Too Many Choices!

This past week marks my first attempt at using Care.com. I don't know if it's the site, or me, but we just don't work well together.

See, I need to hire a babysitter for a couple hours, and I don't know anyone personally. I guess back in Ye Olden Days I would ask around if anyone knew someone, or hunt down some neighborhood kid off the street who seemed responsible. But it's 2017, and they have this website where you can just say, "I'd like a babysitter next week," and...

...and 25 people will respond within days (some within minutes). This isn't a good thing. It would be nice to pick between 2-5 different options, but 25 is just too many choices. If I wasn't determined to go to this event, I'd delete the "job" and just say, "forget it." I've now spent about 3 hours - the same amount of time I'd like to hire someone for - making my request, trying to figure out how to view the messages from respondents (no surprise: I had to pay), and then reviewing the respondents... and I still haven't even contacted a single one of them.

This has got me thinking about one of the drawbacks of the internet - sometimes it is Just Too Much. Too many choices. Too many voices. So much noise.

When you're looking for a needle in a haystack, it's good that Almost Everything Ever is on the internet. For example, last week, I ordered Rainbow Butterfly Unicorn Kitten greeting cards. I also procured a bobbing piece of bacon for the car dashboard. When you're looking for something obscure, the internet is your friend.

When you want to do something simple, like find a babysitter, it is Just Too Much.

Sorry this is short, I have to get back to these potential babysitters.

-A Real Housewife of the North Shore

Garbage Problems

The Baby has gotten really good at cleaning up after himself. Too good, in fact.

Phase I: Post-Dinner Cleanup

After dinner, I consistently have to remind Thing 1 and Thing 2 to scrape any remnants of dinner off their plates and into the trash (for Thing 1, almost everything she was dished up; for Thing 2, almost nothing). The Baby, tiny imitator that he is, does this routine without being asked. I am winning at life!

Then one day, when I go to scrape the Husband's plate into the trash, I see a plate and fork in there. The Baby apparently decided that after scraping, the whole place setting just went in there. This has happened more than once. I now know to check the trash after dinner for plates and utensils.

Phase II: Disposable Cup Quandary

We frequently bring home those kiddie cups you get at restaurants - the plastic ones covered in pictures of kids or dinosaurs or, in the case of Olive Garden, random food-people like Olive the... Olive - because Thing 1 and Thing 2 like them, and because they have lids with straw holes, which is nice when you're outside or traveling.

Recently, I've gotten iced coffee, which the Baby thinks is the greatest thing ever. So to appease him and not stunt his growth and not get him hopped up on caffeine, I have been giving him one of the straw cups with juice in it (don't judge - I could let him drink the coffee - and no one wants to deal with a tantrum before they've finished their coffee).

The problem is, he recognizes somehow that these cups are supposed to be tossed after one use. He takes two or three sips, gets bored, and throws the entire cup of juice into the trash. Which I then have to fish out, wash off, and put in the fridge for later. And repeat.

Phase III: Paper

The Baby hasn't gotten the hang of recycling versus trash yet - to be fair, neither has the Husband. And I have faith the Baby will get it before the Husband does. Regardless, to the Baby, paper can go in the trash. Any papers. All papers. But still, imagine my surprise when I open the trash the other day and find... six dollars in bills. That hellion went in my purse in search of gum (which is a whole other post), took out the money, and threw it in the garbage.

I'd like to think this was a one-time episode, but no. Tonight, I once again open up the trash to throw something in and... dollar bills. My hard-earned paper-route money, sitting atop the remnants of our visit to McDonald's.

So now I'm stuck routinely checking the trash multiple times a day for useful items that the Baby has decided are no longer useful to him. I guess at least I don't have to worry he'll grow up to be a hoarder.

Household Creatures

Over the course of my adult life, I've been the owner/servant of several fish, rabbits, ferrets, and a cat. I started with a rabbit, which my boyfriend at the time thought would make a great birthday gift.

Don't give rabbits as gifts
A rabbit is probably one of the worst gifts you can give someone in college, in case you were wondering how that worked out. My roommates were less than thrilled with his ability to nibble on everything in sight and scatter his little rabbit poops everywhere. I was informed that the rabbit was male, and there are no health reasons for getting male rabbits neutered, so I never took him to the vet. When he died under mysterious circumstances a scant few years later, I learned that he was actually a she. I was renting a room at the time, in the city, and didn't have any friends who owned land, and suddenly here I was with a dead rabbit in need of burial. Did I mention that it was cold out, and that I didn't own so much as a trowel?

Don't buy betta fish
Concurrent with the rabbit, I attempted to rescue several fish from the pet store, but after accidentally killing two in a row, I've sworn off fish forever. Fish are blessedly easy to "bury."

Don't adopt street cats
After the fish, the husband (who was not the husband at the time) and I found a kitten in a trash can. We liberated him, but he refused to leave the trash can and we had to drag him out. He is currently the insane diabetic cat that has been previously mentioned in this blog. This week he even ate through a bag of potatoes to gnaw on a potato; nothing is safe. He will eat clothing out of the laundry if it smells enough like food. And twice a day, I get to give him insulin, which after a year of playing with dosages is still not properly managing his diabetes.

Don't expect rabbits to behave
The husband and I adopted two rabbits. The first was a sweetheart, and very well behaved. But he got lonely so we let him pick a girlfriend (don't worry, they were both fixed). The girlfriend hated me. She also was a frequent nibbler - baseboards, books, cords, furniture. Our crib still bears her nibble marks. And she hated me, right up until she got cancer and I had to give her prednisolone twice a day for six months. Since she loved the medicine, she also wound up liking me, and when I had to put her to sleep the day before Easter, we were finally pals.

The other rabbit lived on, dying the slow death of old age, and had a seizure while we were away on vacation, so the poor person I had hired to watch over him had to see him over to the other side.

Don't be me 
At some point, the husband also decided we should get ferrets. I was not a huge fan of this proposition, as they don't live very long. Case in point, the older ferret - a scant three years old - developed pancreatic tumors. After a week and a half of feeding the ferret special superfood every three hours and administering prednisolone twice a day, the ferret developed an ulcer. So on the morning of the biggest snowstorm of the year, I had to call around and find an open vet's office that could handle ferrets. Then we (ferret and I) drove through the snowstorm so that I could watch him curl up one last time and ease out of his misery.

When I returned from the vet, the baby was puzzled as to why the ferret was no longer in his carrier, and Thing 1 and Thing 2 asked when we could get another ferret. To which I replied, "We can get another pet when you're ready to put it to sleep."

I'm not anti-pet; I'm anti-dying pets
I probably won't win parent of the year for that response, but it's the truth. Pets die. Pets get long-term illnesses. Pets can be loving, and fun (not fish; fish are neither), but at the end of the day you just might wind up getting ferret blood on yourself as you take your poor little friend on a snowy car ride. And you'd better be prepared with a shovel and a plot of land, or a place to put his little box of ashes on your mantle.

I hope you have better luck with your pets than I do as a
-Real Housewife of the North Shore

I'm Still Here

I'm still here.

I just haven't been housewifing very well. Hence the lack of blog posts.

See, one of the things that has happened this year is that I've started making up crazy stories in my head again. I haven't done this for quite some time, but running around delivering newspapers at 4 AM actually gives your brain a lot of time to fly free, and when mine flies free it starts making up stories featuring fictional characters.

So when November came around, I decided to try something a little different, and actually write one of my crazy all-in-my-head stories. Unlike what I imagine a Good Novel to be, these are more like a cross between Gone With the Wind and something VC Andrews would put out. Hence why they stay in my head and entertain me when I'm bored. It has occurred to me that there is probably some similarity between my doing this and my 5-year-old running around the house muttering to himself for hours at a time, fighting imaginary... whatevers. I discussed this with the husband and he assured me that no, everyone does not go around inventing characters in their minds while they do the dishes. So, I figure I might as well put them out on paper and see what happens.

I don't know yet if this is a good or a bad thing. My not-literary-masterpiece stories are approximately 80 times more fun to write and edit than the stuff I was trying to write before, and I don't think they're that much worse. This means that I spend easily several hours a day writing. The first story rapidly soared past meeting my NaNoWriMo word count goal, and I was even excited to edit it.

But actually enjoying writing means that I have to drag myself away from it to do all that housewifey stuff like making dinner or going shopping. Or parenting stuff like entertaining my 1-year-old. So... it's kind of taking over my life, like Candy Crush once did.

I've also let the bathroom kind of stagnate in its half-renovated state for two months now.

Ultimately, I'm just not sure if what I'm doing counts as work or not. Am I being lazy? Selfish? It feels like too much fun to be sending my fictional friends on adventures. I hope I can justify continuing this endeavor by editing one of their stories into something that makes a dime or two.

I must go now, to prevent the baby from writing all over the house in red ink. He's just made some sort of illegible entry on our family fridge calendar. 

Then, I'll probably see how I can get my new set of characters to kiss. Unfortunately, I don't think they're going to get there today... 

Things I Stink At

I would not be a good General Contractor.

This is too bad, because I harbored a secret ambition to make this my new career. Another dream shattered.

I realized my inability in this area when I started attempting to oversee renovations in my bathroom. As you may recall, I ripped down the wallpaper border months ago with plans to repaint the walls. This was either a success or a failure, depending how you look at it. I learned that there was wallpaper under the wallpaper border, not paint as I'd thought, and I had to spend hours removing wallpaper (and wallpaper glue) from all the walls. Once this was done, I was left with a beautiful purple wall - marred with scratches and non-purple sections.

The purple has actually grown on all of us and we love it, but it doesn't go with the tile.

You know what doesn't go with aqua and black? Lavender.

Before painting, though, I decided to see about getting the shower I wanted put in. And while things were getting repainted, I might as well replace the ceiling fixture with a fan to solve our mold problem, right?

All good in theory. But then the electrician did this to my ceiling:

I don't think cutting drywall is his specialty?

 Which was really my first failure as a GC, because he really should have discussed things with me before relocating the fixture and destroying my ceiling.

And then the plumber came and put in the shower, but that left me with this:



Do you see the holes in the tile? Look closely...

 

Which was almost exactly what I asked for. Old taps out, new shower in.

"I'll just swap out those holey tiles with ones from under the sink, behind the vanity," I said.

"No, no you won't," the wall said. "I, Wall, will break long before you shatter one of the tiles. And removing them in one piece? Hahaha! Not if I have anything to do with it!"
And then I bashed those babies with a sledgehammer and wound up with this.

Success! For now...

Which, um, takes us to today. I have holes in my ceiling and my wall, a shower that's not totally functional because it will get the walls soaked, the walls are still not one color, and the tub refinisher dude is coming in two weeks.

And I'm over here blogging. Which just goes to prove that I stink at renovations and should stick with attempting to write my novel. It's almost November, folks. Will this year be the year? I finished editing novel one and it stank. I finished novel two and it stunk, too. I am halfway through writing a third novel and it is so boring that I am having trouble finishing it.

(I also agreed to coordinate field trips again, which is also stinking, just in case you were curious.)

The husband has completely given up on the bathroom. "Call a GC," he told me last night. "Have someone come fix this mess you made."

Has it come to that?

I might be terrible at many jobs; at least I can still fall back on being a

-Real Housewife of the North Shore.

Housewife Responsibility #2: Groceries

Today our local Hannaford's (regional division of international grocery store) reopened as a Big Y (local chain of grocery store) and grocery shopping is on my mind.

I also hate the new novel I'm attempting to write and am avoiding looking into field trips or dealing with the mysterious maggot-laden bags that I found in the basement and threw outside into the yard, so it's Blog Time.

Grocery Shopping!

I think when I was about eight or ten or so, grocery shopping was fun. You have a list and you go on a quest through the store to buy all the right items at the right prices. You get to push the items around in a big cart that you can get going and jump onto and ride down the aisle. Also, I don't think I was allowed to accompany my mother to the grocery store until I was an older child, so it carried an air of grown-upness that is always appealing when you're not a grown-up.

Sometimes, we even went to this awesome grocery store that took your bags of groceries and sent them outside for you. You'd pull your car around to the side of the building and your groceries would come out in paper bags on a conveyor belt. Then someone would help put them in the car. It was super cool.

Grocery Shopping...

Fast forward to being an adult. I am now responsible for making a list of what to buy - and I frequently don't make one. I default to buying the same foods again, and again, and again. I can always use an onion. I always drink milk. Must have Diet Coke. I become familiar with grocery store layouts, able to hunt down cooking wine and peanut butter. I start to memorize prices of items.

Hannaford has always been one of my favorites because they don't put 6000 items on sale every week or have ridiculous activities like "Mix and Match! Buy 10 of these 25 different items and get them all for $2 each!" ... I invariably wind up buying 9 items and paying full price. Grocery shopping is already complicated, and I'm always in a rush, and I have to time to fulfill quests.

I get my groceries in a slew of plastic bags that rip before I can get the groceries into my house. Some bored-looking teenager puts the cans on top of my bread and we have weird-shaped sandwiches all week. I save the plastic bags that don't rip and they fill half my hall closet.

Grocery Shopping with Things and Baby

One of the first things I did as a newly-minted housewife was organize the coupon holders that The Husband got me for my birthday. I also started keeping a notepad on the fridge where I write the items we run out of or are running low on, so I have to make fewer substitutions in recipes. I feel confident and capable.

Then I go shopping with Thing 1, Thing 2, and the Baby.

It turns out every child, including Things 1 and 2, wants to ride the cart up and down the aisles. And if they don't ride it, they try to push it and run into little old ladies or grouchy men, or hit the shelves and send food flying everywhere. They also argue -
"I want to pull the number at the deli counter!"
"I hate that kind of Pop-Tarts!"
"It's my turn to ride the cart!"
"He said I smell!"
"Why does she always get to put the onion dip in the cart!?"

Then Baby gets fed up with sitting still and starts pulling items out of the back of the cart and eating them - "No! Not the box of rice! Here, try this green onion!" - or throwing them on the floor - "Now we have to buy a bruised apple!" - and screaming when you take away the jar he was about to throw to the floor.

Oh, and those belts they put on the seats? Those do not contain a small wriggling child. He stands up in that seat faster than you can say:

"Grocery Shopping Sucks!"

It's not my favorite task, that's for sure.

But today we needed milk (like always) and muffins (like always) and also a lemon, so Baby and I went to this new Big Y and I was wandering around trying to make sense of their sales. Is the unit price of 3 Danimals Six Packs-for-$6 cheaper than the unit price in a 12-pack? Why don't they have a generic soy sauce?

Since I'm an experienced shopper, we found all the items (soy sauce is with Asian; cooking wine is in baking; rice vinegar is in the aisle labeled Vinegar), and made it through the jungle without maiming anyone or overspending.

...And then I get to the checkout and they handed me a gold coin along with a flyer explaining what you can do with a gold coin. I'm a nice person on the outside so I said nothing, but on the inside I had some not-so-nice thoughts about what the folks who run with Big Y should do with their gold coins. Now I have to keep track of gold coins on top of everything else?!

They also have a slot machine game that you can play to win a reusable bag. I did not participate.

I'm going to start sending my children in to do grocery shopping while I wait in the car reading a book. I'll just tell them it's a treasure hunt. They'll be thrilled with the gold coins and they can practice their reading and math skills.


Srsly?

Non-Green Thumbs

We've been dealing with a drought this summer, and not just in blogging (that's the one reference I'll make to the fact that I haven't posted in over two months). So I have a helpful tip for everyone who's also suffering through an extended dry spell: you can turn potatoes into water.

Apparently, all you have to do is buy a bag of potatoes - they're often on sale for a couple dollars - and put them on your basement stairs. Wait a few weeks - about three - and then voilà! Water.

I discovered this magic yesterday. Something foul was in the air. At first I blamed the cat, but his litter box was nice and tidy. Which left the potatoes. Mind you, I walk by the potatoes numerous times a day, you would think I'd have noticed that they were liquefying, but from a cursory glance, all that was visible was the presence of a few eyes, no big deal. Potatoes with eyes are still useful potatoes, so long as the eyes haven't taken over completely. But the smell did seem to be coming from the potatoes, so I decided they should go to the compost. I picked up the bag and water started pouring out of the holes.

It's a mystery to me why this is occurring - and also how the water stayed in the holey bag until I picked it up - but if you're in a severe enough drought, this seems like it could be useful.

Our drought isn't that severe, so the potatoes went in the trash.

The drought is severe enough that it almost killed our baby apple tree. Every single leaf dried up and fell off, and I was afraid that it was dead. But I lugged the bucket of water from our dehumidifier up out of the basement and dumped it on that baby tree for two weeks and it came back to life with even more leaves than before.

It failed to rain just about at all in July, so the plants are confused and blooming late. The morning glories and hostas are a month behind. Our pumpkin plants somehow miraculously survived but are also flowering late, so here we are in September with nary a pumpkin on the vines.

This after one cucumber plant came up out of the entire package (it fell victim to the drought), and two basil plants managed to come up out of two dozen seeds.

The dill was doing okay, but in the last two weeks it all shriveled up and died, I have no idea why. And that's how our first attempt at gardening has gone.

I would make a terrible farmer. Plants commit suicide when they find out I'll be taking care of them. Or, rather, failing to take care of them. The lady who owned the house before us cultivated beautiful gardens with carefully selected annuals that bloom in succession so that there are always flowers, from March through October. I've managed to kill a rose bush, a clematis, and for some reason none of the irises bloom anymore. We planted daffodils one year; none of them came up. We planted thrift; it died. I tried growing garlic and got the world's tiniest garlic ever.

It's been a bad year for indoor plants, as well. I somehow murdered my poinsettia plant, along with my last remaining Christmas cactus. The skeleton of the poinsettia is in my kitchen window, haunting me. I haven't thrown it out because I'm still hoping it comes back to life like the magical apple tree. The only plant you can trust me with is a spider plant. Those things could survive nuclear war.

Perhaps I need to try growing potatoes...

At any rate, it's a good thing we live within spitting distance of several grocery stores, because we'd all be starving if I had to grow our food. In that regard, I'm grateful to be a Modern-Day

-Real Housewife of the North Shore