Life and What-Not

“The problem with adulthood,” I began my conversation with Victoria, “is that by the time you realize what you want to do, what you are good at, it’s often too late to go back for a do-over. Take this quantitative management class I’m in right now. I love it. It’s just straightforward mathematical statistics for the purpose of solving business problems, and it energizes me. I really like this stuff.” (Eye roll from the daughter.)

“I knew this, of course, back when I was in college, but I didn’t pursue the field. I met with one tiny obstacle and – meh – I moved on to an easier path. I was young and dumb and though I don’t have many regrets about my past – other than superficially wishing I could go back in time and give the young Lori a few Gibbs’ head-slaps – I regret not pushing through for the degree I wanted and a career that might have provided more material resources. Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do now and I don’t believe material resources would serve me any better than the spiritual resources I have access to, but I often find myself wondering what it would be like if I had been ‘adult-enough’ to insist on more effort from myself at a younger age.

“And so that is what kicks me in the head as an adult – knowing that we cannot change the past, we can only direct the future. We can change what we do today for the benefit of tomorrow, and no more. But when you’re over the proverbial hill, and you see it all this clearly, and you know – absolutely know in your heart – that you could have done better, or more, or whatever with your energy and resources…all you really can do is let your children know the pitfalls. You want to make sure that your kids understand what mistakes not to make, what obstacles to push through.

“And that brings me to the fallacy of youth, in that when I was young and dumb – as so you shall be, too – I was not interested in older people’s advice of the pitfalls. I had my whole life ahead of me, and that’s all that I saw. My future was a blank page, and I was selecting the pen with which to write it. Don’t dare tell me what pen I should use; that’s my decision! And so, when we are young we make the easy choices, the fun choices, the choices that bring us pleasure, even if it is fleeting. It’s only when we are older that we think, what if??? What if I had chased that dream? What if I had studied harder? What if I had actually attended that Business Law class instead of deciding that Dominic might be hanging out in the student center and surely I HAD to be there too? But Business Law, while a really interesting class, at the time paled in comparison to the interest I held for my social life and your father’s whereabouts. (Cue head-slap). Surely I could have pursued your father after my work was done??? But, as I said, I can’t change the past. Our choices, our actions, make us who we are and I do love this life. What I can do now is hand you the information and hope that you choose to make good decisions. That’s the goal of every parent…to make sure our kids don’t have any regrets.”

Victoria seems to consider this for a moment, then says, “I watched this movie last night where this guy walked outside and got struck by lightning. For no reason at all! He just walked out, got struck by lightning, and died right there on the spot.”

Nobody listens to me.

List Therapy: Things I Like

Here I am, head spinning from a stressful busy week, finding something to be  peeved about at every turn. In fact, this started out as a list of pet peeves (admittedly, some stupid, some funny, and some universal). As I mentally ticked off the things that tick me off, a still tiny voice in the back of my head said, “Way to focus on the positive, Lori.”

Ahem.

So I backed up a bit and decided to make my list about things that make me happy rather than the things that annoy me. Here goes.

1. Sunshine. The brighter, the better.
2. 70 degree weather (Can I get an amen?!)
3. Babies cooing (even if they are so far in my past that I’ve almost forgotten them…almost…my memory was stirred by the family who sat behind us in church on Saturday.)
4. Mabel in her role as “the Christmas Puppy.”
5. Sunshine.
6. Coffee with a just-right proportion of milk. It never lasts long enough. Good thing there are refills.
7. A clean kitchen.
8. Glimpses of summer at the end of January.
9. Seeing Dom and Vic playing basketball when I pull into the driveway.
10. Planning this year’s vegetable garden.
11. Our freezer full of deer meat, which means I don’t have to buy hamburger meat at the store for almost the rest of 2015.
12. Gospel songs, Statler-Brothers style.  “Are your garments spotless? Are they white as snow?…”
13. Stove-top popcorn drizzled in Kerrygold butter– better than the movies!!
14. A new bottle of nail polish.
15. Sunshine.  (Can you tell I wanted to spend the whole day outside?)
16. Realizing in the midst of stress just how blessed I really am when Aaron asks me, “Mom, do you need a hug?”
17. Mommy-daughter time.
18. Mom-son time.
19. Dom time.
20. Sunshine.

What was I stressed about, again?

Turkey Confessions

Tags

cooking, kitchen fail, paleo, Thanksgiving

Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, I can reflect on the feast and forgive myself for some mishaps.  I loved surfing the web and reading everyone’s Thanksgiving Roundups of the recipes on their lists as the holiday drew near.  And the pictures.  OMG the PICTURES!!  I wanted to make my own Roundup post, but I wasn’t quite creative enough early enough, and truly, I decided the other bloggers’ roundups were sufficient enough without my duplicates tagging along behind them.  At any rate, I had a fabulous meal planned for the night before Thanksgiving with some dear friends who were visiting for the holiday:  Stuffed wild turkey that Dom brought home from his latest Texas hunt, baked sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, roasted cauliflower, homemade yeast rolls, sautéed spinach and green beans…I had it goin’ ON!  Now, the kicker here is that with the exception of the homemade yeast rolls, the entire menu was to be paleo.   Yep.  Grain- and refined-sugar-free.  Dom and I changed our eating habits at the beginning of November, and I wanted to make sure that our dinner was in line with our dietary preferences.  I went to my most trusted sites for the ideas and the directions, I shopped till I dropped and I came home from work at noon on Wednesday to begin cooking.  I spent the next five hours proofing bread, stuffing turkey breasts, and scrubbing veggies.  Our guests arrived, they got a nickel tour of the new home…

And then I burned the turkey.

Yes, folks, you read that right. I burned the turkey.  I threw open the oven door and a wave of smoke poured out as we peered in at a darkened pan and some pitifully weathered-looking stuffed turkey breasts.  Oh, but that’s not all I did. Moments before my guests arrived, I had turned a half-baked pumpkin bread out of the pan, stuffed it back into the pan and continued cooking it; I failed to follow directions for a paleo piecrust, ate part of the crust by myself while I wondered how to use it in a trifle, and then chucked the idea and whipped up a basic flour-dough pie crust; I frantically and mistakenly added too much agave nectar to the pumpkin pie filling, which resulted in an embarrassingly sloshy pie; I under-roasted the cauliflower; and as I sautéed my green veggies, I noticed that I had neglected to cut the stem ends off of my beans after washing them.  All this before I had uncorked the first bottle of wine!!!  In fact, by the time we set the table and picked up our forks, the only menu items that had come through unscathed by my kitchen catastrophes were the baked sweet potatoes and the rolls.

What’s a Martha-Stewart-wannabe to do?  Well, she’s to open a bottle of red wine, apologize to her guests, fill their glasses and let it go.  Except that I’m not really so good at letting it go.  Never have been.  The only way I can really let something go is to write it all out.  Hence, this blog and your personal tour of the crazy in my head.

We had a delightful evening.  My guests, Stacey and Lee, were entirely more gracious than I deserved, even if they were a bit hungry at the end of dinner.  (I truly hope they weren’t, but I’ll never really know.)  However, I awoke the next morning with the awful embarrassment of the final results, much like a foggy hangover through which one vaguely remembers dancing on the table.  (Not that I would know anything about that, mind you.)  I texted Stacey immediately and confessed my continued mortification, apologizing again for the burned turkey and sloshy pie.  There’s a reason she’s my best friend: she has been present for 95% of my embarrassing moments.  The other 5% she knows by heart as if she had experienced the drama personally.  The only thing she doesn’t know about me is whether or not I was really trying to sing well that one day in college.  And I still ain’t sayin’!!!

I shared my culinary failings with my mother on the telephone the next morning, and it was at that point that I realized my fatal flaw for the dinner: I was serving four dishes that I had never made before, with recipes that were vastly different from mainstream holiday recipes, and I gave myself only five hours to pull it all together.  I quite technically bit off more than I could chew. Problem was, everyone at my table had to chew it too.

The wine, however, was excellent and the company even better!  I hope you and yours had a lovely Thanksgiving holiday.

Adventures in Upholstery

Tags

dumb ideas, furniture upholstery, wingback chair

The fact that I’m not as crafty as I’d like to be never manages to stop me from attempting the most asinine of projects.  Take, for instance, my wingback chair.

This chair was bestowed upon us at the onset of our marriage by a couple who was upgrading their living room furniture.  We were the proud heirs to the wingback chair and a matching sofa, both pieces outfitted in a lovely cornflower blue floral print reminiscent of the 1980’s.  Never let it be said that I turned my nose up at free furniture.

I handily slip-covered the sofa in a solid blue cotton with coordinating plaid throw pillows.  The only thing Dom had to remember was to not grab hold of the top back of the sofa, lest he become intimate with the family of stickpins which held my handiwork together.

In due time, our puppy Mason would eat the sofa (yes…the whole sofa), but the wingback chair managed to survive where it stood proudly in what I called “the sitting room.”  For the next 13 years the chair provided a comfortable place to read, relax and chat.  Since the blue floral print fabric was a bit dated for my taste, I constantly sought more pleasing fabrics to drape over the chair, giving it a new – if not wrinkled – look every time the mood struck.  Without fabric properly cut and sewn to fit, my chair always looked like a laundry bin, though I tried to keep it tidy and inviting.

Dom didn’t exactly share my love for the chair.  He found it utilitarian at best, and would gladly sit in it when he needed a place to rest, but I think he would have been perfectly content with the idea of leaving the chair as a permanent fixture of the house that we sold. I was having no part of that, and insisted that the chair come with us to the new house.

“Can’t we just buy a new one?” Dom complained.  “I don’t understand your attachment to this chair.

“It’s a good chair!” I insisted.  “Besides, I want it to live in the office at the new house.  It only needs a facelift.  I have the fabric already; I just need to find someone to re-cover it for me.”

My plan was to recover the chair in a fabric that my Aunt Penny had found – she had recently sent a bolt of a pretty gold-and-chocolate print upholstery fabric my way.  I was afraid I wouldn’t have enough for the chair, and thought about covering throw pillows in the fabric instead.  Then I unrolled the bolt and figured that if I found an alternate coordinating color for the back and sides of the chair, I would not only have enough of the print fabric for the main parts of the chair, but also enough to recover a footstool to match.

Keep in mind that the whole time I envisioned this transformation, I never once envisioned myself as the muscle behind it.  The only things I have ever successfully re-covered look painfully homespun.  I do not have the knack for making anything, save cakes, look store-window worthy.

But, as with all my projects, desperation and an unnerving desire to NOT spend money began to settle in my bones and I sort of convinced myself that re-covering the chair on my own might be an easy project (stop laughing) and surely it couldn’t be thaaaaat difficult.  (Really. I said stop.)

Dom helped me hoist the wingback chair upstairs to the bonus room where I could work on it to my heart’s content and not disturb anyone with my mess.  Using a small flathead screwdriver and a pair of needle nose pliers, I began to pluck staples out of the bottom of the chair, revealing the springs, padding, wood frame and (dear goodness) more staples.  Mabel felt the need to stay with me while I worked, at least until she heard the dog bowls rattling downstairs, at which point she was a puff of black dust in the doorway.

I worked on the chair for about an hour before my hand began to cramp and I noticed red grooves from the pliers’ handles marred into my skin.  I looked around the room and took inventory: one back and half a side of the chair uncovered, three metal tack strips that surely could be used as medieval torture devices but had only served to secure the fabric to the back of the chair, and about 200 plucked staples neatly piled in the curve of a Babe Ruth commemorative plate.

I believe there was a still, small voice in the back of my mind as I tidied my mess that evening which told me I could very quickly get in over my head, and that this project surely was not going to be all rainbows and sunshine.  I also believe I told the voice to shut the hell up as I turned out the light.

The next day we had some rowdy power surges at our office which left the electric company working on a nearby transformer for the better part of the day, so we were granted the afternoon off.  I decided to spend this unexpected free time working on my chair.  Approximately fifteen minutes into the continuation of the staple pulling, my screwdriver slipped, viciously ramming my knuckles into the wood frame of the chair.  We have a saying in the Mainiero household that declares NO project is going to turn out well unless somebody bleeds in the process.  The evidence dripping down my hand suggested that my adventure in furniture re-covering was going to be a raging success.  I slapped a band-aid on my index finger and proceeded to pull more staples.

Two minutes had not passed before I realized the soaked band-aid was about to float away, and more blood was running down my hand.  I soaked through two more band-aids before throwing the pliers onto the ground, huffing in Mabel’s direction, and storming downstairs with a confused pup hot on my heels.  The little voice in my head had only one word for me:

Google.

Before my browser had completely launched, I was already employing my six good fingers to type the words, “furniture upholstery shreveport.”  A list of local businesses popped up and I began to dial numbers on my phone.  Five phone calls later, I understood that most folks want at least $700 for labor on a wingback chair. (Egad!!)  One lady broke my heart when she said her late husband was the one who did the furniture upholstery, but he passed away last December.  She would gladly make me a slip cover for my chair, however, but I needed to put all the fabric back on my chair so that she could work with it.  I already knew Dom would wrinkle his nose at the mention of a slip cover, and the mere thought of re-attaching all that fabric to my chair made my finger throb.  Another location offered to charge considerably less than everyone else, was located on my side of town, and would be open until 5pm if I decided to bring my now blood-stained chair on over to them.  With that news, Victoria graciously helped me load the crime scene furniture into my van, and I was on my way.

When I arrived at my destination, the gentleman who had spoken with me on the telephone walked out to my van to retrieve the chair.  “You wouldn’t believe how many people call us in your situation,” he said.

“What… frustrated and bleeding?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he laughed.  “Actually, if you hadn’t called today, you would have called once you got ready to sew on this fabric and realized your machine at home couldn’t handle it.  People usually break the machine’s needle before they call.”

I hadn’t even foreseen the problem of sewing on upholstery fabric with my little machine.    I gave him the fabric I wanted to use, and he helped me pick out a coordinating fabric from his stock for the sides and back of the chair.  He also pointed out that I have a really good chair “worth keeping” because of its solid wood frame.  I couldn’t wait to share the chair’s redeeming qualities with Dom.

So, in roughly six weeks I should have a newly recovered chair and healed knuckles.  And maybe, just maybe, Dom will be proud of this chair I refused to give up.

The Era of Cake

Tags

at-home business, baking, cake decorating, cakes, hard drive crash, icing, kitchen business, over-busy mom, photo loss

Once upon a time, in a land eight minutes to the northwest, when I was long on ibuprofen and short on sanity, I ran a tiny side business in my kitchen…making cakes.  Aaron was 2 years old and Vic was an infant when the madness began.  Mom and I set out to learn to decorate like pros, and the next thing we knew, we were churning out three to five custom cakes a week.  That doesn’t sound like much at all until you factor in a full-time day-job, two toddlers, and all the regular household chores of a bustling little family.  I look back on those days and I really don’t know how I did it all.  Actually, I acknowledge that I got by on very little sleep, which did none of us any favors. Cake decorating began after the kids went to bed, which meant I was up until at least midnight, and that’s IF there were no icing issues or mental meltdowns. (To clarify: add heaping mounds of sugar inhalation to perfectionism, a pot of coffee and self-induced OCD and see what you get!)  It was a bit of a rough spot, looking back.  But there was fun, too.  And the smiles on my customers’ faces made the aching wrists and sugar-splattered kitchen all worth it.

In 2006 my hard drive crashed and I learned a tough lesson about backing up my files.  Not only did I lose six years of pictures of my children, but insult was added to injury when I realized all my cake photos were gone too.  At that point I had four years of cakes invested in my archives.  Fortunately, I also had some of the photos stored on my website, although they were sized rather small in order to not consume so much space.  I recently opened the vault of past files and uncovered some cake photos that I felt deserved a place of honor for the dream that they once were, calories and all.  Indulge me a memory-lane trip, if you will, down Bella Dolci Boulevard…

(Yes, sadly, these are full-size pics, folks.  See my disappointment in losing the hard drive? 😉 )

This first picture below was made to celebrate a lady’s 80th birthday.  Birthdays were my favorite occasions to make cake.  The recipient is always so grateful.   

The cake that started it all:  Aaron’s 2nd birthday cake.

And, coincidentally, his third.  😉  To Infinity and Beyond, right?!

And his fourth, ala Nemo:

Victoria’s birthday cakes were equally fun.  (Castle at the beginning is hers too.) Who doesn’t love Tink??

And then there were the senior birthday cakes…

Buttercream cakes weren’t the only ones that stole the show.  Cream Cheese Poundcakes rocked the stage, too!!   And no one could resist the temptation of chocolate ganache!  Wedding cakes, though incredibly stressful, were always worth it in the end.   

Wedding Cake and Roses

Grooms’ cakes were much less stressful than bridal cakes.  Just sayin’…     

And then there were the special occasion cakes.  Baby showers, baptisms, holidays… And Veterans’ Day.  Possibly my favorite cake ever…

   The lattice work became my signature, as almost every sheet cake I made bore its mark.

I had fun with the Fire Department’s cake:

This ducky cake always makes me think of Joey from Friends.  “How you doin’??”

The most disappointing losses of the hard drive cake pictures were the Roly Poly Olie cake made for a friend’s child and the Robots cake that I made for Aaron’s 5th birthday, complete with cake cogs and icing nuts and bolts. I dare say William Joyce would have been proud.

In 2006, after just four years of baking and mixing and piping icing, I hung up my apron in favor of devoting more time to being Mom.  My customers understood and were genuinely sweet in wishing that I would fire up the ovens again.  As it looks now, it just wasn’t meant to be.  But it was one incredible ride.

Again??!!!!!!!!!

Tags

buyer's market, crazy people, Home For Sale, seller beware

I thought the first potential sale of our house was stressful. I really did. The inspection, the negotiations, the 72-hour waiting periods, and finally the lack of return phone calls from the buyer’s lender…it all left me really frazzled.

I laugh at that now. As in, BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAH!! Laugh.

I laugh because we have just been through Round Two with new potential buyers. A couple of weeks ago we got another offer on our house – a seriously low-balled offer which we countered with a much fairer price. They responded with their original offer.

No freakin’ lie.

And I was soooooo DONE with these people!

But they came back again with a higher offer and believing them to be sincere, we came down a few notches and somehow managed to meet just on our side of the middle line. Not my particular desired selling price, but I could live with it because these buyers were pre-approved, had secured local financing, and were wanting to close in under three weeks. Eureka!!!!

We were happy to see things moving along quickly when the appraisal took place within hours of the home inspection. So, together with the good faith deposit, these buyers were already in for roughly over $1,000, which we took as a sign of their commitment to buying our house.

And then the home inspection report came back. It was pretty decent; it noted some things we were already planning to fix, but nothing too terribly major. Dom figured even if we fixed EVERYTHING in the report we’d be out of pocket less than the buyers had already paid out.

{Side note: We loved the part of the report that said all of the bulbs in our outdoor flood lights were burned out. I guess I need to put a sign up that alerts the next inspector to the fact that they are photo-cell motion-sensing flood lights, which means that they won’t come on unless it’s after dusk and something moves. So an inspection at 9:00 a.m. isn’t the best time to judge my exterior lighting. Just sayin’.}

In conjunction with the inspection report the buyers had provided their Response to Inspection Report, which typically is a list of the things they want the seller to fix. It was here that we got our second red flag: “In lieu of repairs, buyer requests $6,000.”

I asked my agent if these people were smoking crack. It was the only explanation I could conceive.

We wrote back with a list of 8 items that we were willing to repair, in lieu of paying them any money. They wrote back with a list of 5 additional items to make a list of 13 repairs total. But get this: one of their 5 things was noted on the inspection report as “Acceptable.” So we wrote back and kicked that plus one other ridiculous item out, dropping the list down to 11 things we would fix. We did all of this communicating within two days, bypassing all that standard “72-hour response time” garbage.

And then they responded that the thing that bothered them the most was that the inspector had said one of our AC units was nearing the end of its expected life span (but not its twin, which was installed at the same time…interesting…) and if we would just REPLACE the AC unit, they’d let us off the hook for any other repairs. Note that the AC unit was on neither our list of 8 nor their original list of 5 items. This came from out of nowhere at 5:30 on Monday night.

Thankfully, my “air guy” answered his phone and gave us a rough estimate of the cost we’d be looking at to accommodate this hair-brained request. We weighed the benefit of being done with all this bargaining compared to our potential expense. And we slept on it – ‘cause we were frustrated and besides, it was by now after 6pm and most normal working people had called it a day already.

The next morning (at 8:05 a.m., to be exact) we let our agent know that we would agree to replace the AC unit, but we would not replace what was still working AND buy them a home warranty. They would be on their own for the warranty expense.

The buyers replied that we had taken too long to respond and were now demanding that (again) in lieu of any repairs WE PAY THEM $4,000.

I got mad. Reeeeeeeeeally mad. I said things I’ve never before had reason to say. As I drove out to my new home construction site, spewing obscenities into the speaker phone in my dashboard, Dom asked me to please not show my anger in front of our builder and my Father-in-Law. In hindsight, I’m glad he made me check myself. My tirade really wouldn’t have left a nice impression on anyone. And I have enough to go to Confession for.

We replied for the last time that we would give them $2,000 and make NO repairs just to put this matter behind us. I secretly hoped they would not agree because I had a bad feeling about what else might be in store for us with these buyers. In the end I think they settled on a contract price they weren’t comfortable with and were looking for any way to get the price down, because ridiculous amounts of money were the only things that were consistent in any of their requests.

So, of course they said no to our final proposal. And we are back on the market. Again.

I hope St. Joseph doesn’t mind working overtime.

God Watches Out for Drunks and Mainieros

Events of the last month have pushed our stress levels to DEFCON 1.

Things were going along swimmingly.  I was picking the kids up at Mom’s so that Dom could make an early evening meeting at the church.  Then my phone rang.  I thought he was playing a cruel joke on me when Dom said we received a notice from the IRS that our 2010 tax return flagged us owing five digits plus interest.  He wasn’t joking.  Apparently, the IRS can’t read a 1099-R, or they don’t understand their own tax code, or maybe they don’t really care.  I dunno.  All I know is the mistake was theirs, but the burden of proof was on us.  Fine.

Except it wasn’t fine.  I nearly had a nervous breakdown in the middle of mom’s kitchen, imagining the IRS to be like Al Capone on steroids, but with glasses, calculators, and comb-overs.  And maybe a baseball bat hidden in a briefcase.  I chastised myself for watching too much TV.

At any rate, Dom had to rush off to his meeting, and I rushed home to read the nasty lies the stupid, ignorant, egotistical IRS was perpetuating about us.  (Dear IRS: I mean no offense…really.  I’m sure you’re a bunch of great people.  Call me sometime and we’ll do lunch.  You’re buying.)  Since we now had to provide copies of our return and our 1099-R, as well as a written explanation of WHY THEY ARE SO STUPID, all I needed to do was retrieve the tax file and proceed with copying.  That’s when things really went south.

In the process of getting the house ready to sell, we packed up everything we wouldn’t need for the next six-or-so months.  It would have been folly to pack the tax files, because we had not yet filed our state taxes.  Everything sits on the desk until it is complete, then it goes into the file drawer.  Except that when you’re getting ready to show your home to potential buyers, you swipe your arm across every desktop and countertop, sweeping all the contents of clutter into a box or a bag or a basket of whatever sort you can find.  Then you stuff the box/bag/basket into your car and carry it around with you for weeks on end. Yes you do.  Because you know that if you need yesterday’s mail or the lawnmower key, it’s easily retrieved from the backseat of your car.

Long story short, our tax files weren’t in the house or the car, or at mom’s house with my loose valuables, or at my in-laws’ house with our boxed possessions.  I know this because we spent the late evening at my father-in-law’s home emptying two sheds of our boxed stuff, opening and retaping when we found each box to be void of tax files.  We decided to print our tax return from the electronic copy, and request another 1099-R from the issuing company.  It was a solution to one problem.  I would deal with the issue of filing my state taxes later.

———

We were to spend the next morning with our builder, selecting items for the new house at a local plumbing supply place.  Before we got started, our builder mentioned how concerned he was over the potential appraisal value of what we’re building, considering where we are building it.  New development in the area kept us hopeful that it wouldn’t be much of an issue now, but we know our home will stand out a bit on our street.  Is it a good business decision?  Probably not.  But it’s more personal than business for me, so I really don’t care.  Problem is, the bank cares.  They may not give two hoots about my personal decisions, my commitment to the long-term, my half-century of family land or my next-door-neighbor-in-laws.  And if they aren’t willing to fund us, we can’t build.  It’s a bummer of magnanimous proportions.  And it propelled me head-first into a Novena to St. Jude.

We continued with the shopping, half-heartedly selecting a tub and our faucets.  The morning rainstorm matched our mood.  When the shopping task was complete, we went with our builder to Government Plaza to straighten out our address issue.  You know, should this ever become our address, I want it to be right.  Da dum dum…

The address issue, which had plagued me for two months, was resolved in five minutes to my immense satisfaction.  Score one for the home team.

With final cost estimates in hand, we nervously finally scheduled an appraisal of our plans and lot.  Another week went by while I bit my nails and wore out God’s door-knocker.  And then on a sunny Friday, Dom emailed me the appraisal, which values our new home at more than we need.  I may never come down from this high.  Score two for the home team!!!

———

Speaking of the home team, we are super-stressed about selling our present home.  I suppose that is part and parcel of this process, but it’s enough to put me in a straight jacket, what with me being the Type A, anal-retentive, OCD-driven control freak that I am.  I don’t do “chill.”

I also don’t do live-with-half-your-possessions-packed-in-boxes.   I have borrowed muffin tins, eaten off of paper towels, shared a fork with Dom, and watched him flip steaks on the grill with what equates to bamboo tweezers.  I have squeezed shaving cream into a nickel-sized travel container, cheffed-up stir fry in the shallowest of sauté pans, and arm-wrestled the kids for a corner of one of the only two blankets that didn’t get packed.

Don’t even get me started on making the home “show-ready” every. single. time. we leave the house.

———

Longer ago than I realized, Aaron lost his band binder.  This was the notebook that held all of his music and practice sheets and Lord-only-knows-what-other-important-papers.  He said it was missing, and we looked around.  I didn’t put much effort into looking because I try to stress with my kids responsibility for their own belongings.  If they need something badly enough, they need to put forth the effort to find it.  If they don’t put forth considerable effort and it stays lost, so be it.  (Yes, my tax files are still missing.  Shuddup.)

Aaron swore to me that he looked EV-E-RY-WHERRRRRRRE for the binder to no avail.  I was convinced it lurked at the bottom of his locker and would be seen on the last day of school when he is finally forced to evacuate for the summer.  I just kept on doing laundry, lowering toilet lids and clearing countertops and let him do what he needed to do to find the binder.

It wasn’t until we received a series of phone calls from our school system’s automated tattle-tale that Dom got serious about us finding the binder, or at least some solution to its absence.  He asked me to email the teacher and see what to do about replacing the binder and getting our son back on track so he doesn’t kill his band grade in the last quarter.  Ohhhhh, alright…. I emailed this lovely lady who reminds me so much of my favorite teacher from middle school, also a band director.  J  I confessed that we are a tad scattered, what with selling one house and trying to build another, and that I had likely packed Aaron’s band binder with my taxes, and could she please help me figure out how to replace the binder so Aaron could proceed with the learning process in her classroom.  She would probably offer me some cheese to go with my whine.  I wouldn’t blame her.  I hit “send” and trekked into the kitchen to herd the kids into the car.  One last glance at all the places my tax files could have been stuffed in a hurry, and my eye rested on a binder in the letter holder on the wall of my kitchen.  A child’s binder that no one claimed, and I assumed was a random notebook for holding art, love notes, and other such what-not.  Wrong-o.

“What is this binder?” I asked as I plucked it from the metal basket.  Aaron’s face lit up.  “THAT’S IT!!!! THAT’S THE BAND BINDER!!!!!!!  WHO PUT IT THERE??!!!!”

Geez Louise!  Not only did I just whine to a teacher for no reason, I AM the reason Aaron didn’t have his binder?!!  I rushed to my phone to send out a chuckly sort-of “neeeeeeeeevermiiiiiiiiind” email to the teacher, stating we had found it and with any luck at all the tax files would be next.    She sweetly wrote back that she can only imagine the stress we are under with taxes and changing homes and school work, to boot.

Stress??  What stress??

Perhaps I’m a Little TOO Stressed

I had the craziest dream last night. Maybe it was the storms that I slept right through, or maybe it was the Mango Moscato daiquiri that I had with dinner. Or, maybe I’ve just crossed the border into CrazyTown. Whatevs. Point is, I think I need to chill.

In my dream we had an appointment to show our house. But we ALL fell asleep and woke up minutes before the showing time. And our house was messier than it was before we put the sign in the yard. I mean, Tornado Alley had nothing on my home. And the dogs were with us. But Mason was a tiny pocket-sized critter who was barely seen in the dream. Mabel, however, was up to her (almost) usual antics. She had just eaten half a bottle of prescription antacids and her head had fallen off. I knew that I needed to make her drink peroxide to expel her stomach contents, but I didn’t have time right then. The potential buyer was pulling into the driveway. I grabbed Mabel’s head, the chewed bottle, and my bracelet (????!!) and ran downstairs, where Dom was greeting the guy who wanted to buy our house. The guy stated that he had made an offer we didn’t know about, and he wondered why his realtor hadn’t shared the information with us. I apologized for the MESS and glared at the kids for the cheerios strewn on the kitchen floor. To my relief, the guy showed no shock at the bleeding dog head in my arms. I made a mental note to ask mom to help me get the blood stains out of my shirt.

And then the guy sat down at the kitchen table, spread out his Taco Bell lunch and casually told us to go on with our cleaning while he waits for his realtor to show up. I wondered why a single guy would want a four bedroom house, but then I decided it was none of my business. I mean, really, if he wasn’t gonna ask why I was holding a live, bleeding and still blinking dog head then who was I to get all in his business?

Back to reality, I think it was at this time that Dom whacked me on the shoulder and announced not only the time but also the fact that I did not set the alarm. We had almost overslept.

I really want my house to sell. But I think even more than that, I want Mabel’s head to stay attached to her body.

The Twelve Days of Christmas – Mainiero Style!

For some, Christmas is over.  For our family and slightly over a billion other Catholics, Christmas has four more days to go.   I have taken some of our more memorable moments of the last few days and compiled them into the Mainiero Twelve Days of Christmas.  Disclaimer: The conversations shared here may or may not be verbatim, but convey no less than I heard, at any rate.  They are also not dated with any precision, since we are technically only on Day 8.

Somebody crank the harmonica, would ya?

On the First Day of Christmas my true love said to me…

“I’ve made an executive decision.”

“Seriously?  You do recall that the last time you made an executive decision and announced it in such grandiose fashion we ended up with Mabel, riiiiiiight??”

“Nevermind.”

On the Second Day of Christmas, my dear son, with Christmas money burning a hole in his pocket, said to me…

“Hey, Mom…can you take me to WalMart so I can get this Lego set I want?”

“Dude… on the day after Christmas, you want to go to WalMart?  December 26^th…the pinnacle of wretched retail returns…really?? Puh-leeze!!” I huffed…

And then promptly took my children to WalMart.

On the Third Day of Christmas, my mother said to me…

“Let’s clean out Victoria’s room while I’m at your house today.”

“Sure.  Then we’ll clean out my washing machine and dryer filters.”

Ironically, neither of us was kidding.  Equally amazing, we found a movie gift card lodged in the dryer filter, and it still had a balance.

On the Fourth Day of Christmas, my children said to me…

“Hey Mom, since we found that movie gift card…” (don’t you love inappropriate use of the word “WE?”) “…can we go see a movie today?”

“What do you want to see?”

“Chipmunks!!”

“Hell no!”

On the Fifth Day of Christmas, my children said to me…

“Hey, when are you going to the grocery store again?”

“Never.”

“Whaaaaaa???!!!!”

“You want food?  Take my car.  And some books to sit on. One of you steer and one of you work the pedals.  Kroger is that direction.”

“Mommmm!!!”

On the Sixth  Day of Christmas, the rabbits said to me…

“Hey, lady!! It’s freakin’ cold out here in the garage since you left the bloomin’ door open all night.  Bring us in, would ya?”

“It’s 6 a.m.  Curl your furry little cottontails up into a ball and snuggle down in all that expensive bedding we buy you to pee on.”

“If you don’t come down and let us in, we’re going to thump our back feet so loud you’ll think the house is falling down around you.”

And so they did.  And so we did.  The rabbits were in the kitchen by 6:15.

On the Seventh Day of Christmas, I said to those damn rabbits…

“It’s 60 degrees again.  Out you go.”

“Witch!!”

“Hasenpfeffer!!!”

(Google it.)

On the Eighth Day of Christmas, my daughter said to me,

“Mimi wants to know if I can spend the night with her so that the fireworks don’t keep me awake tonight. Can I? Can I?  Pleeeeeeeeeeease???”

“Did Mimi ask you, or did you ask Mimi?”

“Does it matter?”

On the Ninth Day of Christmas, I heard my daughter say…

Quite excitedly as she was assisting her dad in cleaning out the fireplace…

“Hey, Daddy, can this be my job EVERY year??”

Rock on, right?  I may loan her out.

On the Tenth Day of Christmas, I said to AMC…

“For the love of everything holy, WHYYYYYYYYYYYY are gift cards to your theaters sold in Shreveport, Louisiana when there is not an AMC theater in a 200-mile radius of us???!!!!!”

“Oops.”

“’Oops??’  I’ve been gifted with $50 of worthless movie cards.  That is, unless my husband and I pass up fourteen other theaters and spend three times that in gas to go see a movie in Dallas.”

“We can refund you for the gift card values.  You’ll have a check in 5-8 weeks.”

Sweet.

On the Eleventh Day of Christmas, I confessed to the Hubster…

“Um, honey…I think that movie card I picked up for your office party was an AMC card too.  Tell whoever got it they can call for a refund.”

I got The Look.

On the Twelfth Day of Christmas my daughter said to me…

“Will you help me give Marsha a bath and clip her nails?  She really needs it, and I just know she’ll be good in the sink. I’ll hold her still.”

And wouldn’t ya know?  That’s just exactly how I wanted to spend the last of the holiday – giving the rabbit a Spa Day. 😉

I hope your family had a magical Christmas celebration, and that the magic continues throughout the year. 

Apoca-Lips

Friday night as we put the house to bed I went outside to turn the sprinkler off in the backyard. Mabel came with me, as she never misses a chance to chase and hunt less-fortunate creatures of the night.

As I leaned down to shut off the faucet valve, something buzzed and swarmed around my head, causing me to flail, stomp and squeal – not once, but three times – in my typical horror-show meets heebie-jeebie fashion.

Dom never heard a thing.

I shook my shirt, swatted at my hair, and performed a quick examination to make sure no passengers were hitching a ride inside my home on me. Then I ran inside, followed closely by Mabel.

I did not care what Mabel was doing while I was dancing like a maniac at the faucet. I only cared that she was inside and that we could therefore lock out all the night creatures and go to bed.

Still rattled from my near-death experience (have I mentioned how much I hate flying bugs??!!!) I rounded the corner of the kitchen cabinet about to regale Dom with my story, when suddenly I heard a buzzing. A very loud, distinct buzzing.

Inside. My. Home.

I stalked the fridge to see if it was the ice maker. No. I looked at Dom in a panic and saw that he too could hear the buzzing, and that meant I wasn’t crazy. This was both good and bad.

We followed the buzzing into yet another room where it got louder. We looked at the bar, at the light fixture, and finally at Mabel, who was looking at us with keen interest as well. Upon making eye contact, she bounced once and the buzzing stopped. Then it started up again and she turned and ran away from us, taking the buzzing with her.

“She has something in her mouth! A LOUD something that is very much ALIIIIIIIIVVVE!” I squealed to Dom. I admit I probably sounded a little like Dr. Frankenstein. Unintentionally, of course.

His reply: “She has a locust. She’s done this before. Go let her out, and hurry!”

So my screaming and running and panicking and nearly dying started all over again as I ran through two rooms yelling Mabel’s name and begging her to keep her mouth closed. Can you just imagine Mabel opening her mouth, unleashing that god-awful Bug of the Apocalypse? I fumbled with the key in the lock and did my scaredy-cat dance hoping she wouldn’t kick-start Judgment Day right there in my garden room. (FYI: I don’t pretend to know how the world will end. I just pray that Mabel and bugs are not key on the agenda!) Mabel obediently ran back outside, where she dropped the locust in the grass and proceeded to toy with him until she was ready to eat him. I begged her to leave him in the grass, but her obedience limit had been met for the day. She chomped, then gulped, and then sauntered back inside.

Moments later, upstairs, she had the nerve to curl up next to me and ask for kisses. It was then that I realized in her mind, she had saved me from the locust. She does not realize that she caused me greater panic by bringing the bug inside. She just thinks she rescued me, since I was the one wigging out at the faucet in the first place.

All things considered, I think I’d rather see her eat my sunscreen again.