7 Quick Takes Friday (vol. 1)

--- 1 ---

My sister tricked me into doing this, my first quick takes. As usual. When we were kids (like, age 7), she tricked me into eating a PB&J with mustard on it (she told me she was putting strawberries on it), fooled me into believing our baby brother had decapitated my Barbie, and had me going for weeks--weeks!--that she had a friend with brain cancer. (I was a little confused about how she had a friend that no other friend or family member had ever heard of, but I regularly inquired after the progression of the cancer and fretted over the difficulties of facing mortality at such a young age.) She's made up for all this by promising to beat up anybody who gets in my way. She hasn't done it yet, but I'm totally sure she will.

--- 2 ---

I've been wanting to join in the quick takes fun for ages, but I have a disability as yet unrecognized by the Americans with Disabilities Act--an inability to be random. I've started countless quick takes posts . . . but after about take #4 I'd start struggling to come up with more, and then I'd realize all my quick takes revolved around a theme--which is totally legitimate, but most of the fun is the random snapshot of a moment of someone's life. Trying to be more random in my posts felt totally TTH. Like a middle school girl with no attention span who doesn't know what she likes yet, so she just says she's "soooooo random!" and then spends the whole day trying to prove it by squealing about whatever pops into her head. I love reading everybody's, I just can't quite seem to generate one (. . . until now?). And, like I said, Sydney tricked me into it, so here we are.

--- 3 ---

There are lots of important things I could be doing with my time, like working on my current editing project or parenting my children or paying my bills. But none of that matters right now, because I've found something so beautiful, all other cares dissolve. That thing is . . . warm vinegar, mixed with Dawn dish soap. If I told you it cuts through soap scum, I wouldn't be making false promises. If I told you it makes sinks and fixtures look brand new, I wouldn't be lying. If I told you it's the best granite cleaner I've ever used, I wouldn't be telling tales out of school. If I told you accidentally inhaling the spray mist would make you hack up a lung, I might be exaggerating a little bit. But seriously, folks, this stuff has changed my life and made my bathrooms and kitchen and dining room table and Stephen's tricycle and the living room box fan beautiful, fresh, even sparkling. (You've probably seen the recipe floating around Pinterest--just one part warm vinegar to one part Dawn in a spray bottle. Mix it a bit. Spray, scrub, rinse. Relive the magic of having new things.)

--- 4 ---

So I'm not usually a coupon clipper. I love the idea, but keeping up with the activity, organizing the coupons, and having them with me at the appropriate time is all somehow beyond me. Target coupons, however, I am all over. Since I can only run one errand at a time avec les enfants, I'm never combining a Target trip with any other errand, so I have a dedicated Target coupon folder, organized and up to date--and I actually use them. I know, I know--just grasp that chair and put your head between your knees, and you'll feel better in just a few minutes. I'll warn you the next time I try to be consistently competent with something.

--- 5 ---

Today I left the kids with my mom and went to the doctor, and I felt giddy and light--I was on a solo outing! I seriously need to get out more.

--- 6 ---

Texas Pete, I don't know who you are or where you've been, but I know where you're going: into my mouth. (To clarify, I'm talking to a condiment. One that's really good on eggs.)

--- 7 ---

I did it. (~pant, gasp, splutter~) I did seven. I don't know how. I need a drink.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Hobbies

Clearly I need to do more with my life than not get dressed, not clean my kitchen, and not fold my laundry. But I need to take this slowly--I don't want to get all excited about a hobby idea, do a bunch of research online and convince myself a) my life will never be complete without this hobby and b) this will make my family's existence so much better they'll start praying to me and maybe even build me a shrine whereat they leave me daily offerings of ice cream as though I were some sort of Indian cobra goddess. (People leave out bowls of milk for snake gods, right? I'm not making that up?)

So, this has to be a hobby that requires

1. little-to-no monetary expenditure, unless I can justify it as being for the household, like furniture reupholstery, or HGTV-watching, or extreme couponing (I do enjoy cutting paper with scissors...);
2. little-to-no regular sleep--no operating heavy machinery...except cars carrying small children, large appliances operating near small children, and doors blocked by small children mid-tantrum;
3. little-to-no space--I have no craft room, no desk, no attic, no basement, no crawl space, no closet space, no shelf space, and very little mental space. (The hobby is kinda supposed to fix that last one.)

I've already considered and discarded many excellent ideas--writing, reading, needlework, photography, coloring, singing in the shower, getting dressed, cleaning my kitchen, folding my laundry (into origami), and Zen Buddhist meditation. Plenty of options that cover bettering my environment, clearing out my brain, avoiding my brain at all costs, being more active, being less active, or being completely inactive. I could just pick one of these and go with it...but then what do I do when I get bored with it next week?

New hobby idea: Watch Cars every day. It fits all my numbered criteria, requires no special preparation--and I can do it regardless of state of dress, health, or mental awareness. I'll learn more via observation about the intricacies of digital animation, feature-length film plotting, and literary character development. I'll memorize all the words to Sheryl Crow's "Get Gone" and James Taylor's "Our Town." I'll be able to list each of Luigi's tire offers to McQueen--so far, the one thing I know is that they actually get progressively worse each time (I can feel you getting more impressed with me already). 

This may take some convincing of Stephen--currently he only wants to watch it about 5 times a week. I'll just have to employ my sparkling powers of preschooler persuasion (they're vampire powers). It's important not to let your personal interests be neglected, even--especially--if that means your children don't get what they want all the time, so they aren't spoiled and you aren't burned out. Priorities.

Real Housewives of Anne Arundel County

Eat it, "Bethenny" Frankel. I have my priorities straight. No plastic surgery, no ghostwritten book. I also know how to spell. And all those Marthas on Pinterest who make ice cream and pinwheels and silk screen scarves with their clean, smiling children--is it fun taking all morning to prep, spending most of the activity making the kids hold still so you can get good pictures, and then cleaning up after they've melted into a puddle of tantrum in a puddle of ice cream and silk dye?

Like I said, priorities:

• Priority 1: Keep Children Alive. 
• Priority 2: Make Dinner. 
• Priority 3: ...It depends. Some days, Get Dressed. Others, Do Laundry. Sometimes even Don't Yell At Stephen For Being A 3-Year-Old. I like to mix it up. You gotta keep things fresh. 

Regardless of the status of Priority 3, to be a successful working mom-on-the-sit I always focus on my goal and I never make myself feel guilty for neglecting those specialty tasks other mothers use to try to impress each other.

Like kitchen hygiene.

Or decorating.

Or bed-making.

Or showering.

(I do, however, make love to the camera.)

My goal? Don't leave the house. It makes everyone tired and hungry, I spend too much money at Target, and I start getting wild ideas about being informed while listening to NPR on the car radio. Dangerous. So far I've got a 98% success rate. (The internet really helps here, if I find myself at loose ends.)

Why waste time and energy trying to keep up with the Frankel, or Martha? I'll only end up rich, famous, and thinking that 41-year-old me should be played by Mila Kunis in the movie of my life, or making brownies with Snoop Dogg. Actually that last one might be kinda cool.

Most importantly, in the pursuit of my goal I will spend time with my kids, which is the greatest gift a mother can give her children. That, or check Hyperbole and a Half for a new post. It's been a while.

Everybody Drink Chai!

I knew chai was delicious and suspected it was nutritious. It also seemed to help me lose weight when I drank it regularly. Now, info revealing chai is in fact a wonder tea! Those Indians know a thing or two about consumables (cf any Indian restaurant lunch buffet).

Links regarding the health benefits of...

• black pepper: http://www.indepthinfo.com/pepper/health.shtml
• cinnamon: http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/nutrition/a/cinnamonbenefit.htm
• ginger: http://www.healthdiaries.com/eatthis/10-health-benefits-of-ginger.html
• cardamom: http://www.nutrition-and-you.com/cardamom.html
• cloves: http://www.indepthinfo.com/cloves/health.shtml
• anise: http://themodernherbal.com/2010/12/star-anise-health-benefits/

I'll let you look up the benefits of black tea and honey (if you add it to your chai) your own dang self. 

I guess I'll be living forever now. Pardon me while I go brew another cup.

It's Not Writer's Block

I realize it's been about a year since I last posted. An eventful year it's been (but aren't they all). But it's not writer's block. It's more like writer's anxiety. Or writer's terror.

My problem with blogging is that I craft a piece of writing (literary value TBD), and then I just throw it out into the vast, anonymous interwebs. No control over how it will be received or interpreted. The context in which the ideas are created is utterly divorced from the context in which it is read. That's really not how I roll. I am a reader of atmosphere--how I interact with those around me is greatly dependent upon who is where and why. Without all those touch points, I'm lost.

Which me should I be when I blog? The me who loves South Park and the greatness of 90s rock? The me with a husband and a kid-and-a-half and a house to clean? The me who takes two hours to do her nails? The me who is a project management editor? Perhaps you can see not only my confusion but also the high likelihood that I will bore and confuse the reader. Cuz if I'm not writing a housekeeping blog, nobody wants to hear about my stain-laundering procedures. And at that point, my primary reason to write becomes something along the lines of "right now I'm really excited about myself I bet people will think I'm cool if I write about this like this!" Tedious.

This is an age-old dilemma: why should anyone listen to you? (Right now, for one person, I have the age-old response of "because I said so." We all know that won't last for long.) Traditionally compelling reasons include "because I am the expert" and "because I am awesome" (or something like that--Plato may have said it better).

So, expertise. . . . Well, my son, who is a "late-talker" but suddenly acquired a decent little vocabulary last month, suddenly decided yesterday he will only say "oh no!" in any and all circumstances. I could tell you all about that. (Just did, in fact. . . .) Expertise. . . . Ellipses are three conjoined points, which should not break over the end of a line, and the "fourth point" is really just a period; in quoted material, this period should be closed against the text if it's the end of the sentence and separated from the text by a character space if it's not the end of the quoted sentence. That's Chicago style, anyway. Hm . . . Don't let kids play with sharp things or drink bath water (good luck) or eat cotton balls. (At least that was useful.)

This blog will be big one day--I can feel it. Just gotta change this diaper first.

If anyone got to the end of this wondering why they bothered, just know that it's all Sara's fault.

On Taking a Sick Day

No onwe will read this--but that's fine! I just want to write. And that way I don't have to feel guilty about not providing any details of my year-long blog absence. (Blogsence?) Or thew extra ww my dying iBook G4 likes to throw in at random moments, just to let me know it's still got a little something special.

Yesterday afternoon I went home sick. I had one of those deep, clotted coughs that clogs your vocal chords and alerts those miles away to your presence. Coversations were difficult, since I could only make myself heard for half of them (and who could predict which half?), and laughing hurt my chestal cavity (there's a lot of laughing at my office--restrained, cubical-appropriate laughter about erudite topics and literary masterworks like Butterflies in Heat). I became a pariah, a roving health hazawrd. If I wandered from my cube, Laura would look at me like she thought any moment I might turn myself inside out, phlegmy organs wriggling, and touch her. Michael pointed and laughed, knowing his weeks-old immunity from this office-wide epidemic would keep him safe. When I handed anyone paperwork, they would first pull on hazmat gloves and use lead tongs to take it from me before spraying it down with disinfectant. In my defense, I always wwwashed my hands before printing anything out to give to someone.

My protests of "it's better than it sounds" meant nothing. Some could only think, "Thanks for saving the worst part for me to listen to all dayww." For others, weach cough was as a death knell--eventually they, too, would be stricken, and they, too, would have to work through voicelessness, wheezing, and choked bronchial tubes. No one appreciated my heroic stance, working my infected, sanitizer-gelled fingers to the bone as I typed out cover copy after cover copy. No one wanted to be within ten yards of me. But that, sadly, is the lot of a hero--unappreciated in her time, mourned only after she is gone. So basically I'd need to do something really awesome, so that everyone would miss me when I went to run errands at lunch time.

However, before lunch time--I got sicker. I started getting chills--not too strange, since the heater wasn't working that well. Then I started getting dizzy--stranger, since I assume no one was releasing gasses into the building. Then my whole body started to ache. And then I began to consider finishing up the day with some sick time.

And here I am now, at the end of a second sick day, better rested and with a far less interesting cough. Tomorrow I shall merely annoy my cube mates, rather than toll the bell.

Quick! What's 40 times 1?

Sooooo obviously my whole "regular blogging" thing hasn't worked out so far...and there's no start in sight now that My Little Man has entered the world and desires my undivided attention. (What he doesn't know is...sometimes I think about ice cream! Ha ha! Take that, task master! You can't control me!) But MLM is currently on an outing with the rest of the household--one I am missing because of (hopefully) passing stomach grossness. So here, ladies and gents (can I say that? do multiple males peruse my scanty posts?), are a few recent thoughts.

...abouuuuut Lent! Surprise! Nobody else is writing about that, I know. So unique. But I'm going to do the coolest Lenten meditation blog of all: I will say nothing original, only flotsam I've gathered from other sites (primarily Women for Faith & Family), perhaps with a little comment.

Item 1. The word "lent" comes from the Anglo-Saxon word "lencten" which refers to the lengthening days of Spring. Oh those Anglo-Saxon--they have a word for everything. "Lent" may sound dreary and dark, and draw up images of aceticism, sackcloth and ashes, and foregoing ice cream for a whole 40-day period. But actually it means that light and warmth are ever increasing, that each day the sun dawns earlier and burns longer for us. It also means that the days of regular trips to Rita's are fast approaching. (Can I get a shout-out for March 6?!)

Item 2. The 40 days of Lent especially commemorate Christ's 40 days of fasting, prayer, and temptation in the desert, in preparation for His earthly ministry. Personally, I can't think of anything that induces temptation like fasting (except maybe perpetual indulgence...one of those "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenarios, life...). And then on top of that, Jesus has to deal with a social call from Lucifer. And what does Our Lord say? Not "well maybe if the stones turned into ice cream..." which would have been perfectly understandable, especially as I am led to believe it was a very hot day. No, he whoops de Debil all up and down with some very apt Scriptural quoths. Good egg--and in a "famished" state (says so, right in the Gospel According to St. Matthew). Usually my famished mood leans toward the petulant. But I guess Lent is supposed to whoop me up and down a bit, so I learn not to follow "I'm famished" with "so give me whatever I want"...but perhaps something a little more charitable.

Item 3. Lent prepares us for the commemoration of the Passion and the 50-day-long hoorah of the Easter season. Idn't that just like the Almighty Father? "Now you're going to spend a little time learning about love. Then, as a special treat, I'm going to sacrifice my only Son for you, give you eternal life and peace, and throw you a big party! Sound good?"

Item 4. Some other Biblical periods of 40, for your consideration: the rainy days of Noah's flood (after 120 years--40 times 3--of ark-building and preaching); the years the Israelites wandered in the desert between the Exodus and arriving in the Promised Land; Elijah's fast on Mount Horeb before the visit of the still, small voice; the peroid of clemency in Jonah's prophecy of the destruction of Ninevah. Think about the themes these stories protray, and you'll find practicing Lent an excellent way to live out the life of the 40: purification, waiting on God's faithfulness and redemption, close communion with God, seeking Him out, His awaiting our response to His call to repentence, and of course our repeated returnings to Him (however grand or small)--what RC folks call "continuing conversion".

Now the only question is how to keep up even the smallest acts of Lenten devotion for 40 whole days. I'd appreciate any practical tips you've got for that. On this, my third awareness of the Lenten season--I won't say "observance" because I can't pretend I even got past week 1 with any consistency--I find a pleasant familiarity with its rhythms; ironic, as that familiarity is itself a new feeling...but I'd really like to make some actual progress this year. You know, something beyond feeling guilty every Sunday as I am reminded it's Lent for the first time in a week by the seasonal markers in Mass, and promptly forgetting again Monday morning. I've got that down. I'm up for something new.

Joyeux fasting!