live from sublurbia

The six-year-old birthday girl screams as a doll that is whole only from the waist up is removed from a birthday cake, sobbing and hiccuping, trying to be understood by adults trying hard to stifle their laughter.

I do remember it being a lovely cake. Lovely. A wonderful gesture by one of the Aunt Mommies in my family. Yellow star-shape frosting squirts decorating a lovely full hoop-style skirt. Barbie’s torso sticking out of the top, smiling her open-mouthed smile as if everything is fine, that she doesn’t mind us feasting upon her lovely limbs and ankle-length finery.

“Wow,” I probably thought. “A Barbie doll of my own! With all her parts!” I did ‘own’ a few dolls of her style, hand me downs with their own enormous trunk of inflatable furniture. These were shared with a sister and several cousins; all their finery and furnishings were quite loved. The one true Mattel brand Barbie doll we did own was shy a hand; the second gone somewhere in the yard after a dog took her as a chew toy for a while.

I apparently got over it the butchered Barbie doll, though I don’t remember tucking her in my little bag after the party. Mom says that they hid what was left of her away and distracted me with other things. That Aunt Mommy had been making those style cakes for years, and I was her first terrified recipient. From then on she made the cakes using whole Barbie dolls instead of refugees from Sid’s bedroom.

The next winter, I did get my own new Barbie doll from that side of the family. She came complete with inedible yellow dress and full, bendable legs and special “shampoo” that let me set her hair straight or curly (until it ran out and she was stuck in curly mode forever).

Now adays, picking cakes for my own kids, I see that birthday cakes come from the store bakery with fully-functioning removable toys as part of the decor. I haven’t asked about Barbie-dress cakes yet; but I’ll make sure she’s a whole gal when I do.

My thanks to Wife and Mommy for reminding me of this story with her post about what is possibly one of the worst cakes ever from the Cake Wrecks blog.

3 Comments »

I do not like to check the box,
I do not think they’ve had the pox.

I will not bus them here or there,
I will walk them everywhere.

I do not like green forms and spam,
I do not like them, Sam-I-Am.

One school year is winding down, another is spinning up. Tis the season of application packets. And we aren’t even applying for colleges yet. Old school exit forms. New school entrance forms. Allergy lists. Pink sheets, blue sheets, yellow sheets, food sheets. Continue Reading »

No Comments »

One of Wolfie’s favorite books lately has been a drawing book. How to draw a present, a house, a cake, and more, in three or four steps. It comes with its own magnetic drawing pad and stylus, and amuses him to no end because of the power he’s found in drawing a picture and telling its story.

His imagination has been cranking in high gear lately, and the 1000 words of a picture are his treasured launch pad.

Sometimes it’s a large fire, flambeing the cake. We have to blow out the fire before it burns away the cake, then feast on crispy chocolate cake. Sometimes it’s a house turning into a rocket ship, blasting away to outer space. Continue Reading »

No Comments »

We actually didn’t do much. I used it as an excuse to bring out the sugary cereals for breakfast, and … that was about it. We did some leaping around, but otherwise it ended up as a regular day.

Some friends celebrated birthdays and struck out into other sorts of new territories. I … fixed my blog. ;) The software had been hobbling along for a couple of upgrades and I just finally threw the rest of it together to get to the latest version of Wordpress. Not sure how long I’ll stay here as I have my eye on a new bit of software that will let me stir this page up even more. But that’s for later.

Plans, now that I’m back and organized, include reworking the blog a bit, folding back in the pumping blog, updating the blog roll with friends and their bits and bytes. Getting back to Think Of A Something Thursday [TOAST] and maybe doing a Works For Me Wednesday once in a while.

Stay tuned!

No Comments »

Yes, I’m back and feeling all bloggy again. And it was a bit of a rough winter, unexpectedly weaning my toddler, holiday madness and all kinds of things. But I’m back and will be reworking the site into another bloggy format, incorporating all the pak-mam posts (Amanda, I know, I suk, I’m so sorry! I have your new address, and again, very sorry about your contest prize!) and tweaking a few other things. But I need to beta the new software first before I decide to roll it out or just do with what I have here.

No TOASTS this week; still getting back into the swing of things. Spent a hilarious amount of time trying to explain to the kiddo what Leap Year Day is; between that, the music critiques, and trying to get him to understand the concept of Sarcasam and why it’s rather inappropriate in a child his age, I’m pretty wiped this week. But more soon.

So, how are you going to celebrate Leap Year Day with your kiddos?

No Comments »

You read it in most parenting books, or hear it in amazed hushed tones from friends and family: “Shh! They soak it up like a sponge! Keep your voice down!”

But they don’t just hear things, they see them, too. On a recent business trip, I observed a 15 month old girl keeping herself amused in the air port, walking around, playing with her purse, holding her mother’s phone to her ear and jabbering at it. Hands free. She had the perfect shoulder tilt to hold it in place while walking and rummaging through her little purse.

My youngest still looks alert and says, “Hello, Ish me” whenever she hears “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell on my 80’s station. Which really amazed me when I realized I had stopped using that as a cell phone ring tone when I was eight months pregnant with her.

But the eldest … he’s been exposed to my musical tastes a bit longer, and it’s starting to show. Continue Reading »

No Comments »

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 »

No Comments »

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!

No Comments »

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!

No Comments »

I toyed with the idea, when we closed on our house, three years ago this week, running for President of our Home Ogres Association. I never followed through with it, being busy and working way too far from my new home, and like many of my ideas, I let it slide away and didn’t bother myself aside from the monthly fee, occasional meeting, and rare letter dinging me for one thing or another.

Letter number three arrived sometime earlier this month, and I hope to take the time tomorrow to grab a thick black marker and fax their letter back, telling to take their violation and shove it up their … association. Continue Reading »

1 Comment »