how scandinavian of me

maura @ 9:25 pm

Phew, the weather’s finally broken, and though it’s still humid this is NOTHING compared to the past week or so. Seriously, it was like swimming through the sweat of each and every one of my fellow New Yorkers every time I left the house (or the a/c-ed office). Eeewww.

And with the cooler weather comes Energy! And Resolve-To-Blog-More-ness! Yes sirree!!!

(Also, I’ve finally been able to drag my butt back into the gym recently, which is definitely having an impact on my mood + alertness levels.)

Alert the CDC! Recently I’ve discovered a new disease. It’s called time-to-move-itis. The description goes something like this: July 30th marks six (6!) years since we closed on our beloved apartment. Six years! That’s a long time. In fact, that’s three times longer than we ever lived in any other apartment during our entire relationship (15 yrs.).

Further, Jonathan and I are members of the 70s nomad generation. Our parents moved a lot when we were little, for various (both half- and full-assed) reasons. I can’t summon the exact lengths of Jonathan’s tenures in his childhood abodes to mind right now, but I can sure as poop tell you that in my own childhood we never lived in any apartment or house for 6 yrs. straight, no way.

AND, what’s the first thing you do when you move into a new place? That’s right, you take a day and completely, thoroughly clean that puppy, top to bottom. Inside the fridge and cabinets. Along the baseboards. The windows. Hell, if you’re really spazzy you might even paint (though we only did this once and it was nearly a relationship-killer, seriously).

So, to recap: six years is a long time to live in one apartment. Six years is also precisely the amount of time it’s been since we washed the windows or cleaned inside the cabinets. Well, except for the kitchen cabinets, since we renovated the kitchen about 4 yrs. ago.

The cure? Obviously it’s time to move!

(Just kidding. What will really happen is that I will use my summer Fridays to clean the house, except for the windows, which will just stay dirty. And the painting. We’re currently deadlocked over that, with Jonathan wanting to pay someone and me thinking we should save the cash and do it ourselves. Stay tuned!)

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title, schmitle

maura @ 9:44 pm

Woah, going for some kind of infrequent blogging award here or something. And just when I was really getting into a groove, too. Sigh. Suffice it to say that I’ve been a bit melancholy lately, for personal reasons. No, I can’t tell you, it’s PERSONAL. Sheesh!

Last weekend we totally maxed out our social schedule, striving to have as little time as possible for the three of us to sit in the apartment and stare at each other and for Gus to have fewer opportunities to dump cups of water onto the floor, the table, etc. Of course, this never works, and Gus did indeed dump a cup of water into a bowl of olives on Saturday night, while we had a whole family playdate with a friend of his from preschool and her parents, whom we quite like. Why is our 3 1/2 yr old suddenly acting 2 yrs younger? Hard to tell, but that repeated button-pushing certainly keeps us hopping. Right now we’re working hard on not reacting, which is really really challenging.

And on Sunday we left the gritty city for Tranquility, NJ (I kid you not) with some neighbors to take the kids raspberry picking. It was the last day of their summer season so the bushes were kinda picked out, which was fine since the kids were more interested in eating the berries we picked (and, in Gus’ case, hoarding them: “no Mommy, this is MY container”). Then we picniced (-ked?) under a big shady tree, and our neighbors took us to school by bringing a real picnic set as well as tasty treats both savory (fresh mozzarella w/tomato + basil [from our courtyard plant!]) and sweet (homemade chocolate chip cookies). While we did bring leftovers, they were pretty tasty as well: Jonathan’s been making this salad w/blackeyed peas, cornichons, shallots and cherry tomatoes (inspired by our date night meal at Prune) and the other week we added couscous which adds yet another level of deliciousness. Yum!

So this raspberry farm was really just the bushes, a shack where containers and money are exchanged, a field to park in, and the picnic area, and a porta-potty. After lunch everyone had to pee, of course, but we were scared of the porta-potty. So we made Jonathan go in first. And boy howdy, these things have changed since your Lollapalooza days, I tell you what! I mean, probably the cleanliness was due to location (really, how many people were using that thing, anyway? A dozen a day, maybe?). But man, they are now loaded with all kinds of features: a door that locks! toilet paper! a toilet seat! blue chemical liquid to make odor nearly disappear! purell-like hand gel for after-potty cleansing! But the cream of the crop was…an in-porta-potty urinal! It was this little plastic urinal stuck to the wall of the porta-potty, with a little tube running from the urinal to the under-potty sewage area. Brilliant! AND it meant that if you are the privileged holder of your very own penis, you did not even have to look at the accumulated human waste at all, not one little bit!

I guess if you are a regular porta-potty user, this is not news to you. But for me it was a shocker! I have historically hated porta-potties so much that I risked dehydration + a bladder infection at Live Aid when I was in high school, seriously.

Time for recorded television, laundry folding and beer, sweet beer. Later, gators.

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can’t fight the undertow

maura @ 1:25 pm

We’re back from our fabulous trip to the Midwest, but this week has been depressing, sad and frustrating in for many many reasons, completely trashing our stress-less vacation moods. I am still so sad about London, though thankfully all four of our friends currently living in London’s environs are fine.

So let’s sweep that downer stuff under the mental rug, pour ourselves a cup of our favorite caffeinated uppers, and recount amusing vacation anecdotes!

…or even not that amusing. We had a fantastic time. Gus was, as ever, adored and doted upon. This year there was a new, huge, motorized Thomas train set for him to direct the big people around (”Grandma, I am Thomas and you are Percy. No, go on number one track only!”). Plus a Slip-n-Slide, which admittedly gave me a little pause (I am so vain — whenever he falls I always say a little prayer that he won’t land on his beautiful face) but which was rejected by my usually cold-loving child anyway because the (well) water was too cold.

We parents slipped off to a “meeting”, overnight, in Chicago, to stay with college friends, ride the Ravenswood line, gawk like the rest of the tourists at Millennium Park, and stuff ourselves with lingonberries + potato sausage at Ann Sather’s for breakfast. Good times. We felt a little bad while riding the El — our train freak child would seriously have loved it — but the El’s not going anyplace and neither are the grandparents, so it’s not like he’ll never get his chance.

I only read ONE book (Because I Said So, which I ripped through in less than 24 hrs), but I did write in my journal three times. And we did spend about 6 hrs in the car with the Chicago trip, time which could’ve otherwise been devoted to reading. But also, I just wasn’t that into the other books I brought. I actually returned two nonfiction books to the library yesterday, mostly unread. Yes, my nonfiction love affair has been rudely broken off, thanks to Jonathan and his pesky fiction recommendation. It’s sad, really, because mostly right now I just want to go back a few weeks and read Time Traveler’s Wife again, how lame is that? But I got three mostly fiction books at the library yesterday which should hold me, I hope. The first is starting out well, at least.

Which all makes me wonder why the nonfiction glut happened in the first place. I mean, the parenting/momoir (ugh, hate that word) stuff is easy: duh, I had a kid, didn’t you know? But the other stuff, I don’t know. Maybe it’s that having-a-degree-I-don’t-use complex rearing its ugly head.

And speaking of that complex…we topped off our vacation with a visit to the Indianapolis Children’s Museum (which really is fantastic, if you have kids and happen to be in Indy you should totally go — it has FOUR floors of fun for all ages!). Of course Gus now claims that his favorite thing was “the running ramp” — the ramp spiraling up the middle of the museum, leading to each floor. We made him run up and down this a zillion times, thus insuring that he was mellow + quiet (read: tired!) on the flight home.

But I digress! There’s also a big dinosaur exhibit called Dinosphere which mostly consists of huge skeletons in a dome shaped room. The walls of the room change colors + there’s a booming sound system to imitate the weather, plant and animal sounds + visions of the Cretaceous. When we walked in here, Gus said darkly, “I don’t like this world,” like it was a video game level or something. But on the edges of the sphere there was a fake (? maybe real, hard to tell) paleontology lab. Gus had fun fitting together the rubbery, amber-colored molds and bone casts. And I made Jonathan’s stepfather take a picture of this case for me:

Look, it’s Paleontology Barbie and Ken!!! Is this not hilarious? Note her supine, loungetastic posture! Check out the spiffy attire (yes, those are tiny dinos on her shirt) and the bright pink canteen! And there’s no alcohol in sight! Surely this CAN’T be right. At least Ken is wearing latex gloves. Sigh, maybe they should hire me as an exhibit consultant.

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