Fred

We lost my father-in-law over the weekend. Here are some memories I will carry with me.

He lived alone for many years, after losing his wife, and was just fine with it, thank you very much. He loved to have visitors, to a point. And then he was just as happy to get back to his life. He still got the newspaper every day, and did the crossword puzzle.

He was the Hanz to my Franz at the family’s twins-themed party. We are here to….Pump…You Up. We had balloons in our matching sweatshirts to simulate muscles and matching sweatbands.

He sent me earrings as a thank you for sharing my husband, who travelled to Michigan to take care of him when he was sick.

We have several vinyl/reusable bags around that he received as free gifts for one thing or another, with slogans from the NRA and one that reminds us that “Freedom is not Free”. He thought we could use them. And we do, and think of him.

Our kids were the youngest grandkids and he was older, so we didn’t expect a lot of interaction with them. How shocked we were, though, when he got down on the floor to hang out with the girl, when she was just an infant.

He kept cookies in a real-life cookie jar. Always.

He told stories about his time in the Army that would make a longshoreman blush. He’d seen some things I’m glad I didn’t have to during the riots in Detroit.

He was gentle and kind and caring. He missed his wife terribly.

Just as we will miss him.

What we liked this week

Here’s what we liked while surfing the web this week:

1.  Wondering how to tempt the tastebuds of the moms in your life?  Look no further than these Mother’s Day Recipes.

2.  And while we’re at it, this chocolate toffee cake looks divine, absolutely wonderful.  Hint hint.

3.  Here’s a link to some famous mothers, in honor of the day.

4.  Think being a mom is glamorous?  Well, you’re right, it’s not.  But here’s a blog about what it is, though. I can relate.  What’s your mom-a-form?

5.  I’m lucky enough to be part of a great coaching team of a wonderful Girls On The Run group at the girl’s school. Any group whose tagline is “Inspiring girls to be joyful, healthy and confident” is all right by me.

6.  Ah, board games with friends. Fun, competitive and…rife with politics?  Read on.

7.  The Cheap, Charming, Kinda Crazy Lab of a Video Visionary.  Cool.

8.  What would you do to demonstrate what it means to Make It Count?

9.  You must watch this beautiful video made by Outside In Magazine editors of their journey through India.

Enjoy, my friends!  Laura and Scott

Balance

I find myself wondering about balance a lot recently. I think we all do. It’s part of the modern condition, with the constant expectations and demands on our time. We all talk longingly about achieving balance. However, now that I come to think about it, I’m sure people through the ages have always thought about balance.

- Honey, make sure you make time to pick berries after you hunt that caribou. And don’t forget, on Wednesday we’re carving arrowheads at the Johnsons. Oh, and make sure you show Billy how to make a fire without setting the hut on fire again. And, and we need to make time to stare at the fire together in the moonlight, ok?

I think for me, one of the icky-sticky points is that I don’t trust those moments I have “balance”. I have grown so accustomed to texting while driving, eating while standing, making calls while I brush my teeth, etc. that I’m not sure I know how to just slow down and accept a peaceful time in my life. Peaceful times usually vacillate between me waiting for someone to sneak up on me and hit in me in the head with a bat or just sitting around and being bored.

Last week, I decided to get a massage. I haven’t had a massage in years, but I felt it was time to treat myself. It was great, but the funny thing was that it took 10 minutes to wind down, and as the massage was ending, how I started thinking about what I needed to do when the massage was over:

- I need to call that client

- I need to pick up the girls from school

- Alexa has that homework project due on Monday

- Are the Johnsons actually coming over on Wednesday or did I just imagine that?

- Oh, I need to pick up the drycleaning on the way home and get milk from the store.

Wasn’t I supposed to accept balance in my life and be calm and stuff. But, then I had to stop and think. “Balance” wasn’t the same as “calm”. Being calm is being quiet and peaceful. Balancing means holding multiple responsibilities together at the same time. I had “balance”, and very occasionally that “balance” leads to something that might be defined as “calm” or “peace”.

So, I’m being to recognize that its not as much that I need balance in my life, but that I really I need to learn to accept that with kids, work, a dog and a hundred real and imagined expectations, balance is going to be a noisy, raucous business.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to show Billy how to make a fire without burning everything down.

I’m 10 Now

So the girl had a big birthday over the weekend. She’s the big 10. Double digits. Practically a grownup, or something. We had an interesting exchange about getting ready for bed on her actual birthday.

“Brush your teeth, please.”

“I did.”

“You did?” (I look at wet toothbrush and remnants of toothpaste in sink, she’s only 10 after all) “Wow, you did.”

“You told me to.”

“I know, but that doesn’t always work.”

“I’m 10 now. I listen.”

Well. That’s good to know.
And I’d like it in writing.

What we liked this week

We’re sorry for being MIA with the things we liked this week, for the past few weeks.  In an effort to get back on track, here goes:

1.  My girl’s having a birthday.  A big one, like double digits for the first time big.  And with a birthday of epic proportions coming up, this article spoke to me.

2.  Kalamata olive garlic bread?  Yes, please!

3.  I found this article to be a little bit helpful, and a little bit funny.  You can never be too ready for the apocalypse. Never, I tell you.

4.  And because I’m always dreaming of a vacation, especially the cheap European summer kind.

5.  Did you hear about the Space Shuttle Discovery rolling up to its new home on the back of a 747?  It was, almost quite literally, in my backyard.  And it. was. awesome.

6.  Have trouble keeping up with Pinterest peer pressure?  You’re not alone.  What boards would you add?

7.  They had me at cheesy.  And potatoes.

8.  I recently came across the band Delta Spirit.  I love this song, Empty House, and love that the video shows my beloved Chicago as its backdrop.

We’ll try not to be strangers!  Laura and Scott

Nutrition

So, I ran my 10k race over the weekend (including a PR, thankyouverymuch), and that means that it’s now time for me to refocus and get ready to train for my first marathon in October. I’m thinking if I’m going to up my mileage so much, I’m going to need to refocus, or, you know, focus, on my nutrition. I decided to do a little bit of research on the internet, because I know I’ll find truth there.

I came across several articles (Lord, runners love to talk about food). Here’s a sampling of the advice I saw:

1. Determine your daily calorie goal. Bo-ring. Next!

2. Eat dinosaur kale. Really? Because I don’t even know what that is. And I’m pretty sure that if I tried to bring that into my house, the littlies and the big guy would revolt.

3. Eat sardines and jarred tuna. I can’t get behind sardines, sorry. But tuna’s not so bad. Add enough mayo and put on some nice white bread and I’m good to go.

4. Learn how much food you can eat and still run comfortably. This sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. Because you know I’m going to guess wrong at least once or six times.

5. Go easy on fats. Pffffft. What kind of quack wrote this article?

6. Choose a carbohydrate-rich diet every day as the foundation for every meal. Now we’re talking!

7. Add the spice turmeric to just about anything because it’s a natural anti-inflammatory. Or, and I’m just spit-balling here, I could add some chocolate to anything because it will make you forget about anything that hurts.

8. Distribute your calories. Yep, I like to have food in both hands. Check.

I’m continuing my research until I come across an article that tells me to eat pizza and Oreos. And not in stupid moderate portions, either. Stay tuned.

Saying Goodbye to Bookstores

When I was in college, my mother lived in Oak Park, IL not far from Lake Ave, a walking district filled with retail shops and restaurants. One place in particular that I loved was Barbara’s Bookstore which was a block down from the entrance to the Green Line Metro.

Barbara’s wasn’t a small bookshop but neither was it a huge, warehouse-like place like Barnes & Noble or Borders. There was a great collection of eclectic fiction, non-fiction, design books, local zines and poetry chapbooks. There was a generous raised area for kids books and posters of upcoming readings and publications strewn along the walls. And there was the fragrance of the independent bookshop that was the combination of wood pulp, printers ink and patchouli.

Barbara’s Bookstore was an enormously comforting place for me to hide from the cold of Chicago’s winters, and I would spend afternoons wandering through the store, brushing up against the titles of authors, activists, adventurers and statesmen. And in the periodicals section, a crazy assortment of art magazines, stapled pamphlets, opened copies of the Reader (Chicago’s now defunct alternative weekly) and university press anthologies.

Though it is easy to whitewash the past, those hours looking at book jackets, leafing through design magazines and attempting to delve into some of the local poetry had a big affect on my love of certain writers and willingness to have an open mind to different works. Some of how I see the world came from spending time in that store.

Much like the first alternative record store that I went to in high school, Barbara’s bookstore was a cultural hub, a place where ideas and dreams could mesh with what had already come before. Though that is true in a library to a degree, Barbara’s was a store, so much of the work presented was current, relevant, and smelled of the future.

As you can imagine, Barbara’s Bookstore in Oak Park is now gone. I’m happy to know that the store re-organized itself into a series of smaller, more nimble bookstores aimed at commuters with locations at O’Hare, Northwestern Hospital and the like. Like any modern bookstore, they’ve had to move with the times, and profit margins grow smaller every year. But, I miss what Barbara’s was in that time before, when independent bookstores weren’t endangered, when ideas and dreams could stand for a few hours, safe from a snowstorm among the stories.

Busy Spring

So this spring, the girl is playing softball again and the boy is playing his first season of tee ball. It’s so fun to watch them do their thing, even though it’s a really busy time of year. And when I say busy, I mean pull out your hair, need a moment, how am I ever going to get everything done, and how am I going to be in 3 places at once kind of busy. Each time a season starts, I have the best of intentions that this time, I’m not going to lose my mind. This time, I will be calm and collected, and the kids will be proud of their mom who holds it all together. But this is how it actually happens from the beginning of the season to the end:

Uniforms
Beginning of the season – All uniform elements are washed, smoothed, and packed neatly waiting for their moments in the sun.
End of the season – Do you really need both the uniform top *and* bottom? Won’t plain black shorts do? Check the dirty clothes. Just wear your shirt from last season – Your name hasn’t changed.

Meals
Beginning – Healthy, delicious and thrifty meals are prepared and ready to go for those evenings that we just can’t sit with all of our shining faces around the kitchen table.
End – Our faces are shining, but mostly from the grease from Chik-fil-A or McDonalds fries. And the second course is a ring pop from the concession stand.

Bedtime
Beginning – Bedtimes are strictly but lovingly adhered to, so the little darlings will keep their good humor for tomorrow’s activities.
End – GET IN BED. NOW. IT’S LATE. DO IT. I’M NOT KIDDING. THAT’S IT, NO TV FOR YOU EVER AGAIN!

Weekends
Beginning – Well, we’re busy, but sure, we can volunteer at that thing/attend that function/have that friend over.
End – Don’t answer the phone! We’re not here! I need a nap!

The one thing that doesn’t change from the beginning of the season to the end? The glass of wine for mama at the end of the day.

What we liked this week

Here’s what we liked while perusing the web this week.  You’ll notice it’s a little Easter heavy.  Apologies to our Passover-celebrating peeps.  We’ll get you next year.

1.  These little bunnies are to die for, made from Nutter Butter cookies.

2.  My niece Anne turned me on to the site Smitten Kitchen.  These carrot cake pancakes will join the weekend rotation.

3.  See this cool technique for dip dyeing your Easter eggs.  Neon, pretty!

4.  Kids finding your Easter eggs too quickly?  Check out these 16 creative ways to hide them.

5.  These coconut and chocolate nests are so (so!) cute.

6.  Have you ever gotten live chicks to hatch?  See Steamy Kitchen’s account of doing just that here.

7.  Stumped about what to put in your kids’ Easter basket?  Here are some ideas.  My favorite is the key, read on to see why.

8.  This is not at all Easter-y, but I love it just the same.  Sheet music as decoration, lovely!

Happy Easter (and Passover), friends!  Laura and Scott

Is it two late to name my daughters Katniss?

I haven’t really been writing that much or posting on Facebook very much recently, mostly because I’ve been reading the Hunger Games. I think this is just another way that I’m secretly trying to convince the world that I’m a 14yr old girl trapped in a man’s body.

But, they truly are fantastic books. I started the first one a couple weeks ago. And the first 50 pages or so I didn’t really get into it. It was only when we closer the the premiere of the movies that I knew I Alexa, who has read all three books of the Hunger Games Series three times each, would want to see. I had decided to finish at least the first one so I knew what we were getting into before we were in the movie theater.

As I got into the books, I was really amazed by the characters. Now, I will be the first to admit, this is a plot driven book, with stylistic hooks that pull you along. I appreciate that, and frankly I’m a fan of plot-driven stories. Personally, I think the benefits of plot-driven stories are often overlooked for the literary equivalent of self-indulgent navel-gazing that passes for “important” books now-a-days. I realize that comment might be controversial, but really, did you get all the way through “Beloved”?

I was really taken by both the characters and the setting. Though it is technically science fiction, it has enough similarities to real events in humanity’s past history that we can make literal allusions to it in multiple ways. As I’ve continued to read the books, one reads about a culture that is both obsessed with the spectacle of the Hunger Games which is both intentionally nihilistic and entertaining, I found it gave a veiled distance to many issues that my children will eventually need to understand as they grow older. This has led to initial discussions in our house about apartheid, slavery, fascist-era Germany and, of course, modern reality TV programming.

However, there are other discussions which also came. The character of Katniss, though not always a sympathetic character, shows a strong propensity for self-sufficiency, self-reliance and an understanding of her personal responsibilities. Additionally, she is never portrayed as some Norman Vincent Peale herione, with a 2-D character based on some unattainable moral hierarchy. Just her willingness to sacrifice herself for her sister, but not quite forgive her mother for her predicament, is both endearing and so perfectly natural in a 16yr old girl. She is a young woman that seems to have a grasp on the realities of the world in which she lives and also the ways to work within the confines of that world.  I think my children could do worse than to have Katniss Everdeen as a role model.

So, I’ve decided that we will rename Alexa to Katniss, and Teja will be Katniss II, but we will probably just call her “Blanket”.