live from sublurbia

I’ve worked Black Friday. For me it wasn’t hard; most of the preparations were done in the run up to Black Friday: ordering more coins, counting out extra register bags, and helping verify we were adequately staffed.

I’ve occasionally shopped it, but in general the deals available were for things I wasn’t really interested in; this year it helped that if I went, I’d be hauling two kids under the age of five along. We do okay in most situations, but long lines and holding still aren’t among our favorite things.

This year, as I mentioned before, we decided to spend Black Friday doing a holiday organization binge instead. Continue Reading »

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[think of a something Thursday]

This week’s post (ghost written by yours truly) was entirely the idea of my eldest child, Wolfie. We were driving the usual eight or so miles towards our house recently, and once we had exhausted the “what did you learn today” questions, he proposed we play some, in his words, “safe car games”:

I Spy, Alphabet Games, Numbers Games, Opposites, Language Word Pairs, and Finding Rainbows. Continue Reading »

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We used to have a cat named William. She was a sweet fluffy black and white cat, but woe to anything you owned that was colored red. She’d take it and it would be hers. Full stop, end of record.

We found this out one year we had room for a Christmas tree in the “new” part of the house (granted, the first part of the home was built in the late 1800s, so the “newest” part of the house may be a more accurate description). We put up the tree, knowing that cats love trees, as we did most years – but this was William’s first tree experience. Continue Reading »

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[Think of a Something Thursday]

It’s the season of decluttering (wait, when isn’t it?) and a friend at work gave me a large box of kid books. Yay! Sometimes I wish my peers had more kids my age, but it’s times like this when I’m glad I lag behind.

I’ve been handing the books out to the kids one or two at a time, and they are loving them, adding them to the bedtime book rotation, piling each book atop their loads of others. But our books are really slightly out of control. Not that I mind that much, but it makes it difficult to buy books for the kids; I certainly can’t keep track of them all.

So I started looking at the software options out there, and reviewed three in time for Thanksgiving weekend. We’re going to spend Black Friday selling outgrown kid’s stuff in a bit of a Black Friday garage sale, and entering our books get organized. We’ll have an idea of what we’ve got, and we can share this list with friends and family looking to add to our collection.

http://www.bookbump.com http://www.librarything.com http://www.readerware.com Continue Reading »

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When I linked this article to my sister earlier this fall, our response was about the same. No way. No way. Neither of us could figure out why on earth Southwest would do something so inexplicably insane. How many of the people making these decisions have ever tried to haul two or more children under the age of five, and their gear, alone, on a simple flight, or even a complex one? Two kids, two carseats, bottled breast milk, and a laptop … oh, and stroller and diaper bags through security. Plus our checked luggage (though not to the gate).

Alone? Cross-country? No. I’ll take another airline, thanks. I’m not about to haul all of that, get a “C” card for checking in last (my name and computers are not friends), only to spend 30 minutes boarding last, fighting for a spot to place my diaper bag, trying to find a couple of seats together anywhere on the plane without inconveniencing the other ninety people on the flight.

Turns out, though, that pre-boarding isn’t going away. You can pre-board to your heart’s content. However, there are … conditions. Continue Reading »

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I had lunch with a co-worker recently; we traded kid stories and product stories (and books! Oooh! A BIG box of books!). She was a bit grossed out by a new product she saw, “Bottled Mom Spit”.

I suppose if you really take it apart, it is kind of a gross name. But it is accurate enough: though my mom didn’t (usually) spit, it was part of my awareness growing up from reading. That and hankies tucked into sleeves, pinched cheeks…

I’ve come up with a few names now and then, for different ideas, different products. But I’m more dreamer than designer, so most of these stay on the drawing board. But I’ll run across a name once in a while that makes me wonder – what were they thinking? Do clever names work for a product or against it?

Then again, with all the noise online and offline, you need a catchy name or some kind of gimmick to rise above the noise, if only for a moment. Then you need a good product to stay there, I guess. My kids won’t know what a Pet Rock or a Furby is, but Chia Pets may make a come back if they time it right. Cha-cha-cha-chia!

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[think of a something thursday!]

I make forays into super-parental-book-mommy-land, trying to do the connecty-fun activities with my kids that we all can enjoy. Activities that also give them a taste of the lifeskills they’ll need some day. Sewing, cooking, shopping for supermarket deals, snaking a drain, running off fraudulent roof repair men claiming to be inspectors for your insurance company … skills kids of both sexes need in equal measure.

But you’ve also got to know your audience. I watched some of the moms before me go through this – trying to figure out an age-appropriate activity and have it blow up in their faces. Not only skill-level appropriate activities, but time-appropriate activites, too. No one is having fun if Mom or Dad is in the kitchen or doing most of the obvious work.

Heck, it was only last month that I finally learned from a mom friend how to let my kid crack open an egg and enjoy it without getting egg slime everywhere (hold egg in one hand, rap with a spoon held in the other). On a scale of Sandra Lee to Alton Brown , I’m coming up close on a one-man Rachael Ray … but not that close. Continue Reading »

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One of the things I was intensely “insane” about, as a lot of my peer friends still are: the trials involved in conceiving children. We were “lucky” in that we were only mildly infertile, and our problems were inexpensively correctable – mostly by simply waiting and waiting and waiting to hit that fertile jackpot and hanging onto it.

So much of those journeys I chronicled, with and without my electronic bit-ty friends inside of the computer, heading to the ladies room twice a day to take an ovulation test and faithfully charting the results (and badly photographing them, curse the cheap camera phones I had).

I’ve been looking at my charts, and darn if they aren’t sporadic. One “late” CD 19 ovulation, and a mid-fifties – with precious results. And yet through every failed cycle, there was always hopeful Opal in my head, no matter how pessimistic Worst Case Kate got.

Here’s wishing Julie and a few less-publicly blogging friends fiesty fertile follicles!

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I looked for leaves. Really. But there are more (fake) leaves in my front hall than on my lawn. Sorry, children, fall is a magical time of year that happens in other parts of the world. You’re deprived, get used to it.

We managed a leaf pile anyway … five or six whole ‘leaves’! Continue Reading »

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[Think Of A Something Thursday!]

Towels are generally very useful things. But I come today to sing the praises of one particular 16 x 14 rectangle of terry cloth.

My sister started her family before I and turned me onto the simple bar towel. Catches spills and drips, hangs nicely off of various mom bags – can serve as a very emergency diaper. But as my kids have gotten less messy and my purse and mom bags have evolved, I began leaving them at home.

Bad Idea.

One dark and cranky night, I managed to get the kids in the car out of order, pop the groceries in the trunk, my purse in the front, and get the cart to the cart guy while negotiating the surrounding parking spaces with people who’ve never learned to wait their turn. Meantime, mister can’t-keep-his-hands-off-of-buttons-and-switches has locked the children, keys, and cell phones in, and the mommy out. All for the want of a towel. Fun, no?

That’s how it could have happened.

But how about this?* Continue Reading »

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