feel sorry for Corey?

A Massive Undertaking

In our carport, we have this

At $200 from craigslist, it was a steal. I convinced Corey to haul it home from Metairie. It is solid wood. No veneer. It is all one piece, not a separate desk and hutch. It is much larger than the dainty secretaries I have been eyeing in antique stores for three years. It will provide me ample work space now that I am relinquishing the guest room/home office to a summer boarder. Plus, our bedroom TV will fit in and be quasi-hidden by those upper cabinets, which is my ultimate goal for all televisions in my house.

One teensy, leetle thing about this secretary, which I did not fully acknowledge until we got it home and in our carport. It is rustic. Rustic is not bad, but rustic is also not me. The plan has always been to paint a secretary a soft white with a bold interior, so all those knots can be hidden and that finish recovered, no problem.

Except that the entire surface is the opposite of smooth.

None of the planks line up and there are ridges in the wood. I spent a week applying wood filler to it in 15-minute bursts. On Mother's Day, Corey sanded the beejesus out of it. This morning, I wiped inches of sand dust from it and it is now waiting primer and paint. Corey hates it and hates me for not buying exactly what I wanted. I keep insisting that the bones and the price and the size were all perfect, and so what's a little extra work on the surface? This weekend it gets primed and painted, and then a Grownup Dream of mine to own a secretary will be realized.

I think it will get some Snowfall White on the outside, and something in a Sullivan Green or a Grassy Fields for the interior (upper and desk only, as the lower cabinets will be the same exterior off-white so that I can see under there.)

How about a little inspiration gallery, to help you understand my vision? Do not be like my husband, who fights my vision during and saves his full, belated appreciation for the end.

19th century Swedish secretary with pink interior from Annie Sloan

Secretary makeover featured on Apartment Therapy

Cottage-y secretary, size LARGE, featured on Casa Greer.

Chalky gray and powder blue secretary from Simply Seleta. I love the styling of this one most of all.

I must confess, I am not looking forward to painting all the nooks and crevices at least three times this weekend, plus there are places that will need caulking, for my sanity.

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can........

High Five For Friday!

This week was a bitch. Like the big mean girls in high schools who would rather jump your ass than say "hi" in the hall. So much so that I actually feared this week that I would not be able to come up with five reasons to be happy today and write a blog post about it. But I dug right down to the bottom of my soul, to see what I had inside, yes I dug right down to the bottom of my soul, and I tried. I tried. But unlike Diana in A Chorus Line, I found something. Several, actually.

1. It's Friday, Friday, after all. 

Fridays are my favorite day. Everybody at work is more relaxed (towards the end, at least). There are TWO days of sleeping late ahead of me. I do not have to cook. I do not have to stop drinking wine at 9 PM. Tonight my mom is coming down so we can help Baby Sister start cleaning out her apartment in preparation for vacating the (shabby) premises at the end of this month. Tomorrow's baseball game is at 11:45, so I do not have to set my alarm. Lunesta, take me away. 

2. Macaroni and cheese is still my favorite food.

Photo from here. 

If a person could consider themselves a connoisseur of macaroni and cheese, I am it. And I recently discovered The Perfect Macaroni and Cheese recipe, and it is a bonus that it does not require standing over the stove stirring a white sauce. It is equal parts cheesy and creamy, and you can make it an entire meal by throwing some diced ham or chicken or some hamburger meat in it. Trisha Yearwood taught me how to make it. In my crock pot. With evaporated milk and five cups of cheese. Go forth and get your crock pot ready. You will not be sorry.

3. First swim of the season.

Not mine. My parents were here last weekend and we took the boys swimming at their hotel. Little fishies. Jake swims like a torpedo and Landen taught himself to dive. They take swimming lessons every summer, and we try to spend as much time in a pool as we can. 

4. First pedicure of the season

I feel odd taking pictures of my own feet, so these are not my toes. My toes do look like fingers and do spread out when I walk, so this picture is not entirely inaccurate. The first pedicure of the season is an exercise in humility, as they make quite the production about all of the machinery they use to get the winter skin off your feet. I have one place where I go get my first pedicure done, and then I do not go back there until the next year. I do not do it regularly over the summer, but it is worth it to me to shell out the dough a couple times a summer to have someone else do it for me. 

5. Furniture purchase

I have wanted a secretary since I was in college, the kind with the fold-out desk and the glass cabinet. Eddie Ross convinced me that I needed to get one and paint it a bold color and replace the glass with mirrors. When we bought the house, I ratholed money and visited the antiques shops regularly looking for one I could make over, with no luck. When I took the job working from home, I returned to the secretary search and ended up repurposing the guest room with a regular desk and office chair. On Wednesday, I returned to the longing for a secretary, painted a glossy white with a bold contrasting interior. I need to relocate my workspace from the guest room to my bedroom for at least the summer. And then I found this on craigslist

which is not necessarily my tastes for a finish, but the size is great, the price is great and the cabinet below will serve my work purposes much better than drawers. So it's coming to live here on Saturday, and I'll spend the month of May giving it The Best Furniture Makeover Yet, and I'll tell you all about it. My preliminary plan for it, sight unseen, is a creamy white with a high gloss for the exterior and a kelly green in the cabinets and fold-out desk. 

As with all of these Friday posts we have done together, do not forget to go check on Emily, to see what she is recapping for the week. I plan to sleep a lot, clean a lot, move a piece of furniture from Metairie to Baton Rouge and have an all-around better weekend than last, which will in turn yield a more positive emotional and mental-positioning with which to confront another week. 

Gratuitous Dog Photo (of a dog terrified of thunder and not wanting to go potty)

High Five for Friday!

I thought about this post all week. Wrote a song about it. Like to hear it? Here it go. (If you were in high school in the nineties, somebody is beating a cowbell in your head right now. You know who else besides me was in high school in the nineties and who also writes a blog you should read religiously? Mrs. Emily Greenwald, née Hudspeth.) 

Link Party sponsored by Lauren at From My Grey Desk. 

1. House's First Hydrangea

Last year we did a bit of landscaping. This year I am not focusing on it because nothing that happens in the yard gives me the instant gratification I desire, so I am letting two years pass between landscaping looks before throwing tears and money at it. Again. Last spring we put in a hydrangea. Nevermind that everyone told me that hydrangeas are difficult to keep and I have the blackest thumb there is. I killed a cactus in college. But I was emboldened by my new homeownership status and the successful laying of sod, so I hauled Corey to the nursery to buy me a hydrangea. Then we made a bet that it would be dead in a month, and it did not die. Not only did it not die, but Saturday morning I left the house to run errands and had to stop and take a picture of my THRIVING pink hydrangea.

2. Having time to cook

Media and writers and nosy moms love to make you feel like a crappy parent if you give your kid processed foods, which I usually ignore in pursuit of an "everything in moderation" approach to filling the bellies of my kids. I did read in all my Tourette's research that kids whose brains have neurological impairments - like Tourette's or ADHD - are very responsive to articifial elements in foods. So I made the commitment to myself (not out loud where people could hear me and make me feel like a failure when I faltered) to focus on giving Jake natural foods. They would then be forced upon Landen by default. So I replaced the muffin mix with fresh-ingredient double chocolate muffins with whole grain flour and yogurt and the mac and cheese in a box with homemade mac and cheese. I structured my days to give the Gift of Natural Foods to my children at every meal I cooked at home this week.

The only downside is that buying the freshest ingredients and snacks without artifical colors, flavors or sweeteners is at least double what it costs to buy the vacuum-sealed crap.

3.  Signs of developing children

Tuesday night when the sun was shining upon his face, I noticed that Jake had a small red spot on his chin. It turned out to be a bug bite, but upon close inspection I could have sworn it was a pimple and I may have made a slightly-bigger-than-appropriate-or-necessary deal about what I thought was Baby's First Zit. In examining that, I noticed that the sun really lit up the hairs on his top lip, several of which are no longer baby fuzz and starting to turn into dark hairs. I may have put a little too much hoopla on that discovery as well. I realized that this whole "Taking Things Too Far" approach that I have is likely what keeps them from holding my hand in public or letting me play my music in the carpool line. I'm going to take advantage of them not knowing or caring that I have a blog and post pictures of them on the internet with embarrassing stories for public consumption and allow you to study this picture for dark hairs. I actually took a close-up macro photo of the hairs themselves, but he might stop the adoption if he found out I used that one with this story. 

4. Casey at the Bat

There was ease in Casey's manner as he stepped into his place;

There was pride in Casey's bearing and a smile on Casey's face.

And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat,

No stranger in the crowd could doubt 'twas Casey at the bat.

His name's actually Landen, and there is no bigger gift to any of us than for him to earn people cheering his name in the stands of the Manship Y. The difference between my baseball player and the one in Edward Thayer's poem is that Landen Allbritton did not strike out. We played a make-up game on Tuesday evening. Boyfriend was up to bat twice. Boyfriend hit the ball both times. One time I was behind him taking pictures, so I did not see his face until he got to first base, at which point he tapped his helmet and was all bidness getting ready to take off to second. The second time I was facing him, and it was not wonder or awe or surprise when that bat connected to that machine-pitch ball. It was the look of truth. That time he got to third. Nothing that makes any sense comes out of your mouth when you're cheering your kid to a base after he's whacked a baseball. Pride in your child is something no one tells you is better than getting a raise or acing a final, but it really, really is. 

5. My fabric closet

The closet under my stairs is quickly becoming storage for all the fabrics I have left over from various projects or are storing until I am ready to deploy them to their particular projects. 

The blue lattice one is an outdoor fabric that I am using to re-cover a chair in the boys' room. The outdoor qualification is key for this room. The red medallion print is a woven upholstery fabric by Robert Allen that I am using for a slipcover to the ottoman in the living room, which I am paying an expert to create. Though my fabric actually has red squares, the geometric chenille fabric is what we are using for a new slipcover for the chair in the living room. I could not find a photo of it on the internet, and I bought what my online store had left in stock. Finally, the linen stripe is the new fabric for the curtains in my bedroom, to continue bringing that room into adulthood. They all arrived this week!

So concludes my second High Five For Friday post, which was just 0.001% less fun than the inaugural one. Like that one, this could not come to a satisfying close without a Completely Gratuitous Photo of my dog.