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procrastinating
We’re leaving tomorrow and I’m not one bit ready. I have to do laundry still and wash the car. I also have to pack some suitcases and figure out some kind of emergency fun kit for an eight hour road trip with a toddler.
What am I doing instead? (Besides typing this blog of course.) I’m sitting here making a Baby Bug calendar for 2008. Some of you asked how I made my calendar that you saw on my card wall of fame. I use Qoop through Flickr. They are decent quality for what they are.
Just make sure you don’t position your baby’s head on the page so she gets a punch hole right next to her eyeball and it looks like someone shot her in the head. I’m sure that was lots of fun for all my relatives to gaze at for the month of May.
Speaking of gazing, I’m also looking out my front door (that is a sliding glass door so I can look right through it) at a giant box. A giant box that is going to be a shelf (except it will be horizontal not vertical) in Baby Bug’s room to store all her toys. I’m so excited about it. I’d put it together myself right this minute if I could just lift the dumb thing. It seriously weighs 200 pounds. I know IKEA furniture is cheap but this shelf must be made of solid lead or compound wood matter or something. It is HEAVY. Or “Hehbby” as Baby Bug says.
I know I’m not supposed to be shopping at IKEA anymore after the great desk explosion of 2007 but where else am I supposed to get cheap furniture that I can track down in a single afternoon? I have no time for shopping or scouting out garage sales and Craig’s list anymore. I’ve snooped in the trash and there was NOTHING. Finally, I just buckled and bought exactly what I wanted for ONLY $79. You can’t beat that. Let’s just hope it isn’t made of lead or explodes.
I love IKEA and I hate IKEA. I love the simple lines of their furniture but I hate that it falls apart. I love that everything is affordable but I hate that they keep their prices low by cutting other places, like in the customer service department. I love their fun show room that you can walk around and pretend to play house in but I hate that you have to hoof three-thousand miles to get to your box of furniture in their warehouse. I also hate how when you are three thousand miles away down some long dark alley of towering boxes, there isn’t a soul around to help you lift a 200-pound box.
You see that box up there that Baby Bug is surfing on? I bought that all by myself. I mean ALL BY MYSELF. I did not speak to one human being from the time I walked into IKEA until the time I walked out. I didn’t even talk to one person in the parking lot as I teeter-tottered it into my trunk ALL BY MYSELF. Not a peep. Not counting Baby Bug of course. With her I had a running commentary about the whole episode.
I was just waiting for someone to say, “Please don’t let your child ride on top of the box while you wheel it down the aisle.” To which I would reply, “Oh! Please help me! Can you push my cart so I can wrangle my toddler and get this GIANT box to check out? Please! Please! Somebody pleeeeeeeese help me! Anybody!”
But no. Nobody helped me. Nobody even cared that Baby Bug surfed on top of a 200-pound box on top of a wheely cart. We were fine-and-dandy just helping ourselves because we are fancy-free and independent like that. Plfffff. I actually made three trips in and out of IKEA, checking the size the 200-pound box and the size of my 200-pound car to make sure that one could fit inside the other. I wasn’t sure.
I wheeled that thing through self check-out, wrangled Baby Bug before she teeter-tottered off the end of the 200-pound box and wheeled it right out the door with my receipt without speaking to a single soul. It was so un-American. But hey, it only cost $79. I guess I got what I paid for.
And that is what I am thinking about instead of packing my suitcases. I am not putting the bookcase together no matter how badly I want to. I’m leaving it for my Dad who will be staying in our house for a day while we are gone. My mom is house-sitting and my Dad will be home from the road for one night. Of course he wants to spend it putting together a bookshelf! That’s what Dads are for.
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Day Twenty-two: the day I am thankful for
So I cooked thanksgiving dinner today and I am one tired mother something-something. It was great though. As I was editing all the photos I uploaded onto flickr, I was overwhelmed with how wonderful everything turned out and how lucky I am to have a mom who will slave away in the kitchen with me from morning until night. Of course there were lots of other relatives helping helping helping but my mom really did make it happen. If she weren’t here I think I would have ordered a pizza and run for the hills.
I’m not the world’s worst cook but I just don’t love it. I love cleaning better. I would rather wash five countertops filled with dishes and sigh that big happy sigh of relief that they are done than cook a great big thanksgiving dinner and know that I made a table full of people happy. I don’t know why. I’m just weird that way. I just really really like that feeling that everything is clean and orderly.
So you can imagine that the thought of a kitchen over-flowing with dishes and half-unwrapped ingredients and chopped-up vegetables and trash bags and pots bubbling over and things dripping on the floor and children running in and out… could run me a little ragged. I’m not type A but I like things in “my office” (the kitchen) to be just so. And “just so” would be how the kitchen is when NO COOKING is going on. That’s how I like the kitchen. Clean and tidy.
Heh. Happy Thanksgiving to you too.
Do you know what I do when I feel a little insecure about something? I call my mom. When I used to do wedding flowers my mom was my right-hand man. We’ve worked so hard on so many projects together that she’s used to my constant running worry-wart commentary. She just rolls her eyes when I freak out about something and reminds me of the zillions of other times we’ve pulled off the impossible.
This year I carted her out a day early and we braved the crazy madhouse grocery store together. Did you guys go shopping on Wednesday? It was a AWFUL!!! I seriously felt like my cart was a bumper car at the carnival. All we needed was some loud Calypso music and maybe a wild wig or two and we’d be ready for the circus or the funny farm or something. It was downright scary. I’m usually very orderly in my shopping, always starting in the produce section and working my way east but this time it was all I could do to scramble here and there and make my way down my list. We forgot a million things but what can you do? It was either that or throw down some WWF wrestling moves.
The best part of getting Thanksgiving dinner ready was fulfilling our family tradition with Baby Bug for the first time. In our family it is a time honored tradition that the youngest family member stuff the first handful of stuffing into the turkey. I don’t how this started (maybe Grandma can fill us in?) but I do remember it with all my many cousins. I don’t remember doing it myself but I may have. I was probably too little to remember. Who knows. It’s just something fun we do and I was not one bit disappointed with Baby Bug’s glee to do her part.
It was all a blast. The relatives arrived early and the cousins shrieked with glee. Baby Bug and her cousin Super Chic are two peas in a pod. They are BFF for sure. I love to watch them play together.
The Dads took the kids to the beach and even though I was sad to miss out on that fun, it really helped with getting things done in the kitchen. It’s amazing how hard it is to cook or get anything done when you have a toddler who wants to help and/or be held at the same time.
Thankfully Toby’s brother (Uncle George) took a ton of great photos so I got to live that moment vicariously. I love that we are starting traditions like this in our family. It’s a very strange role that I’m now playing as the mom and person who is in charge of organizing these sorts of events but I’m thankful for it too. I know it’s a lot of responsibility but I’m up for it. There is nothing better than realizing these moments are the memories your kids will always look back on. Just like I look back on all the many thanksgivings I spent with my family.
At the end of the day, the food was good and everybody was happy. I really couldn’t ask for anything more. Well besides a cup of coffee and a big fat slice of apple pie.
I would definitely do this again.
***update***
Grandma does have the origin of this tradition! Check out her blog and leave her a comment if you think of it. She loves comments. (Doesn’t everyone?)
