Handyman Blues

From the end of August up until about two weeks ago our downstairs toilet wasn't working properly. 
Flushing it was like playing Russian toilet roulette. It would work fine and then every 5th or 6th flush it would back up.
I may have toned up my butt climbing the stairs constantly to use the upstairs bathroom.
It didn't affect S & N much because they already won't use the downstairs bathroom because they can always find some lone spider holed up in a corner down there - apparently when you're five, spiders are way scarier than overflowing toilets.
You may wonder why I didn't mention this before and I'll tell you.
It's because commenting on your own parenting inadequacies, or on the wacky things that your kids say or do, is funny in a folksy, self-deprecating way but having a broken toilet, well that's just downright embarrassing.  
Ken valiantly hauled it outside on the back deck not once, but twice.
What's more embarrassing than having a broken toilet? 
Having a broken toilet on your back deck.
He fished foreign objects out of it not once, but twice (tweezers and a metal bracelet).
Who says boys don't wear (and lose) jewelry?

song: Handyman Blues • artist: Billy Bragg

Black Socks

It's hard not to be suspicious when your kid leaves five pairs of socks in the dirty clothes basket but only two pairs of underwear.
Is he changing is socks three times a day or his underwear once a week?

song: Black Socks • artist: Bill Harley

It's Good to be King

I'm not sure I understand the concept of the king cake.
Isn't a dessert with a coin in it really just a choking hazard?
Well whatever. H won it again this year which is apropos of his name.

song: It's Good to be King • artist: Tom Petty

Cold Turkey

Offered: Frozen Turkey

You gotta love Freecycle. I know I do.

This frozen turkey, purchased in 2012 "when they were cheap" was up for grabs because the woman who owns said turkey, "needs the freezer space."
While it's nice to give it away - and I hope that if she didn't have any takers she up and took her "never used" turkey to a food pantry - here's a wild suggestion: cook it!
Turkey - it's not just for Thanksgiving.

song: Cold Turkey • artist: John Lennon

The List

OMG, The prompt for NaBloPoMo is about list making. I love making on-going lists and crossing off items as they get done. My lists go in their own special notebook not on a digital device, I guess so that I can keep referring to it when the power goes out.
I'd like to title this post Zen and the art of list making. 
I started list making in earnest at the beginning of last year when I decided to tackle the age old problem of flitting from one project or chore to another without finishing anything. You know how that works, your pantry cabinets are above the washing machine and so every time you reach for a can or box of pasta you hang up a few items of clothing to dry. Except that that leads you to forget what food item you went back into the laundry room to get in the first place and causes you to make more trips than necessary and the laundry does get hung but it's piecemeal and not very satisfying. 
So I brought this problem up during dokusan, which, when you study Zen Buddhism is your one-on-one meeting time with your sensi (teacher). One of the challenges of Zen Buddhism is to always be in the present, to focus on one thing at a time. Sensi, suggested among other things than whenever I head in the laundry room to fetch a jar of spaghetti sauce and notice clean laundry in need of hanging and get tempted to stray from the task at hand, I bow in acknowledgment to the laundry and then get that jar of spaghetti sauce. So I bowed more than a few times and then I started making these lists as I went along - I didn't need to hang the laundry immediately per say, I just needed to write it down so I'd remember to do it later. Then I could stop thinking about it and go back to thinking about that spaghetti sauce.
I regress now and then and put away clean dishes one at a time as I'm walking by the dishwasher but for the most part the list making helps, and even if it takes me a few days to do even some simple task that I've written down - well that's okay too.

album: The List • artist: Rosanne Cash

Parenting is...

when some wine helps when they whine.

Freeze Frame

To celebrate the new year we joined the Woods Hole toast to the coast parade which features dancers with horns, a jaunty man with a parasol, the spontaneous quoting of Shakespeare (at least I think it was Shakespeare) and other oddities to be found only in Woods Hole.
After toasting the coast we went to Pie in the Sky to try and get our frozen selves a little more toasty only we couldn't because the shop is so tiny that we all ended up at an outside table where once again I lamented that my stainless steel travel mug is so darn insulated that no heat seeps out to warm cold fingers.
After Woods Hole my kids insisted on going back to Old Silver to slip and slide on the ice at the far end of the parking lot, an activity they discovered on New Year's Eve when we went to the beach for the last litter pick up of 2013. They played ice hockey (with ice), ran and slid, and just generally entertained themselves in 28-degree weather for almost an hour.
You think that all your cat needs for entertainment is some wadded up newspaper but all my kids need is a dirty parking lot and some ice.

song: Freeze Frame • artist: J.Giles

Pencil-Thin Moustache

song: Pencil-Thin Moustache • artist: Jimmy Buffet

New Year's Day

That new year's joke about how "I won't see you again until next year!" never gets old does it?
I let the kids all suggest things for dinner Tuesday night which meant we ended up having mac and cheese, pesto, pot stickers, and I threw in some rice pilaf and broccoli for new measure.
There was so much food on the table I didn't have to cook again until the next year!

song: New Year's Day • artist: U2

Got to Have Something

Tonight I told one of the boys that if he couldn't eat his dinner, could he at least artfully arrange it on his plate?
No sense wasting food and sacrificing good design too.

song: Got to Have Something • artist: Mark Knopfler

Little Drummer Boy

I don't get it.
He had no gift to give?
He had a drum.

song: Little Drummer Boy • composer: Katherine Kennicott Davis

Do They Know It's Christmas Time?

You know you've raised proper Unitarian Universalist children when you take them to "trim the church" morning at the fellowship and someone is playing Christmas songs on the piano and when they play "Hark the Herald Angles Sing," one of your kids says, "look! the church know the same songs as Charlie Brown Christmas."
Later, when you're driving to town, one of them comments from the back seat of the car, "why do so many people have Jesus's on their lawns?"

song: Do They Know It's Christmas Time? • artist: Band Aid

Runaway

So what exactly is the moral of the story of the gingerbread man?
That you'll be eaten by a fox if you run away from home?
Sort of a harsh cautionary tale for kindergarteners if you ask me.

song: Runaway • artist: Del Shannon

The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)

Oh no! The twins have discovered the Alvin and the Chipmunk's Christmas song!

song: The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late) • artist: David Seville & the Chipmunks

High Hopes

I keep wanting to run, Pavlovian-like to the phone, every time they play the Christmas Elves forgetting that we're - yes! Already qualified!

song: High Hopes • artist: Bruce Springsteen

Until the Day is Done

It shouldn't be Thanksgiving until all the Halloween candy's been eaten and it shouldn't be Christmas until all the left over turkey's gone from the freezer.
And since I've still got a chocolate bunny on the top shelf above the sink, this pretty much ensures me immortality.

song: Until the Day is Done • artist: R.E.M.

Photograph

Every time I see your face, it reminds me of the places we used to go.
But all I've got is a photograph, and I realize you're not coming back anymore.

song: Photograph • artist: Ringo Starr

If I Ever Lose My Faith In You

I think we can all agree that over weight guys with white beards and nicotine habits should not don Santa hats.
My kid (pointing out the car window): "Mommy. Is that Santa?"
Me: "I don't know. Maybe."
My kid: "Doesn't Santa know that smoking is bad for you?"

song: If I Ever Lose My Faith In You • artist: Sting

The Final Countdown

Despite having spent almost $40 on advent calendars I am still being asked the question children have pestered parents with since red-velvet coats and flying reindeer were first conceived: "how many days until Christmas?"
I get it - the idea behind the advent calendar is to let kids know how many days until the big pay off - so they'll stop asking their parents every five minutes.
But the sad truth is that they don't work.
And here's why.
They are made wrong.
Advent calendars count up the days until Christmas beginning with calendar day one, which corresponds with December 1 - unless you buy your yearly calendar at the Christmas Tree Shop. One year I got an extra day at the end of April, another year Easter was labeled wrong. For $2.99 you take your chances.
Anywho - the problem herein is that what does it being day 6 really tell a kid? Are there six days left until Christmas? No they aren's so the modern advent calendar tells us nothing. Who cares that we're six days in? All kids want to know is how many days are left and how five year olds can subtract 6 from 24?
None.
The same number who have the patience to count up all the skillfully camouflaged boxes that are left among their scenes of sugar plums, kittens in santa hats and sleighs flying through moonlit skies (in pictures there's always a full moon on Christmas Eve) to determine for themselves how many days are left based on how many little doors remain. Why go through the trouble when in your parent you have a living Siri doll to ask?
Sure - I could be a renegade parents and just have my kids open door 24 first and then work their way backwards but the calendars aren't set up that way. The big pay off is under door 24 - the tree with presents or the baby Jesus depending on whether you got the secular or the religious calendar.
Some of the calendars even have poems threaded through the doors - written in 4pt type. You can't very well start on December 1 with "and to all a good night," and expect the next 23 days to go well now can you?
So please Mr. Manufacturer of advent calendars - wherever you are - do a parent a favor and really count down the days to Christmas, starting with 24 and ending with 1 so I don't have to keep answering the question. Again. And again. And again.

song: The Final Countdown • artist: Europe

All I Want is You

The only item on my bucket list is winning the WMVY Holiday Stocking.

song: All I Want is You • artist: U2