live from sublurbia

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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Gosh, I’m not sure I even remember how to TOAST anymore, but here goes ….

I know I mentioned during one of my infrequent spring pop-ins that I joined the ranks of the unemployed earlier this year. Whee.

I have had some interviews, and some nibbles. Nothing I could take to the bank; mostly the jobs were far away but I’m so over that. I want to live in the city I sleep in. Consequently, the pickings have been slim, but I’ve managed to land a job that I can do from home a lot. Some travel, not the corporate salary I’d been spoiled by, but home-based writing, yay.

When it got really slow at the beginning of this month (no criticism of those who are employing me!) I signed up for school. I did it the wrong way, of course, jumping in randomly on the last day of registration and missing a few days (BAD IDEA in the summer). But I caught up and my grades are pretty good. I’m re-learning Microsoft Office (2007 version) and will probably get certified in it later this year.

But my book? I spent seventy bucks on that darn thing (if I’d registered earlier I could have bought it online for about $20). And I can’t sell it back. No one is buying it, anywhere.

Why? Continue Reading »

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(for more WFMW, go to this week’s link!)

So my favorite green cleaner is VINEGAR. I won’t say it cures all that ails you, but is sure is handy. :)

The hardest thing is getting it to “stick” – if I need to soak an area that’s stained (plastic kid tables + food dye = !!!) it’s hard on the rag, but I use an old rag on its way out anyway.

The even more hardest thing is getting it to stick to a vertical surface. UGH! I couldn’t for the life of me, even with my lightest rags, get it to stick to that stubborn stain that comes up in the shower from time to time. I’ve had to resort to the “evil” Bleach Pen.

Until one day I baked up some bread and my stubborn vertical stain problems ended. Continue Reading »

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I don’t know if I remember how to do all this! Blogging, Work for me Wednesday, Think of a Something Thursday …

Funny how I’ve been blogging in my head a lot recently. What is this blog? Why is it here?

I didn’t grow up in sublurbia; it was a small town of it’s own that became sublurbia-like, as much as it could. Suburb in the older sense of the term, an outgrowth of a central town, not these mushroom-field boxes of ticky tack.

And yet, here I am in my own little mushroom, finishing up another month of … sublurbian living. I work in the town I live in, finally (I’m still a writer, but from home). And I see my neighbors for long stretches of time as we play with the kids on the street. It’s not all bad, but, some of the plastic sameness still bugs me.

But I can be … domesticated and not plastic. I’m still greenie-eco-gal, but not nearly as much as I want to be. I’m trying to strike a balance between the consumerism that surrounds us, drowns us, and being green — not to be seen but because it’s the sensible sustainable thing to do.

So I’m getting back in my stride. Let’s see what I remember about all this interwebby stuff.

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Sorry for the quiet; I’ve been rearranging life and re-learning my old sewing skills. Despite my plans, it’s been a while since I actually took scissors to cloth.

Mostly I’ve been patching and fixing, hemming and sawing, and repurposing here and there. Baby flannels into cloth napkins, baby dresses into little girl skirts. I spent the last week scouring the house a bit, and I’m having a blast just digging into the piles of “meant to do” and turning them into “done”. No pictures yet; I keep forgetting to take “before” shots. But soon.

If you’re looking for a great last-minute Mother’s Day gift (not all of us actually remembered it was this weekend, or thought it was next, as evidenced by some of the invites we’d gotten for the weekend):

kiva.org – give mom a gift that keeps on giving!

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