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There is a reason I do not bake, and I should not be a kindergarten teacher… These are my cookies. Rolled and cut out in class with the children, and baked at home by me.

These are Mrs. S’s cookies.

She will never, ever ask me back into the class.

We had a bit of a reorganization here at Chez JE this weekend. And even though I brought it upon myself, I was the one who at the end of the day was so freaked out by all the changes that I needed a glass of wine and a nice hot shower in my unchanged bathroom to keep myself from delving into a full-fledged panic attack. C was similarly afflicted, requiring a restorative stay in his room, while M and A jumped around the house in glee exclaiming “Look! How great! I love it!”

Now, because you are all going to clamor for such things, I present to you the pictures. With the caveat that once my sewing machine arrives from Santa there will be real window treatments and such…

Eating area before

Eating area after
It feels, well, empty. But it DOES make accessing the pantry easier. And if we ever get around to the kitchen redo, the eating area was going to be toast anyway. But seriously, since the renovation is several years out, do you think the empty space is going to look odd?

“Train room” before
“Train room” after
When I first saw the house, I saw this room and Rebecca and I both went, “Hmmm. What do you DO with that room?” We quickly decided upon eating area, but the real estate showing the house insisted sitting area. And so it became ingrained in everyone’s mind that it should be a a sitting area. But there was no real way to configure the room as a sitting area. Clearly this table is too small for the space, especially since we are down to two chairs thanks to “you get what you pay for” construction. What do you think, if there were a larger pedestal table in there, with a small buffet against the wall to the right of the fireplace?

Family room before

Family room after

Not sure how I feel about this one. Clearly that wall is calling out for SOMETHING. We’ve moved the quilt up to the guest room for now as the kids kept pulling it off the wall, and it really didn’t go in the room. I think the long term plan for in here is a sectional with this furniture moving down into the basement for the kids, as it has been basically trashed by them already.

Living room before

Living room after

This one I think came out well. M is less convinced, primarily because he can’t figure out where the Christmas tree is supposed to go and refuses to consider placing the tree in the family room. I say you can’t build a room around a Christmas tree that is in the house for two weeks a year, but clearly the Christmas tree placement is not quite the concern for me as it is for M…

So what do you think? We are not at all wedded to any of this, and are seeking input….

Wikipeda should totally cite who actually wrote the article on any particular subject. While surfing to fill in info that IMDB couldn’t, I decided to see what Wikipedia had to say about my high school. And based on the random alum mentioned under “Notable Alums,” and the fact that I KNOW this alum, and his claim to fame is not particularly worthy of mention under “Notable Alums,” I am somewhat suspect as to the authorship of this particular entry.

I’m tempted to add myself to the list of notable alums. “Chichimama, fabulous mother and wife. Queen of the Laundry Room.” Do you think that would be too obvious???

Y’all might have noticed that there hasn’t been a menu for a while. Ahem, about that. Well, there hasn’t been a menu because there hasn’t really been much cooking going on around here. By the time dinner rolls around it is dark, and I am tired, and the effort to make dinner just got to be too much. Not that we are doing take out or any such thing, but we have basically been living off of my stash of freezer meals. Which is not really a bad thing, I suppose, as isn’t that why there are there? But still, I sort of feel like I should make the effort to actually cook something at least once a week.

But, yet, I keep pulling from the freezer. And then I realized a few days ago that my stash was getting pretty low. Low to the point that we are about to eat the smothered eggplant that I wasn’t so sure was worth the effort when I made it this summer, but still froze because who knew, we might get snowed in for a week this winter (It could happen….).

So for the last few days I have been trying to throw meals together in the afternoon, before I collapse onto the couch and watch Clifford the Big Red Dog. Then I had the inspired idea that I should make one meal for dinner and one for the freezer. I know, I know, I’m not a rocket scientist. This method has been touted by folks far and wide. But we’ve established that I am slow on the uptake.

To aid in my efforts, I decided to order some foil take out pans and lids from a restaurant supply company so I didn’t have to use up my limited stash of Pyrex. Not the most environmentally friendly option, I know. But I could buy 500 take out pans for the cost one one Pyrex, and I couldn’t really argue with the numbers there. And hey, at least foil is recyclable.

Do you KNOW how much space 500 take out pans and lids requires? I didn’t quite think about the logistics of having to store that many pans. Or the draw that that many glittery foil objects might have for my kids. “Can we have JUST one more? You have so MANY!” I have a feeling that the garage is the best place to stash the big box-o-foil pans, but that means having to clear out a shelf (or two or three) out there to keep them on. Which requires a trip to the hazardous waste disposal place to get rid of all the old paint and lawn chemicals. And probably a trip to Goodwill and the used bookstore, and several trips around town to return all of the random crap that I have been “storing” for other people.

Somehow, I think I would have been better off just cooking dinner.

Don’t say I never give y’all anything (and make sure your speakers are on!)…

Happy Holidays From Chichimama

After I picked the kids up at school today, we swung by church to deliver some presents for the angel tree. We saw the rector from afar, and I waved as he was conversing with someone else. We kept heading towards the angel tree, and the kids kept chattering about their day. At some point once we reached the tree, the rector caught up with us and I didn’t quite notice as I was busy depositing the presents and keeping A from knocking over the water cooler.

I heard C say “Hi!” The rector responded with “Hello Father XYZ, how are you?” to which C blinked and dutifully repeated him. I blinked as well, and then, unclear how I was supposed to respond at that point, escorted the kids out of the building.

The whole interaction basically ruined my day. At first I was terribly embarrassed because clearly I had failed as a parent since the rector felt it necessary to parent my children in front of me. Then I got rather upset because really, my children are polite and interested in other people. They are three and five. The fact the C even had an interest in saying hello in a friendly tone of voice to a figure of authority is more than I can say for most of the children I interact with in the church.

By the end of the day I was ready to take our pledge card back from the stewardship office and rip it up. I have gone out of my way to instruct my children in the religion in which I was not raised. I have gone out of my way to volunteer, befriend members of the church who need befriending, and do the best I can to be an active and involved parishioner. I have done the best I can in raising my children, and yes, in an ideal world, they should have addressed the rector with ” Hello Father XYZ, how are you today?” But I can’t come up with a scenario in my mind in which I would have responded to a child’s friendly hello in such a manner.

This is not a child-friendly, or even a family-friendly, church. It is a critical and insular church, which resists change and deters newcomers. And I really have no interest in continuing to participate. So the rector who has been nothing but unresponsive, condescending and insincere to my family can look for another family to drive out of this church. I’ll fulfill my pledge and other commitments for the upcoming year, but after that I’m done.

It’s the little things that keep a family in a church. And the little things that drive them out.

For the past month I have been glued to my back window twice a week. Thursday and Saturday, the days that the next door and diagonally behind neighbors’ landscapers come to do the leaves. On Thursday, the landscapers of the diagonally behind neighbors blow all the leaves into the backyard of the next door neighbor’s instead of collecting and disposing of them. Then on Saturday, the next door neighbor’s landscapers blow THE EXACT SAME LEAVES, plus whatever fell during the last few days, back into the diagonally behind neighbor’s lawn. For some reason, this amuses me to no end.

I figured it is a big old game of chicken, and at some point in the near future, someone is going to get stuck having to collect and dispose an entire season’s worth of leaves from two lawns in one day. My money is on the next door neighbor’s landscapers….