Projects – Page 5 – My Truant Pen

I am fantastic

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but blogging is really a feast-or-famine kind of thing. You have a great weekend with time enough to think and read a book, and suddenly you have like 6 posts all thought out, including a societal indictment and discussion of good bras. This after the last month where you hoarded and scrimped anecdotes in a desperate attempt to make your life sound interesting, at least to yourself.

Well, I’ve discovered that hoarding good blogging material is a little like hoarding Thanksgiving leftovers — if you don’t use them right away, they go bad. So you might as well whip up a nice tall open-faced turkey sandwich and enjoy already.

This weekend was marked on the calendar as “I am Fantastic” weekend. I put it on the calendar so I would take it seriously. There are always things that need to be done, and making myself look and feel good is usually at the bottom of that list. That’s ok short term, but sometimes you need to invest in yourself in order to give as wholly to the other people who count on you. “I am Fantastic” weekend started at 1:30 at Intimacy Copley Place in Boston. I’ve spent the last 5 years pregnant, nursing, trying to get pregnant, rinse and repeat. The body changes involved in that have made any investment in undergarments a losing proposition. That time is now over, and I was ready to invest.

I figured a really good bra would cost about $50. I added $25 on to my estimates to be safe. I had trouble imagining a bra could cost more than $75. The fitting was interesting. My fitter had a zip up dress so she could model the combination she was sporting that day. (In her defense, it looked great on her 10 months post-partum self!) She sat me down and gave me the lecture on proper care of my bradrobe. (I’m not making that word up.) Then she brought out the samples. I figured I’d start with two — one that would work under anything and one that would be very, uh, appealing.

None of the bras had price tags on them. This should have clued me in that I was in over my head.

I got two bras that were — are! Fantastic. They look awesome and make me feel awesome. One is extremely comfortable, and I suspect the other will be once I break it in.

But man, I totally and completely underestimated just how much a bra could cost. I’m pretty sure if I’d been shopping in a less, uh, intensive environment I wouldn’t have bought the more expensive one. I’m pretty sure if I’d seen a price tag, I wouldn’t have tried it on in CASE I liked it as much as I ended up doing. I find myself ashamed to have paid so much for something — this is a kind of indulgence I don’t really feel comfortable with. The more expensive bra cost $180.

I walked out of the store sort of shell-shocked into this mall that takes it for granted. The beautiful people all around me were likely all wearing $200 bras and $500 shoes. I looked around and I felt like I was all wrong: my shoes are a little scuffed, my pants are not designer. I was wearing makeup (unusual for me) but we’re talking Wet-and-Wild folks. My top, which seemed pretty in the morning, seemed dowdy and unsophisticated in the glare of the marble. My favorite courduroy jacket seemed threadbare in the soft lighting. My purse is hopeless — a $20 Target creation overflowing with children’s toys and touched by white wall paint in the corner. I hugged it close to my body hoping no one would notice me. As I hunted desperately for safe ground (aka Starbucks) I hoped no one would see me or call me out or notice how wrong I was. I wondered just what criteria the numerous lurking security officers used for escorting someone out. (One hopes more than a terrible purse.) I felt like there was exactly one part of my entire self that was ok for this place: the new bra.

These environments are set up to make you feel like you are not good enough. They also try to let you know that your failings are not permanent — if you spend enough money, pay enough attention and do the right things, you might perhaps hope to walk those halls between the Prada store and Monolo Blalik with confidence that you are all right. You are presented with the false hope that this is a winnable path to being acceptable.

I choose not to play that game. I vehemently reject the premise that “good enough” has to do with the right shoes and right clothes and perfection of physical attributes. It was a with a great sigh of relief that I crossed the busy street to Back Bay T stop, to a more normal world where I’m a perfectly ok person.

Did I mention I picked up “Twilight” to read during my sojourn? I enjoyed it as I switched from the Orange to the Red line. You see, I know Forks. My father lived there for a year when I was in my late teens. A boyfriend and I on a date had once wandered our way across the Olympic Peninsula, to many of the spots mentioned. I was that love-lorn teenager wishing to be called out as special in that tiny Northwest town. The bits about the sports — Volleyball etc. — ring very true. She must’ve grown up there too. So in addition to being a fun if flippant read, it made me rather nostalgic. Thank heavens I didn’t encounter it when I was 16 or I would’ve thought that FINALLY someone UNDERSTOOD me!

Anyway, on to my next stop. I got off at Harvard Square, with fading self-consciousness, and went to DHR to get my hair cut. Dale did an amazing job — I think this is the best cut he’s ever given me. I opted not to add some clarification to a rather vehement opinion Rob held about the middle ages (see also: completely monolithic society with total control over everyone — so not possible), and switched conversation safely over to “Red Dwarf” instead (they’re huge sci-fi fans).

And I emerged looking fantastic. I went home and had dinner prepared by my husband, got the kids in bed, and finished reading Twilight in the bath.

Truly, fantastic.

Not sure if you can really see the haircut -- I should've used a better backdrop

The turkey mocks back

On November 6th, I made this wise statement: After years of panicking about cooking, I’m now confident that a) there will be enough food b) I know how to cook a turkey.

Ah, hubris!

Also, this might be a good time to mention that I try very hard not to be superstitious because I do not believe in superstition. It’s totally a load of crock, in my humble opinion. Also, I TOTALLY JINXED MYSELF WITH THIS STATEMENT. That was nearly as bad as talking about a no-hitter, people.

I changed two things about how I cooked my turkey this year.

1) I bought a new pan. My old pan always stuck to the top of the turkey, and pulled flesh off when I went to baste it, and was really too small for the behemoth birds that occupy my oven on Mocksgiving day. So I saw a new, bigger pan that didn’t have a lid but did have a cool little rack thingy and I went for it.
2) I read Cook’s Illustrated. Their November edition had some neat ideas on roasting turkeys. I didn’t do the pork one only because I couldn’t find the pork. I didn’t do the brining because I’m really lazy. I didn’t do the baking powder crispy skin bit because I have a hunch that the extra oil I add is needed to make the amount of gravy I produce.

But I did try the temperature thingy. I cooked the bird at 325.

And here are the results. Glorious, no?

Quite possibly the finest-looking bird I've ever cooked

And completely underdone. The breast was done, mind. The popper thingy popped out. The temperature was right for that breast meat. But the bottom of the bird — the dark meat and thighs, etc? Totally undone. Completely.

I hadn’t flipped the bird. I’d cooked it right side up. And since the skin looked so amazing, I didn’t crank the heat up (note: I actually think that was the right call).

We had let the bird set for half an hour, as recommended, and everything was on the table when my husband started carving and we realized that we had a turkey-disaster on our hands. Thinking fast, we pulled out cookie sheets and put turkey parts on the sheets to cook that way. It actually worked out ok. And frankly, I’m not sure that anyone would’ve even noticed if I just failed to put the turkey on the table period. There were so many fantastic options that the turkey was, well, gravy. Mocksgiving was by no means ruined by the total turkey FAIL.

Additionally my gravy was also a fail. I’m good at gravy. I make gravy all the time. But the open-topped pan allowed for much greater evaporation of delicious turkey-juices, so I kept adding water to the drippings. I added too much, and it came out as weak sauce. I actually usually (shhhh) add chicken boiullion (however you spell it) to my turkey drippings when they start to percolate to increase the volume of gravy. Since it cooks with the turkey for several hours, it ends up tasting like turkey gravy. But this time, it just tasted weird. If I want to use the open pot, I’m going to need to come up with a better plan for gravy. Of course, the fact that the turkey wasn’t COOKED might also have led to a diminution in drippings and subsequence chickenosity of the gravy.

Lessons learned:
1) It’s probably a good idea to start the turkey wrong-side up and flip it halfway through
2) Wrap the entire pot in tinfoil before cooking, not just turkey, to prevent evaporation
3) Maybe cook a larger turkey at 350 instead of 325.

I’m actually half-tempted to make a turkey on Thanksgiving just to tinker and figure out what I did wrong. (I can hear you saying “WHAT? Thanksgiving IS turkey day!” Not for me. If I can’t cadge an invite to a Thanksgiving dinner someone else cooked, Thanksgiving is likely to be a pizza night.) Also, the turkey and gravy didn’t come out well. This means NO HOT TURKEY SANDWICHES FOR ME. This, friends, is completely unacceptable.

As an additional Mocksgiving note, I made this Cranberry sauce ahead of time. More than 50% of my motivation was that I’d previously made pomegranate molasses for a recipe I didn’t end up making and it was lurking in the ‘fridge making me feel guilty. This was a fantastic make-ahead dish. It tasted excellent and looked amazing. If you need to bring a dish to a Thanksgiving, I’d heartily recommend this one. I doubled this recipe, and really. Don’t double it. All 28 of us having a serving barely made a dent in it.

Apple Butter

Last Thursday night I made Apple Butter. I find that my hobbies — the things I do for myself — have to fit into smaller and smaller spaces. Moreover, like so many workers in corporate America, they need to be more productive. The boost I have to get out of doing something for myself has to be considerable to be worth the price in sleep loss, opportunity cost, or making my husband work harder. This summer, I found that canning fits the bill. It doesn’t take a wild amount of time — one evening plus thinking ahead. It’s very different than what I do all day (computer hobbies, for example, have the downside of being just like work). And it’s intensely satisfying, both right after you’ve completed it and throughout the year as you watch happy people nom down on your cooking. So in an indirect response to my life time-crunch, I did a lot more canning this year.

Which brings us back to apple butter. It was an obvious choice. One of our yearly traditions is apple picking. Abuela gives us apples from her tree every year. And the farmshare has also provided us with a hearty harvest. Added all together, and we had a ton of apples. Worst yet, although I make a mean apple pie, none of the men in my house like it. So although I’ve never eaten apple butter in my life, I figured it was worth the effort.

For my birthday, my mommy bought me the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving and some canning toys. I used the Cider Apple Butter recipe.

Without a doubt, canning apple butter is best done with a chatty best friend working with you. (Now taking applications for next year!) It took me nearly an hour and a half to peel and core the SIX POUNDS of apples the recipe called for. I’m not a novice peel-and-corer, either. It was rather tedious. It was interesting to see how different all the apples were. Since my apples came from a wide variety of sources and types, it’s a mutt of an apple-butter — never to be reproduced. I liked seeing how different all the apples were. Here are the results of my peeling-and-coring extravaganza:

That's enough for four or five pies, by my reckoning

I dumped them all into my biggest pot (note to Santa: I need a bigger pot if I’m actually going to do more boiling-canning. None of mine were large enough to fit the canning rack I got.). I added the two cups of cider. This seemed woefully inadequate for such a large “cider soup”.

I also got the jars going. I’ve aided in making jam since I was 8 or 9 years old — mostly in the squashing raspberries and stirring departments as a young child. But only once have I been around canning where you boiled the cans afterwards, so I paid careful attention to the instructions. Please note an important idea: you preheat the jars filled with water, but you better have enough room/not so much water so that when the jars are filled, the pot does not overflow. Happily, I caught that one before I found out the hard way. I thought the jars were pretty in the pot.

Then I pureed the apples, attempted to food-process my whole cloves to ground cloves, failed miserably, and ground them in a mortar and pestle instead. Despite carefully measuring the POUNDS of apples, I didn’t have the volume the recipe called for. I added apple cider to make it up. I’m pretty sure that was a mistake — since I wasn’t adding pectin, it wasn’t as necessary to be precise. I bet that added significantly to the cook time. However, strike 1 for the recipe. It offered no guidance. I added the pureed apples/cider and spices back to the pot for the Long Cook.

Included in my birthday present was this clever device (upper right). Just one problem: it uses about 10x as much water as boiling the lids flat and using the neat magnetic lid-grabber-thingy I also got. So…. very cool but I’m not sure it’s worth it.

The apples cooked and cooked and I stirred and stirred. Since I’ve never EATEN apple butter, I wasn’t quite sure what it was supposed to look/taste like, or what the consistency was supposed to be. Here’s what the cookbook said:

Testing Fruit Butters: Butters are cooked until they thicken and begin to hold their shape on a spoon. To assess doneness, spoon a small quantity of cooked mixture onto a chilled plate. When liquid does not separate, creating a rim around the edge, and the mixture holds a buttery, spreadable shape, the butter is ready to ladle into jars and process.

I think I read that about 18 times. I never decided if the clause “creating a rim around the edge” was something that it was or was not supposed to do when it was ready. I thought of my sister, the tech-writing cooking-savant and how she would blanch at this obfuscatory help. Clearly, assessing apple-butter-doneness is the sort of thing you have to learn at the apron of someone who knows it. Here was my attempt at being a good little recipe-follower:

I’m pretty sure it didn’t cook long enough, but I was running out of time. When the butter started “spitting” and burning me, I decided that I’d better start jarring it. Here’s a picture of what happens to your hand when you wash it as often as I did making this butter. I expect sympathy, people.

It was time to start the canning bit. I’ve done this a gazillion times with jam. I advise you to move the jar right next to the pot. A funnel is one of the few truly critical pieces of jamming equipment (you CAN do it without a funnel but it’s HARD). If you are doing jam, use your jars in a bell curve: smallest known jars first (they are hardest to get to seal), then middle, then big, saving a few small jars for the remnants in the pot that won’t fit in a big jar.

At that point, the recipe gets a HUGE strike 2. They had helpfully told me how many jars I would need. I prepared equivalents (I like to use three jar sizes: sampler, medium and big) and added a few extra for safety margin. They were WRONG. I needed three medium jars more than they called for. That’s huge. I actually ran out of prepped jars and had to use an unprepped jar, which I marked with an “X” because I didn’t want to trust the seal on it. ALWAYS HAVE WAY MORE JARS THAN YOU WILL NEED (and enough lids for all the jars you have).

Because of the additional jars, I had to boil them in two sets, making me even later for bed.

It took me roughly 3 hours, start to finish, to make the apple butter. The good news? It’s delicious, especially on cornbread! The bad news? It’s really sugary, spicy applesauce. We definitely didn’t achieve buttery consistency!

The heart-center of the family

The kitchen is where it’s at. The heart of my family has always revolved around the kitchen. I’ve never wanted granite countertops or designer appliances. I am thrilled, however, to have a kitchen table. The kitchen table is where meals are eaten, homework is done, playdoh is played, books are propped, and the world’s most meaningful conversations happen. The kitchen in the home we bought is perfect. Well, mostly perfect. It has a great kitchen table — intact from the ’70s. The table and chairs were probably bought around the time I was born. They’re vinyl and metal and laminate and indestructible.

When we bought the house, we added a butcher-block counter and shelves for tea, spices and cookbooks. There’s a load-bearing wall separating the kitchen from the mud room (and the ‘fridge). Through the window above the sink you can watch the seasons expressed in the leaves of the trees.

A few weeks past when my mother-in-law came to visit, her big project was to tackle the kitchen. Her motivation was a passionate hatred for the burgundy lace curtains in the kitchen. The kitchen — like most of the house — was paneled. Not, mind you, the SAME paneling in any two rooms. Stop talking crazy talk. The kitchen had a light-wood paneling of very poor quality. It was impossible to clean off, which is an issue for a lived-in, loved-in, cooked-in kitchen.

For ONCE I remembered to take before pictures. Here ya go:

From near the coffee maker - note bread rising and top of curly moppet head

The Ikea island - you would not believe how much we use that sandwich press

This needs to be framed in and painted, but that's corkboard and metallic paint

There’s still plenty to do. We need curtains. The color theme for the first floor is sage and lapis, with the living room mostly sage, the dining room a combo (we bought new fancy-dishes since the ones I got for my wedding just have not held up to normal use), and the kitchen mostly white-and-blue. Laureen also painted the mud room, bathroom, entrance hallway and halfway up the stairs white instead of cream. (She did get through the entire 5 gallons of paint!)

We’re also working on this sort of correspondence center. The wall that’s currently black and cork is intended to be magnetic paint on the bottom (currently black) and then a bulletin board framed in with molding at the top. I think we need a whole additional can of magnetic paint. The bottom has about 7 layers, but it’s not enough to hold up the boys’ magnetic toys, which was the point. Once we’re done painting, the whole think will be painted white. I’ll put things like cards and art work on the bulletin board and the bottom can have magnetic letters, etc.

We also plan on putting an overhead fan/light where the old chandelier thingy is — which will mean we will have overhead fans in every single room in the first and second floors. We’re also going to put in a magazine rack on the small shelf, and maybe really narrow shelves to hold my teas.

But I really like it. It’s clean and cleanable. It’s a light, airy room anyway, and this made it lighter and brighter.

This is the room where the living of my family will take place over the next 17 odd years. May it be filled with heavenly scents, laughter, and memories.

The real reason for home ownership

I would like to submit Exhibit A for evidence that I do not learn from experience.

This week, we painted our bedroom purple. It had been extremely dull before. Imagine a white carpet (plush), white cheap panelling, white curtains and a white drop ceiling. Strew liberally with excess papers, clothes that didn’t quite make it into the dirty clothes, bedside reading and shoes, and you have a pretty good view of our bedroom. I paint this word picture because what I do NOT have is a single solitary PICTURE of our bedroom. Not from the home inspection, not in the move-in pics, not in the two years we’ve since spent in the house. Brilliant. The very best I can do for you is this picture of a recliner I’m trying to offload:

Bo-ring!

Having painted the boys’ rooms fantastic colors (green for Grey and blue for Thane) the utter blah-ness of the color scheme became even more noticeable. And my mother-in-law kept asking what project we wanted her to do when she came up.

I vaccilated between the lilac color I actually wanted and the sea-green in our attic which is rather more grownup than the lilac color I actually wanted. I kept hearing in my head the commentary of the guys on “Sell Your House!” on HGTV wondering for a national audience just WHAT these people were thinking?!?! Then I realized: screw them! I’ll paint it a boring color if I ever want to sell the house!

A very short time later, the walls became a spectacularly warm and joyful color of purple, thanks to the hard work of my mother-in-law.

But wait! There’s more!

Our house was built in about 1900 — an era when women actually sewed clothes and 6 or 7 outfits was a plentiful wardrobe. (Well, or so I imagine.) For that era, the closets aren’t that bad. This means that they are tiny and few, but do exist. My clothing collection is, er, perhaps larger than necessary for strict modesty even granting our lax frequency in doing laundry. (Ok, ok, it’s outrageously large. But, er, so it is.) This has lead to me putting my hanging clothes in Thane’s room and the upstairs room. And this, in turn, has lead to me wearing many of my fun clothes less often because I forget they exist. Also, it’s cold on winter mornings. I’d had a plan for quite a while, but building on the energy of my MIL we took a trip to IKEA. And lo. We returned with a wall worth of wardrobes.

A shockingly short time later they were assembled. And then they were populated with appropriate clothings.

There are finishing touches left. We plan on putting curtains over the wardrobes (doors were expensive and we couldn’t get the ones we wanted in the size we wanted — I think curtains will be fun. And if they’re not, we can always go back for the doors.) We need to, you know, clean up the room.

But voila! Much more storage and much less boring!

Why the summers seem so short

This year I think I’ve figured out why summers seem half as short as any other season. The simple fact is: they are shorter.

Consider. Summer officially starts June 20th or thereabouts. June 20th is reasonable for summer starting. By the end of June, we’re pretty reliably above freezing and most of the snow has melted. Then you have July, which is really summer. (Except this year, when it was May Take II.) For me, the first week of August we have our big vacation of the year where I go home and hike Mt. Rainier and relax while my kids are entertained by my parents. I come back August 10thish a bit more tan and a bit more relaxed. But as soon as the tires of my Jetblue redeye touch down at Logan, I’m into planning for fall.

It’s not summer that’s weird. It’s fall that’s weird. No other season requires so much advance planning. I don’t plan for summer. I don’t plan for spring. I plan for Christmas, but not for winter. But well in advance of the calendar start of fall (September 20th or thereabouts), I’m planning.

Part of this is due to my own unique circumstances. Let’s look at my autumnal schedule, shall we?

*September 23rd – my birthday (generally ignored)
*October 6th – Grey’s birthday (big deal)
October 12th – my FIL’s birthday (we miss you Mike)
October 16th – my sister’s birthday (I sometimes scrape up a card)
*October 21st – my husband’s birthday (err… I usually buy something for him off his Amazon wishlist)
*October 28th – Thane’s birthday (what am I going to do for his first?)
October 29th – my niece’s birthday (make with the loot already!)
*November 14th (this year) – Mocksgiving (huge big hosting deal that requires lots of forethought)

Items with an asterisk require me to do party planning if a party is going to happen (which is a longer and longer shot with the grownup birthdays).

Add to that the typical things that need doing in fall — a new wardrobe for the kids, a new Saturday activity for Grey (we’ve settled on aikido), starting preschool, prepping the house for winter (cleaning gutters, furnace maintenance, mulching, etc.), Halloween, Thanksgiving and all that.

Finally, toss in a good measure of church starting back up. Now church doesn’t close down, but we have a more moderate schedule over the summer. Our committees meet less often. We don’t have quite as many events. There’s no Sunday School (we do have a kids’ event). There’s less extra work. But there’s a lot to be done for fall: the Fall lunch, the pumpkin party, lining up teachers to teach, ordering curriculum, the Sunday School launch party… all sorts of seasonal things. (Many of which I should probably start thinking about since the loss of a member has made us very shorthanded for some.)

Well, of course I had better start planning for fall by the middle of August! But what this means is that the amount of time I’m in summer and thinking of summer is about 6 weeks — from the end of June to the middle of August. Although there’s another 6 weeks of summer left on the calendar, my mind is already engaged with the fun season of autumn and has left summer behind.

Hmmm… I’m not actually sure I’m glad I wrote out all the things I need to do in Fall. Because right after I get those done we’re in Christmas. Ah well. As one of my professors used to always say (which, to be fair, drove me absolutely bonkers in college), “Life is rich and full.”

What mirror? Where?

I’m still walking to daycare when the weather is nice. It’s just about two miles. I’m working on getting my body back to a place I’m comfortable staying. After I had Grey I realized that my body wasn’t going to miraculously return to prepregnancy state. Nursing, my normal amounts of exercise and food, none of that was going to get me back to where I used to be. I was convinced that it must be hormonal or thyroidal or otherwise not because of my actions, but before I called my doctor to discuss the possibility I figured I’d track my calories to prove just how virtuous I was.*

This was, shall we say, eye opening.

So I spent several months tracking what I ate and how much I exercised (doing a lot less of the former and a lot more of the latter) and I got back to what I consider my “set weight”.

Well, Thane is almost 9 months old. In another few months I’ll be into Thanksgiving and Christmas and the cold, dark times of year. It’s a lot harder to diet/exercise when it’s freezing out and there’s no fresh fruit to soften the blow. So I’ve resumed running an intentional calorie deficit. By Thane’s first birthday I hope to be back at my set weight, and from here on out only make sure I don’t gain weight.

But man, the reason people don’t usually do this successfully is because it’s hard. When you eat fewer calories than you burn, you (shockingly) end up hungry. Your body tells you that something is wrong. You get grumpy, cranky and fragile. My worst time of day is when I’m preparing dinner — I often haven’t eaten since lunch 6 hours ago and the kids require patience and handling and there’s traffic and I’m like-as-not on some sort of deadline and several times a week I’m doing it alone. Not only that, but I’m trying hard to make sure Grey doesn’t notice I’m dieting, because I do not want him to think that it is normal or necessary to count calories on everything he puts in his mouth.

Anyway, this is less about the woe of dieting than it is about today’s walk. My quest to return to pre-pregnancy has been working. I’m wearing the jeans I wore pre-Thane. Today I have on a rather fitted shirt which shows off my, uh, nursing-supplemented assets. And I got no fewer than four friendly catcalls during my two miles. Including one “Hey, you’re gorgeous!”

I know that I’m supposed to mind catcalls and find them 1) degrading 2) insulting 3) threatening. I must admit that I’ve never managed to do so. Here on my walk I find them … welcoming and appreciative. Welcoming because the guys (usually young to middle aged Latinos) doing the catcalling don’t seem to see me as outside their community — not some stuck up gringa, but a part of their town and their warm summer days. Appreciative because they’re usually saying NICE things. Their comments feel quite friendly. They are an invitation with no hard feelings if I don’t take them up on it (which, obviously, I don’t).

And I have noticed that certain outfits are much more appreciated than others.

Now that I’ve managed to terrify my mom and horrify my husband (“Are you sure it’s SAFE to walk to daycare?”), I’ll move on. It’s very hard, after you have had a child, to find yourself in your own skin again. I used to be a blonde. Now I’m truly a brunette. I’m a brunette with silvery threads wending through my darkening hair. The dimensions of my body shift and change with the demands put upon it. Very few of my blouses, for example, can contain my abundance, even though most of my pants fit. I haven’t been able to wear a regular summer dress in two years. My body has been swollen, shared, deflated, inflated, strangely hard, shockingly soft, blurred around the boundaries. And now it is coming back to me, to be mine again. I am the sole occupant, again. I may control my body with concern only for myself, after a long period where that was not true. (Well, coming up. I’m still nursing so there are still constraints, but they are more limited than they were.)

This requires a re-understanding of how I relate to my body — how it works, what it looks like, what I see when I look at myself, what others see when they look at me. This, too, is hard work.

The only picture of me among the 141 currently on my camera

*I know that intentional weight loss and dieting can be controversial. I know plenty of people cannot lose weight for good reasons, ranging from eating disorders to hormonal imbalances. I have also learned that I do not have any of the conditions that would make losing my pregnancy weight unusually problematic.

Twoo wuv

I’ve noticed lately that my life has been a little busy. Just a touch. So I’ve decided to start getting proactive and evaluating where I spend my time to see if there are any places where I can gain efficiency without losing fun. So, for example, I don’t want to “more efficiently” play with my children, but more efficiently obtaining groceries? That I could do.

I have very, very few hobbies left. I game whenever gaming is held at my house. I possibly cook slightly more extensive meals than the minimum standards. I have this illusion that I make cards that I send to people, but in truth I think that I’ve made 4 cards in six months — and I made two last night. And I document what life is like for me with my camera and my blog posts. This latter part is really one of the more satisfying things I do. The writing part is pretty unavailable for efficiencies, but the picture part is. I have been doing pictures in a very 2003 sort of way. I’d upload them from my camera, scroll through them using a free, trimmed down picture viewing software, delete them from the directory (I usually only “show” one in four pictures), resize them (while maintaining the full size ones), write an html file containing all the links to them, including links to the fullsize picture, and then upload them to the website where I might or might not test them. I often (usually?) made a mistake in uploading the videos. My ftp software is really full of fail for massive uploads, and would often crap out before the videos finished uploading, etc.

This is all done at like 11:15 at night on a Thursday, of course.

Then the other day I thought, “Gee, maybe I’ll see if software for handling pictures has improved in the last decade.”

OMG. Why did no one tell me about Picasa before?

First I fell in love with how it managed the pictures on my hard drive. I spent a rapt hour gazing at lost images from the hard drive of my college computer, buried deep in directories called “Brenda Archive” and “Old Files 2002”.

Then I discovered the great, simple, idiot-proof retouching tools. And the way it allows you to easily make simple edits to videos, like start and stop times.

Then I fell in love with the ease of uploading. Lookee ma! No FTP software!

Then I discovered the face recognition software. If I’d had this when Mike died, it would’ve saved me HOURS scanning the archives for good pictures of him.

At this point I wondered if petitioning the Massachusetts state legislature to permit the marriage between a woman and a really great software product was called for.

Did I mention they have a very good system of permissioning?

Then I discovered the one-click integration to various photo-ordering options (you don’t wanna know my process for buying prints). It’s possible I swooned at that point. I came to with Picasa holding me by the shoulders and administering smelling salts. (Ok, not really, but close!)

As a software engineer, I’m deeply humbled. I have never in my life written anything as close to this powerful, intuitive and useful.

As a user, I’m totally wow’d.

As a mom, I’m extremely grateful that a very precious part of my life just got more fun and less tedious.

So with this tremendous buildup, I present to you:

Late Spring 2009

Planning for the worst

In the last few weeks I’ve tackled a few of those unpleasant tasks that seem infinitely postponable. The first task was to update our wills. We actually had created wills after Grey was born, in a similar fit. But since then, my husband’s father (who was mentioned in the will) had died and Thane was born. While I’m sure those left behind would’ve figured our will out if neither one of us was around to explain it, I thought we might as well spell it out. That, and my MIL had asked for a new copy of our wills to keep in a safe deposit box down by her so there wouldn’t be any delay in her ability to take custody of our kids should something unthinkable happen.

It’s not fun imaging a world where you leave your kids orphaned. (There’s really no difference between our will and what would’ve happened if we died intestate if only one of us dies. Ok. I’m really just looking for excuses to use the word intestate. Intestate intestate intestate.) And by the time you get down to the final levels of planning, “And if we both die and she dies and all these other people die, THEN blah blah blah.” I feel glad that we tackled it.

Any interpretation of this post as a hint that you might want to do likewise, especially if I’ve bugged you to do so before and am executor of your estate, is likely accurate.

The other bit of worst-case planning wasn’t so bad. It started out with the world’s most boring shopping. In retrospect, I suspect that the folks who redid our attic for habitation didn’t get all the permits they needed. There is a bedroom in our house which is basically a fourth floor bedroom. If you can’t get out the door, it is four stories out the window. If you can get out the door but not down the staircase, it’s three stories. The attic has no built-in fire escape. So basically, if you get trapped in that room in a fire, you’re screwed.

My brother, who is living with us for the summer, is living in that fourth floor room.

So I bought a pair of these: http://www.amazon.com/Kidde-468094-25-Foot-Three-Story-Anti-Slip/dp/B000H5S96A — one for each room in the attic. This is quite possibly the most boring $120 I’ve ever spent on anything in my life. They’re bulky. They have to be high access to be useful. They’re single use. I consider it an investment in anti-regret insurance. It’s actually not quite long enough to get to the ground for that fourth floor, but I reckon it will get you close enough that the fall might result in a sprained ankle, but not death. I’m willing to take that.

(We also have one on the second floor, but there are more possible egresses from that floor. Also, a fall is in the “break a leg” instead of “lose your life” range from the second story windows.)

Having equipped the house, we staged a fire drill yesterday. This was a little for the grownups, but mostly for Grey. We trained him that if he hears a fire alarm, he’s to get down the stairs from his bedroom and get out the front door right away. I’m glad we did it. He had some questions that could’ve been trouble in a fire. “Do I need to put on my shoes?” “Do I need to wait for you to open the door?” We practiced it three times. Now, if the fire alarm goes off, he can get himself out of the house without help. I’m happy with that outcome. I also practiced crawling (with my eyes closed) to the baby’s room to get him out. I’ve heard that in real house fires you can’t see your hand in front of your face, and that it’s important to have muscle memory. Since I’m not leaving a burning house unless I know Thane is safe, this also worked well.

With a three year old, it’s not possible to go through all the permutations. (For example, I think it’s too much confusion to check for a hot door, etc.) But this seems like the best default option for if he hears the fire alarm.

With both of these things, it wasn’t pleasant confronting first our mortality and then our peril from fire. But I feel better having done so. We all have a better chance of getting out safely now if there’s a fire in our house. And if we don’t, well, at least our families will know what to do.

What have you been putting off doing because it’s no fun to think about? Rebalancing your portfolio? Updating your will? What would make you tackle those projects?

My walk to daycare

The other day I took my camera with me as I walked to daycare. On that one mile, I pass through and past so many different stages of Lawrence: the historic 19th century mills (and bridge), the renovated future with offices and transportation centers, the incredibly depressed and depressing present of boarding houses and neglect, and the remnants of a modest suburban immigrant town.

I’ve created this album so that you can walk with me.

Lawrence