Monday, Again...

Sometimes we all feel like we are on the hamster wheel of time. We get up, get coffee and get on with the day. Falling face first into the unmade bed at the end of the day caps it all off.

Why are we so tired? Especially after a weekend of endless fun?

I still have Christmas gifts to return. Summer camp to book. Bills to pay and a hefty clean up from too much fun on the weekend.

Monday starts off foggy and clears throughout the week. Yes, this post is really the same old whining about Monday post that I write all of the time.

I was going to go for a walk with a friend and we ended up drinking coffee instead. That is the essence of Mondays. I am not out saving or organizing the world, I am sitting on my butt and drinking coffee and putting away wine glasses from a weekend fondue dinner.

What did I learn this weekend? Poire William, Don Julio 1942 and Williams Selyem make for interesting dinner conversation. We asked a question about who we might like to add for interesting dinner guests. Here is the short list: Hannibal Lecter, Lolita, Mary Poppins, and a Hobbit to name a few.

Next weekend we see The Who in concert. I wonder what I learn next weekend?

Maybe Mondays are good just to ponder and clean? In fact, it seems like a buffer day between play and work. I will really get things done tomorrow.

Giving My Plant Extensions: The Brown Thumb Approach

About a year ago, I asked our gardener to create a planter of plants for my dining room. We were hosting a dinner for my husband and I was trying to get everything looking beautiful. I rationalized the expense because I would not have to buy a cut flower arrangement that would just end up dying anyway.

I am not a green thumb. Black thumb is more accurate. Even if I was raised on a farm, no hereditary DNA was passed on to me that remotely suggests I'm related to a long line of farmers. Maybe I was adopted? Found on the doorstep?

Here I am a year later. It's birthday time, and that planter is only a third alive. Instead of lush and green, the leaves are sparse, yellow and brown. I thought about calling the gardner, but wait!

I was at Michael's craft store and what did I find in the fake plant section? Why, fake plants of course. Now you can say artificial, but let's not mince words, these are fake plastic plants.

Ladies, I have friends who get hair extensions. Why can't I put in plant extensions? And that is what I did, see below!

Cottage Vacation?

How fast can you say oxymoron. A cottage vacation is the only kind of vacation where you work harder on vacation than you do at home....that is especially if you are the mom in the scenario.

Breakfast, lunch, dinner--made by me!  Laundry done while you wait!  My best offering?  Location services.  I am a Location Services master.  Are you missing a mitten or a sock?  I can find that baby for you faster than you can say "These two don't match!"  Ahhh, but it doesn't matter, it is the cottage.

Yes, at the cottage you can choose to brush or not to brush (I am talking about hair, though I suppose if you don't tell me, it could be your teeth).  At the cottage you can wear clothing that does not match, but dress for maximum comfort and coziness.  At the cottage you can ignore all texts and emails.  Why you might ask?  We don't have WIFI, cable modems or Ethernet.

You can chop wood and build a fire.  You can make a dinner out of Kraft Dinner and leftover ham by mixing them together.  Yes, that would never fly at home, but at the cottage, somehow it is magically all right.  You can go for days without a true bath, especially in the summer, yes, those folks call it "Lake Hair."

There is no make up required.  There are no dress codes.  Even at the local store curlers and pajama bottoms are fabulously spotted on a regular basis.  There really are no standards of acceptable beauty.  No one is talking about the stylist for so and so at the Oscars.  No one is talking about botox.

Yet, meanwhile back in the kitchen, that is where you'll mostly find me.  There is probably a dip in the floor in my 3 foot triangle that goes from fridge to stove to dishwasher.  And yes, having a dishwasher is the best thing ever.  This is especially true when you are serving dinners of 10-14 people nightly.

In the deep woods of the cottage vacation you can make your teenage children watch movies like "The Exotic Marigold Hotel."  After the screening, Ruth declared that in addition to G, PG and R there needed to be an O rating.  An O rating that means "old people movie."  Yes, if the movie was made for old people it should be rated O so that the younger folks should know what they are in store for.

On these movie nights you can also have popcorn from our air popper that spews popcorn kernels all over the room.  Only about half of the kernels pop, and of those kernels only about half land in the bowl.  Yes, I am popcorn popper and clean up crew on my cottage vacation.

Last but not least, on the cottage vacation, you can have epic games of Risk.  This is the one moment when the moms can sneak off and leave the fathers and kids arguing about breaking treaties and cheating.  I grab my glass of wine or cup of tea, and stare into space.  Of course I uncorked the wine or brewed the tea, but I don't have to be playing referee for that one brief moment.

Oh, while we are on the subject of referee, that is another cottage vacation job that is pretty all consuming.  When your three kids see each other in passing most of the time, when the change to full time sibling cohabitation, there is a lot of refereeing.  There is a lot of laughing, but there is a lot of refereeing.

On the cottage vacation, when I get up early, and enjoy a peaceful morning with my coffee, then I am truly on vacation.  In the olden days, when the kids were younger, we used to put them to bed early to have this delightful quiet time.  Now, I am the one putting myself to bed early and getting up while all is still quiet.  I drink my coffee, then I start doing the dishes that are leftover from the bedtime snacks and it all begins again.

Out With The Old & In With The New

For any folks who are wondering about the little cottage...

The Canadian Chronicles: Divine

Everything Old is New Again: Leaving The County for The Country

I am sitting here, thinking I should be saying something holiday-ish.  Right now, December is feeling very slow and long.  I know that not everyone feels this way (especially not the people in the mall parking lot), but I am ready to have Christmas.  I'm tired of waiting.

We travel away from our home every Christmas.  We leave a nice housesitter to enjoy our decorations and our home, and we rush away towards Christmas Part 2.  This year, Christmas, The Sequel, is taking place at the cottage in Canada.

Sequel?  Yes.  We've decorated and celebrated and partied and Nut Crackered.  We've already eaten too much, drank too much and surpassed our set budget for holiday spending.  The bags are mostly packed, the presents mostly bought and there is only danger in shopping from here.


More importantly, when we go to the cottage, it is a lot like Country Mouse and City Mouse.

Let me explain.  We live in Marin County.  Sometimes it is referred to as "the bubble" in the Bay Area.  Everything is clean, green and manicured--both lawns and men and ladies.  Oh, and dogs and little toddler girls, too!  Vegetables are freshly picked and prepared at local restaurants.  Northern California wine flows like water.  Gournet grocery stores beckon you from every corner.  A fresh, open air farmer's market can be found daily.

Then we separate from our reality and get on an airplane to experience another reality.  We will arrive to a hopefully snowy, deep freeze of a landscape and then it is time to decorate and bake and re create Christmas for the second time in December.  I'm looking forward to it, but on the Wednesday before we travel, frankly, it sounds like a lot of work.  All of our Christmas is in about 6 suitcases and duffel bags.  Not all of it, we have plenty of decorations  awaiting us in the country.

I have travel anxiety.  Like I've said before, I'm not afraid my plane will crash or anything, I just am not very good at transitions.  Once we make it to the airport, check our bags, get through security, get on the plane, realize we are all in middle seats scattered throughout the plane, get delayed, frantically race to our next connection, arrive and our bags do not, get the rental car and begin our coutry road trip and drive two hours away from civilization, I will be fine and feeling on top of things.

City Mouse:
Oops, forgot the organic, locally sourced buttermilk.  Grab the keys and hit the corner market.  Back home in 5 minutes.

Country Mouse:
Uh oh, forgot the organic buttermilk, look in the Betty Crocker cooking bible for a substition that includes cider vinager that's been in the cupboard for 10 years.

City Mouse:
Oops, running out of underwear.  Look in clothes basket.

Country Mouse:
Uh oh, only got one bag at the airport, my underwear is not in that one bag.  Wash the underwear I'm wearing every night until my bag is dropped off at the local combination post office, fishing license, putt putt golf and grocery store a half an hour away.

City Mouse:
Oops, the cable is not working.  Call Comcast.

Country Mouse:
Uh oh, the electricity is out.  Better build a fire, get snow to melt for water and hit the sub zero outhouse.  It could be days until a work crew gets out our way.

City Mouse:
Oops, we are out of Merry Edwards Pinot Noir.  Once again, 5 minutes to the local grocery. Buy it and stick it in the sub zero fridge.

Country Mouse:
Uh oh, we are out of Merry Edwards (not hard to do what you are only allowed to bring in two bottles of wine per adult).  Now we must brave our local LCBO and be at the Canadian Government's mercy. Bottles of wine that we pay $5.00 for in California are $17.99 plus tax.  On a positive note, it does curb the wine consumption--$5 wine is still tasting like $5 wine no matter how much you charge for it.

Whether you be in the city or the country, happy holidays to you!

The Canadian Chronicles: Women's Studies Classes and Pre Christmas Hoopla 2012

This holiday post begins with a little un-related holiday back story.  When I was studying for my undergrad degree at the University of Michigan, I met with my college counselor.  I only met with a counselor once in my whole undergrad history.  He was a basic, old, overweight white guy.  He looked at my transcript and questioned the number of Women's Studies courses that I was taking.

I told him that I intended to double major in Communications and Women's Studies.  There was nothing more interesting to me in all of the classes at Michigan that I was taking as a fired up discussion in one of my Women's Studies classes.  Everyone in the class was super smart, passionate and involved.  I learned all kinds of things.  My horizons were broadening.

He shook his head and stared at my transcript.  He looked up over his reading glasses, his tired eyes met mine and he said, "You definitely should not major in Women's Studies.  Anyone seeing that as your major will assume that you're a lesbian and then they will not hire you."

I left our meeting confused.  What did he mean by people thinking I was a lesbian?  Was that bad?  I went to my next class, Women in Art, and looked around at my awesome classmates.  It's true, there were a lot of comfortable shoes.  I guess I knew a couple of them to be lesbians, but were they all lesbians?  And, so what if they were?  I didn't care.  I just like the class and its content.

In the late 80's, his remarks did give me pause.  I did want to get a job, so even though I took a hefty load of Women's Studies Department classes, I never declared it as my major.  It's amazing how one little comment, can shade your thinking.  I didn't even care if someone did think I was a lesbian, but I did need that post grad job.

Flash forward to a ride in the car with my 14 year old daughter.  We were talking about education and opportunities.  She was questioning why I chose to be a stay at home mom.  I mean, if I was preaching quality education and equating it to choice, why didn't I have some super high powered career?  Why had I failed my own mantra?  How can I even begin to give advice on women's choice?

Well, baby, I made the "mother" of choices.  I was a junior high teacher and a preschool teacher...I believe in education so much that I've been a crusader for the excellent private programs that we sacrifice much financially to send our kids to.  I always thought I would live in a trailer park, and I was fine with that.  I really didn't need much.  I didn't have dreams of wealth and riches.  It's not what I'm about--there's a lot about that here where I live, but that's not my story.

We are making our way to a remote cottage in the woods for Christmas.  It is hours away from actual stores that you could buy presents from.  I am bringing Christmas with me in duffel bags.  As I work on orchestrating what we need for the holiday, I realize I am challenged.  I realize there are people that depend on me.  I realize that I teach every single day in all kinds of different ways.  I love being a stay at home mom.  I am lucky to be doing the job that I chose!

I also totally support the women who work outside of the home.  Sometimes it's a choice, sometimes it is not.  Life is a funny path, and you sometimes end up somewhere you didn't even know you were going.  I consider myself very fortunate to be somewhere that I like being, and if I didn't like it, I would try to be doing something else.

I do believe education can give you choice in your life.  I also want to wish holiday peace to the old white guy if he's still out there.  Mister Counselor, how many things in your life didn't you do because of what somebody said or what you were afraid of someone thinking?  I am going to make it my mission to make sure my kids know, lesbian or not, go for it, don't be afraid.  If they don't want to hire you because of something like that, keep looking!

Now, time to pack more stuff into the duffel bags.  We are off to a Canadian adventure, and I'm going to take you all with me!  Stay tuned!