Thinking Outside of the Box - Doh! I Meant "Inside"

We were headed to a halloween party at our church and, unlike some of you perfect parents out there, I haven't purchased the pieces for the kids' "real" costumes, yet. Since Peanut and Bean have enough costumes to transform every child within a two mile radius, I felt confident that they would find something fantastic in the Ikea bins, upstairs.

Before I continue, let me mention that after a lifetime of being involved in theater - I have a true love for costumes. Seeing people turned into a plant, animal, or mythical creature is akin to some kind of crazy magic. I, myself, have been hired to design and/or costume children's theater productions for many years (okay- OKAY! Those who really know me will want me to mention-in full disclosure- that a lot of those costumes were sewn with a glue gun. In all fairness, it's really hard to sew foam!).

MacG and I were sitting on the couch, when we heard, "We're ready for the costume party!" My daughter's sweet little munchkin voice was proceeded by her appearance, as Elphaba - that's the Wicked Witch of the West, for those of you who haven't been acquainted with the musical, "Wicked".

"You have to paint me green!" She cackled. I agreed.

Then came Bean. We could hear him thumping uncertainly down the stairs and craned our necks to see what fabulous character he had chosen.

My son had decided to attend the church costume party, as a Cardboard Box.

Peanut had "designed" the getup. It had a large box with armholes for the suit and a smaller box with eyeholes for the mask. She had drawn a mustache on the front of it.

A Cardboard Box?!

I am ashamed to admit the next part:

I said, "Wow, guys. Really...uh...creative. You couldn't find a real costume to wear?"

*Ouch* I feel awful for having said that. Thank goodness Peanut responded with:

"This IS a real costume, Mom. I worked really hard on it." Bean nodded his square head.

Well, okay, then.

I painted Peanut's face (and the inside of her ears and back of her neck: it had to be right. It was really hard to remove.) green and off we went. My children had been thinking outside of the box, while creating this recycled facade. My son was now, literally, thinking inside of the box - and I had to deliver him to the party in his new, square state.


Bean was disturbed that people kept mistaking him for a robot. "I. AmaBOX!" He would correct them.

After some spooky fizzy punch and carnival games, came the costume parade. Ian donned his mask - it's pretty difficult walking around with a box on your head - and joined the circle.

The kids walked around in circles and a microphone voice called, "And now, the judges will tell you what they've decided."

You mean the costumes were being judged? *Sigh*

"For funniest costume: The Box!"


Bean went to accept his award and I was flooded with pride (and guilt for having tried to talk him out of wearing it). Peanut spent the remainder of the evening bitterly telling anyone who would listen, that the concept was hers, dammit (all right, she didn't say "dammit" - she's only eight - but you could hear it in her voice)! Bean agreed to share the chocolate bar that he had won and all was well.

This was my latest lesson on not trying to stop my kids from being creative and unique. Sometimes it's a hard lesson to learn...

Luckily, my children are very persistent and persuasive.

And creative and unique.

An Hour Drive That Lasted Three and a Half Hours. Three Hours and Forty-Two Minutes, to be Exact

Have I ever told you that I have a paralyzing fear of heights?

I'm not talking about "climbing up the ladder" heights. I'm talking about "driving on a on-way dirt road looking over the ocean/a steep canyon/a severe drop into sharp conifer trees" heights. Whenever I know that there is going to be a road like that in my future over which I absolutely must travel, I make MacG drive. I close my eyes, hold onto the door handle with a force that turns my knuckles a bluish white, and say really bad words under my breath. I don't open my eyes until he tells me we've survived. Unfortunately, we live in a state, which is home to many, many beautiful mountains and we find ourselves traveling on these awful, quaint roads too often for my liking.

I got to drive myself across three such roads, this week. Well, okay, two such roads: I was hopelessly lost and went over one of them twice.

Peanut (she's eight) was going on a school camping trip to one of our state parks, with two 3rd/4th grade classes. Yes, that's forty-seven eight through ten year-olds. I volunteered to go with them. I was in charge of all the food for the kids and around fifteen adults - and I had forgotten the peanut butter. I figured that the odds of someone in this particular group needing peanut butter for making their lunch sandwich the following day was pretty high, so I stopped at the grocery store on the way out of town. I would only be ten or fifteen minutes behind the rest of the caravan, I figured.

Big mistake.

Really big.

I should have brought another parent with me to navigate, but every seat in my little (totally not-a-mom) car was completely filled with food. Along with my duffel bag, the front seat had several condiments lined across the seat and piled up on the floor. Do you know how much ketchup this age group eats? The back seat was covered with twelve watermelons. And they were heavy! I could feel my car accelerating quite a bit slower than usual. The trunk looked like a fruit cart: 90+ Gala apples, three bags of oranges, enough grapes to feed... well around 70 people. There wasn't any room in that car for someone to hold the map. Barely enough room for the map!

So I ended up on the wrong side of the coast. On a one-lane, dirt road. Overlooking the ocean. Twice.

The drive started out quite wonderfully: I had moon roof open, windows down all around. I had my favorite teen vampire soundtrack on superloud. There was a Cherry Coke Zero in my drink holder. Since I don't normally go on solo road trips, I was relishing the breeze and the music.

I had used an online map service, which had given me the direction to travel up the coast, find this nightmarish road and turn left onto a street - which hasn't existed for around 40 years. Apparently, it would have brought me into the back entrance to my destination. Forty. Years. Ago.

I had become desperate enough to ask an old man on a motorcycle for some guidance. He had a giant handlebar mustache, which bounced when he said, "I don't know what- in- the- hell you are talking about. I've lived here for half of my life and I've never heard of that road." He was yelling through my window: "You are at least fifty miles away from where you want to be."


Since I was in charge of cooking and it was almost time for our little campers to eat dinner - I began to panic. Just a little. As I headed back down the highway, I noticed that the fog was closing in on my little silver car, making it look like I was driving on a thoroughfare in the middle of the ocean. It was so awesome.

You realize that I'm being facetious, right?

I was sick to death of teen vampire music, at this point. I had listened to all three movies (don't hate) and I was done. My own racing heart accompanied the raucous bouncing of melons on the backseat, setting a rhythm for my trek across the coast.

I stopped at the first McDonald's that I could find and bought a giant Coke, so I didn't feel like a dork being there. But not one person who worked there "ever knew that we even had state parks". They referred me to an

extremely

slow

talking

man,

who had a crumb of something McFried on his lip. He told me to goheregothereandturnleft (only much slower than that). It turns out that he really meant to turn right, because when I next stopped at Burger King (I interrupted a domestic dispute to ask for directions) they sent sent me back the way I came. I bought a cup of coffee before I left.

On my way out the door, a much younger motorcyclist than the first one said, "Listen. I'll tell you how you can get where you're going. For real, this time." And he did.

I made it to our campsite by 5:01pm. The school camping schedule had stated that we would begin to cook at five. "You're late!" One of the kids said, beginning to unload the watermelons.

He had no idea...

Tenth Anniversary of the Tasty Titanic

My wedding cake was ugly.

It wasn't tacky or cutesy, or anything like that - the caterer dropped a case of soda on the "real" one on the morning of my Big Day, so they tried to make another one realquick and frosted it while it was still hot.

It looked sort of like the Titanic: Listing to the side, as if it had recently collided with a gnarly ice burg. The little bride and groom were up to their knees in white liquid sugar and roses looked like they were melting down the sides. It cost us hundreds of dollars, but my mom made sure that she got a refund.

When we arrived at the reception, my mother blocked my way to the door. The following conversation is the best recollection that my memory can serve:

MOM: Uhm, we have a problem. It's the cake. It's, well, you might have to see it for yourself...
ME/BRIDE: *GASP* What happened to it?
MOM: It...It looks like it is a little bit squashed, it-
ME/BRIDE: Squashed? What do you mean squashed?
MOM: They ruined the first one, so-
ME/BRIDE: You mean the ugly cake is the second cake?
MOM: Yes.

I looked at my new husband and decided that a sinking cake wasn't going to ruin our special day. We burst into laughter and my mom gave a huge sigh of relief. MacG and I made our grand entrance to "Groove is in the Heart" and we sailed by the disgraceful dessert as we crossed to our table.

Although it had the appearance of being slowly sucked into the Bermuda Triangle, and by the time we cut it it had turned from a three- tiered cake into a lumpy one-tiered cake, we had no option other than to serve it to our two- hundred- and- some- odd guests.

It was delicious.

Life is like that sometimes, isn't it? My mother once told me this: "Life is not beautiful. You have to make it beautiful." I believe her. How many times have things gone terribly wrong, but the way you handled the situation made it even better than it could have been, otherwise? It happens to me all the time... Some of my favorite trips, friends, and purchases have become my most beloved, due to some sort of unplanned calamity.

We had a fantastic reception. It was ten years ago, this month. Looking back, I wouldn't have changed a thing - except that some of the people that I now hold near and dear would have been there. But, at the time I didn't know that they existed. I guess you can't have everything.

However: You can have your ugly cake.

And you can eat it, too.

The Haunted Hospital

I could say that I'm surprised to see that the Halloween stuff has taken over the shelves at most stores in our area - but if I did I'd be lying. I saw some at the local dollar store in July. It made my brain feel a little funny, to see the red white and blue "You're a Grand Ol' Flag" banners next to the Frankenstein Paint-a-Piggybanks.

My six year old son, Bean, has a reputation for being terrified of pretty much anything which signifies the orange and black holiday. Last year, MacG brought our daughter into the Spirit Halloween Store to look for a costume. We all went on this little trip, because we decided to visit the Bounce House Patch after - to see if they might actually have some pumpkins there. Bean refused to enter the store. I couldn't blame him: Once you walk in, every terrifying animatronic/robotic statue in existence begins to gyrate, scream, shake and moan once the motion sensors have been activated.

The boy and I sat on the curb eating a bag of chocolate from the Sees shop, next door. Peanut left the Spirit store with a big bag of bloody gauze - she planned to use it to make her own costume.

Bean wouldn't allow the gory purchase to sit on the seat between them. He requested that it be locked in the trunk. I'm going to guess that out of the two children, he will not be my future horror movie-watching buddy. There is definitely hope for Peanut.

Although the things in the store are pretty scary, the only truly frightening place that I've ever been is the hospital. Now, I don't want to sound like your old Aunt Marge, who constantly complains about her various ailments. I know that with me, eventually my thoughts always returns to my wonky back. But this time it really does have something to do with the story!

I want to tell you about my time in The Haunted Hospital.

So, my spine surgeon is a talented guy. He builds things out of titanium and plants them in your body and you're able to walk, when once you might have had a lot of trouble getting around. But, he wanted to do my most recent surgery in a hospital that was about to shut down and change hands. In fact, I was the last living patient in the entire facility.

Okay, there was one Other Guy - but his family was just waiting for the doors to close, so that they could unplug him. I'm not being funny: This was actually the case.

The surgery was scheduled to be completed by mid-morning and I was supposed to be able to leave before dinner.

Didn't happen that way.

I ended up staying for FIVE DAYS.

The place was completely deserted. There was yellow Caution tape criss-crossed over the doors of the offices and rooms that had already been cleaned and sanitized. There weren't any doctors there, except one that was under contract to watch over me and the Other Guy. My own Doctor had left the country on vacation with his family, because he hadn't expected me to be hanging out there for so long.

The hallways were always dark, except directly in front of the room in which I was enjoying my stay. The same three nurses were always somewhere nearby and two physical therapists would visit daily and make me hobble around the eerie, shadowed halls with my walker.

The only people who visited were the Other Guy's wife, my family and our pastor. Everyone always looked very uncomfortable to be paying a visit, during my time at Casa de Creepy.

The night before I was able to leave, I had to sleep in a different room - because they were scheduled to renovate my room.

In the morning, there was yellow tape over my former door. Needless to say, I was thrilled to be given my walking papers. As I walked toward the exit, I passed the Other Guy's room. His family was saying goodbye.

If that hospital wasn't haunted when I got there, it surely is now...

October 17, 1985

On Tuesday it seemed like my house was haunted. We go to the front door and you can hear the television. when I opened the door I saw a flash and it was off. We herd footsteps and someone sliding on the loose carpet in the hall so we ran out to E's house. We got to her house and I said "let me lock the door". because I left it unlocked when we ran out, so we went back and it was locked!

Sounds like someone had been reading too much Stephen King...

Whoomp There it is

Because driving around in my car listening to Raffi is about as much fun as hanging out with Yours Truly after a week without thyroid medication, I decided to liven things up a bit with a mix tape. Wait - did I actually just say "mix tape"? What decade is this? What I meant was mix CD: which is probably just as bad, because I really should have moved on to an iPod by now. Right?

Anyway, I sat down with my good friend, iTunes, and decided to begin with a theme. Themes can be dangerous - just ask MacG. I made him a mix tape many years ago (that really was a tape), because he was going on a road trip with a touring punk band. I decided the theme should be any song that had travel words in the title: street, road, etc. Ask him how hard-core he felt, when the Disneyland Electric Light Parade song came up next in the queue. I hid that little gem somewhere between "Stepping Stone" and "Fascination Street".

So my theme for this week's mix is "weird songs". I thought the kids would enjoy hearing things that were a little off-beat.

Among songs that I included are:

Dead Man's Party (Oingo Boingo)

Turning Japanese (The Vapors)

Thriller (Michael Jackson, of course)

Dig That Groove Baby (Toy Dolls)

Yeah, I already know that my list gives away my age big time.

The last song that I picked was "Tootsie Roll" by 69Boyz (and yes, I did feel like a big dorky mom, writing that title/group name just now). I found it in our iTunes library and realized that I hadn't heard it in a while. Well, it turns out that I haven't listened to it in a long while.

A very. Long. While.

Did you know that that piece of musical genius starts out with:

"Yeeeeeaaaaaaaaahhhhhh 1994..."?

NINETEEN NINETY- FOUR??? That means it was from SIXTEEN years ago! How the heck did that happen? All I remembered about it was "to the left, to the left, to the right, to the right,to the front, to the front, to the back, to the back, now slide...".

NINETEEN NINETY-FOUR.

I was probably wearing a half-shirt and jeans with a cinched waist, the last time I heard that song! I think I was past the gigantic hair/bangs phase, but surely my belt was above my belly-button. I am certain that there was a pager somewhere in that glorious ensemble - I had to be able to send MacG a pre-texting era text, to find out the"4-1-1" for that evening's plans. Maybe watching a little "Life Goes On" to see what Corky was up to, or "Beverly Hills 90210" to check in with Brenda and Brandon?

Nineteen Ninety-Four.

Whoomp - there it is...

October 10, 1985

Today we told about our parents childhood. I told that when my father was little if something was neat they'd say twitchen! The fads were wide belts and beattle cloths. and the singers that were popular were the beattles and the beach boys. also gum costed five cent's and a candy bar costed ten cents. When my mom was young fishnet stockings, go-go boots, and psycadelic was in style, and everybody had had a skateboard. The singers they would listen to were the beattles and the beach boys and Twiggi the model was in style and gum costed one cent and candy bars costed five cents. also when she was camping with grampy and uncle paul a big bull came out bhind a rock and followed them when they were walking untill they got into their car and drove away. I bet they had an interesting childhood! They had fun it sounds like. I've heard them say other things they did.

Food, Glorious Food!

This week I have learned how much a smallish child can eat in a span of six hours. Packing a snack and a lunch for two people has really thrown me for a loop. I think it's because I have giant twin piles of foodstuffs waiting to be neatly packed(all right, who am I trying to fool here? So it isn't so neatly packed - more like haphazardly stuffed - but no one has complained yet) into lunch boxes, staring me in the face every morning. It isn't spread out through the day like it has been, all summer.

I'm thrown into a panic at roughly 6:35am each day, trying to figure out what I am supposed to put in the aforementioned lunch boxes. If I ask Peanut and Bean what they would like to eat, they will tell me to include:

A) Gum

B) Chocolate

C) Lucky Charms Cereal

I am not the healthiest eater on the planet, but I recognize these items as unwise lunch selections. What is on our menu? I'll tell you: Peanut butter sandwiches, peanut butter bagels, peanut butter and crackers - do I really need to go on? I guess I think peanut butter is a comfort food.

I know that one mother at our school packs homemade pumpkin muffins almost every day, because her family considers them comfort food. Another child is allowed to have Cheetos - only they aren't really "Cheetos", because they are a low-fat, health store, organicy version of something that really shouldn't have ever spawned a healthier version, at all. I mean, if a snack is going to turn your fingers orange - it might as well have all the other unseemly...uh, benefits, too, right...

I'll tell you what I crave when I think of comfort food:

McDonald's

Yes, I am actually owning up to my abiding love of the Golden Arches. Let me tell you a little bit about our history.

One of my earliest memories is seeing my mother's waist length hair right at my level, but a little further in front of me was the counter at Mickey D's. We would go there to celebrate, to reboot after a bad day (only we didn't say "reboot" back then, of course), or as a reward for something good that my brother or I did.

I know this to be the truth: Nothing tastes finer than one of Ronald's cheeseburgers, if you are sick or melancholy. Even if it barely resembles a cheeseburger.

When I was pregnant with Peanut, I convinced myself (and my doctor - although, I'm still not quite sure if she was just humoring me) that I had horrible morning sickness, which could not be conquered by anything other than A1 Steak Sauce or everything on the McDonald's menu. I truly did have awful morning sickness. I also had afternoon sickness, early evening sickness, and late night sickness. McNuggets seemed to be a cure-all. I know how terribly unhealthy the Big Mac is, I really do. I haven't had one in ages. However, during that nine+ months the Big Mac was a lifesaver.

Needless to say, I was not one of those adorable women who looked like they swallowed a beach ball. I was one of those gigantic women who looked like they swallowed a few too many Happy Meals.

When Peanut was a baby, that movie, "Supersize Me" was released on DVD. I watched it one extremely early morning, after the baby had decided that 4:45 was a perfectly wonderful time to wake up. I'm pretty sure that the film was supposed to shock and awe. It was supposed to show the American public how truly awful those french fries are. Maybe it was aiming to make us all fear the evil Sausage McMuffin and its partner: The crispy, golden, flaky, delicious fried Hashbr-but I digress.

That movie just made me want to eat me some McDonald's.

However, I can't pack that in the lunch boxes, now can I? Nor would I want to: I want my kids to grow up with nutritious food, which actually looks like the food that you are supposed to be eating.

But I bet I got you thinking about those fries...

September 30, 1985

Yesterday was okay, I didn't do much, I went to MacDonalds for lunch, I walked with my friend C, my brother A, and me. We went to my old house where Iused to live so it wasn't fun. I went to lot's of stores, we went to halmark, lucky's, mac Donalds, Thrifty's, and another one, I can't spell the name. My brother was acting wierd, so we both (me and C) yelled alot, and he just kept on being wierd, then we went home. A stayed home but I went to C's house, we both made Halloween books, and they were neat! you open the little books and then you open doors glued to the paper and you see a person, on the top of the door is a person in a costume.

Aways Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth- or, Pockets, as the Case May Be...

My husband, whom I shall call "MacGyver" - because everyone seems to use "The Husband" or "D.H." and my husband is original and completely uncommon and using such a nickname would not do him justice- is really good at fixing things.

He is, after all, super MacGyvery - minus, of course, the mullet. Minus any hair, actually.

So, MacG (there, that's even better) has a new hobby: Restoring and refurbishing old Coleman lanterns. How this all started, I'm not completely sure; but it is less expensive and time consuming than some of his other interests, so I've decided that I'm a fan. To aid in his search for Coleman bits and pieces, we decided to spend our Saturday at a flea market. Call him a Lantern Picker, if you will.

This was the first time at a flea market, for Peanut(8) and Bean(6). They weren't too sure about the place, for the first hour or so that we were there. For MacG and I, the smells, sounds and sights brought us back to our childhood, because we'd both been to that exact flea market several times in our youth.

MacG is an awesome companion at places such as these: When a bent old woman shrieked "onedollaronedollaronedollaronedollar!" in his face, he calmly blinked at her and asked, "so, uh, how much does everything cost?" She was not amused.

The kids quickly got over their hesitance and learned to bargain. Peanut found some great pieces and Bean bought six boxes of TNT Pop-Its for, well, one dollar. You totally had these when you were a kid:

Right?

All the people milling around looking at other people's junk (er, I mean treasures) reminded me of the garage sales that we used to have at our house, when I was growing up. I began to ruminate about one sale in particular:

The one where my mother sold several hundreds of dollars to the neighborhood ladies. It may have been thousands, but the idea makes me feel kind of ill, so I'm going to pretend that it was just hundreds, okay?

How does one sell money, you ask? Was she printing copies? Laundering for the mob? Well, hang on and I'll explain.

My grandmother is a notorious pack rat. I think I got the hoarding gene from her. She was the one who gave me a sugar cube for my birthday - from a trip that we went on, like, fifteen years ago. She rarely parts with anything. So, imagine how pleasantly surprised everyone was, when she began packing up items to donate to the Goodwill. This was sort of ironic, because she enjoys shopping at Goodwill - once she even bought back a sweater for me, which I had donated to Goodwill, because she thought it "looked like" me.

She put the *ahem* treasures in boxes and then they sat in the garage for a while. For a long while. Years.

One particular weekend on a summer in 1988ish, my family was planning to hold a garage sale. My grandmother was visiting her mother on the other side of the country, so my mother decided to help her out. She took the To Be Donated boxes out of Grandmother's garage and priced it all out - fully intending to hand over the earnings.

One of the boxes was full of old, worn out purses. There were square bags, drawstring sacks, imitation *insert your designer here* bags; lots of purses. No one even really paid much attention to them for a while.

Then all of a sudden, women were clambering for the chance to buy one of Grandmother's old purses. One lady came back and bought all of them. How wonderful, we thought, Grandmother will be thrilled that we were able to make some money off of this old junk (oops, I mean treasure) before she could give it all away for free!

She wasn't thrilled.

She was extremely unhappy with us.

She had been using the old bags as her own personal Bank of Grandma. Each purse had had around $100 in its folds.

The moral of the story: If you are going to sell someone else's stuff, be sure to check the pockets first...

November, 1985

My grandmother took me to the goodwill. It has lots of good stuff there! I got parts of my costume from there, and purple pants. I think it is pretty neat there! I am not poor or anything, but why pay regular price, when you can pay five dollars lower? I got lots of stuff from there.

C is getting lots of words for this journal! He gets more than me sometimes! I used to get the most all of the time, but B and C are getting pretty much now! I can't wait until Thanksgiving, a nice, carved turkey, with a mashed potato, beans and sweet potatoes! Yum! I can't wait! Then christmas is to come! That is fun! This year for Christmas, we're going to Yosemite.