Beware the woman with an itch to scratch. 

Occasionally I get a bit disgusted and overwhelmed with the stuff I’ve talked myself into keeping, and my merest intent to get rid of a few things turns into a full-scale purge.  The seed of this is usually something pretty benign, such as the folding table that I set up in my basement, oh, six months ago, upon which I have piled a few boxes’ worth of stuff we don’t need any more.  My intention was to finally take those things to St. VdeP so that I could take the table down and make room for my front porch furniture, which needs to be stored for the winter. 

My mother showed up to help me, thinking I had way more to haul upstairs than what I had actually set aside, and I told her that I didn’t have much to take.  But heck, my mother has an SUV and I have an SUV, and the temptation to fill both of them to the gills was just too strong. 

And so, this is how I found myself carting stuff up the basement steps that I had always intended to get rid of, just never had before. 

Up went the five gallon humidifier.  Up went the six-piece luggage set I received for high school graduation.  Up went my mother-in-law’s electric typewriter, which my husband refused to part with even though she said she didn’t want it anymore.  Up, up, up, went bags and boxes of stuff that I finally admitted there was no point hanging on to.  It was a wholesale purge, whereupon I didn’t even bother looking in the boxes as I carted them upstairs.  I figured, if I hadn’t missed these things in all this time, then they were as good as gone, anyway, might was well make them completely gone. 

And I finally got rid of my grandmother’s basket of roses. 

For as long as I could remember, my grandmother had a huge basket of red silk roses sitting atop her gigantic console television.  Those roses were the envy of all the other little old ladies in the retirement village where she lived.  When she passed away 13 years ago, the basket of roses came home with me.  To me they were such a tangible part of her, like the ratty old brown sweater that belonged to my grandfather which she had taken to wearing after his death.  I brought the roses into my new house and set them up, where they stayed until Spawn came along.  Once Spawn was a mobile infant, the roses met with curious hands and became somewhat beheaded, so I took them downstairs to the basement. 

Over the past eight years, the basket sat downstairs, occasionally ravaged by a marauding feline.  Many of the roses were mere stalks, with the bud stuffed hastily into the basket for future reattachment.  As I looked at that basket of roses, I realized that I would never take the time to reunite the buds with the stems, that I would never rearrange the basket, and that I would never bring the basket upstairs again. 

And I was okay with that.  Thirteen years after her death, I was finally ready to part with something that I identified so strongly with her. 

In the process of hauling so much stuff up and out, wholesale, I kicked up a lot of cat hair and dust, and my poor, feline-allergic husband has been miserable ever since.  Come to think of it, my eyes have been stinging and burning quite a bit, too.  But I’ve been bitten by the purge bug, and there is more stuff in the basement that needs to be jettisoned. 

Then it’s on to the upstairs.  My first plan of attack is the coat closet.  I think that my grandmother’s ratty old brown sweater is in there. 

– Mox

Seriously, y’all.  I have been just about useless all week long.  I blame party aftermath.  And the time change. 

My next large project is a mass purge of closets and basement.  I have a date with St. Vincent de Paul on Friday.  I can hardly think about anything else.  I always feel a bit thinner whenever I clean out closets.

The really cold weather hasn’t hit here yet and already I’m dreaming of warm, beachy days.  Our annual fall break last month didn’t do much to help me relax, what with the addition of another kid into the mix and the head cold I managed to procure early during our trip.  Truth be told, I was a little glad to get home.  But what I really want is to hit the beach again, this time by myself. 

I wonder how long it would take for me to completely empty out my brain.  A steady supply of cool beverages, a stack of as-yet unread books, and no schedule to adhere to — that’s my idea of a good vacation.  I might actually be ready to rejoin the world after that. 

~sigh~ 

– Mox

The joys of growing older, y’all. 

I think I have finally solved the mystery of my aching hips and legs, which wake me up at night.  The answer is tequila. 

Stay with me here.  I’ll explain. 

Back when I was pregnant with Spawn I used to wake up in the middle of the night with (among other things) a strong desire to get up and walk around the house.  The reason for this was achy hips and legs, which only felt better if I moved them around.  I chalked it up to the various and sundry mysteries of pregnancy and got on with my life. 

Except, after I was done with being pregnant, and done with being up half the night, and done with just not sleeping more than 4 hours at a stretch, I was still having this problem. 

One of the great enlightenments of growing a bit older is that everything in your body is interconnected.  Sure, most of us get up with a crick in our necks once in a while, which is a result of poor sleeping posture or not letting go of  stress at night, and we don’t really give too much thought to it.  But growing older, see, your defense mechanisms get a little thinner.  This is why little old ladies don’t drink caffeinated coffee at night.  They know, of course, that caffeine will keep them from sleeping. 

You grow into this sort of knowledge.  Back a couple of years ago, when I was 17 pounds thinner  (gah) and living a lifestyle that could be described as “healthy” I was a little more in tune with how I felt on a day-to-day basis.  If I overindulged in sugar or caffeine or… booze… I knew where my crappy feeling came from.  But in the couple of years since I fell away from that sort of living, I’ve gotten lax about listening to my body. 

So this morning, when my achy breaky legs and hips woke me up just before my alarm went off, I started listening again.  I mentally listed everything I ate and drank the night before and compared it to how I felt and what I ate and drank a few days before that.  Outside of probably taking in too much sugar the only other thing I could put my finger on was the margarita that I had with dinner. 

Now that the weather has cooled I am not so much into drinking margaritas — to me they’re a on-the-patio kind of beverage — but I had one last night with dinner, and the conclusion I came to was it was either the tequila or the salt around the rim.  Probably it had more to do with the salt than anything else, because wow there was a lot of salt on that rim and I licked every bit of it off, but that in combo with the tequila didn’t do me any favors. 

This is what I’m thinking at the moment.  No margaritas are planned for this evening, so if I wake up with the aches again tonight I’ll scrap that idea and embrace the Quervo. 

– Mox

Do not adjust your screen.  That is not a UFO. 

What that is, is a gift from above, specifically from the truck that passed me going the opposite direction yesterday morning as I was on my way to work.  I thought I’d been shot there for a second.  I ducked. 

My poor, beleaguered little car has had the crap beat out of it in the nine years I’ve owned it.  Some of it has been my fault but a good portion of it has been the slings and arrows of everyday traffic — parking lot scrapes, door dings, and the like.  A rock on the windshield, though, that’s almost the ultimate insult.  Especially when it’s right in your line of vision. 

After the initial shock wore off, and I emptied my vast storehouse of curse words, I called the insurance company.  Our auto insurance is with the same company that insures our home, and our homeowners’ policy has taken some hits in the last few years, what with all the storms and ice and floods and whatnot damaging our house.  So naturally I cringed when I called, because it’s just another mark besmirching my record. 

In the past whenever I’ve had a windshield claim, it’s resulted in the replacement of the whole windshield.  This time they’re going to attempt to fix the divot rather than replace the whole thing.  I’ve never seen this process before so I’m curious to see how well this “fixes” it. 

Stay tuned. 

– Mox

I know you’re anxiously waiting to see how we fared with our wet & wild Halloween bash. 

Long story short:  I’m still here. 

After more than five inches of rain (how many more I don’t know, my rain gauge was overflowing after five) we ended up with a swampy back yard.  All that talk that my husband has been doing for the last couple of years about bringing in a load of dirt and filling in the low spots?  Yeah, hasn’t been done yet.  Obviously.  So we mucked about for most of the morning, moving decorations to higher ground, and cordoning off the swampiest section of the yard so that no one would lose a shoe in all the muck. 

Plans to scavenger hunt in the cemetery had to be scrapped because getting into the cemetery was also a swampy affair, due to the gates being closed and any entry point would have had to have been off-road. 

I should point out that Saturday dawned sunny and clear, if a bit cool.  If it were not for the deluge 24 hours prior, it would have been a glorious day all the way around.  I was just happy to see the sun. 

I ran the vacuum, shoved the dining room table to one side of the room, placed chairs all around, and closed off the study, where I had stashed all the piles of crap that every household accumulates in the process of everyday living.  The cats were banished to the basement, and happily so.  I lit scented candles (apples and cinnamon) and played themed music on the stereo. 

The pinata was rigged up on our deck pergola, which worked out very well.  There is something quite satisfying about the sound a wiffle bat makes when in contact with a filled paper pinata.  Once that pinata broke open, the kids were like rabid wolves after the treats that spilled out. 

Apple bobbing also took place on the deck.  I have never been one to see the charm of chasing down a floating apple in a washtub full of chilly water, but the kids loved it and went for two rounds.  Spawn won the bobbing contest with the most apples bobbed.  Of course no one ate any of the apples, so I had ten pounds of Michigan apples with bite marks in them that went for horse treats later on. 

Kids in the 8-to-9-year age range are game for games, and I had an arsenal of simple games lined up.  I even planned to pull out the Twister game if we hit a lull.  Turns out we didn’t have to go quite that far, as the games were enough.  We did a pumpkin bean bag toss, tossing bean bags into plastic pumpkins (not as easy as it sounds, plastic pumpkins tend to tip over if you toss with too much force).  We also pulled out a party game from the ancient files of my youth and dropped clothespins over the shoulder into a plastic pumpkin, with the aid of a hand mirror.  Also not as easy as it sounds.  Another game was a Smarties game, where you transferred a pack of Smarties from one bowl to another with the aid of a straw. 

And because I am the crafty sort, I had little pumpkins lined up on a table, with peel & stick foam face parts in a basket, so that everyone could create their own pumpkin buddy to take with them. 

I also was able to offload a rather large bucket of candy into treat bags — I was even smart enough to hand out the candy myself, one handful at a time.  Kids can be pretty grabby. 

Party food: 

I tried to balance the sheer volume of sugar that these kids were consuming with something that had protein in it.  Thus, we had mummy dogs (your standard pigs in a blanket) and monster mouths (peanut butter apples).  The mummy dogs were by far the biggest hit.  I tried one and they were pretty good, even if I do say so myself. 

Two hours later, a gaggle of moms showed up to take photos and usher their kids home for further sugar gathering, and Yours Truly collapsed.  When you are not gregarious and social by nature, being “on” like that for two hours can sap you pretty quick. 

Let me say that I could not have done any of this without my best friend.  Eileen is the daughter of a teacher and very, very much like her mother.  She helped to keep the kids moving along, kept the games from getting too raucous, and donated some great ideas to the cause.  I am not teacher material, I learned that after one semester in the teaching program at my university.  I don’t have the cojones for it.  But Eileen has the teaching gene and the teacher-style mannerisms, and kids queue up for her because she has an authority that I do not have.  In a word, she is awesome. 

Spawn went home with my mother, who was taking one of the party guests home.  I spent the rest of the afternoon putting my house back to right.  Spawn ended up being invited to another Halloween party, so I got the rest of the evening off. 

Sunday dawned sunny and clear, though it was still muddy.  My husband and I put away the Halloween decorations.  I now have to buy another plastic storage tub to stash the overflow.  Spawn is already saying “next year.” 

Heaven help. 

– Mox

I don’t suppose you’ve seen the latest national satellite photos? 

That massive amount of rain?  That’s stretching from North Dakota/Minnesota to Texas?  And headed east?  IS HEADED THIS WAY.  NOW.  TODAY.  BEFORE HALLOWEEN. 

You remember Halloween?  That day that we’re supposed to have a HALLOWEEN PARTY?  OUTSIDE?  Where my back yard has this rather large low spot, right in the very center? 

What have I done to piss off the weather gods, y’all?  I mean, seriously? 

Y’know, in my little pea brain, in my heart of hearts, when I agreed to host a Halloween party for Spawn and Co., there was this voice that said, “You are so screwed.” 

I mean, around these parts Halloween is in general mild, weather-wise.  I can remember one year, it was all of 85 degrees and gorgeous.  The next year it was 45 degrees and overcast, and the rain held off until after dark.  Which was fine with me, the real tomfoolery usually doesn’t take place until after dark and the rain squelched that, that year. 

In a way I am extremely glad to have a small batch of spooks on the guest list.  Because even if it clears off Halloween morning (as the weather dudes locally have assured me it will), the back yard will be a swamp.  And because we are not hosting a gaggle of lil’ Swamp Thangs, a swamp is not going to cut it.  So more than likely everybody will be inside where their feet and ankles and shinbones and kneecaps will stay dry, and ohmigod what am I going to do with everybody inside?  We obviously cannot do a pinata inside, since the one I bought is not the kind that you pull the strings on, it’s the kind that you hit with a baseball bat and I have 1930’s-era light fixtures hanging from my ceilings. 

I am currently operating under Freak-Out Contingency Plan B, which is to scour the internet for some games that can be played inside. 

Ack I hate parties.  Hate! 

– Mox

Monday was a “professional development day” for the teachers in our school district, which meant the kids got the day off.  So naturally, I took the day off, too.  Because I wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity to sleep in. 

After I got “sleep in” crossed off my to-do list, I got myself to the grocery story for party food.  Did you know that Monday mornings are when all the little old ladies go to the grocery?  Tottering along, blocking the aisles, vaguely searching for things, slightly confused as to why they’re in the grocery in the first place.  And in comes Mox, hell-for-leather, with a shopping list that (I kid you not) fills an entire sheet of notebook paper. 

I have to remind myself to be patient with the aged.  For sometime in the future I will be there, too. 

In a way I like doing party food, especially if there’s a theme involved.  The menu for our party is witches’ brew (aka punch) with a floating hand (raspberry puree frozen in a rubber glove), crunchy spiders (chocolate covered chow mein noodles), magic wands (chocolate dipped pretzel rods), mummy dogs (pigs in a blanket, mummy-style), heebeegeebees (your basic chex party mix with candy corn) and ghost cakes (mini cakes shaped like ghosts).  Fun! 

Monday was a gorgeous day, too.  Sunny, warm, breezy.  The trees in our area have exploded with color, thanks in part to the wet, mild summer we’ve experienced.  Spawn and I headed out to the park Monday afternoon, camera in hand, so I could attempt a few photos in a lame attempt to get a good shot for a Christmas card. 

Yes, you read that right.  I said Christmas card. 

For the past several years I have sent out photo cards for Christmas, because they were easy to do and people enjoy seeing how Spawn has grown from year to year.  Part of the deal of working in a business that works with a lot of design and photography is that I have pretty high standards for that, and to that end I’ve engaged a professional photographer to get my cards done.  Except this year, being all recessionary and wonky and stuff, I just couldn’t see spending that kind of money.  And so, 2009 has become the year of do-it-myself. 

I’m not much of a photographer, this I know.  It’s something that I have an interest in, and something that I’d like to improve upon, but I’ve never done it.  I have in the back of my heart/mind a sort of lust for a digital SLR camera, but at this point in my life I’m likely to remain a point-and-shoot gal.  And when you’re photographing something that moves at the speed of light (Spawn) you can’t spend a whole lot of time futzing around with shutter speeds and the like. 

Spawn, for the record, was not too happy to be the subject of my experiment.  At least not at first.  But at the park, by the lake, with the sun shining and the trees positively aglow, the kid slowly started to get into the spirit of the thing.  Especially since I was allowing the kid to do things like climb out onto a tree trunk that was leaning over the water.  We snapped photos as long as my camera batteries held out. 

I got home and changed batteries and uploaded what I had shot, and was pleasantly surprised that, amongst all the images of Spawn frowning into the camera, or appearing as a blur, or flashing me the peace sign right as the shutter clicked — I got a good shot.  So I uploaded it to a print site, designed a simple card, ordered 30 copies, and — because I ordered way early — got a 50% discount off my order. 

I haven’t even begun to give Christmas any serious thought.  I’ll do that after the Halloween party is over.  But I’ve already got one thing crossed off my list.  It may be the only thing I accomplished this whole year that I got done well in advance. 

– Mox

I think I am going to give up my watch. 

Having just come off of four days without a real need for a watch (did you miss me yesterday?), I can honestly say that strapping on a timepiece this morning felt akin to shouldering a yoke. 

As a kid, it was a number of years before I understood how to tell time.  All that business of clockfaces and quarter-til and half-past and those increments of five minutes… well, I wasn’t the sharpest marble when it came to math, so it was hard for me to grasp the concept of telling time on a traditional clock.  I came of age during those years that digital timepieces were becoming the rage, and boy was I glad for that.  I still have that first digital watch, a really nice one even though now it’s a bit clunky by aesthetic standards.  I wore that thing for years, until my tragic unhipness fell victim to the Swatch (remember those?) and I made the move to a traditional watch.  I also still have the watch my grandmother gave me for graduation, which was, again, a traditional faced watch.  Not that I knew how to accurately give someone the time from it, of course.  I mastered that cool, quick flip of my wrist (I wore my watch on the inside of my wrist because it looked cool to do that flip thing) and hopefully the position of the hands registered close to something I knew, so that I could say with confidence “It’s a little past four thirty.” 

I think about that now and I am embarrassed to admit it.  But there it is.  I was in college and I still didn’t accurately know how to tell time. 

I don’t know at what point it started to make sense to me, but like so many things that are math-based, eventually I got the hang of it.  I can’t say the same for my multiplication tables. 

The best thing in the world is that digital clock on my cell phone.  I don’t have to wear a watch when I’m carrying my cell phone.  All I have to do is look at that and know exactly what time it is, down to the minute.  I like that. 

I recently read an article about how to be a 40-something in today’s tech-crazy business world, and one of the points made was that referencing your watch was the mark of an old-school dinosaur.  These kids today all tell time on their Blackberrys and iPhones.  I don’t know that I believe that, but I also don’t see a great many youngsters in my workday wearing watches. 

Still, the first thing I did when I sat down at my desk this morning was to pull off my watch.  I put it on before I left the house and took it off before I checked my email at the office.  It’s still sitting on my desk as I type this.  Truth be told, it bugs me, hanging there on my arm like it does.  It gets in my way when I type. 

I do a pretty fair job of getting to places I need to be on time, though I manage to be late just about every single morning.  That, I attribute to morning sluggishness.  I don’t think I have ever, ever, gotten out of bed with a song in my heart and a spring in my step.  That’s just me, the early morning grouch that I am.  When I finally get up to speed I manage to get to where I need to be, mostly on time and sometimes even a little early. 

Do I need my watch anymore?  When I have a cell phone?  And a clock on my laptop, right there in the corner of my screen?  Unless the entire electric grid goes down, I think I’ll be okay. 

– Mox

Party planning. 

In trying to focus on what I can control I have unleashed a mountain of lists from inside my brain, and these lists have begat lists.  Perhaps I should make a list of my lists.  Just to keep it simple. 

I am trying to keep my focus on what I can control because what I can’t control is the weather, and at this point (thank you weather.com) it’s looking like the rain will come through the day before Halloween.  Which will make it cooler than I would like, and possibly make my back yard an unwrung sponge. 

So!  Focusing!  On controllable things!  Yes! 

It seems to be a lot of trouble to go to for 8-9 kids and a few parents, but I want this to go well.  I mean, face it, on the surface I am something of a screw-up mom.  Half the time I don’t know what’s going on at Spawn’s school, even though I tack a school calendar up on my fridge every month.  I never know when Brunch for Lunch day is, I forget to put library books back in Spawn’s backpack, I never seem to be able to get it together to volunteer for class parties. 

So I’m making lists.  Lists of goodies, lists of scavenger hunt items, lists of decorations, lists of lists of lists.  Shopping lists.  Grocery lists. 

I’m listing to one side with all the effort. 

– Mox

Despite my curmudgeonly tendencies, I am actually a relatively friendly person in public.  I say “relatively” because no one can compare to the chat powers my mother holds, and since I am her daughter the comparison is naturally implied. 

Hey, I’m friendly.  I’m pleasant.  I can make with the social chitchat. 

Today I bumped into the husband of a “friend” of mine, the word “friend” being quotation-marked because she is a social acquaintance and certainly not anyone I’d entrust a whole lot of personal info to.  But I know her, and I know him, and our kids are the same age, and we all (used to) go to the same church.  So I guess I know him well enough to say hello and ask how are you and the like. 

Except he wouldn’t participate in the exchange, beyond acknowledgment of my existence. 

We had to ride the elevator together for ten floors, I on my way out to street level and he, along with a couple of coworkers, to the parking garage.  To wit: 

“Hey, hi, J.” 

“Hello.”

“How are you?” 

<crickets, while remarking to his coworkers how he was surprised to see someone he knows>

<awkward pause>

<chat amongst themselves about seeing people they know in odd places>

<and… exit> 

I got off on the ground floor more than a little perturbed.  Feeling a bit foolish, to tell the truth, like I was gushing like an idiot or something.  I got the sense he felt uncomfortable around me, for whatever stupid reason.  (Me!  Over here riding in the elevator with you, mister, and making with the nice!)  Almost like he didn’t want to acknowledge me. 

I realize this is overthinking, but considering that my “friend” tends to be a bit of a snob, her husband is easily tarred with the same brush in my book. 

I just asked “how are you?” for Pete’s sakes.  It’s a greeting, not a request for a dissertation.  “Fine, thank you, and how are you?” is an appropriate response. 

Part of the reason I no longer attend that church. 

– Mox