Windowsill rescue!

If you're expecting to read about a daring feat of heroism... then you can stop reading right now.

There's not even a fireman reference here.

I'm talking about literally rescuing a windowsill. You see, when our house was built the builder didn't want it to look like the other house built off the same plan one door down and one row over, so he bumped out our front window. Just bumped it out... a little... in like a... box.

 



 

Some people might have thought to make it a windowsill, or put some clever built in storage underneath. Not our builder. He just made a box. It's not like he has to live with it, or the horrible clear coat they finished the wood with that apparently washes off with water.

Water.

Sorry, I didn't intend this to be a bash the builder blog, and if I get started on that subject things could get out of hand real quick, so I will just move on as politely as I can.

This lovely window... box I was provided with has been serving me very well in collecting moisture and dust, the wood veneer bubbling and cracking over the years, but really did little else until I got small dogs.

Oh boy, what a treat it is to have a place for my dogs to bark at the neighbors, rip holes in the window screens and scratch at the paint I added when everything the builders applied washed away. Let me tell you, nothing made that window... box dearer to my heart than having a couple of dogs able to hop up and smear their sweet doggie nose slime all over the windows in welcoming patterns for our guests to see.

 

Every so often I scrub the glass clean and repaint the sill, just to give them a clear canvas to start their creative work again. And then, last week, as I pulled out my paint and organic glass cleaning mixture... I had an epiphany.

I have a lot of those, really, but rarely do I actually run out and act upon them.

This time I'm glad I did.

  My epiphany came in the form of vinyl wall paper. Lowe's had a beautiful grasscloth pattern by Allen and Roth that was just the right color tone and didn't scratch or dent when my daughter and I attacked the sample square on display with our nails. That reminds me... we owe Lowe's an apology for the less durable samples... Sorry, Lowe's, you might need to check your display on aisle six. Anyway, the Allen and Roth grasscloth stood up to the challenge, but we thought we would be even more clever and fill the window... box with plants that would deter the dogs from hopping up there at all.  

 

We filled my flea market find antique tool box with a variety of plants and flanked it with some baby alberta spruces that we thought were prickly enough to be added doggie deterrent...  

 

The plan worked perfectly... for about twelve hours.
  Ah well, at least it looks a lot better than before. And hopefully the nose slime will be contained to the less noticeable side areas.

The Hero Syndrome

No.

It's just two letters.

One syllable.

Two sounds.

Nnnnnnn-ooooooo

 

Can you tell I work in Kindergarten?

 

It's the most common word out of the mouth of babes.

As in infants, not hot girls.

So why do I find it so darn difficult to say?

No. No. No.

I can type it. I can say it repeatedly when I'm alone. I even have it in a rubber stamp...

but when someone from the world says "Hey, Christa, can you do this for me?"

Suddenly my tongue won't touch my teeth!

My lips won't make a circle, and those two sounds, nnnn-oooo are impossible to make.

Impossible.

I might think I'm saying no.

Inside I am screaming no.

But no matter how I fight the impulse, I compulsively say yes.

Why do we do that?

Is it guilt? My Catholic upbringing? Too many nitrates in processed food?

Or are some of us just bred to be heroes...

You need someone to bake four hundred cookies? Sure.

A chairman for the least desirable committee on the PTA? I'm your girl.

An essay written in six different languages and signed by the president of France?

No problem.

Now, that one is close. If you could just clap your hand over your mouth before the word problem comes out you'd have it. But I never think of it in time.

 

And so I spend all the weeks leading up to Halloween preparing for Fall Festival at my son's school, while planning my daughter's costume party birthday bash, shopping for home coming, creating three very specific and detailed costumes, decorating the house, making ten pounds of applesauce, three school conferences, four dentist appointments, and a partridge in a pear tree...  

There's more, but I won't go on.

You're welcome.

The problem is, this happens every year.

I know it's coming. I plan to say no. I practice my nnnnnn's and ooooooo's. I even put on chapstick.

It seems like that would help.

 

Then it happens. People in the world come to me and make their requests, and whap, there's a damn cape fluttering in the breeze behind my shoulders.

The cape is choking me a little, making me think I might never see the pale, grayish light of November. It's keeping me up at night and getting in the way of things like eating meals. But no matter how I tug and pull and plan and chapstick, it won't go away.

If anyone out there knows the secret to ditching the cape, let me know, because I sure would like to be one of those women I see on the sideline. You know, the ones watching the leaves change color and eating ten pounds of applesauce that someone else made.  

Sigh.

I bet that applesauce has cinnamon.

  

 

 



Goodbye Summer

I was born for summer.

I mean seriously made for warm and lazy days.

In summer I wake up at the first ray of sun, no clock necessary, get out of bed smiling and spend my whole day singing songs with little bluebirds dancing on my shoulders.

You may have seen me in a Disney movie once, or twice.

 

When I was eighteen, I left my home in Vermont and moved to Georgia, just to have more summer.

So it's always hard to say goodbye when those big yellow busses start to rove the neighborhood again, signaling the start of alarm clocks and schedules.

Oh, God, I shudder at schedules...

But this year I'm finding it especially hard to say goodbye summer, because this year I had this -

 

The southern coast of Maine.



It was only a short time, but it was enough to renew my spirit, recharge my batteries, and make me hate Kansas just a little bit more.

Sorry Kansas.

 

It was morning walks and laying in the sun. It was salt on my skin and waves kissing my feet. It was this...

It was beautiful seaside shops and happy children.

 

It was beach hair.

 

Need I say more? I think not.

And now? Now I'm back to dry fields and windy weather. A closed up house with less than ambient air conditioning and Netflix addicted children with nothing to go outside for. My eldest daughter summed it up when she said, "People move to Colorado when the like skiing and mountains. They move to Maine when they like outdoors and oceans. They move to Kansas when they like airplanes and nothing."

Sorry again, Kansas.

I don't mean to harsh on my home state. We really do have a lot of nice..... corn. And the sunflowers are not a myth. They do pop up in the strangest places. But then I just look at this...

 

and my heart hurts. I honestly ache for the feel of wet sand beneath my feet.

  And I wonder what in the world brought me to live in a place so far away from the sound of waves.

Oh yeah... airplanes.

Ah, well. I suppose that, just like summer, I wouldn't appreciate it so much if I had it all the time.

Maybe.

I only know that fall is here, the busses are roving, and everything I love about the summer and the shore will be there waiting,

until next time...  

-

 



 

Green Smoothies

It's no secret that I'm easily addicted. 

Can you say OCD, anyone?

I find something I like and I eat, breathe, live it... until my ADD distracts me with something else...

Ummm... what was I talking about?

But seriously, the green smoothie is one habit I haven't forgotten about, I can't do without, and I'm becoming quite a pusher on.

I've had a lot of people asking me about these lately so here it is.

My personal craving quencher.

There are a ton of green smoothie recipes out there. I've experiment with many of my own and haven't met many that I don't like. Fruits, veggies, avocados... I've even put almond meal in them for added protein and calcium before I started making them with almond milk. 

It's almost anything-goes with these things, in my opinion.

But this is my day to day quick and easy for my crazy mornings favorite...

10-12 ounces of almond milk (vanilla or plain I use whatever I have)
One banana broken into the bottom
And a great big handful of fresh baby spinach

And I do mean a BIG handful of spinach.

A high powered blender is best to smooth it out. I've heard a lot of chatter about the Vita Mix... but I just throw it in the margarita maker... et voila!

It's a mystery to me how mixing spinach and a banana can produce a vanilla shake flavor... but I'm just going to chalk that up there with the fascination of sisal rugs and the appeal of black marker scent.

It's not just the surprisingly delicious taste of these smoothies that has me hooked, but how good I feel when I'm drinking them regularly.

 So crazy good that my body misses them when I go without.

All right, maybe not as crazy good as say...

Damon Salvatore might feel. But good none the less.

My god, he's beautiful, isn't he?

Now... 

what was I talking about?

Snowpocalypse 2013

I know. It sounds a bit extreme for 14 1/2 inches of snow...
But I guess that's the most we've seen in this area of Kansas for over fifty years. The record back then was 15 inches. That's right. A whole half inch more.
Growing up in Vermont, 15 inches was not a Snowpocalypse. It was Halloween.




But around here I guess it's pretty impressive.
Of course it came with the typical Kansas wind.




And apparently yard gremlins.
How do things like that even happen?




It was more snow than my son has ever seen in his life.
And enough to even tempt my finicky twelve year old to go out and play.




The game she made up was called climb over the fence and jump into to the snow bank.




Notice the broken picket? I did. But I will just worry about that later. Today - we play.

One Step Closer To Simple

All right, so in my latest quest for peace and simplicity, I decided this little cesspool we call a junk drawer had to go. 

I mean good god, I don't even know what half those things are! Seriously, what is that big orange thing in the center and why is something I can't name living in my kitchen? I've been eyeing this drawer for a awhile now. Muttering threats and warnings at it every time I catch it open. But one thing was holding me back.  No, not the fear of that orange stick. My perfectionism.  It so happens, I bought a kit of drawer organizers for this project nearly a year ago. Really, I did. But look how they fit... Not enough space there. Too much space there... and there. For the love of all things holy... why can't they make things in standard sizes??? That just wasn't going to do. And so I lived with this hideous orange monstrosity staring me in the face for another year. 
That might seem extreme, but such is perfectionism. I took to keeping pencils in my magazine basket and stashing sharpies behind the coffee mugs just so I wouldn't have to face the horror every time I needed to jot something down. Until the other day when I walked into Target, collecting my Shopkicks, and spied these little gems in the dollar bins. They looked at me, and I looked at them, and I said,  "Hey cutie, I like your sections."
I just knew they'd be perfect for something. I had no idea just how perfect they'd be when combined with those obnoxiously imperfect, non-standardized drawer organizers. I lined the drawer first with some wrapping paper I found in Target's dollar bin last Christmas.  And holy heck - look what happened! Perfection! I mean, these people know how to size a box.
It was almost too pretty to fill, but all that junk was quite the eyesore on my counter so eventually I relented.
And guess what? Even filled they don't look half bad.
A place for everything and, you know the rest...
There were enough little squares to leave some empty for the next wave of random crap and granola bar wrapper pieces. Pretty slick for a dollar bin find. From this...
To this...
Now that's an evening well spent.  (for this old, married girl, anyway) Oh, and in the process, I learned that big orange stick is actually some sort of ball pump.  It now lives in the garage where I can find it the next time I need to pump my balls. Um... yeah, never mind.

Organizing Obsessed

With three kids I live in perpetual chaos.
And by chaos, I mean clutter.
I don't think there is a surface in my house that  doesn't have a Lego on it or under it. Not a room that doesn't contain a pair of shoes and at least three child or man sized socks at any given time.
And as the chaos, aka children, grow around me, my stifled little need for order writhes and screams inside me. Melodramatic? Maybe. But true?
Yes.
I am one of those terminally routine challenged. My A.D.D. has seen to that. Throw in a good dollop of lazy, a few time consuming hobbies, a full time job, and a writing addiction, and honestly I'm surprised we're not wading through a thigh-high pile of life to get to the fridge every day. I say "life" instead of a few other choice words of what we could be wading in. I'm trying to clean up my recently discovered sailor's mouth.
The fact is, I can't stand mess. I can't stand when two or more things are sitting next to each other and they aren't lined up. I crave order and beauty the way some people crave tobacco. The difference is... I can't buy order for $4.79 a pack.
If I could, I would be broke.
On the upside... order and beauty don't cause cancer, as far as I know. Not even in the state of California.
So I'm free to pursue my addiction without any guilt. And I don't feel bad trying to push it on my children either. The problem is, they don't want it.
Maybe I need a better campaign... one with subliminal messages and age-specific targeting.

Clean your room.
 All the cool kids are doing it.

Hmmm... or maybe something more specific like,

Putting your backpack away will grow long shiny hair.

Alas, I doubt One Direction would agree to posing for my posters.
So where does that leave me?
Alone in my struggle for clear floors and a couch you don't have to shovel before sitting on.
And so I get my fixes online. Perusing pictures in magazines and reading blogs like I Heart Organizing at night after everyone's in bed. Clean closets... and perfectly lined up shoes... my own little form of internet porn.
And then there are my secret stashes.
Little areas like drawers and cabinets that I maintain as long as I can for my own sanity, until at some point the hordes infiltrate my space and turn it into this...



That was once a kitchen drawer.
And, no, I am not the one who uses scissors to cut open a granola bar and leaves the little portion of the wrapper laying there in the drawer each day. In fact, I've decided this year that habit shall stop.
I've decided 2013 is the year I will enable myself to take back a little more of my house each week, with One Direction's help or not.
Starting with that drawer.
We'll see how this works out. Can the hordes be tamed? Will I be able to live out my fantasy openly in the light of day? Will California discover that order and beauty really do cause cancer?  Or will my A.D.D. make me forget my goal, distracting me with a sudden new passion for finding the perfect popcorn bowl...


Ooooh, pretty popcorn bowls.... wait... what was I talking about?
Oh right, my goal.
I guess only time will.tell.