Got Summer? Or, On the Agonizing Ritual of Closet Reorg

Apparently not this year.

Despite its severe winters and famous 3-foot snow, Chicago has always delivered hot and humid summers. These two things are not mutually exclusive, I am sure, according to a meteorologist, but in my mind I always wonder, while either dying from motion sickness from all the shivering or from dehydration when my body turns into a water tank with holes, “Why out of all the cities did we choose this place?! WHY?!”

This year, we had a very cool summer. How cool?

I went through the whole year without seasonalizing my closet… I have basically been living on the clothes I hauled into my closet last fall. And it is LIBERATING!

You know the twice-a-year ritual:

You say goodbye to your sweaters and place your summer clothes on the hangers. Later you stash away your shorts and tank tops and bring out your t-necks and wool pants. The fat clothes, much to your dismay, are still applicable. You may or may not decide to look through the clothes you put away for when you lose weight. Probably better if you don’t. Since if you do, you will realize, by the looks and the styles, that they have been there for A VERY LONG TIME…

Although I love the changing seasons in the Midwest: the 2 weeks of spring, the 5 weeks of fall, I always dread the implications: Summarizing/winterizing the closets. More so because as soon as I am done reorganizing the closets, the temperature will drop/increase to be “unseasonably” WTF.

Every. Single. Time. Murphy’s Law.

I especially dread the re-organizing of my children’s closets: They are not like us. We get to wear the same clothes every year, or pretty much the same “fat” clothes in my case. They grow. Like weed. And they grow out of their clothes before they have the chance to wear them twice. Here is when I envy people with only one child.

Outgrew the clothes already? Pack them up! Haul them away!

When you have multiple children, now is the time to go through every single piece of clothing and agonize: Will No. 2 be able to wear this one from No. 1 two years from now? Will he have grown big enough in time to wear this sweater? Why can’t they grow in sync, as in, No. 2 will conveniently be able to wear No. 1’s hand-me-downs a few years later? Why do they have to grow OUT OF SEASONs? i.e. yeah, No. 2 can now wear No.1’s old clothes, but ooops, these are the sweaters, and we are now in July!

You also need to separate them by sizes, by seasons, by the types of clothing: pants, shirts, shorts, t-shirts, sweaters, jackets, gloves, hats, snow boots, Halloween costumes.

I regret for not having planned the births of my children with precision whenever I am sitting on the floor, surrounded by piles of clothes, assaulting my anal-itis.

Don’t even get me started on the stress I go through, when in the middle of the summer, I receive the Overstock catalogue from Lands’ End: “50% off on Winter Jackets and Snow Boots!” How am I supposed to know how big/tall these kids are going to be 6 months from now? But I’d better get the winter equipments while they are on massive discounts so we won’t be caught with nothing when winter comes suddenly. Which happens in Chicago, it feels, every year. And why do I have to worry about winter when I am sweating like a pig? Curses, Lands’ End!

So, yes, this year I have been living in jeans and long-sleeved shirts when it is cool, and jeans and t-shirts when it is warm. I haven’t touched any skirts or shorts. I didn’t even pack my capris when we went to the beach for the summer. I lived in my swimming suit that week.

I did make the attempt to summarize my closet this August when I decided that oh, yes, the temperature is going to stay summer-y finally…

closet

The pile has been on the floor since…

This weekend I’m just going to box the summer clothes up again and hang up the sweaters, again.

And you know what? Maybe we will see Summer, again…

You can’t fight Murphy’s Law…

p.s. Here is if you need an explanation on WHY cool summers do not mean Global Warming is not happening to respond to snide comments from the deniers…

“Wisconsin Tourism Federation changes name to avoid acronym” ’nuff said…

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“The folks at the Wisconsin Tourism Federation, a 30-year-old tourism lobbying coalition based in Sun Prairie, couldn’t possibly have predicted how the Internet would change the lingo.

While its abbreviation, WTF, was fairly innocuous a few decades ago, it means something entirely different these days…”

News article here.

Apparently the alarm was first sounded by a blogger. So don’t ever say we bloggers do not make a difference!

What do you think? The new logo does not seem to have the same PUNCHY ring to it, eh? They should have changed it to Federation of Tourism in Wisconsin.

FTW! Baby!

“How to Care for Introverts”

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I saw this a couple of weeks ago from a twittie bird on Twitter… I clicked on the link, expecting it to be a funny, ha ha moment, “tongue in cheek”. I grew silent as I read the list. It describes my youngest almost to a T, and for the first time, I was getting an idea of “Where he’s coming from”.

It does not say much about my being an observant mother, does it? How could I have not seen? It is so obvious: The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment has so conveniently divided people along this line: on one side you have your extroverts, on the other, introverts. It’s just that it has never occurred to me that we are living essentially in an “extrovert” world now.

There is an implicit, prevalent belief that in order to be somebody, you need to be an extrovert, or act like one, for most professions residing in a corporate structure. Of course, if you are a writer, an artist, or a musician, you are welcome to be as introvert as you need to. Hack, you can be crazy if that’s what floats your boat. I am sure the way human interactions have been moving onto the Interweb, into the virtual world, has allowed a lot of introverts to thrive. How many amongst us are “closeted introverts” that are gregarious and energetic online yet reserved and apprehensive in real life.

A lot. Judging by the sheer amount of comments on Reddit, almost 700 of them. This list received almost 2,400 “Up” votes, and 3,400 “Diggs“. A pent-up realization that it is O.K. to not to want to be around other people 24/7, to not be adaptive, to not enjoy change, to take a long time before making a decision. To be quiet. To be observant. To need to feel drained by other people. To want to be by yourself.

I like to joke that there is no manual for parenting. Well, this list sort of helps.

Herald to Halloween? Walnut that looks like Jack Skellington

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Originally uploaded by The Absence of Alternatives.

My youngest went tramping in the woods with daddy this weekend and came upon this great looking walnut. He was very excited since, at least to him and all of us in the family actually, it looks like Jack Skellington in Tim Burton’s The Nightmare before Christmas…

The Nightmare Before Christmas was my 6year-old boy’s favorite movie when he was even younger. We used to have to let him watch it almost every day. For someone who is reserved and wary of startling, action-packed scenes, our youngest child’s love of Jack Skellington has always baffled us…

What bacons look like after you soaked them in Vodka for 4 weeks…

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This post is Part 5 of a series of posts documenting an impromptu DIY project I took on when I done and gone nuts on one Sunday afternoon… It is indeed very interesting that the whole thing started on a Sunday afternoon, don’t ya think, after I’d been alone with the kids for 2 whole days… (And, I believe, it is mandatory by law, that whenever I complain about being with the kids for a long period of time, to add this, “…despite the fact that I love them dearly, and yes, I know I will go to the HELL designated for Mothers Who Do Not Enjoy Being With Their Kids 24/7”.)

You can see the Genesis of the Bacon-flavored vodka, my trip to Walmart for the ingredients, 12 Steps to making your own, what it looked like a week before (Hint: LESS disgusting and questionable). Or you can just take my word for it.

So according to the recipe, I am supposed to soak the bacon strips in da Vodka for at least 3 weeks and then put the jar in the freezer to separate the fat. This is the 4th week, so I am doing ok. Although I have no excuse for why it took me a whole week to perform the step of “Bringing the jar from the cabinet and putting it inside the freezer”. “I have a full-time job with 2 kids and a husband” just does not seem to work in this case.

Anyhoo, here is how the vodka looks like today:

DRUM ROLL PLEASE…
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Awww. Isn’t he (she?) cute? I just thought as an apology for showing you the disgusting picture below, I should reward you with a cute sleeping kitty picture. Ok, here it is. For real. Are you ready?

Here it is…

…

“I want to be an artist so I can be rich!”

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“Mom, what did you want to do when you grew up?”

My 6 year-old asked innocently. This question stirs a lot of anxiety inside me, but that’s another post, if you are unlucky enough, I may indulge myself in one day…

He’s been really concerned about his future lately. He has pondered on being an artist for a long time.

“I really would like to be rich when I grow up. So I’m going to be an artist.”

Oh, boy. I tried to think back to all of the things I have ever said to him, since he was a fetus inside me, things that I have done or not, Is it because I didn’t breast feed him long enough?, that have caused him to become so materialistic. Have we been living a life of too much comfort that somehow has instilled a sense of, oh gosh darn it, greed in the upbringing of our kids? PANIC.

Great job, mom. I said to myself.

What to do? What to say? In my mind, I could picture myself running around like a headless chicken. Wings flapping. Cluck. Cluck. Cluck. Somehow this visual image of myself as a headless chicken or a deer with widened eyes is projected quite frequently on the back walls of my eye sockets…

“Hmmm. I don’t think being an artist will necessarily make you rich.”

How honest should we be with our children? Once again I wondered. Once again I had to make an uninformed split-second decision purely based on intuition, yup, the same one that helped me every time I purchased lottery tickets…

“Van Gogh was very poor when he was alive. I don’t think he made a lot of money by selling his paintings until after he died.”

Way to go, mom, for dashing your child’s hopes and dreams. Why don’t you just tell him to dream about being an accountant. Or an actuary. Don’t ever tell them to reach for the stars now Mary Poppins…

“Not even a house?” A look of concern crept up his face. “I just want to be rich so I can buy a house when I grow up.”

Ooops. Failed by overthinking again. Fortunately I am a champion in the sports of back paddling…

“Oh, yeah. Of course you will be able to buy a house. I would say though, you should do whatever that makes you happy and not worry so much about buying a house now.”

“Oh good. Because I was thinking that if I cannot be an artist, I would like to be a musician so I can be rich and buy a house.”

Oh, boy. Here we go again…

“A Class Divided”: Powerful experiment on how Racism can be learned, and in 15 minutes

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Some of you may know about this already, since this Frontline documentary was first aired in 1985. I have only heard about the “Blue-eyed vs. Brown-eyed” experiment done by a daring 3rd-grade teacher, but I have never actually seen the documentary until today. Through Twitter, of course. There is something to be said about the power of audio visual presentation.

I was impressed by the courage of the teacher, Jane Elliott, and awed by the outcome when I READ the description of what happened in those two days:

On the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in April 1968, Jane Elliott’s third graders from the small, all-white town of Riceville, Iowa, came to class confused and upset. They recently had made King their ‘Hero of the Month,’ and they couldn’t understand why someone would kill him. So Elliott decided to teach her class a daring lesson in the meaning of discrimination. She wanted to show her pupils what discrimination feels like, and what it can do to people.

Elliott divided her class by eye color — those with blue eyes and those with brown. On the first day, the blue-eyed children were told they were smarter, nicer, neater, and better than those with brown eyes. Throughout the day, Elliott praised them and allowed them privileges such as a taking a longer recess and being first in the lunch line. In contrast, the brown-eyed children had to wear collars around their necks and their behavior and performance were criticized and ridiculed by Elliott. On the second day, the roles were reversed and the blue-eyed children were made to feel inferior while the brown eyes were designated the dominant group…

But the text does not prepare you for the visceral reactions you’ll be getting when you watch the actual documentary… I’ve got goose bumps all over me…

You can find the full 5-part program directly here and also Teachers’ Guide.

What is even more valuable as a lesson, and reminder, for all of us, even in this day and age, despite the sensationalism this documentary certainly has delivered, is what Jane Elliot said to have pushed her towards such a drastic experiment on her 3rd graders in an interview:

Yet all I could think of as I saw this attitude of sympathetic indifference develop was the way I had myself reacted to racial discrimination all these many years: Sure, an incident can anger you. Sure, you feel sorry about the way blacks are being treated. Sure, something ought to be done about it. And now, what shall we talk about?

Coda: I was surprised to learn that the small, rural, all-white community actually supported this experiment. The parents were ok with Ms. Elliot’s unique lesson plan. Upon further reading, the superintendent at that time was indeed under a lot of pressure to fire Jane Elliot. He didn’t. According to Elliot, “20 percent of the people in Riceville are still absolutely furious about what I did on April 4, 1968.” But the parents of her students never had any problem with her unique lesson plan…

It is probably the sign for the times we live in and my unrelenting cynicism. As I was watching the video and dealing with the whirlwind of emotions and thoughts forming inside me, one part of my brain was actually thinking, and I am not proud to admit it,

“Whoa. That took some courage for her to do that. I wonder whether she would have got herself AND the school AND the school district into a shit load of trouble if she were doing this NOW. Imagine the protests from parents…”

Have we somehow walked backwards some time when nobody was looking?

Dear God, it’s me, not Margaret, but before I die, may I please go to Bora Bora?

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Seriously, I have promised myself that I will finish this white paper I am working on before I do anything else. Except breathe. And drink a lot of water which is good for you. And then of course, pee. And I have been working really hard, until I had to search for a research paper online and I came across this picture, completely by accident, of Le Meridien Bora Bora…

It, how did you say it, oh yeah,

Simply. Took. My. Breath. Away.

I couldn’t go back to do whatever I was doing until I spent some time daydreaming about it…

I love hotels. I think my love for travelling, my Wanderlust, stemmed from my very basic fascination with hotels from a very young age. (Ok, the clean, fancy kind. Or at least, the not spooky gross-out kind. Not the ones looking like they are from the movie Barton Fink, oh no…) My mom worked as a hotel maid and she sneaked me into the hotel when she couldn’t find or afford a babysitter. Sometimes, after I begged her to smuggle me in. Literally. Many times I rode on the bottom of the service cart, camouflaged by a bed linen. I was always excited. Hotels to me are where dreams are made of. Clean, fluffy linens and pillows. Nicely made beds.

(Of course I understand the hard work put in by the hotel cleaning staff. Until this day, I clean up after myself as much as I can whenever I stay in a hotel…)

I don’t even care about Bora Bora. No offence to people who are Bora Bora-nese? Bora Bora-en? I am sure it is a gorgeous tropical paradise, Kodak moment everywhere you turn. What I am trying to say is: I just want to go there so I can stay in one of these bungalows, over the lagoon, before I die.

That’s all I’ve got to say.

Edited to add, now that I have 5 minutes to regroup from my initial shock: Preferably without kids. Thank you.

Why does the smiley face look like a pervert?

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Seriously. Have you looked at it closely? What is wrong with Wordpress? Why do the smiley faces on my posts look like a f*cking pervert? I have never seen a smiley face with arched eyebrows like these…

🙂

Tell me they don’t look sinister. I mean, come on.

Even Google’s smileys, though I do consider them to be on the dunce side, can be said to convey cuteness, or at least attempt to.

I now feel extremely self-conscious when I leave a comment on other people’s blogs and I want to add a smiley to convey my friendliness:

“I come in peace. I mean you no harm.” And by the way, here is what I look like when I am saying this, smiling:

🙂

Whoa. I scare myself just looking at it. Now my comment looks like a death threat from a psychotic serial killer. Great.

Glue Gun, Pom Poms and Googly Eyes: Props for Mother of the Year medal

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That is: if your kids, like mine, don’t know any better…

My kids are ok. They don’t know any other way of living.

I say this often. Sometimes, I am merely being sarcastic, and self-deprecating. (Ha. Like that’s a surprise…) Sometimes, I am being dead serious…

I didn’t realize we were poor until the other day when I was telling my co-worker how I slept in my parents’ bedroom until I was in senior high because there was not enough room in the apartment.

“Oh, shit! We were poor!”

It’s like a light bulb went up. It finally dawned on me. But did I notice it when I was growing up? Nah. I simply didn’t know any better.

Similarly, my kids don’t know any better. I seldom “cook”, cook. So when I make biscuits from the tube-thingy, bake a cake from the boxed mix, or make cookies from the scoop-a-tub, they think I am making stuff “from scratch”. If I have to cut up vegetables and make something that requires more than 2 pots and/or more than 5 ingredients, boy, we are having a “family feast”. I am not proud of deceiving my kids. All I can say is, “My future daughters-in-law are going to thank me!”

I do believe that every mom needs a glue gun at home. And if you want to reach for the stars, an endless supply of pom poms and googly eyes. Because when you have a rainy afternoon to while away with your kids (and honestly, the constant “We are so bored” whining litany is really getting on your nerves), you break out that glue gun, and then you glue those suckers onto ANYTHING that’s lying around the house. ANYTHING.

All of a sudden, your kids are so wowed by their own creations that there are stars in their eyes, and they think you are as awesome as that gal from Trading Spaces. And for a moment, you’ll believe you are.

Awesome.

Glue Gun: $7

Bag of pom poms: $1

Bag of googly eyes (the fancy kind): $3

Being Mom of the Year for one afternoon: Priceless