snapshots: a photograph (or several) and an isolated observation (or several) about the past week (or so)

Conversation with my almost two year old.

Me: Would you like me to tell you a story abou–

A: Yes! Story!

Me: Once upon a time, there lived a ba–

A: Babushka! (Grandmother)

Me: And a de–

A: Dedushka! (Grandfather)

Me: And they had a chicken and her name was–

A: MEAT!

My definition of fast food is something you can make in less than the time it would take to order pizza or swing through the In n’ Out drive through.

Our In n’ Out is always packed so that means fast food is at least twenty minutes away and that means I end up making fast food at home.

And when that temptress Rachel Voorhees tweeted out a mouth watering photo of her home-made pizza I HAD to have it. Of course I didn’t have pizza crust or pizza sauce or mozzarella. But I did not despair because I DID have english muffin, spaghetti sauce and cheddar…

et voila!

And now that dinner is taken care of, onto the surfin!

Parenting: Sometimes I complain about having a toddler and other times I freak out that soon I’ll have a teenager, who might want her boyfriend to sleep over! GAH!

Social media: Pinterest is genius so to this I say DUH! That’s why silly mommy bloggers are all over it.

Delicious: food & drink

See you next week!

I’ve been a terrible friend to Write on Edge, an online community that is ‘a place for writers to gather, exchange ideas and learn something about the art of storytelling.’ In fact it’s been so long since I wrote something with Write on Edge that they were still called the Red Dress Club when I did! I kept wanting to join in on the prompts and kept talking myself out of it for a million different reasons.

But this week the prompt begged me to join, it asked to explore friendship, a current one or one from your past and to look at the role it plays in your life.

I knew just what to talk about.

You see I have this friend…

~

I shout and share my exciting news: published, I’m going to be published in a real magazine where they pay me money for words I strung together!

Really? Well I hope you don’t get your hopes up, it’s a local magazine and isn’t likely to lead to other opportunities. And honestly? If other opportunities do come along you need to accept that you might put years into this ‘writing thing’ with nothing to show for it at the end of it all. It’s not a real job. Besides don’t you have a job? Aren’t you a blogger? *snickering*

I’m a stay at home mom, remember? I suppose that’s not a real job either.

Well I hate to say it like this, but it’s just not. Not to mention your kid is in preschool two mornings a week now and you have a nanny to help you occasionally? Does that even count as being a stay at home mom? That’s like saying I’m a ballerina because occasionally I watch ballet.

That’s not very nice.

Well dear, sometimes you don’t need someone to be nice, you need someone to be honest. Speaking of honesty, have you looked in the mirror lately? How is it even possible to gain twenty pounds in one year? Do you eat in your sleep?

I don’t know. I’m trying to get healthier. I am.

You’re going to have to try a lot harder than that. Didn’t you want to get pregnant again? Though if you want my opinion, can you even handle another kid? Look at how things are turning out with your first one.

What is that supposed to mean?

You’re sleeping upstairs in a separate bedroom from your husband? She’s almost two and just barely sleeps through the night, if she feels like it. Does that seem normal to you? Maybe if you had been stricter in the beginning like I told you to be, you wouldn’t be dealing with the fallout from this co-sleeping nonesense. You know, how she acts is a direct reflection on who you are as a parent.

So she doesn’t sleep. She’s an awesome little kid.

You know, how she acts has no bearing on who you are as a parent, that’s just her personality.

I give up.

Of course you do. Quitter.

~

I want to break up with this friend.

Too bad the bitch lives inside my head.

This week’s challenge at I heart faces is “oh so silly” so it’s pretty obvious which photo I had to enter:

When do you go grocery shopping?

Let me rephrase that, what is the one item that will force you to get up and go to the grocery store even though you’ve been living off of creative ‘what’s in the pantry’ dinners for days? Is it eggs? Bread? Beer?

For me it’s half and half. Once we run out of half and half for my morning (and mid morning and early afternoon) coffee I will reluctantly go shopping.

We ran out of half and half three days ago but I have been unable to go due to toddler whinus maximus. So I have had to resort to desperate measures and make iced coffee with condensed milk…which as it turns out is DELICIOUS!

And onto the Surfin…

Social Media: Picnik’s announcement has left me depressed and anxious, luckily @CentsationalGirl is exploring alternatives to Picnik for me and the Photoshop-phobic masses.

Funny: Despite the fact that one of my biggest pet peeves of all time is skinny people complaining about being “fat” this post by Erin @gonnakillhim is hysterical! (And I know she’s skinny, I’ve met her at BlogHer and she is a gorgeous twig.) Here is a teaser as she takes us through her morning routine which involves”Attempt in vain to convince son that his father is as genetically and emotionally invested in him as I am, which might be more evident if he weren’t comatose at this moment.” Snort!

Parenting: This was such a fantastic post by HeatheroftheEO on how hard parenting is and how all we need (most of the time) is for someone to say I see you and I hear you. A thousand times YES.

Must read: An important post by the fabulous Alice of Finslippy on women as objects in our society.

Photography: I absolutely adore Karen Walrond’s blog chookooloonks, her photography and her whole approach to life is inspiring. She is starting a “subscription-based monthly newsletter that will help you create your own visual gratitude journal, using photography.” Doesn’t that sound amazing?

Oh and I started writing for Examiner.com so go check out this week’s posts over there:

Children’s clothes at bargain prices, “Whether you’re dressing JR in Juicy Couture or JCrew you’d probably love to spend a little less on something that will be outgrown in a matter of months.  One way to save your dough is to score some great hand me downs from your friends, relatives or the uber fashionable mommies in your playgroup. If you don’t have a hand me down hook up or you’re a shopaholic you might miss the thrill of hunting down the perfect outfit. In that case try thrifting…click here to read more!

Kid friendly restaurants in Reno, “Remember the days you could say to your fiance or your friends or your imaginary pet labradoodle “hey let’s go out to eat” and then you just went out to eat? Simple as that. Sure maybe you needed to wait in the occasional line for a great breakfast place or you had to make a reservation for the hip new tapas bar, but mostly there were no worries and no constraints (except budgetary and digestion related ones.) Having kids changes all of that and suddenly a whole new set of criteria is applied when determining what is a great place to eat...click here to read more!

And if you want to write for Examiner.com use this link to say I sent ya!

Cesspool of

Horrible

Icky

Leisure-threatening

Disease

Who wants to take bets on how long it will take until I am stricken with preschool plague?

snapshots: a photograph (or several) and an isolated observation (or several) about the past week (or so)

It was the little things.

I started noticing the way Aliza says good morning to every single person in the grocery store.

How she asks to see people by name, Asho an Bitney? Dawn an Juweya? Tetya Kewie?

How she goes off to play on her own at playdates when just a few months ago she clung to me and burst into tears if I so much as went to the bathroom without her.

I noticed things in myself, feeling like an hour or two to myself wasn’t enough anymore to re-charge and to be fully present for her all day. I was losing my temper, losing my sense of self, not being the best parent I could be.

So I listened to what she seemed to be saying to me…I’m ready to move on, are you ready to let me mom?

I made a phone call and put her on a wait list for a place I adored. A wonderful place with caring staff, a lovely environment, philosophies that align with our personal ones.

After several weeks of observations, and forms, a test run and getting her new backpack packed and re-packed…

She started “school” last week.

We are both boldly going where we have not gone before.

Wish us luck on the journey.

I know, I know.

That sounds bizarre.

And vaguely offensive.

What I mean is I’m okay with who you are and your life choices and I want to make sure you know it…

Say you meet a new person, perhaps on vacation, and you suspect that he (or she) is gay. Which is A-OK with you. But they are going to great lengths to conceal this by aggressively hitting on members of the opposite sex, hiding the Barbara Streisand on his playlist or [feel free to insert your gay stereotype of choice.]

So you start to drop hints to communicate that should this person happen to be a boy who likes boys or a boy who likes girls, that you are fully accepting of homosexuality or heterosexuality or asexuality or WHAT HAVE YOU.

Oh I’m from San Francisco!

or

OMG I just loved Brokeback Mountain!

(or My Own Private Idaho if they also happen to be a hipster)

or

My friend and her dads are visiting me this weekend.

(Even if this is a complete fabrication and they are not coming to visit or you don’t have a friend with two dads or friends at all.)

Hopefully these little admissions will make the other person feel comfortable or intrigued or it might backfire and cause them to retreat slowly and un-friend you on Facebook.

Nowadays I find myself doing the same thing but not about who you choose to love but about how you choose to feed your child.

I’ll meet a new mom and I suspect she may be breastfeeding (or breastfeeding a toddler) and feeling weird about it or not breastfeeding and feeling guilty about it.

And I start to drop hints that communicate that I am A-OK with breastfeeding or bottle feeding or extended breastfeeding or exculsively pumping or hating pumping or WHAT HAVE YOU.

I made the funniest joke at this month’s La Leche League meeting.

or

You’re pumping? Kudos to you, pumping sucks! (rimshot)

or

I see that you are choosing [insert infant/toddler/etc feeding choice here] and that’s A-OK with me.

That last one might be kind of direct but effective.

Anyway internets what I mean is I’m okay with who you are and your life choices and I want to make sure you know it.

This week’s photo challenge theme is “By the Book”

I don’t know about you but I’m all but done with this whole New Year’s weight loss resolution nonsense.

I was however still trying to eliminate processed foods from my life…and then I started dreaming about potato chips.

I was never much for potato chips, but you know how it is, as soon as you say you shouldn’t have something that’s all you’re jonesing for.

So I made my own. So much better than store bought anyway!

And here’s how I done it:

1. srub & peel a potater

2. slicer em real thin like

3. drizzle em with olive oil, garlic salt and cayenne pepper (that there is for spice)

4. spread em (out on a baking sheet)

5. put em in the oven at 425 for about 15 min

6. eat & destroy all evidence before your child wakes up from nap or husband comes home

And onto the Surfin…

Home: De-cluttering is hard but here is a list of things you can throw out today, easy peasy.

Parenting: People? If you don’t already read this blog you are missing out on some of the best, most honest writing on the internets, possibly anywhere. This post is about those moments when we are unkind towards our children and choosing to focus on REPAIR.

Funny: Wikipedia goes down for the day and the unwashed masses revolt.

Social Media: Interacting via Facebook is something I need to get better at. And of course the best thing to happen to the Internets since Google, Pinterest is an awesome way to grow your blog or business.

Photography: One of these days I really will try to take more pictures of myself and I’ll be using this guide to do it.

And in case you missed it, I was over here on Friday talking about my proudest parenting moment thus far.