live from sublurbia

This week’s theme over at WFMW is: Summer Recipes!

Not that hard; it’s summer here all year long (thereabouts) so just about anything we do is fair game. The “recipes” the kids come up with every Saturday during our picnic playdate and lunch – usually involve stacking, smashing and rending lunch into objects of art for the eyes, then stomach.

But my favorite summer recipe this year is Freezer Jam. Most of the fun of a dry run on canning, without the greater chance of my lack of lots of experience giving us botulism.

It started out with a trip to the cousins’ house, where they’d just gotten in a huge batch of strawberries from the co-op.

The general recipe we followed was printed on the pectin packet: Continue Reading »

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If I didn’t know better, I’d say my spices were afraid of heights.

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I think this is my favorite link on rainy days … I can see the storms creeping up on us and pinpoint exactly my chances of getting from A to B and C without an umbrella.

It’s amazing how much rain we’ve got this year compared to last; no wildfires, but the lake still isn’t full. And the rain is fast and furious; after a 30-minute downpour the other day, I dug up bare spots in my variegated lawn to seed them with grass plugs.

But the ground wasn’t really all that wet. Despite my frequent aerating of the lawn, nothing was soaking in. If the rain doesn’t soak in, the roots don’t go down, the water doesn’t have any place to go. Cycle of life and why I need rain barrels. But I did dig up a few more reasons why my lawn is so crappy: construction litter. I’ve dug up nails, concrete block chunks, pipes, wires, and now broken roof tiles. Augh! This is not how I wanted to spend my summer, digging up two inches of sod-dirt to a layer of garbage and then the sand they poured on the lot when they graded it.

Hopefully, the patches will take, we’ll get enough rain that I can naturally keep the lawn alive enough and green enough, but not enough to wreck our summer adventures with all of our cousins, mostly coming in for a few landings for about half the summer. I’ll really need my swimsuit-organization hooks all over the tub for that.

Any special plans for the summer? Picnics? Camp? Making your own adventures ala Remember Me to Harold Square?

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Not to make it a habit but blogging about something that didn’t work last week was actually kind of nice. A lot of famous experimenters and inventors didn’t knock it out of the park the first thing, and goodness knows I’ve screwed up more than a few things trying to raise these kids and heck just figure out life. Some of my Facebook friends had some nice comments and suggestions to go along with it, too.

This last week back home was a little crazy – extra house guests and the house a fright from being away for two weeks. I woke up Sunday morning to the unusually overpowering odor of curry powder. Fearing the young ones had decided to fix themselves breakfast and managed to roll their ownselves in curry powder, I popped into a kitchen thick with curry scent and minus all my throw rugs.

Luckily, another adult had gotten to the scene first. Unluckily, my experiment in floating spices had failed. Glass, fine powder, tile floor, throw rugs … clean up on asile me! Continue Reading »

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(For other WFMW posts, see the little linky!)

So I totally loved the concept presented last week by the WFMW host; one bag to grab and go for swimming sounds so … serene.

I think if we had enough swimsuits and fewer activities, we could manage it. But I’m perpetually behind on laundry and life, and I so far have sent my kid to summer camp with an Uncrustables sandwich every single day this break. That’s fifteen sandwiches I’ve not made or supervised him making. But I will get the kitchen tidy (soon!) and he can then make his own …. but I digress.

One kid has swimming two, sometimes three days a week. The other has six, sometimes seven days of swimming. And depending on my working-at-home schedule, one or both of them swims later in the day for extra practice. (I have *got* to get these kids water-safe!)

Helvetica can’t deal with her own swim gear, but will imitate Wolfie. Wolfie needs … reminding. So I rolled out my sewing machine and made an addition to the name tags I’d already put on their gear. Bowties. Continue Reading »

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But I don’t know anything yet. Won’t for weeks and weeks, if ever. Well, if they don’t call, they’re just not that into me. But you don’t know if you don’t try. And I found a Twitter page that might be useful for updates. :)

But I’m busy reliving the adventure part of traveling to NYC. :) Re-reading the YA books I grew up with, watching a second remake of The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler, and emailing everyone I met there. They just showed a scene shot in the Metropolitan Museum of Art; kind of makes me wish I’d dawdled there sometime instead of working the entire trip. Sometime I’ll take a leisurely trip there; but helping plan the invasion of big chunks of family here reminds me that there are many things to explore here.

Of the things I enjoyed, I think I liked the variety of Mexican food, the art supply stores and the Highline Park most of all. In a few years the kids will be old enough to read my little Manhattan-specific reading list (Remember me to Harold Square!) and maybe we’ll either plan a trip to re-create that adventure or plan one of our own.

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(for more WFMW, follow the linky!)

I’m always trying to figure out ways to speed things up, use end bits, have fun with the kids doing something. This last week I figured I’d try Peanut Butter and Jelly sticks – the kids like PBJ, and maybe I could do something interesting with them; make it easier to do a PBJ roll sandwich?

I picked up a “water bottle ice maker” silicone mold to give it a shot. The results were … interesting. The Peanut Butter shaped and froze well, but the Jelly did not. Images beneath the fold. Continue Reading »

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It’s still the same color and paint job as when we moved in, and, well, we’ve added kids since then. The bathroom is a little worse for wear.

Backing up … WAY up …

I tried out for a reality TV show. Oh, and by the way, the winner of the Amazon GC is Ms Tilla. Ms Tilla, expect an email within 24 hours.

I tried out for Kelly Ripa’s New Reality TV Show (Mom, Inc?) last week in New York City. I had a ton of fun, met a lot of wonderful women (not limited to but including the fabulous Blondee and the inventor of the SafetyTat and one of her little inspirations! And some dragon tamers.

It was a little crowded the first day and a bit hectic. Not to cast asparagus at the production crew – they did fabulous. First-day usual shakedown; moving things around to run more smoothly, it worked out pretty well, I thought. A bit of a delay while Kelly herself came in to do some promo shots and speaking parts (I saw the top of her head! TWICE!), but overall it was a lot of fun.

If you’re going to go to the tryouts (still to be held in Chicago, Dallas, and Los Angeles through the end of this month), here’s how it will likely generally run: Continue Reading »

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If so, head over here and answer the poll! Don’t forget to leave a contact email address so you can be contacted if you win!

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But not forgotten.

Some of my misspent youth was spent in the family’s game room (definitely not in sublurbia!) learning how to shoot pool. We mostly used pretty dull sticks and only when we were old enough to do so unsupervised. Before the glorious free days of sticking on the felt we’d just slam the balls around the table, trying to smash each other’s fingers.

I recently took my eldest out on a play date with his young friend and tried to start the tradition back up again. Alas, they don’t let kids into local pool halls – we’re going to have to find a friend who doesn’t mind replacing the felt on her table in a few years. But I did find a larger-sized version of table top curling to amuse them … Air hockey.

The kids are smarter and faster than I give them credit for. At least, smarter and faster than I at their age and older. Whereas my finger-smash-game antics had broken two of my fingers before I hit adulthood (in two separate incidents), they managed to spend about seven dollars in an hour in some bloodthirsty, no-holds-barred games of Air hockey.

And nobody broke any fingers (especially me!).

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