2005
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.
