Nice Neighborhood

My new house is in a nice neighborhood. It's a neighborhood that without the significant downturn in the housing market we would never have been able to afford (thanks, Giant Pool of Money and Credit Default Swaps!) The manse is not a small house and is in need of some updating. We will be doing this updating in tiny increments so as not to interfere with our giant string cheese budget.

The funny thing is, people assume all kinds of things about us and our neighborhood. All kinds of solicitors try to get us to do stupid stuff. There was a dude yesterday who was selling a service of moving pictures from film to CDs. Really? I can't even express this problem without my brain growing an aneurysm. You want us to pay you to do something that we could easily do ourselves? And you want us to pay you to move a format that we no longer use to a format that we no longer use? GOBSMACKED. When Other Half got after the solicitor, the dude responded with, "Well, everyone is selling something."
Other Half removed that notion from the dude's cranium using lots of fancy mean words and some growling. He'll turn this place into the 'hood, like his native Florida, before we know it. Just kidding. Other Half didn't live in the 'hood (but Florida is still a hole with no mountains and lots of insane people.)

Can we talk about the fliers rubber-banded to our door? We have a few every day. I wish I could count the number of fliers pitching plastic surgery that are attached to the handles. REALLY? I know I live in a fancy neighborhood, but come on. If your idea of marketing technology involves advertising by neon rubber-band fliers, I would never, not in a million years, use your plastic surgery skillz.

A rumor has floated around for years, I even heard it when I was a child, that our neighborhood hands out full-size candy bars. THIS IS NOT TRUE. Even if it was, we will not be handing out full-size candy bars, not even the gross ones. I think we are going the individual M&M route this holiday, maybe it will confuse the hordes of strangers (honestly, they unload by the van-full) who descend on our streets in search of a full-sized Kit-Kat. NEWSFLASH: Put three fun-sized Kit-Kats together and it's THE SAME as a full-size bar. Do the math, or knock on our door and ask Other Half to do the math for you.

On that note, I'm going to bed, before midnight, because Hell called and they saw flurries.

No, Not New York

I have been in a brunch state of mind.

Who would think you could get into a brunch state of mind? As if I could just fall out of a Hamptons state of mind, through a Martha Stewart state of mind, and right into brunch, with a clang of crystal.

But here I am, caught up in the idea that fifty percent of my children in school means that I can blithely invite unsuspecting friends to my home.

Can we talk about my home, please? The elderly couple who built this house as their dream home kept it pristine condition, a perfectly beige late 70s capsule. The original carpets, every tuft babied; the walls, not a patch in sight. It was their house, and for thirty years it was loved. And now, this house is in an abusive relationship. Dry erase marker on the carpet, walls, and doors. There is crayon or pencil on the wall of every room and many surfaces--and I must confess that I haven't gotten around to cleaning it because my one regrettable lament is that every wall is textured and therefore against the 8th amendment to scrub. (Heavens knows that I don't want to be ruled unconstitutional.) The paint is chipped, and the staircase suffers from the constant up and down clattering of boys. I hope this place can take such a careless, violent love.


But out go the phone calls. Please, come over! We'll sit in the kitchen, I'll set the table, the children outside in the yard. Don't stare at the marker stains.

And what will we have? Why, caramel-apple syrup on yeasted waffles.

Caramel Apple Syrup

4-5 medium tart apples

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup butter

1 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup maple syrup

Peel, core, and dice the apples. In a large saucepan heat 1/4 cup butter over medium high heat until melted. Add apples. sprinkle with salt and a couple tablespoons of the brown sugar. Turn the heat to high and stir while apples caramelize, about 4-5 minutes. As the apples brown, turn down the heat to medium to prevent scorching. Add the remaining butter and sugar. Reduce for another 3 minutes, until sugar is melted, stirring often. Add syrup and serve over waffles or pancakes.

I recommend making this recipe now, when apples are at their peak. I used local jonathans, with a few granny smiths, they were divine.

If you use Eggos with these apples your grandmama will rise from the grave and smack you. It is October. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Yeasted Waffles:

1 3/4 Milk

1/2 cup butter

1 cup white flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

3 Tbl sugar*

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp yeast

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

Heat the milk up until hot, but not boiling. Add the butter to the milk and melt. Cool slightly. Beat the eggs lightly and then add to the milk mixture, along with the vanilla. Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl and whisk to combine. Add the wet ingredients and stir until combined, a few lumps are OK. Cover with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for 12-24 hours.

Heat your waffle iron a good 10-15 minutes before you use it. Whisk your batter and ladle it into the iron. Cook until golden. Serve immediately.

No more excuses about homemade waffles. I'm only being bossy for your own good (and not because I enjoy it. Much.)

You HAVE to make this batter ahead and leave it for a day, it just tastes better. I always double the recipe, cool the extra waffles, and put them in a ziploc bag and freeze them. Then in the morning when I am stumbling around like Frankenstein's monster and the children are talking soloudandsofast, I throw a waffle in the microwave for a little less than a minute, and the kids are sated. This recipe is so great that the waffles are still crispy when reheated in the micro.

And GO.




*Jane is right, 3 TBL is the way to go.

All at a Price

I got to sleep in Sunday morning while Other Half got up with the kids. It was lovely: the light filtered through the pink sheers in the pink room, getting warmer and brighter.

On the edge of consciousness, I heard the door open and someone sit on the bed. Someone started talking, so I made myself start listening. El Guille was asking me a question, "Do you want a small one or a big one." "
"Big one," I reflexively answered, and then thought better of it, "I mean, which one do you want me to have?"
"feawpjo graojp eawfjp," He said, or maybe I couldn't quite focus. He was talking a lot.

"I think you should have a big one," he decided. I opened my eyes and saw him next to me, cutting up (with unauthorized scissors) his brand new school pictures, his very first school pictures, with all of the dexterity and precision that a Kindergartner can offer. Just then, I heard Other Half's loud, rumble-y voice yell my name. He sounded insistent. And then I heard him demand towels. Not a good thing to demand.

I came downstairs to a scene:
El Guille, finding his father a novice in the morning child-watching business, took advantage. In the time they were together, he managed to spill nearly my enter oil canister on the kitchen floor. He proudly announced that he "made chocolate muffins!" meaning he cut the challah bread I'd been saving for french toast with a paring knife, found chocolate chips, and jammed them into the bread. Tada! Muffins! And of course, made short work of his school photos.

I find that sleeping thoroughly made me simply shake my head at his antics, maybe with the smallest of smiles, and carried on with my clean up of our destroyed kitchen.

Turns out that if you only towel up the oil, the floor is still pretty slick and you, as well as every member of your family, will at some point slip-n-slide on the vinyl. The toddler will biff it every time.

What can I say? I don't mop on the Sabbath!

(Because I am lazy.)





Catch me over at Segullah today, where I drop the bomb.

Covert Operations

You might remember that once upon a time (35 days ago) I bought a play set which then sat in the parking lot at Lowe's while the store and the rest of the universe couldn't figure out how to help me get it home. Lamenting the cruel separation of my money and my play set, tempered with the anguished cries of my children, last Sunday dinner yielded one very capable volunteer: my cousin Clark.

He called me Tuesday night and asked if I'd meet him in the parking lot at 11:45. No, not a.m., p.m. "Of course," I said.

(Look, it's a family thing, we're always out in the middle of the night or up doing crazy things. In fact, why wouldn't we be running errands in the wee small hours? There are no lines and the traffic is light. Besides, sleep is for babies.)

Clark had already gone to Lowe's earlier in the day, disassembled the play set, and loaded it onto a trailer, which he had left in the lot. He mentioned that no one asked him what he was doing, demanded a receipt, or bothered him in any way. That's so bizarre, I thought, because if I'd been the manager of that store (and I have been a retail store manager) I would have been out there asking questions, especially when someone left a loaded trailer in front of the store in broad daylight. But nope.

Clark asked if I could please drive behind him in case anything fell out and to prevent the over-size load from causing any problems. ANYTHING AT ALL TO GET THAT THING HOME HERE TAKE MY BLOOD. So, yes, I agreed to meet him at quarter to midnight and be the rear guard.

Tiffany came over in the meantime and we sat on the couch to dish. She was texting, I was tweeting, just a couple Gen Xers living the life of Millennials. I told her about Clark's plan and she was game. We might have done a drive by past a house of a guy that she kind of likes on our way to Lowe's. (More Millennial stuff.) (Or is that high school stuff?) (And what did we think would happen if our high school crushes had actually came out of the house? Would we just drive even faster, only screaming? Not a lot of thought went into drive-bys, did they?)

Clark pulled into the lot with his pick up truck and jumped out of the cab with a headlamp on his head and a busted up tee. He moved frenetically hitching the trailer and digging around for a bungee cord while telling us all about the movie he's shooting in the morning. Clark is a wizard. (Not that kind, the special effects kind.) The movie is about orcs. Do women find orcs as attractive as vampires, I wondered? Clark demanded that we explain the current feminine obsession with vampires. I do not have an answer, Tiffany stammered one out. I pretended not to be obsessed with True Blood.

As long as we were in a deserted parking lot in the black night, Clark suggested, and no one was asking any questions, maybe we should just throw the other display play set next to mine onto the flat bed and create some sort of ginormous mutant play set that appeared to be self-replicating. I was sorely tempted. Yes, outlandish ideas and scheming plans, we are related.

He dug a military grade flashing flare out of his truck (of course he did) and tied it on the play set boom extending from the trailer. "Excellent!" Clark proclaimed, and fired up the pickup. Tiff and I jumped into her luxury car to follow the flat bed. Clark blasted over the speed bumps at top speed with every slat screaming to abandon the trailer. I begged Tiffany to stay further behind the careening truck. Sure enough, boards tumbled out onto the road in front of Five Guys and Fries. I jumped out of the car, golf cart style, and grabbed the boards. Up the road we watched the flare detach and bounce-flash along the asphalt and land in the dark. Tiffany and I scan the road and spy the bungee. Another car is racing towards us as I scoop up the bungee in the middle of the road and let out a scream as I vaulted back into the car.

I wonder what the neighbors think of us moving this thing at 12:20 a.m. I hope they think we're mysterious. Not so mysterious that we're selling meth, but just mysterious enough to be moving large, bulky items under the cover of darkness.

Am I sad that Lowe's took my contact info after my last post and then didn't call me back? No. Why? Because when Clark was taking apart the set no one batted an eye. He left a trailer in the Lowe's lot and not a word. We came back in the dead of night and not so much as a rookie security guard moseyed on over to see what the Hey For we were doing.

When Clark is done with the orcs he'll be back to put the play set together, which prompted me to come up with a cracking idea for next week's posts, just you wait.

So now we have our play set; it's just in pieces in the backyard, but at least it's not still in the parking lot of the hardware store.

The Play Set Problem

We bought a play set for the new backyard. Well, my mother-in-law bought it for us (there might be a competition between my mom and his mom on who can buy us more things, this can only end well.)

The play set is the fully assembled display model at our neighborhood Lowe's. We had to call the manufacturer to actually purchase the set and on the receipt they pdf'd us (yes, a verb) it clearly stated "delivery is not included."

OK, no big deal.

I called Lowe's and explained that we'd purchased the set and could they arrange delivery. No problem, I was assured. I clarified that it was the display model. Again, no problem, just come into the store and pay the delivery fee.

I went to Lowe's to arrange for delivery a couple days later. At the store the manager informed me that they couldn't actually deliver the set since it was already fully assembled. And since the manufacturer had assembled the set, the manager didn't want his associates to disassemble the play set.

"But we aren't handy people," I explained.
"When people purchase fully assembled sheds it's the same thing," the manager explained, "One guy hired a crane and truck to lift the shed and transport it."

Uh, what? Even if that was in the realm of the every day possible, I'm not exactly sure how a crane could lift the play set over our narrow side yard and back fence and into place. The manager had no more answers for me. I couldn't spend any more time at the store, so I left in an extremely flummoxed state.

I'm not sure what to do.

We have a play set, it's just in the parking lot at Lowe's instead of at our house.

What would you do?






p.s. I'm too nervous to tell Other Half this story because he's had THREE run-ins with Lowe's this month over crappy service/product issues and this might send him over the edge.

Story of a Proximo

This is the story of a boy, who used to be a baby.

He longed to be outside to stretch his growing arms and long legs, but he spent all day inside a very small apartment on the top floor. One day he packed his bunny and moved to a house that had a paradise disguised as a backyard. He could run, jump, and shriek as fast, long, and as loud as he wanted. 

So he did.

And when he'd run, jumped, and shrieked (until his heart nearly burst from joy,) he asked for a sparkle-sicle. 

So he took that sparkle-sicle, sat down on the steps, and leaned against a post. This was his favorite spot. He could talk to the birds poking for worms, hear the dog next door, and just hum a harmony with the busy world around him.

He was so happy, his smile nearly split his head open.

For all the beauty, space, and wonder of his new world, the lure of the old one sometimes called to him.

And sometimes he listened.

(Especially when the call said to arrange his own sunscreen application.)

 

(And to smear the extra all over his mother's brand new wool rug.) 

 

The End.