Party of Six

hubris

2010-07-29T22:53:00.004-06:00

Well...this second round of Do Nothing, Say Nothing didn't go quite the way I expected.

I was just sure that this week was going to be fabulous. The kids were going to rock our world, because we weren't going to do or say anything, and they were going to show us how far they have come in the last 6 months.

Umm...yeah. Right. That fantasy ended pretty quickly.

There were bright moments -- Dante made dinner of his own accord on the nights that he was supposed to (dinner was his contribution this week) and attempted to clean up the kitchen when he was done (the dinner person isn't supposed to leave a giant mess for the dishes person). The dinners were delicious, and even though he wasn't super successful at the cleanup, at least he tried!

Okay, that was one bright moment. I'm sure there had to have been another, I just can't think of it now, no matter how hard I rack my brain.

Again, Will and I haven't had time to formally talk about what we learned, but informally, we've discussed our observation that all four kids are spoiled (with money, toys, activities, you name it) and don't really take responsibility for or appreciate any of it. This is not their fault, but it's not a pretty reality. And, as I posted below, given the opportunity to play video games 24/7, they lose all interest in anything else.

Oh, and I learned that there's a good reason that I've been hesitant to use one of the Parenting on Track strategies, in which instead of telling the kid what to do, I say, "Would you be willing to....?" If they say "no," then I say, "What would you be willing to do?" If they say "nothing," then I get to decide how I will respond (hopefully parenting from my best!)

I planned to try this way back in week 11, but haven't been able to bring myself to do it. Control issues, much? However, I figured that since it's DNSN and I can't order them around or remind them to do stuff, I had nothing to lose.

We were having a dinner party on Tuesday (I know, what was I thinking, right?) and I had already decided that I was going to do what needed to be done so that I felt good about having people over, and that I wasn't going to be resentful of the fact that I probably wouldn't have much help from the kids.

So Tuesday afternoon I stepped in front of the television screen:
Me: "Hey guys, would you be willing to clean up your mess in the kitchen?"
Them: "Sure, can we just finish this song?"
Me: "It's up to you."
Them: {keep playing Rock Band for about 5 more songs}
Me: {silently go about my business in other parts of the house}
Them: "Hey mom, we're riding bikes to the store, okay"
Me: "Sure. See you in awhile!"
Me: {clean up their messes in the kitchen}
Them: {get home and don't notice that kitchen is clean or remember that they said they were willing to clean it}
Me: "Hey guys, would you be willing to hold your rats while I clean the tank?"
Boys: {settle back in front of the television screen} "No, I don't feel like it."
Girl: "I can't decide."
Me: "Well, you need to decide because I need to clean the tank."
Girl: "I hate to say this, but no, I am not willing to!"
Me: "Okay."
Them: {play video games}
Me: {put rats in rubbermaid tub and clean the tank}

I wasn't resentful, the kids had fun, the house was clean when the party started. And I must add here that am really grateful for good friends who are willing to at least act like they understand why we let two boys (ages 7 and 9) walk into the kitchen, grab a loaf of bread and take it down into the family room to eat while playing video games, completely ignoring the fact that we had a houseful of people and that dinner was literally being put on the table as they walked off with the bread.

I'm really thankful that Do Nothing, Say Nothing is over for another go-round.

And I'm feeling like many of the changes we've seen over the last six months (because honestly, there have been many, and almost all of them are changes for the better) are still being directed by the adults. Mostly I'm left with questions about giving the kids more ownership over themselves, their things, and the family.

And I'm really glad that we're starting the whole program over, because I can see it spiraling (yeah, you guys who teach Everyday Math are scoffing now, because we all know that the spiral doesn't really work :P but this is different, I swear!) and I do think that things will continue to improve over time. As our wise counselor told us last time we saw her, we're doing so many things right and it's still really hard.

do they still call it the boob tube?

2010-07-29T22:09:00.005-06:00

The kids' reaction when I told them that we were doing DNSN again, and that the purpose was to observe how far we've come since the last time, and to see what we still need to work on: "Ooohhh, greeaaaat...here comes the moldy milk again!" (I don't remember this, but someone must have left a glass of milk out -- I'm guessing they remembered since they were the ones who cleaned up at the end of the week? Told you it wasn't pretty last time!)

I'm not going to break it down day by day, and Will and I haven't had a chance to sit down together and do a recap on the week, but here's the big thing as far as kid behavior goes (I'll hit adult behavior in another post)...

Screen time. Yuck. Huge issue still. No, really. Huge. And they've taken the opportunity to use DNSN to completely throw our family policy out the window and pretty much do nothing but play video games for the last 72 hours. So...this tells us that the family policy is really a parent policy, that the kids have no real buy-in.

FYI, the policy is that during the summer they get half an hour of screen time a day. Two kids play while the other two "chillax" in their rooms, then they switch. Honestly, Will and I thought this was brilliant, and, in our view, it's worked out well -- everyone gets a little siesta time in the heat of the day, four kids are not having to share the screens all at once, and most of the time the kids are playing, running around outside, and generally being creative.

Will and I actually talked to the kids about this yesterday, and basically they told us that their screen time is so limited that they felt the need to compensate for the fact that they normally get to play so little (yes, they did actually use the word "compensate" -- we must be doing something right, no?) by taking advantage of the fact that they knew we weren't going to stop them.

Still...yuck. So Will and I are contemplating something radical as a result. It goes back to the fact that I've had trouble keeping myself from staying up all night wasting time on the internets this summer, and the idea that we shouldn't be asking the kids to exercise more self control than their parents are capable of. Sorry I ended that sentence with a preposition. I'll keep you posted.

do nothing, say nothing recap

2010-07-26T11:07:00.004-06:00

Well, it's been longer than I thought since the last time I posted. Oops! Life with four kids, three rats, two full-time jobs, a dog, and a snake is a little crazy! I actually meant to blog throughout our Parenting on Track journey, but one day stretched into twelve weeks, which stretched into six months without a single update...

The good news (?) is that we've found the program to be so valuable that we're doing it again. Yup. The whole twelve weeks. It's really rich and deep, and there's so much to learn and try, and we feel like our family has come a long way as a result of the conversations and actions brought about by doing the program. So we're doing it again, maybe this time really in twelve weeks instead of six months!

The first week is "Do Nothing, Say Nothing" week. This is where we stop using ineffective parenting techniques and "strategies" that hinder the relationships we would like to have with our kids. Instead, we do and say nothing, and observe them to learn what they can and will do without interference from us. We also observe ourselves to figure out when it is hard for us to exercise control over our reactions to situations or behavior.

The first time we did DNSN, it led to some hilarious (in retrospect) and horrifying moments.

Day one brought us a seven-year-old (Sebastian) who got up on his own, made himself breakfast, packed his lunch, and cheerfully loaded himself and his backpack into the car on time. Impressive! But Dante (age 12) didn't get out of bed and subsequently didn't go to school.

Day two was role reversal. Dante was totally happy and ready to go. Sebastian refused to go to school because, "It's stupid! I never learn anything! And if Dante doesn't have to go, I don't have to go!" Since he's not twelve, he got dumped at my mom's house while I left for work. My parents did such a good job ignoring him that, around 10:30 he announced, "This is boring! I'm going to school!"

Days three and four continued the pile-up of toys and dishes that had begun at the beginning of the week. Kids were responsible for their own breakfasts and lunches, but we had dinner as a family the way we usually do, except for the fact that we didn't have a formal setting or clearing of the table. I just announced when the food was ready. We also didn't put any limits on screen time, or enforce a bedtime. This meant that things were a little more - ahem - chaotic than usual around the house.

Day five was brutal. It culminated when Will and I left Subway because we were so humiliated at the behavior of all four kids. We just walked out and waited for them to eventually follow, because we couldn't handle staying in there AND staying silent. You name it, the kids did it.

Crawling on the floor? Yup! (Keep in mind that we are YEARS past the age at which this is developmentally appropriate.) Swinging from the railings? Yup! Playing a game in which every chair is an island and you can't touch the floor? Yup! (Keep in mind that this was a relatively busy night at a relatively busy restaurant.) Folding your bread into a paper airplane and zooming it around in the air? Yup! Stuffing an entire bag of chips into your mouth at once and then talking while it takes you almost 10 minutes to chew it up? Yup!

And that's just one example from each kid! Multiply what I just described by approximately 10, and maybe, just maybe, you'll have an inkling of what we put those poor Subway patrons through that night. This is what our kids did when we weren't nagging, reminding, and lecturing constantly about how they should behave. It was pretty clear to us that they had internalized pretty much nothing we have said over the last 7-12 years about table manners and restaurant behavior.

By the end of day six, we were DONE, and really, so were the kids. So why would we want to repeat it? Well, here's what we wrote down at the end of that first week about what we learned...

About ourselves -
We care what other people think about our kids and about us as parents.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel.
We do a ton of nagging and managing.
We do way too much work and baby them way too much.
Unknowingly, we created some of their problematic behaviors.
We don't enjoy being around our kids when they behave badly.

About our kids -
They are capable of more than they do.
It seems like they don't care if the house is a wreck.
They behave very badly in public when we're not actively directing them.
Their manners and cleaning up after themselves are the two biggest issues.
Some of the fighting the kids do is for our benefit.
Dante is developing a habit of being disrespectful.
They think they are good.
Trin (age 7) gets mileage out of being "the good one."
Most of their negative attention-seeking behavior (fighting, pouting) goes away when we ignore it.
They have no self-regulation when it comes to screen time -- they will choose screen time over just about anything else.

As difficult as DNSN week was, it was totally worth it to me in terms of the insights we gained into our family and our kids and ourselves. So even though I'm dreading this going in the second time, I'm excited to see what we will learn this time around.

parenting on track

2010-02-03T15:25:00.007-07:00

When my kids (especially my oldest) were little, I acted very deliberately when it came to raising them. I made choices that supported the bigger picture that I wanted to cultivate.

Then, life changed. I became a single mom. I went back to work full time. The boyz got bigger, and the decisions didn't seem quite so monumental. It's not that I didn't think about parenting, or do my best, it's just that I got busy and distracted. We had a routine, we had the support of my family, and most of the time, things seemed to be pretty good.

Then, life changed again. When people say blended family, it implies something like a smoothie: sweet, evenly textured, completely combined. On a good day (and we have pretty many of those) it's more like a fruit salad. It's yummy, but lumpy. The bananas are really squishy and the apples are crisp; the mangos are sweet and the yogurt is tart. On a bad day it resembles oil and vinegar, with two groups of people refusing to combine without vigorous shaking.

At any rate, we got a little off track, in terms of parenting. While I wasn't doing a terrible job as a parent, I wasn't doing a great one. I had lost sight of the big picture when making decisions just to get through the day. Luckily, Will and I are in agreement about the need to do something different. I knew he was a keeper, but the last several weeks have really proven it. Together, we're working through a program called Parenting on Track (the name is apropos, is it not?) We chose it because the philosophy aligns perfectly with our ultimate goals, and we're sticking with it because we are starting to see little glimmers of progress.

This isn't an infomercial, and I'm not a paid endorser, but if I'm blogging about our life as a party of six, I've gotta blog about PoT right now. The coolest part of it all, though, isn't the program. It's that doing it with Will reinforces why all of the challenges are worth it. I love, love, love having a partner in all things, one who is willing to hash it out, put in the time, and figure things out as a team, to stand up to me, to make compromises, then follow through on what we decided.

We just started another program for family budgeting/money stuff and the experience holds true. Yeah, I know: what were we thinking!? "Let's tackle the two hardest things, parenting and money, all at once!" But what better time to start doing things right than right from the start? And I gotta say, so far being married rocks!

wedding weekend: the most important part

2009-10-28T15:11:00.017-06:00

Today I'm unexpectedly home, the snow is falling, my gorgeous husband (almost 5 months later I still get a little shivery thrill when I get to say "my husband") is out trying to keep the snow from breaking any more limbs off the trees in our backyard, two bundled up kids are jumping on the trampoline and throwing snowballs (!!) while the other two are cozied up watching Robots, and I, well, I've got hot chocolate, whipped cream, and a little time to tell you about our wedding ceremony!

I'm including the whole text, plus music and commentary for a couple of reasons. The first is that it really helped me with planning our ceremony to see what other people had done, and maybe someone else will find this helpful. If you're planning a wedding and have been looking at different nontraditional ceremonies, you might see some stuff here that you recognize, but we shaped everything, editing, combining, and deleting without compunction, until we had something that fit us. The second reason is that we made a huge mistake, and didn't get a microphone to use during the ceremony. We had a lot of people share our celebration, and some of them in the back couldn't hear the whole thing, so if you were one of them, now you can read what you missed!

All photos by Nicole Allen.

While people were mingling and finding seats, our prelude music was the entire album of The Vitamin String Quartet playing ACDC songs. We thought that was a very appropriate way to set the tone for the whole evening -- classy, but with a sense of humor!Will and his kids came in from behind the arbor and stood in front of the famous paper flower arch, accompanied by instrumental Metallica. Anyone who knows Will understands why we had to have Metallica at our wedding!

Our "processional" music was "I Will Love You" by Fisher. Several people told me that they started to tear up already when they heard this song and we started walking in (Will included!)When we got to the front, I couldn't help myself. I reached up and gave my sweetie the last smooch of our unmarried life. Just a little one.Then Lynn (our officiant) began:
Mawwage…Mawwage is what bwings us togevver today. Mawwage, that bwessed event, that dweam wifin a dweam. Wuv, twue wuv, will fowwow you fowever.
While people were laughing about this, my dad stepped up and played Storybook Love on his flute. This is something of a family tradition -- my dad has played flute at every single one of his kids' weddings -- and one I was happy to continue. We thought it was also a nice transition from the Princess Bride jokey beginning to the more serious part of the ceremony.Lynn again:

September and Will have invited us to share an occasion of great joy and celebration.

They know that marriage is not a relationship to be entered into lightly, but deliberately, lovingly, and reverently. Today they are declaring to each other and to all of us that they plan to be by each other’s side, no matter what life brings their way.

Then my very very very good friend Jill stepped forward, and read the lyrics of a Leonard Cohen song:

As the mist leaves no scar
On the dark green hill
So my body leaves no scar
On you and never will

Through windows in the dark
The children come, the children go
Like arrows with no targets
Like shackles made of snow
True love leaves no traces
If you and I are one
It's lost in our embraces
Like stars against the sun

As a falling leaf may rest
A moment on the air
So your head upon my breast
So my hand upon your hair

And many nights endure
Without a moon or star
So we will endure
When one is gone and far

True love leaves no traces
If you and I are one
It's lost in our embraces
Like stars against the sun
Lynn:

May we have the rings, please?
Will's brother Corey came up and gave the rings (in a little bag) to Lynn -- it's funny how nervous he was but he did a great job as a first-time ring bearer!

Lynn held the rings and said:

We will now bless these rings, symbols of infinite love.
The root meaning of ‘to bless’
is ‘to share life with’.
As these rings pass from one to another
we will each have the opportunity to share our energy,
our blessing, our thoughts and our love
with Will and September.

Take your time. Know that as we take this moment to ‘share life’ with this couple we will each be contributing our love to this marriage.

Corey followed the rings as they were passed from hand to hand among the people who were present, while Lynn continued to speak:
As we pass and bless these rings, let us also bless the hands that will wear them.

September, please hold Will’s hands palms up, so you may see the gift that they are to you. These are the hands of your best friend. These are the hands that will work alongside yours, as you laugh and cry.
These are the hands that will play air guitar, throw footballs and exchange high fives with your sons.
These are the hands that will countless times wipe the tears of sorrow and of joy from your eyes.
These are the hands that will comfort you in illness, and hold you when fear or grief engulfs your heart.
These are the hands that when wrinkled and aged will still be reaching for yours, still giving you the same unspoken tenderness with just a touch.
These are the hands that will tenderly lift your chin and brush your cheek as they raise your face to look into his eyes.

(Now Will, I would like for you to look at your hands right now, really look and them and remember this moment, because this will be the very last time you will ever have the upper hand!)
Will, please hold September’s hands palms up, so you may see the gift that they are to you. These are the hands of your best friend.
These are the hands that will massage tension from your neck and back in the evenings after you’ve both had a long hard day.
These are the hands that will put bandaids on scrapes and help with homework and provide nourishing food for your children.
These are the hands that will hold you tight as you struggle through difficult times.
These are the hands that will comfort you when you are sick, or console you when you are grieving.
These are the hands that when wrinkled and aged will still be reaching for yours, still giving you the same unspoken tenderness with just a touch.
These are the hands that will give you support as she encourages you to chase down your dreams.
God, bless these hands that you see before you this day. May they always be held by one another. Give them the strength to hold on during the storms of stress and the dark of disillusionment. Keep them tender and gentle as they nurture each other. Help these hands to build a family full of grace. May Will and September see their four hands as healers, protectors, shelter and guides. Amen.

The idea had been that we wanted to keep things moving, wanted to keep the ceremony long enough to be meaningful, and short enough to be interesting, and that the blessing of the hands would keep people from getting bored while we did the blessing of the rings. I thought that the two would end at about the same time, but people really did take their time with the rings, and by the time the hand blessing was over, the rings weren't even halfway around the crowd.

So we had a moment of silence that stretched out, then I turned to Lynn and whispered that we should just go ahead with exchanging our vows. Side note: we wrote the "I promise" part together, but the one thing we kept secret from each other was the "I love you because" part -- we wanted to have a little surprise, but we also wanted what we said to sort of match, so we agreed in advance on how many funny and how many serious things we would say.

Seppie:
I love you because you get so excited about things, even when they are things that don't seem exciting to me at all, like fish and chips or a great power chord, or a football game.

Will: I love you because when you want to tell me a funny story, you start giggling so much, you can't even get the story out.

Seppie: I love you because you are an amazing father -- you're fun, your patient, you're firm, you're gentle, and you are a great role model to all of our kids.

Will: I love you because you understand my need for alone time and have no problem giving it to me without hesitation.

Seppie: I love you because you always make me cry. I never used to cry, but now I cry all the time. It's because you care so much about me and because I feel completely safe with you.

Will: I love you because when you come home and I am watching SportsCenter, you don't let out a big sigh of disapproval, even though you're probably thinking it.

Seppie: I love you because no matter what wild and crazy idea I have, like a wedding that lasts an entire weekend, you just nod your head and say, "okay, that sounds fun" even when it means a ton of work for you and you wish I'd just let you rest.

Will: I love you because not only do you understand my love for the great game of Texas Hold 'Em, you enjoy playing it with me.

Seppie: I love you because we always laugh so much together.

Will: I love you because you are the first person in my life that completely understands me and loves me despite my faults. I love you!

Seppie: I love you because whenever I'm with you, I feel like I'm exactly where I should be.

Will: I love you because you treat me the way I've always wanted to be treated.Seppie: Will, I accept you just as you are today.

Will: September, I accept you just as you are today.

Seppie: I choose to intertwine my life with yours.

Will: I choose to share my life and everything I have openly with you.

Seppie: I choose to build my home, my family, my future with you.

Will: I promise to strive for the kind of family and the kind of life we can both be proud of.

Seppie: I promise to be faithful to you, and never to allow anything to build a wall between us.

Will: I promise to speak truthfully and lovingly to you, to support you and encourage your fulfillment.

Seppie: I promise to be who I am, and no less, and to accept and support you in being who you are and no less.

Will: I promise to be patient and forgive you when you get upset and act unreasonable about stupid things.

Seppie: I promise to clean up the yard even when it’s your dog who got into the trash.

Will: I promise to always clean the bathrooms even when it’s your kids who miss the toilet.

Seppie: I promise to hug and kiss you every single day.

Will: I promise to let you put your cold feet on me in bed every single night.

Seppie: I promise that I will love you.

Will: I promise that I will love you.

Seppie: I choose you to be my husband and life companion.

Will: I choose you to be my wife and life companion.

Those last two lines were supposed to be when we actually exchanged rings, but the rings still hadn't made it back to us, so we just kept moving with the rest of the ceremony.

Lynn told everyone to look on the bottom of their chairs. We had secretly taped playing cards -- the king and queen of hearts, natch -- to the bottom of two random chairs, Oprah-style. The two people who found the cards underneath their chairs were called up to witness our signing of the marriage certificate. Even though our selection of witnesses was completely random, this turned out to be another emotional thing for me, since one of those was my aunt Moira, who obviously has known me all my life, and is herself the mother of a blended family with six kids!There was yet another pretty long moment of silence while my cousin J's son spontaneously handed out rose petals and we waited for the last people to bless the rings (let me tell you, people took that ring blessing seriously! Our rings are blessed!) and for Corey to bring them back to us. We exchanged rings.
We wanted our ceremony to acknowledge that our marriage is not just about us, but about our kids as well, and we wanted them to be part of things, but every suggestion I found seemed lame and hokey, or weird and creepy, so this next part we pretty much totally made up. The bracelets we gave them were a pretty heart with rhinestones for Will's daughter, and manly bike chain bracelets for the boys.
Lynn:

Early in their relationship, September and Will took all four of their kids to Subway. Somehow it worked out that the kids were sitting at one table, and the grownups were sitting at another table. The kids decided that this was so romantic that Will should propose, and they spent the whole meal making rings out of their straw wrappers and running over to whisper in Will’s ear that he should just “ASK HER!”

Well, less than a year later, they got their wish, when Will really did propose. Today, Will and September know that they are not just marrying one another, they are marrying entire families. They are promising to accept one other’s children just as they are, and to help them grow into good, happy people. They are promising to make their home a place where all members of the family feel safe and loved.

I put bracelets on Will's kids, and Will put bracelets on my kids.
Lynn:
These bracelets represent the promises of a new family made today, just as September and Will’s rings represent their commitment to one another.

At this point, Lynn gave a piece of paper to Dante and he surprised me totally by giving a little speech of his own. I had some inkling that he was planning some secret with the help of my mom, but didn't know that what he planned was part of the ceremony! As soon as I get my hands on the last remaining copy of the text of his speech, I will post it here. At any rate, it was AWESOME!Since we started with the Princess Bride, we had to end with it, too...

Lynn:
September and Will, by exchanging vows today, you have let it be known that you are joined, body and soul in this lifetime, and that this bond is sacred and eternal...

Will interupted her:
MAN and WIFE! Say MAN and WIFE!!

Lynn: I now pronounce you man and wife!

Then we kissed and we were done! Our recessional music was "All I Want is You" by Barry Louis Pollisar.

wedding clothes

2009-08-07T14:44:00.001-06:00

All photos by Nicole Allen

One of the biggest expenses for many weddings is the bride's dress. In fact, the average bride spends $1505 on her dress, according to the Bridal Association of America. It seems silly to me to spend that much money on something to wear exactly once. I thought my best options were to wear a non-wedding dress, or to buy a used wedding dress. Just like the real diamond, I wanted the real princessy/white dress experience, so that left the used option.

Digression on the topic of being "princessy": Today I was dragging Sebastian through Target, unshowered, hair uncombed, wearing my black clog sandals that I've had forever and this funky knee-lengthish black cotton tank dress with black embroidery, a diagonal zigzaggy hemline and lacing up the bodice. A little girl, probably two years old, walked by, pointed at me with wide eyes and said, "Look! It's a princess!" I laughed out loud, and so did her mom.

Anyway, back to wedding clothes...Everything gets a bridal markup, I guess, because dresses I found at thrift stores were still $90 and up. Craigslist was even worse -- people wanted hundreds of dollars for dresses that were pretty hideous even in 1981 when they were brand new. I was bitching about this to some of my coworker/friends, and one of them offered to lend me her dress.

This was before Will and I were officially engaged, but I was too excited at the prospect to wait, so we stopped by her house right before my birthday dinner (Waffle House, the kids were too hungry for the wait at the restaurant I chose first) and everyone sat in the car while I ran in and tried it on. Might not be the most romantic wedding dress story ever, but as it turns out, Tara and I are just the same size, and I absolutely loved her dress. Here we are together at the reception. Yes, we were doing the dance commonly known as "the shopping cart":

So. Dress problem solved. Can't get cheaper (or greener) than that, and this was seriously the dress I would have chosen if I had walked into a bridal shop to buy the dress of my dreams.

As it turned out, the dress thing was much, much, much easier than figuring out what Will would wear. He knew that I wasn't a bridezilla kind of bride, but I think the first time he realized that our wedding was about US and not about WEDDING was when I suggested that he wear this shirt:In case the image is too small, yes, there are guitars! And yes, it does say "Rock & Roll Religion!" To make a very long story short, we looked at probably hundreds of shirt options, and I told him I thought he should wear whatever he would love and be comfortable in. He really struggled, though, because many of the shirts he loved seemed like they would only look good untucked, with jeans, and he worried that people would think that he didn't know how to dress for his own wedding, or that he wasn't taking the occasion seriously. It wouldn't have bothered me if he had gone untucked with jeans, but we decided that he wouldn't be comfortable unless he felt more dressed up.

In the end, he chose a new bright blue button-down shirt and black pants that he already owned. I found a guitar tie on etsy, and he looked great!Instead of the traditional "wedding party," we had an adult flower girl (my sister) and ring bearer (Will's brother) and our kids stood up with us.

I told my sister to wear any black dress she wanted. She was silly and emailed me beforehand with a pic of the one she chose, all worried that it wasn't what I wanted. Of course, she was gorgeous!I told Will's brother to wear jeans and any button-down shirt he wanted. He was silly and came over beforehand with shirt options, all worried that they wouldn't be what I wanted. Of course, he looked great!

With a little help from my internet friends I found the perfect black sundress for Will's daughter. You obviously can't see them in this picture, but she also wore the cutest black suede mary janes that I got for $3 at the thrift store.

I put white clay flowers in her hair to match the ones in mine.

And that just left the boyz...I found them Hawaaiian shirts with guitars that totally matched Will's tie, and they wore those untucked with jeans.

I think it worked out beautifully -- they were way more comfortable than they would have been in formal outfits, they looked great, and all of the kids have worn their wedding clothes several times since the wedding.

GOOOOOOOOOO....

TEAM!!!!!!!

On Offbeat Bride I saw this woman who had the sweetest little shrug over her dress, and I started thinking about how nice it would be to have a shrug to keep my shoulders warm, not necessarily for the ceremony, but beforehand.

My lovely sister-in-law, Heather, saw that on my list of stuff to do on this blog, and offered to try to make me one. She said try, because at the time she was nine months pregnant, and we were just about 3 weeks away from the wedding, and she had never made a shrug before. We went shopping for yarn on a Tuesday, and two days later, this little bundle showed up:

Amazingly, Heather finished the shrug in time anyway! Thanks, Heather!
You can see it pretty well in this picture (on the left is my dad, who played flute during the ceremony and went with the black/jeans thing, and my mom, who has much better fashion sense than I do)

And I had to include this picture, not only because it shows off the shrug, but also because I have no idea what the hell was going on when Nicole took it, but it makes me laugh so hard every time I see it! I also bought a dress for $25 on sale so I would have something to change into at the reception. I picked it because it was cheap and comfy and would match Will's shirt and my shrug, and was also something that I would wear again. I didn't change until the very end of the reception, but it was nice to have, especially since we were riding our bikes away at the end of the night and I didn't want to wreck Tara's dress.

wedding weekend: beauty

2009-07-25T23:20:00.012-06:00

All photos by Nicole Allen, unless otherwise noted.

I'm not really much of a girly girl, but I'm not really a tomboy either. My daily routine consists of moisturizer, mascara, and lipgloss. I get my hair cut and colored every six months or so. I sometimes used to get manicures before I had kids, but my oldest is 11, and I haven't had one since he was born.

I figured that I'm only getting married once, so I might as well take the opportunity to get pampered. At the same time, I didn't really want a new or different look -- what I wanted was to look like me, only prettier! I think it worked...

I timed things so my regular hair and waxing appointments fell in the week or so before the wedding. I didn't count them under our wedding budget, since I would have made those appointments anyway.

I experimented a little beforehand with my hair. I thought about wearing it down (Will's first choice) but decided against it, mostly because every female I know told me I should wear it up for various reasons (down would be too hot, it's an occasion that deserves an updo, up will stay looking better through the day and night) and because I loved the clay flowers I got from etsy, and knew they would look better if I wore my hair up.

A couple of weeks before the wedding, my mom and I took a special trip to Sephora to get makeovers, and I ended up buying some primer, eyeshadow primer stuff, tinted moisturizer, and fake eyelashes. I had never used any of these before, but I didn't feel like I was going over the top (even though my debit card was screaming when we left!)

On Friday morning, I went by myself to get a manicure and my very first pedicure ever. This was super fun and relaxing, and definitely worth it!

After the scavenger hunt and lunch with everyone, we came back home to get ready for the photo shoot and the wedding itself. Some people like the idea of a big reveal, where the groom sees the bride for the first time when she's all dolled up. I didn't care a bit about that, and anyway, Will had already seen me in my dress when he walked in our room while I was trying it on one day. His reaction then was quite gratifying, even though I was wearing my glasses and hadn't combed my hair in a couple of days.

I'm glad we didn't try for a big reveal, since I actually really loved getting ready with Will and all the kids and my mom and sisters, with Nicole taking pictures of the whole thing.

My sister Corina and I always laugh sooooo hard together, and we've been getting ready for events together for as many years as I can remember. We have lots of stupid private jokes, and make new ones all the time. You don't even want to know what we were laughing about here! She's amazingly good at everything she does, and has a great sense of style. She came over to our house right after I had blowdried my hair.

I put on my makeup then curled the ends while she did her makeup. I wanted little asymmetrical braids in the front of my hair and a messy bun in the back. I couldn't afford to hire a stylist for the day, and I'm just as glad, because Corina did such a good job!

Once our hair and makeup were finished, we ran off to do the formal family photos, then Will and Nicole and I went all over town taking photos of just the two of us. I was really windblown (no hairspray for this girl!) by the time we got to the church, but Corina fixed me right up again. Check out her headband! I had given her carte blanche to wear any black dress she wanted, and I hadn't given any direction for hair. She had no idea that I was going to wear white flowers, but we thought it was such a happy coincidence!

Look closely at the next two pictures to see the tiny braids. The first one shows the messy bun at the end of the ceremony. Isn't it pretty?! (Nicole didn't take this one)

Proof that Corina did a great job: the next picture was taken twelve hours after she first fixed my hair. Three of those hours were out in the wind, and four of them were spent dancing like a crazy woman.

wedding weekend: saturday morning fun

2009-07-23T20:48:00.008-06:00

We met at 9:00 on the morning of the wedding. There were 50 guests, plus the two of us and the scavenger hunt guy. As the group started to gather, it felt like this was a natural continuation of the party the night before. Being the teacher that I am, I had people arrange themselves in two groups according to whether they were having lunch with us after the hunt or not (so I could get a final head count to let the restaurant know how many people were showing up) and then I read off the teams.

The scavenger hunt dude (I guess I can call him John, since that's his name!) had said that we could just show up and divide into teams that morning, but, um, that didn't really work for my virgo self. Any teacher knows that usually when you let kids choose their own groups, you're asking for disaster. So I had pored over the scavenger hunt RSVP list and created teams of people in advance, keeping in mind our ultimate goals of having fun and creating a feeling of community.

I mixed people from Will's family and people from my family, people from in town and people from out of town, and also tried to make sure that every kid had someone close to their age on their team. This was actually easier than it might sound, since we have a lot of friends with kids. I also created one team of families with younger kids, and asked John to give them a more direct route so they had a shot at finishing around the same time as everyone else. Will and I weren't on teams, so I made sure that our kids were on a team with people they knew well who would take good care of them. Gotta say, I'm glad I was a control freak about the teams, and I'm pretty sure that every team hit it off and bonded over the course of the morning!

Once everyone was standing with their teams, John explained how the hunt would work, and the teams scattered to find their first envelopes. These contained clues that led to the next envelope. The clues were a combination of riddle, code, and visual images, and each envelope had 4 copies of the clue -- this made things much easier, since there were 12-13 people per team.

Will and I walked around videotaping and hanging out with the teams as they followed clues around the whole downtown area of our city. This was totally perfect, because it gave us quiet time alone to talk while we were in between teams, and rowdy fun time with all of our friends as we watched them try to solve the clues.

Soooo fun! The weather was gorgeous: sunny but not scorchingly hot. Even though we pretended like it was...
There were nine clues in total. One of them led to the jewelry company that made our rings, and another led to the pub where we had our first date, and where we wrote our vows. The final clue brought everyone back to a spot near the restaurant we had chosen for lunch.

We picked this restaurant because the food is yummy, and they are totally set up to accomodate a large group, even when everyone is ordering off the menu with separate checks. It's super laid-back, and the party area has pool tables, so the kids were entertained while the grownups socialized. People kept moving from table to table, but the waitresses didn't get cranky even though they had trouble figuring out where to bring the food. This would have been a non-issue if we had paid for everyone's lunch...but then, there are lots of things that would be a non-issue if we could afford to buy lunch for 40 people!

A few of my Albuquerque relatives got into town too late to do the hunt, but they met us there and apparently hit it off with some of our friends and ended up spending the afternoon with them. (I only found this out when I saw photos they had taken of the weekend!)

The whole morning was exactly the way I had envisioned it when we first started talking about a wedding weekend. Was it worth the money? Hell, yes! Do I regret changing my original budget to accomodate what we really wanted? Not one bit! Am I proud that even with the scavenger hunt, we spent less on our whole weekend than most people spend on a celebration that lasts a few hours? Why, yes! Yes, I am!

It was hard to pull myself away from the restaurant, but before I knew it, we had to go home to get ready for our photo op...

choices

2009-07-23T10:21:00.001-06:00

(Stay with me here, I swear that I'll get to the Saturday morning fun in the next post.)

I've written before about the fact that I originally thought we could get married for $1000 and Will said there was no way. I still believe it would have been possible. And I'm sure it would have been quite nice. It just wouldn't have been the wedding that we really wanted.

We talked about doing a very private ceremony, with either just us and the kids or just us and our immediate families. We could definitely have done that for under $1000. But, while I would have loved an intimate wedding in some ways, I think I would ended up feeling cheated of the wedding of my girlhood dreams (even if those dreams were planted in my head by the evil WIC!)

We also seriously considered having the ceremony and reception at our house. If we had done that and had a potluck reception we probably could have pulled off a $1000 wedding. We ended up nixing the home wedding plan for two reasons.

The first is that we decided that either we had to have a small, intimate ceremony, or we had to invite everyone. We both have big families, and we both have many friends. There would not have been room for everyone in our backyard or our living room.

The second is that Will wouldn't have been able to relax if we had a home wedding. He would have been freaking out about wanting everything to be perfect and nice and clean, and the weeks leading up to the wedding would have been super stressful for both of us. It didn't seem worth it.

When we decided to invite everyone, we also decided to try to avoid the #1 complaint that I heard from people after they got married: that the whole thing went by too quickly and they never got to spend enough time with the guests at their wedding.

So we got the brilliant idea of hosting a party that lasted all weekend.

Which brings me to the point of this post...

The thing that really and truly killed the $1000 budget was the scavenger hunt. Yes, you read that right. Kickball wasn't enough, we had to throw a scavenger hunt in the mix, too.

wedding weekend: friday

2009-07-22T14:01:00.002-06:00

Friday afternoon our wedding crew met at the church to start decorating. It felt like we were moving in -- we filled up my van, Will's car, plus my friend Shen's truck and part of his trailer to head over there. Will went first, to meet the rental delivery guy, but the rest of us followed close behind.

Everyone worked really hard for a couple of hours, figuring out exactly how to set up chairs for the ceremony, hanging lights, putting together the flower arch, moving tables, rolling up rugs to create a dance floor, and trying to set up the photobooth.

When it was time for the rehearsal, the peeps who weren't participating in the ceremony kept setting up, while the rest of us went out back to practice.

In Colorado you can solemnize your own marriage, so we didn't have to have an officiant, and I was willing to contemplate just doing our own ceremony, but Will thought it would be too weird. Lynn is the minister at the church we usually go to (which is where we got married -- subject for a whole 'nother post), and she's also my parents' next door neighbor. Once we decided to have an officiant, we never considered having anyone but her perform our ceremony. Lynn was around when I was going through the hellish drama of custody battles and the draining everyday life of single parenting, and she's watched my boys grow up since infancy. Even so, I was surprised at how emotional she was both at the rehearsal and the ceremony. I think you can tell from this picture how much she really loves us!

When we were planning the ceremony, Will and I talked about wanting to make people laugh and cry at our wedding. Laugh because we are always cracking each other up, and cry because our love for one another is so deeply felt. Even though we just ran through the blocking and didn't actually say any of the words, we met that goal at the rehearsal!

We felt really strongly that we didn't want an "in" crowd at our wedding, with some people invited to participate in things that others weren't. So instead of having a traditional rehearsal dinner, we invited all of our guests to our rehearsal dinner. In order to make it affordable, we had a potluck barbecue.

In order to make it manageable, in addition to the set-up crew at the church, I had delegated a couple of families to set up for the barbecue. So while we were wrapping up at the church, they were already hard at work at the park, firing up the grill, welcoming people and setting out food and tableware.

I'm so glad that they were willing to help. It kept me from completely stressing out when we ran way overtime at the church, and it also meant that I got to shower and change clothes before dinner. If you look at the rehearsal pics above, you'll see that this was more of a necessity than a luxury. Sweat, yoga pants, uncombed hair, and race t-shirt don't really scream "bride!" And that moment, when we rushed home and I rushed in and out of the shower and put on cute clothes for the bbq, was when it first started to sink in that I was a bride...the omg-I'm-getting-married-in-just-over-24-hours-! feeling.

In order to make our wedding weekend totally kick-ass, this wasn't just a barbecue, either. There were about 70 people at this kickoff event, and the highlight was a rousing game of kickball. (Get it? Kick-ass?! Kickoff?! You know, kickball, kickoff, kickass? Get it? Ha ha!) It's hard to tell from these pics, but between 40 and 50 people (kids and adults) played. It was so much fun that I think kickball should become a new wedding tradition.

In fact, it was so much fun that the ball broke in half! Oops! Game over...

I'm discovering that it's hard for me to write about the wedding weekend without getting sappy. As I looked around the park, and saw all of the people who chose to celebrate with us -- eating and laughing and talking and running around and having fun -- I felt like my heart was going to burst with love. Not just love for Will, but for the family and life we're making together.

yes, I am a teacher for a reason

2009-07-20T23:35:00.008-06:00

It's because I like to organize things, and I like to boss people around. It's funny how much those traits came out in the wedding process. In the weeks before the wedding, I went a little crazy with the list-making. I posted some of my to-do lists here on the blog, but those were not the only lists I made.

I had a spreadsheet with all of the guests, whether they were kids or adults, and which of the wedding events they were attending. Since there were 5 separate events that weekend, keeping track of this was no mean feat! (The funny thing is that I had guests call me on Thursday and Friday and say, "Which things am I coming to?" and I would go to my spreadsheet and tell them what they had RSVPed for.)

I also had a "Wedding Plan" spreadsheet where I kept track of everything that had to be done between the time guests arrived on Wednesday night and the time we left for our honeymoon on Monday morning. This included the boring stuff like dropping the dog off at the kennel and loading the used dishes and wine glasses into the rental cases, as well as fun stuff like getting family photos taken. It had columns for the day, the time, what needed to be done, who needed to do it, and a "needed" column, for what needed to be taken. For example, this column reminded me that we needed water bottles, sunscreen, phones, and camera for the scavenger hunt.

I used the minute detail of the Wedding Plan spreadsheet to make lists for everyone who had a part to play in the weekend. Guests who were just guests didn't get one, but friends who were helping in any capacity and family members each got their own personalized list. It's true that this took a ton of time and people laughed at me for doing it (my dad even mentioned his list when he was making his toast at the reception) but I can tell you that this was probably the most important thing I did to make sure that the weekend was a success. I can say unequivocally that the few things that didn't go smoothly got screwed up when people deviated from their lists.

This personalized list thing wasn't invented by me. When my friend Erin found out that I was getting married, she emailed me a bunch of her wedding plans and the text of her ceremony. I found this immensely helpful, and the most helpful part was seeing the lists that she gave to the members of her wedding party (yeah, she's a teacher, too!) They were similar to my lists, except totally different, since her wedding was totally different from ours.

I've read a ton of wedding blogs, but I've never seen anyone write about making lists for people with a part to play, and so I'm including samples here. Just passing along Erin's fabulous idea...prolly boring if you're not planning a wedding, but invaluable if you are.

Here are a couple of representative examples...

This was my dad's list:
FRIDAY, JUNE 5
3:30 – Rehearsal at Unity Church
5:30 – Barbeque at Spring Creek Park – have fun, eat yummy food (or not, it’s up to you!)
He is notorious for refusing to eat anything prepared by people who aren't my mom
Play kickball if you want

SATURDAY, JUNE 6

9:15 – Meet at Library Park for scavenger hunt

11:30ish – Lunch at Coops

3:00 – Meet at oval for family photos

6:30 or 7ish – Meet at Unity

7:30 – Play flute and try not to cry at the ceremony

Right after the ceremony – Get people started folding and stashing rental chairs (church chairs can stay out for the reception).

Make a toast after Seppie does

After that – Par-tay!!!!

Around 9:30-10ish, help Sierra and Gina get our kids back to our house

SUNDAY, JUNE 7

11:00 – (optional) Brunch at Seppie and Will’s

And my sister's list:

FRIDAY, JUNE 5

5:30 or whenever you make it (‘sokay if you don’t get there, I know you’ve gotta work) Barbeque at Spring Creek Park – have fun, eat yummy food, play kickball

SATURDAY, JUNE 6

9:15 – Meet at Library Park for scavenger hunt

11:30ish – Lunch at Coop’s

1:30/2:00ish – Go to Seppie’s house to get ready and help Seppie and Sarah get ready (I’m going to need you and J to help me with my hair)

3:00 – Meet at oval for family photos

6:30 – Meet back at Unity, make sure everything is set up and ready to go, help Will’s brothers greet people as they arrive, generally make people feel welcome

7:30 – Be our flower girl

Right after the ceremony, our kids will go down the aisle with us as the recessional song plays. Hang out with them on the playground while Will and I walk the labyrinth and everybody else folds chairs and/or heads into the reception hall.

After that – Par-tay!

SUNDAY, JUNE 7

11:00 – Brunch (bring something yummy if you want)

2:00 (optional) – Poker game

My friend Danita's list included:

5:30 – Be the point girl for final set-up/decoration at Unity – we will not be there, but Liz, Will F., and Justin will be there, as well as Laura (the caterer). We’ll come up with a more detailed list when we decorate on Friday, but these are my preliminary thoughts about what needs to be done:

Set up chairs, set out jars, turn on twinkle lights, re-set up outdoor speakers (Justin will mostly do this), hang backdrop, check everything inside, light candles, set up food and drinks

Anyway, you get the idea.

Lists = good.

mason jar wedding

2009-07-18T08:56:00.005-06:00

Aside from the paper flower arch, the main diy decoration for our wedding was mason jar candleholders. The backyard of our church is surrounded by low walls. Follow a break in the foliage behind where our guests sat, and there is a stone labyrinth. Inspired by mason jar posts on pretty much every wedding blog I read, I decided to put candles in jars on all those walls and around the labyrinth.

I've read about people spending $3.50 or more for just one jar, and since I wanted around 200 jars, that would have cost more than the dessert catering or the scavenger hunt. I wasn't willing to give up food or fun for mason-jar prettiness, but I wasn't willing to give up on the idea, either.

I sent an email to everyone I work with, asking them to save pasta sauce jars for me (we've got free curbside recycling here, and people are used to rinsing their glass jars and throwing them in the recycling bin, so I wasn't asking them to do anything extra except bring them to school.) I also asked our friends and in-town family to save jars for us, and they started slowly piling up.

Over the course of about a month and a half, we had collected around 100 jars. My friend Danita loaned me another 25 or 30 (it is not easy to get the wax out afterward, so I don't recommend borrowing jars for this purpose.) Then my amazing cousin Melina saw me post about jars on facebook, and she offered to ship a bunch of them from Albuquerque. I didn't think it would be worth it, until she reminded me that she works for a large national shipping company. Apparently, she collected jars from all of her friends as well, and about 40 more jars arrived the day before the wedding! Wow!

When we moved into this house, we found a bag of sand, and I decided to put a little of the sand into the bottom of each jar before putting the candles in. I had the candles made locally with soy wax. Cache la Poudre Candleworks gave me a much better deal than I found anywhere except the dollar store. Hmmm...dollar store candles made out of who-knows-what by little children or underpaid adults in China and shipped halfway around the world, or local soy candles made to my specifications by someone I know...no contest!

It was still light out during the ceremony, but as it got darker and darker the candles got more and more dramatic. I came outside to cool off for a few minutes during the reception, and the yard seemed so magical it literally took my breath away. I almost wish that we'd planned to have the whole reception outside, not just the ceremony (though some people did hang out outside, the food and music were inside.) But I guess it's just as well we didn't, since the sprinklers turned on before the party was totally over!

If we had more time, I would have wired up jars to hang from trees or from the gazebo, and if we had more money I would have bought some shepherd's hooks to hang the jars from, creating sort of a path out to the labyrinth. As it was, we planned our wedding in only three months on a pretty tight budget, so I'm glad we were able to pull off the mason jar thing at all.

DIY PITA paper wedding flowers* part 3

2009-07-16T15:35:00.001-06:00

*subtitle: All's well that ends well.

You can read part 1 here and part 2 here.

On Friday, the tulle-covered wire got squeezed into my car, and the flowers went over to the church in the back of Will's car. The whole afternoon was devoted to decorating the church and rehearsing for the ceremony, and we were lucky enough to have a whole team of people helping out.

While I was running around being the virgo elementary-school teacher that I am (read: picky and bossy) my mom and aunt Meghan and uncle John took over the arch-making job. They spent about three hours wiring and gluing and getting the arch to look like something I wouldn't hate.

I am seriously grateful to them. This was a sucky job, and I was not up for finishing it, even if I had the time, which I didn't. And, while Karl Lagerfeld still kicked our asses in the giant paper flower arena, at least I'm not a murderer. I was actually pretty happy with the final result:

However, after the wedding, I felt like this is one of the few things I would do differently if I had to do it all over. It was definitely one of the more expensive parts of our wedding (giant pieces of paper are not cheap!) and it was definitely the least green part (paper is made of trees!) and it was by far the most time consuming part (around 100 hours total!) And it wasn't really necessary -- our ceremony would still have been special and beautiful if it had been framed by the gazebo alone instead of by the arch attached to the gazebo.

If you're thinking of doing something similar, honestly, I would encourage you to think again. It's probably not worth it.

And yet...Writing this up (and, yeah, reading my mom's comment on part two) made me realize that the stupid flower arch is an integral part of what I'll always remember about getting married. If nothing else, it proves that a lot of people love me enough to put in a lot of time doing not-fun stuff just to satisfy a crazy fantasy of mine.

Will always says that our wedding looked like a wedding in a movie -- the colors were so vivid and the whites were so bright and the weather was so perfect and everything was decorated so beautifully -- and the arch was a big part of that. It really did frame our ceremony.

So....Maybe I would do it again, even knowing what I know now.... But probably not.

DIY PITA paper wedding flowers* part 2

2009-07-15T15:25:00.002-06:00

*subtitle: Trust me, kids. You do not want to try this at home!

You can find flower-making pictures here, PART 1 here and and PART 3 here.

I had originally planned to use a hot glue gun to attach the flowers to a white sheet, which we could then hang as the backdrop for the ceremony. At the party, we discussed lots of different options and finally came to the conclusion that it might be better to try to attach them to chicken wire. We thought that if they were packed densely enough, the wire wouldn't show.

I had exactly a week between the last day of school and the first day of wedding festivities, so I put off assembling the backdrop until then. Then I was so busy wrapping up other loose ends that I didn't get to it until Wednesday night. My sweetie and the kids were all sleeping, but I had to wait for relatives to arrive from the airport. While I waited, I unrolled the chicken wire and cut it to the size we had planned. Sounds simple, but it wasn't, since the wire kept wanting to roll up and scratch me, and because I had to cut one long skinny piece into three shorter pieces and then wire them together to make one long wide piece. By this time, even our newly-arrived guests were in bed, but I was so excited to see how the finished product would look that I climbed up on the counter and took down all the boxes of flowers from the top of the cabinet. I began to set them out on top of the chicken wire. Then, the excitement faded. Instead of "oooooh, cool!" in my mind, I was like, "oh, crap!" You'll notice that there are no pictures of this part. That's because I was too worried to take pictures.

It looked like I had decided that chicken wire was really pretty, and it would be even prettier if I randomly scattered some white paper flower polka dots in a few spots. Those flowers that had seemed so huge and numerous and overwhelming did not even begin to cover the backdrop.

It was midnight, and I had no idea what to do, so I decided to pull a Scarlett. No, I didn't make the backdrop out of curtains. I just put it all out of the way and told myself that I would figure it out in the morning.
The next day, I had my mom come over, and I set up the whole thing all over again so that she could tell me what to do. She looked at it dubiously and said, "But there were so many flowers! How could this be all of them??" Remember, this was already Thursday, and we had to have everything ready for decorating by Friday afternoon.

We talked about making a tall skinny column or a short wide valance-like-thingy instead of a whole backdrop, but mostly just stood there and stared at it for awhile. Then my mom decided that what we really needed was tulle, to hide some of the chicken wire and make it look more...more...you know...bridey...or something. So we headed for the fabric store where we bought yards and yards of white tulle, and we called our friend Eleanor, who is a genius with making something fabulous out of nothing. Oh, and in the meantime, my friend Gayle had come by and offered to make some more roses after reading about my panic on facebook.

Eleanor left work to come help us try to figure out what the hell to do (she was also at the births of both of my children, so there is a precedent for her dropping whatever she's doing to come help me figure out what the hell to do.) Will helped us hang the gigantic, unwieldy piece of chicken wire on the biggest blank wall in our house -- it happens to be in our bedroom -- and we started experimenting with draping the tulle in various ways to cover the chicken wire, and placing the flowers in different ways to make the sparseness seem purposeful.

I hated it. Hated it. Hated it. No, really, I hated it. Everything we tried. Hated. It looked ugly and tacky and cheap and like what I would have thought was perfect for a wedding when I was five. Actually, it looked like what I would have thought was perfect for a wedding if I had ever been five and completely lacking in taste. Even the magical Eleanor, and my mom the fiber-and-paper-artist couldn't find a way to arrange it that I didn't hate. You'll notice that there are no pictures of this part. That's because I hated it too much to take pictures.

At this point, I was ready to give up on the fucking paper flowers. I was sad about it, because the flowers themselves were beautiful, and we had spent soooooo much time on them already, but I felt like there was no way we could make it work.

I had visions of people showing up at our wedding and saying, "Oh, Seppie must think that that chicken wire is really pretty, and that tulle is reallyreallyreally pretty and fancy and that white paper flower polka dots make everything superfancy and wedding-y. Seppie sure does love chicken wire and tulle!" And then they would go home and talk about what a mistake it is to DIY anything related to wedding decor.

Eleanor had to rush back to work just as Will and my sister's wife, Gina, came in to see how things were going. They tried their best to talk me out of calling off the project completely. The four of us brainstormed ideas until we finally came up with the inspiration to cut the chicken wire into an arch, instead of using it as a full backdrop. This meant that instead of a 5' x 8' solid space, we only had to cover a 1'x16' arch, cutting 24 square feet of flowers off the total we needed. That seemed more do-able, especially when I ran over to Gayle's to pick up the extra roses and found that she had made six huge ones all by herself over the course of the afternoon.

Will and I had planned all along that we would have a date on Thursday night, since that was going to be our last chance to breathe and chillax together before things really got rolling on Friday. It was great to get away, and I felt so much better after eating and having a little quiet time with my sweetie, but this meant that we didn't get back to work on the arch until after 8:00 p.m. This time, the crew consisted of me, my mom, my sister Sierra, and Gina. We all got a little slap-happy, and some of them got a little tipsy. You'll notice that there are no pictures of this part. That's to protect the parties involved.

At any rate, despite the fact that we were working our fingers to the bone, measuring and cutting wire and wrapping tulle and stitching it onto the wire and laying out flowers, we had fun. While we worked, we also created the shot list for the family formals. Nothing like multi-tasking in the final 48 hours before the wedding! We finally went to bed around 1:00am, with the arch cut, the tulle sewn on, but none of the flowers attached.

Coming soon on Party of Six: The final installment of the paper flower saga (with pictures!)

DIY PITA paper wedding flowers* part 1

2009-07-14T08:36:00.009-06:00

*subtitle: if someone had written this post before I got it in my head to imitate Karl Lagerfeld, it would have saved me a ton of time...

You can find part 2 here and part 3 here.

Remember all those giant paper flowers? How they were so giant and were so many of them after my non-bridal-shower party? The deal is that I had totally loved the look of the Chanel spring fashion show when I saw this picture on folding trees:and I decided that it would be super cool to try to approximate it for a sort of backdrop at our wedding. Karl Lagerfeld designed this show, and he has some serious minions to do the dirty work, but I was doing it on a much smaller scale. I don't have minions, but I do have friends, so instead of a bridal shower, I had a flower-making party.

Before the party, I spent quite a bit of time online trying to find paper flower tutorials. It's pretty easy to find instructions for making tissue-paper flowers. It's harder to find instructions for more elegant paper flowers. These are the ones I found worthy of bookmarking but didn't actually use:

Rosie has a video tutorial for making simple-looking flowers with construction paper and other kids' craft supplies
If you're going for more of an origami look, with fewer rounded edges and less cutting, oriland is the place to go (especially once you feel the energy and magic!)
Beautiful, colorful rice paper flowers seem pretty easy to make.
This rose looks more complicated than the ones we did, but you can download the template from the same place I got my daisy template.
Here's a photograph that I found inspirational but frustrating, since there are no instructions and I couldn't find a pattern anywhere on the web.
OMgosh, these "flirty" flowers are beautiful, but they really are NOT simple, even with step by step instructions and photographs. I knew that I could never teach people how to do them in just a few minutes.
If you want to extend the paper flower idea to your cake, craftstylish can show you how.
I tried making paper roses from this flikr tutorial (look at the slide show, and it shows you step by step) but mine came out looking lame and like they were made by a kindergartner, not elegant and sophisticated like hers did.
Folding trees has a kusudama tutorial to make a pretty flower ball. I actually think it would have been fun to make these huge and use them instead of poufs or paper lanterns, but it would take way longer.
The author of this tutorial calls them butterfly kusudama, but I think these just look like daffodils. I didn't try them, but they look much harder than the kusudama in the link above.
I made a prototype of this one from Martha Stewart before the party. I didn't think it was realistic enough to fit in with the others on the backdrop, but I thought about making some to hang in the reception hall, along with the poufs.
I also thought about making some paper bouquets from a tutorial I found at diy wedding on craftstylish:
In the end, the backdrop flowers and poufs were all we could handle -- no time for extras!

I settled on three styles:

daisy magnolia and rose

The instructions for the daisy are from the Canon website. Weird, I know, but I guess they'll do anything to get you to use more printer ink. They tell you to print out pages in color, then cut and glue. Instead, I printed the pages in grayscale, enlarged each part of the pattern, then we used the enlarged copy as a template to cut the pieces out of white paper. We didn't bother with the stem or calyx.

A friend of my mom sent us one giant magnolia, plus a kit with pattern and paper for another. We used that pattern to make the rest of the magnolias.

Here are the directions I used for the roses. She uses a 6-sided flower punch, but that obviously wasn't going to be big enough, so I cut the biggest 6 sided flower shape that I could from an 81/2 X 11 piece of paper and used that. This made a rose that was about four or five inches in diameter. The ladies at the party enlarged it even further, to make roses that were closer to a foot wide.

Counting me, I think there were 14 of us working on the flowers. A few people stayed for just a little while, and a few stayed for several hours, but it probably averaged out to 14 crafty women working for 2-3 hours each. You may remember that I was so excited at the results -- it seemed like my whole house was taken over by giant paper flowers.

Coming up on Party of Six...Assembling the backdrop.

hello, again!

2009-07-09T22:53:00.006-06:00

No, we didn't get tattoos (or pawn anything) -- we just got hitched! Stay tuned for deets about the whole wedding weekend...

i'm a lucky, lucky girl

2009-05-17T20:58:00.008-06:00

I've got such good friends and family. Today looked like this:

And this:And this: (Actually, that's a thank-you card that Heather gave me a couple of weeks ago, but doesn't it look so cute with the little prezzy from Cat? sorry the pic isn't cropped better...)

And I didn't get a picture of the ladies, or the champagne,
'cuz I was too busy cutting and gluing and talking, but the end result was this:And this:And this:And this:Yup, that's my whole couch covered with giant paper flowers. And the stove, too:

Oh, and also the banister:

We're not done yet, but the

Martha-Stewart-meets-Karl-Lagerfeld-meets-recycled-
meets-Seppie-and-Will vibe is coming along...

latest list

2009-05-06T21:16:00.008-06:00

When we first got engaged (I say that like it happened so long ago!) every book that I read said that you really need a wedding notebook. Apparently the first thing you are supposed to do when planning a wedding is buy a planning thing. Presumably, it should be pretty and wedding-y, which means it's probably expensive. Thing is, I'm a teacher. I've got notebooks everywhere, it's just that most of them are castoffs from former students. Read: not pretty and not wedding-y. But free is good, and reusing is good, so I picked the best of the bunch, and here's what I ended up with. I also chose this one because I thought I would put something pretty and wedding-y in the sleeve, but that obviously didn't happen. I've been too busy fixating on other stuff to fixate on making the notebook pretty.

They also told me to divide the notebook into sections, so I did. I made it into all the sections they said, but I haven't actually used all of them. And the ones I have used have mostly just been a place to jot down random ideas and inspiration so I don't forget it. The sections I've actually written in are: What/When; Decorations; Music; Photos; Ceremony/Vows. Oh, and it's important that the notebook has pockets!

What/When is by far the most important section. It's got our lists of stuff to do, stuff to bring to all the of the wedding events, schedules, who is helping. I'm so jealous of people who put it all on an excel spreadsheet (and I really want to change everything over to be as cool as them) but for now it's all just lists. The list of stuff to do is divided into sections, covering smaller and smaller blocks of time. Gotta say, that has been really helpful in making something overwhelming seem not so overwhelming.

We're now just under a month out from the wedding (!!!) and here's the list of stuff that is supposed to get done before May 23, at which time we'll switch over to another list. Anything with a * has been started but not finished yet:

Finish inviting people (Will is done with this, I just have a couple of people that I haven't been in touch with recently, don't expect to come to the wedding, but I do want them to know that we're getting married)
Figure out who is helping with what, make separate list, and make sure they know*
Figure out who else can help at the reception
Get Will vest
Update wedding registry*
Collect pasta sauce jars*
~~Get candles for jars~~
~~Figure out ribbon for bouts~~
~~Figure out/get light strings for indoors~~
Get more light strings for outdoors
Figure out/get all tablecloths
Make napkins*
~~Plan flower making party (try out flowers, get paper~~, thank you notes)*
Chalkboards for photobooth, with signage
~~Make Martha Stewart poufs? (leaning against this, but leaving it on the list until I make a final decision)~~
Snag wedding bands* (moved to different list, since they aren't ready yet!)
Confirm where out of town peeps are staying*
Figure out/order wine
Get shoes/hair accessories
Tell each other how much we love each other every single day*
Do something to work on our relationship every single day*
Seppie get foundation garments* (moved this to another list)
~~Seppie get/make shrug (and one for the girl?)~~ -- wasn't sure about this one, having doubts about matching Will's shirt, and about spending more $, but Heather offered to knit me one(!) We're not sure if it will be done before the wedding -- she did JUST HAVE A BABY! Third cutest baby ever! -- but I'm crossing it off the list
~~Seppie figure out dress for reception -- I might use the $ I would have spent on a shrug to get a new dress, but I might just wear one I've already got~~
~~Get big frame/more backdrops (?)~~/get together costumes for photobooth
Pay for scavenger hunt
Makeup consultation
~~Trial run for hair~~
~~Email Lynn our ceremony plans~~
~~How are we doing ceremony program it if not printed? Figure it out and do it~~
Get marriage license
Work on IPOD reception playlist; back up music and the rest of hard drive
Finalize plans for music and microphone during the ceremony
~~Make more honeymoon plans~~
Work out wedding day timing and details and draw up a schedule (who goes where when and why)
Call or email everyone with a part to play with critical info related to rehearsal and wedding (dates, times, directions, duties)
Get a head start on thank you notes if we can/work on special thank you for people who help*
Go on a scouting trip with Nicole/ create “must-take” photo list
~~Finalize vows~~
Come up with a vegan dessert plan
~~Figure out shoes for the girl~~
~~Talk to grandparents~~
Go to bed at 9:00 every single night*
Do yoga or run or ride my bike to work every single day*

hmmm...

2009-05-05T13:09:00.003-06:00

Something I hadn't considered:

The bouquet.

Well, I had considered it, in the sense that I know what I want for my bouquet, and I have actually even practiced making it (well, not with the flowers I want, but with some other flowers that Will brought home one day, chosen by his lovely daughter.)

But I hadn't considered it, in the sense that I will be walking down the aisle accompanied by my two lovely sons.

Lots of books and articles counsel against this. They say that the symbolism of being "given away" by your children is bound to lead them to feel like you're abandoning them, or choosing your new spouse over them. And I think that could be true if I were doing something like the traditional father-daughter dealio, where they walk me down the aisle, then give me a hug and Will a handshake and go sit down. That would actually be pretty horrifying.

Instead, Will's kids will be with him, and mine are going to walk with me, and then all six of us will stay together for the ceremony. The symbolism has nothing to do with giving me away, and everything to do with the fact that even though Will and I are the ones getting married, the boyz and I are a package deal.

However, that brings us back to the bouquet. If I'm holding hands with two kids, I won't really be able to hold a bouquet. We could walk arm in arm, which would leave my hands free, but I'm not sure I want to do that; it seems a little cheesy and not really like something we would do in real life. It would sure be cheaper not to have a bouquet, but it's one of those wedding things that I've always pictured a certain way, so I'm not sure I'm ready to give it up.

Ideas? Suggestions?

wedding readings

2009-05-03T15:21:00.004-06:00

This whole thing about choosing a wedding reading reminds me how much I love poetry, and how much Will doesn't. I knew that going in, and honestly, it was one of my biggest hesitations about getting serious with him -- I never pictured myself freely choosing to spend my life with someone who isn't great with words and doesn't enjoy language the way I do. Most of the time it doesn't matter the way I thought it would, but it's really hard to come up with readings that we both like. Today I forced him to go through the list we had narrowed down last time, and we did pick one, but he was like, "We still have time to find something better, right?"

He would be happy if we could use some ACDC lyrics:

...For those about to rock, we salute you
For those about to rock, we salute you

We rock at dawn on the front line
Like a bolt right out of the blue
The sky's alight with the guitar bite
Heads will roll and rock tonight...

On and on like that for several verses. We've got a family joke that rusty nails are a "great toy for a little boy!" That's how I feel about using something this for our wedding reading. In other words, No.

But here are some more readings that I do like that we're not using...

I heart Rumi:

from The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

When I am with you, we stay up all night.

When you're not here, I can't go to sleep.

Praise God for these two insomnias!
And the difference between them.

The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste this minute
of eternity. We are pain
and what cures pain, both. We are
the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.

I want to hold you close like a lute, so we can cry out with loving.

You would rather throw stones at a mirror?
I am your mirror, and here are the stones.

This one isn't really romantic, but it sure is true!

Miss Manners: While exclusionary interest in one other human being, which is what we call courtship, is all very exciting in the stages of discovery, there is not enough substance in it for a lifetime, no matter how fascinating the people or passionate the romance. The world, on the other hand, is chock full of interesting and curious things. The point of the courtship — marriage — is to secure someone with whom you wish to go hand in hand through this source of entertainment, each making discoveries, and then sharing some and merely reporting others. Anyone who tries to compete with the entire world, demanding to be someone's sole source of interest and attention, is asking to be classified as a bore. "Why don't you ever want to talk to me?" will probably never start a satisfactory marital conversation. "Guess what?" will probably never fail."

This one almost made the cut (and it probably would have been the one I chose), but Will liked the other one of our top two better:

Crusoe by George Bilgere
When you’ve been away from it long enough
You begin to forget the country
Of couples, with all its customs
And mysterious ways. Those two
Over there, for instance: late thirties,
Attractive and well-dressed, reading
At the table, drinking some complicated
Coffee drink. They haven’t spoken
Or even looked at each other in thirty minutes
But the big toe of her right foot, naked
In its sandal, sometimes grazes
The naked ankle bone of his left foot,
The faintest signal, a line thrown
Between two vessels as they cruise
Through this hour, this vacation, this life,
Through the thick novels they’re reading,
Her toe saying to his ankle,
Here’s to the whole improbable story
Of our meeting, of our life together
And the oceanic richness
Of our mingled narrative
With its complex past, with its hurts
And secret jokes, its dark closets
And delightful sexual quirks,
Its occasional doldrums, its vast
Future we have already peopled
With children. How safe we are
Compared to that man sitting across the room,
Marooned with his drink
And yellow notebook, trying to write
A way off his little island.

I wonder if Dante will use something like this one when he gets married...

The Present by Michael Donaghy

For the present there is just one moon,
though every level pond gives back another.

But the bright disc shining in the black lagoon,
perceived by astrophysicist and lover,

is milliseconds old. And even that light's seven minutes older than its source.

And the stars we think we see on moonless nights
are long extinguished. And, of course,

this very moment, as you read this line,
is literally gone before you know it.

Forget the here-and-now. We have no time
but this device of wantonness and wit.

Make me this present then: your hand in mine,
And we'll live out our lives in it.

This one is so true, but we're optimistic that eventually we'll have fewer things left half undone

The lyrics from The Two Of Us by The Mr T Experience:

Now there are two of us, instead of only one,
two times as many things get left half undone.
We're twice as half-asleep when the new day has begun
and maybe twice as on the run,
Two lives are semi-rough
with half the rent and twice the stuff.
There are two of us, and that should be enough.
Look at everybody.
Everybody's always
falling apart or breaking up.
But the two of us never will be one of those,
and I should know– I have had a run of those
Our love's not guaranteed,
but there are two of us,
I think that's all we need.

This one is silly, and it's not the whole thing, it's really long and I'm just including my favorite parts (if you google, you can get the full text)

I Like You by Sandol Stoddard Warburg
I like you and I know why.
I like you because you are a good person to like...
We have good ideas
When I say something funny, you laugh
I think I'm funny and you think I'm funny too
Hah-hah!
...You know how to be silly
That's why I like you
Boy are you ever silly
I never met anybody sillier than me till I met you
I like you because you know when it's time to stop being silly
Maybe day after tomorrow
Maybe never
Too late, it's a quarter past silly
If I pretend I am drowning, you pretend you are saving me...
HOORAY...
And I like you because if we go away together
And if we are in Grand Central Station
And if I get lost
Then you are the one that is yelling for me...
I like you because if I am mad at you
Then you are mad at me too
It's awful when the other person isn't
They are so nice and hoo-hoo you could just about punch them in the nose...
If you find two four-leaf clovers, you give me one
If I find four, I give you two
If we only find three, we keep on looking
Sometimes we have good luck, and sometimes we don't
On the 4th of July I like you because it's the 4th of July
On the fifth of July, I like you too
If you and I had some drums and some horns and some horses
If we had some hats and some flags and some fire engines
We could be a HOLIDAY
We could be a CELEBRATION
We could be a WHOLE PARADE
See what I mean?
Even if it was the 999th of July
Even if it was August
Even if it was way down at the bottom of November
Even if it was no place particular in January
I would go on choosing you
And you would go on choosing me
Over and over again
That's how it would happen every time
I don't know why
I guess I don't know why I really like you
Why do I like you
I guess I just like you
I guess I just like you because I like you.

This one isn't wedding-y at all, but I love the first stanza especially:

Grammar by Tony Hoagland
Maxine, back from a weekend with her boyfriend,
smiles like a big cat and says
that she's a conjugated verb.
She's been doing the direct object
with a second person pronoun named Phil,
and when she walks into the room,
everybody turns:

some kind of light is coming from her head.
Even the geraniums look curious,
and the bees, if they were here, would buzz
suspiciously around her hair,looking
for the door in her corona.
We're all attracted to the perfume
of fermenting joy.

we've all tried to start a fire,
and one day maybe it will blaze up on its own.
In the meantime, she is the one today among us
most able to bear the idea of her own beauty
and when we see it, what we do is natural:
we take our burned hands
out of our pockets,
and clap.

this makes me so happy

2009-04-30T18:38:00.005-06:00

We don't know very many of our new neighbors, but just a couple weeks after we moved in, I accosted one of them with kale. She was biking by, and I was trying to get rid of some CSA excess. We ended up talking a couple of times, and we invited their family over last time we had a dinner get-together. They came, it was fun!

Today she told me that ever since that night, her two-year-old son calls me "Party" and that every time they drive by our house he says, "There's Party's house! Lets go to Party's house!"

I secretly wish that more people thought "Party!" every time they saw me...

no wonder i haven't been keeping up

2009-04-30T13:22:00.010-06:00

on dishes and laundry! A week ago, I made myself a list of all the stuff I have to do between now and the wedding. I'm a procrastinator, so I broke it up into sections to give myself lots of deadlines. The list is so long that it sorta makes me understand why people plan weddings so far in advance, but I think three months is perfect for me.

Otherwise I'd have obsessed about wedding planning like this for a couple of years, without ever accomplishing much, and I would still end up doing exactly what I'm doing now, which is rushing to get it all done at the last minute. That's what I meant when I told Will that I just wanted to get it over with instead of waiting until next summer or something. Plus, I'm totally in love with him and excited to have a husband. Plus there's that whole health care thing.

Anyway, here's what I've done in the last 6 days:
follow up with the scavenger hunt guy
talk to S about M helping at the reception
follow up with L about helping
send my dad the link with sheet music (he's playing flute at our ceremony)
figure out shirt for Will and buy it
order shirts for 2 boys
order dress for 1 girl
book the park for the rehearsal dinner bbq
update website with accomodation info
figure out where we're spending the night on our honeymoon
update wedding registry
confirm flowers with farmer lady
email everyone at work to save jars
start collecting jars
reserve kennel for the dog
get fabric for napkins
plan date and tell my mom who to invite to flowermaking party
work on figuring out ceremony readings
find out about marriage license rules
figure out tripod for diy photobooth
get backdrops for diy photobooth
finalize ring order/finish paying for rings
make and test four different sangria recipes

Whew! See what I mean about housework going by the wayside? It would be different if I weren't working full time and we didn't have 4 kids! We spent half the weekend playing laser tag and mini golf and riding go carts and entertaining extended family. Oh, and I'm training for two races, too (got in an 8.4 mile run over the weekend...)

Here's what still needs to be done before May 6:
finish inviting people
figure out who is helping with what, make separate list, and make sure they know what to do
~~talk to D about helping~~
figure out who else can help at the reception
get Will vest/~~tie~~
~~figure out what the boys are wearing for pants and ties~~, buy ~~if necessary~~ new jeans for one of them
~~buy shirt for Dante~~
~~talk to Will's brother about role in the wedding~~
figure out how to serve ice cream
~~order flowers for Seppie’s (and girl's?) hair~~
~~mail deposit check to honeymoon place~~
update wedding registry
collect pasta sauce jars
get candles for jars
figure out ribbon for bouquets
figure out/get light strings for indoors
get more light strings for outdoors
figure out how to serve drinks/kid drinks
figure out/get all tablecloths
make napkins
get ready for flower making party (try out flowers, get paper, thank you notes)
chalkboards for photobooth, with signage
make Martha Stewart poufs?
~~choose readings, figure out who is doing readings~~ – talk to them
~~work on vows~~
figure out how everyone is getting to the wedding/getting home
drunk shuttle?
confirm where out of town peeps are staying
figure out/order wine
get shoes/hair accessories
~~work on ceremony program~~
tell each other how much we love each other every single day
do something to work on our relationship every single day
figure out guest book
make sure wedding outfits fit
seppie get foundation garments
seppie get/make shrug (and one for the girl?)
get big frame/more backdrops (?)/costumes for diy photobooth

Oh, and did I mention that I have an all day meeting tomorrow, and I haven't written sub plans yet? Or that we're having a nerf gun slumber party at our house on Friday night? With eight 11-year-old boys? And a dinner party on Saturday night? Or that I'm running a 10k race first thing Sunday morning? Or that it's the end of the school year and I have to have my classroom completely cleaned out and packed away on the last day, since it's being used over the summer and we're getting married the week after school gets out? Oy. Blogging is a great form of procrastination...

wedding budget

2009-04-29T20:45:00.004-06:00

I read a blog post the other day that inspired me to keep track of wedding purchases here, in the spirit of sharing what's realistic and possible in terms of wedding budget. I also think it will be good for me to keep a running list of how much we're actually spending, in order not to let it get too far out of control. I'm notoriously bad at tracking my finances, so it might just be that the only way I'll know how much we've spent is if I vow to blog every penny.

I was just going to include straight wedding costs, but my mom says we have to count rings and honeymoon, too. So far, this is what we've spent and what we've gotten:

8(ish? I'm too lazy to get up and count) strings of white twinkle lights on green cord (wah! haven't found any for cheap with white cords, but we're using the green ones for outside) -- $8.78 thrift store

3 sheets to use for diy photobooth backdrop -- $9.57 thrift store

deposit for church (ceremony and reception will both take place there) -- $150

shirts for the two younger boys -- $24.34 inc. shipping Children's Place

dress for the girl -- $38.65 inc. shipping Gap

shirt for Will -- $20.00 Macy's (sweet sale, 50% off original price + 25% off of that!)

round trip honeymoon plane tickets for BOTH of us (woot!) -- $265.60 Southwest

paying off my rings and Will's wedding band (not sure the exact total for all three rings, will update when I figure it out) -- $396.11

rental of 60 chairs, 50 tidbit plates, 50 dessert plates, 100 forks, 10 dinner plates (not sure of the exact breakdown, will update when I figure it out) -- $298.41

wine and ingredients for sangria tasting -- $40 (approximate, cuz I bought a bunch of other stuff at the same time and can't find the receipt)

dress for me -- $0 borrowing from a friend

jars for candles -- $0 asking everyone I know to save them for me

ring pillow -- $0 borrowing from a friend

invitations -- $0 free wedding website

candles -- $0 so far, I know we'll have to buy a bunch but friends have donated a few to the cause

fabric for napkins -- $5.95 thrift store

giant paper magnolia -- $0 but I will end up spending some $ on paper flowers, I'm sure

So we're at $1,248.63 and counting.
If you take out the rings and plane tickets, it's $586.92 so far for the actual ceremony.

You may have noticed a theme here; I love how saving the earth and saving money so often coincide! Green wedding strategy #2 is to borrow stuff as my first option, buy it used or rent as my second, and buy it new as a last resort.

it's the most important part, right?

2009-04-28T10:23:00.003-06:00

Planning a party is easy, but trying to figure out what the actual ceremony should be like is taking forever! Some parts of it came together fast -- a couple of jokey things that I'm not posting about here, because we want them to be a surprise -- but the actual substance of the thing is hard.

We can't even decide exactly what format to use. Should the format be dictated by what we want to say, or should we narrow down what we should say by choosing a format first? Right now I'm wishing that we had just invited like 5 people each, so that our ceremony could include some stuff that is more intimate, but I guess it's too late for that!

I started out looking at tons and tons and tons and tons of readings. A few weeks ago I cut and pasted and printed off 16 pages of stuff that I thought would be okay to use (don't worry, I did it in a small font on the back of paper that had already been used), plus the ceremony outline and readings that our officiant suggested. We spent a date night looking at all of it together over drinks, with French short films playing on the wall in front of us (sans sound, just music in the background.) It was fun, and we ruled out enough readings that we got things down to ten pages total, but we didn't make any firm decisions.

Last night we talked about doing a Quaker-style ceremony, where anyone who is moved to speak can do so. The office manager at our venue did this for her wedding, and she said it was amazing and beautiful and she really encouraged us to consider it. Will thinks it's a fine idea, so I thought that would solve the problem of readings: we won't choose any, but if anyone wants to bring some, they can. I like the element of surprise, and the element of community, and the fact that it's like making something purposeful out of laziness and indecision. However...

this morning on my way to work, I started getting cold feet. Here's the problem: no control. And if I thought that everyone would say something lovely and appropriate, I would feel like, "yay! we're done! no worries about choosing readings!" But I'm pretty sure that at least some of Will's friends would say stuff about how he swore he would never get married again, or how he must not hate women as much as he used to, or...who knows. And I don't think it's selfish of me to want our wedding to be about us and our marriage, not about Will's divorce. He agrees. So there goes the Quaker ceremony idea, and we're back to square one.

Then I thought maybe we could each choose one person, and that one person could choose a reading, and we'd still have the element of surprise, without the fear of inappropriateness. Will doesn't know who he could choose who would know what kind of thing to read, so he vetoed that idea as well.

We've texted back and forth this morning, and talked for a bit over lunch, and now we've decided that either we'll each do a reading and then have our officiant read the vows while we just say "I do" OR we'll choose a couple of people to do readings and then read our own vows to each other. What we don't want is a ceremony where the officiant does all the talking. So I guess we've narrowed it down from 5 or 6 options to just 2. That's progress, right?

awfully sweet brothers

2009-04-27T06:35:00.002-06:00

Who would have thought that playing XBox 360 could be so cute and loving? I came downstairs the other day and had to take a picture.

I took this one the night after we went to a first grade Dr. Seuss celebration. Sebastian made his hat and got the Cat in the Hat and this book as a gift from his teachers.

It's not just video games that make them snuggle up so nicely! I had been upstairs and wondered why they were so quiet...

cute diy to-go ware

2009-04-25T11:51:00.004-06:00

This post is a bit belated, because I actually made this for a Christmas present for my teaching partner, Nicole. I used to give her a really hard time, because she was so germ phobic that if there was no clean silverware in the lounge, she would use plastic instead of washing some herself. She didn't trust the silverware to be germ-free unless it had gone through the dishwasher cycle.

So I decided to make my own version of to-go ware for her. My mom had ordered something similar off of Etsy, and I used that for the general idea, but what I made for Nicole ended up totally different than the one she has. First I got some bamboo utensils, then I went to the thrift store and found a couple of women's button-down shirts in coordinating colors. I loved the first one; it was a kind of cowgirl-style Lucky Brand shirt with snaps. The second one was just a plain pale pink.

Here's the finished product, unrolled and ready to use:

Nicole keeps hers at school, so she only has to carry it from her classroom to the lounge, but this would totally work to slip into a purse or backpack, or to keep in the glovebox of your car or in the saddlebags of your bike. My mom's has fabric strips that tie together to keep it rolled up, but I used one of the snaps from the Lucky shirt as the fastener. Next time I make one of these it will probably be slightly different, since I specifically designed this one around that particular shirt. I also love how I was able to incorporate the little tag from the placket that says "Lucky You" on the strap. Here it is rolled up, ready to carry:

For the outside, I cut one of the front pockets off the shirt. You'll notice that I used pinking shears to do most of the cutting of the dark pink shirt, just because I'm lazy and hate sewing hems, but I think it ended up looking cool and purposeful, and it echoed some of the design elements in the fabric and stitching.

I cut a square out of the light pink shirt to use as a napkin. It fits perfectly into the little pocket:

I pretty much just made the pattern up as I went along, so it took longer than it would have if I wasn't totally experimenting, but it was still definitely a quick project, definitely doable as a gift. I spent about $5 on the shirts, and $8 on the bamboo utensils, so it was pretty cheap, too! I think that next time I'll make a template instead of freehanding everything.

I'm going to make these for our whole family, eventually (but not 'till after the wedding!) and when I make the next one, I'll take pics as I go so I can post a tutorial. I'm also going to look for actual silverware at thrift stores and garage sales, so that we don't have to buy new bamboo utensils for our whole family.

yay, me!

2009-04-06T20:43:00.002-06:00

I went ahead and signed up for the Colorado Marathon 10K AND the Bolder Boulder. Two 10Ks in one month! So I really need to get ready quickly, but I haven't found any training programs designed to get you ready for a 10K in 4 weeks. What I'm going to do is use a 12 week half-marathon training schedule that has a 10K race in week 10, and I'm starting on the week 6 schedule. Got that?

Today was supposed to be my "stretch and strengthen" day for this week, so I did a 75 minute Ashtanga yoga class. It kicked my butt -- my arms were shaking so hard when I got done that I kept missing the buttons on the microwave when I was heating up dinner -- but it felt really good, especially since I ran into some wedding planning issues earlier in the day (more on those later.) Tomorrow is a 4 mile early-morning run, so I guess I'd better go to bed now!

what a weirdo

2009-04-04T14:36:00.003-06:00

Sebastian loves Will's dog Kobi so much that I feel guilty for never letting my kids have a dog before. He seriously spends most of his time at home loving on Kobi. But it's really funny to listen to him talk to/about her...

Yesterday morning:
S: (hugging Kobi) Koooooobiiiii! Your stomach is getting so fat! Maybe you're about to have some baaaaabies!
Me: Kobi can't have babies, we're just trying to feed her more because she was getting so skinny.
S: Why can't she have babies?
Me: Because she had surgery that makes it so she won't, because there are already way too many dogs in the world who need homes.
S: Can I get that surgery, too?
Me: (in my head) ???????? WTF ??????
Me: (out loud) Maybe, if you want to when you're a grownup.

This morning:
S: (hugging Kobi) Leadership is what you are all about, Kobi. (runs off to play)
Me: (in my head) ???????? WTF ???????

feeling frustrated

2009-04-01T22:19:00.004-06:00

I can't seem to find or make time to run and do yoga these days. Before Will and I got serious, I always managed to do yoga 2 times a week and run 2-3 times a week, even when things were at their busiest. The summer before we met, I was running waaaaaay more than that. But my whole life got shaken up when I fell in love, and I haven't gotten back on track. I really want to run the Bolder Boulder this year, and I know I can make it into one of the qualifying waves, but that means running a qualifying race...

Hold the presses! I just had a sudden flash of inspiration, because I had forgotten that the 10k I did last spring was NOT the last race I ran (that was too long ago to count as a qualifying race). I took a little break from bitching, and found the results for the race I ran in July. This whole sitting-on-my-ass thing has gone on way too long -- I can't believe I haven't run a race in almost 9 months. But that race will indeed count, and I did indeed qualify, for an even faster wave than I thought I would, despite the fact that I ran that race with no training and my time was way slower than the year prior.

So, I guess I'm running the Bolder Boulder! Yay! Now I'm feeling more excited than frustrated. Good thing I have a blog or I might never have gotten it all worked out. I was starting to worry that I would need spanx to fit into my wedding dress.

But I'm also back to the original problem: how to make time for training? I need a plan. I'll talk to Will about it tomorrow, then post here so I'll be accountable to everyone in the whole entire world.

wedding flowers

2009-03-29T20:04:00.003-06:00

Well, I know where I'm not getting flowers for the wedding. Today I hosted a baby shower for my sister-in-law, and I went to Whole Foods to get her a nice big bouquet. I ended up getting white daisies and hot pink gerbera daisies and myrtle leaves, which did make a gorgeous centerpiece. At least some of them were "whole trade" but I was seriously shocked at the amount of plastic that came with those flowers. Also, the whole trade designation does include an element of environmental sustainability, but does not mean that the flowers are organic.

I still feel better about getting the flowers at Whole Foods than at the regular grocery store, but there certainly wasn't less plastic on them than there would have been if I got them somewhere else. Each bunch was wrapped in one of those cellophane floral bags, so three of those (plus the girl at the checkout offered me a floral bag to hold all three bunches together -- I said no, of course!) plus the gerberas had plastic tubes over the stems to keep them standing upright, plus each bunch was held together with a rubber band, plus each bunch had one of those little floral preservative packets. Now I'm wishing that I took pictures of all of the plastic before I threw it away AND the flowers before I gave them away. Oops!

I have a friend who wants to talk to me about wholesale flowers for the wedding, and I'll start checking farmer's markets as soon as they open in mid/late May (but I have a feeling that early June here is too early for great local flowers), and I'm going to look into the option of borrowing flowers, but in the back of my mind I had thought that I could always just get them at Whole Foods. Guess not.

??????

2009-03-25T20:20:00.004-06:00

I have a feeling that pretty soon I'm gonna run out of answers.

A couple of days ago, Sebastian and I were reading a book about Mars. He kept stopping me to ask questions like, "How did they originally figure out that the earth was rotating around the sun?" In the course of that conversation, he also made his own mental leap to figure out that we have time zones because the earth spins on its axis.

Just now, Dante called me up to his bedroom so he could ask me this one: "You know how people are always talking about time as the fourth dimension? Does that mean fourth dimension in relation to the three dimensions of height, width and depth?" This was after a dinner conversation in which he pondered how gravity affects time, and tried to figure out if time is different on Jupiter, and if so, if it's enough of a difference to be perceptible.

I know that everyone thinks their kids are amazing, but my kids really are amazing!

when i was little...

2009-03-23T21:49:00.004-06:00

...there was no pay-at-the-pump gasoline! We had to walk into the gas station to pay. And it was uphill both ways! And we liked it! My kids see this as proof of how old I am.

It's true that I am pretty old, and I know for sure that there was no internet when I was little, but I am having a hard time remembering what life was like before it existed. I mean, yeah, I remember playing Oregon Trail on the fuzzy, black and white, top-of-the line Macintosh IIE or whatever it was that my 5th grade teacher had installed in the back of our classroom because he was so with-it and tech-savvy. And learning how to make a little turtle move across the screen by writing a program in BASIC. But, really, how did we function back then? {Shudders at the thought of science fair project research in the pre-google era...}

The really, really amazing thing about the internet is that there are huge parts of it devoted to just about everything. Like those scary doll ladies (was gonna link, but I just can't, sorry). You don't even realize what's out there until you go looking...I've just discovered that there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of blogs about weddings and wedding planning. This is even more of a time suck than environmental blogs and parenting blogs. Trying to get me off the computer last night, Will said, "Baby, you need a hobby." I glanced at him, then looked pointedly at the screen and said, "I have a hobby!"

Maybe he's right, though. This ~~crack pipe~~ internet thing is really addictive. I vow that tomorrow I will use the computer only to:
a) add a wedding site blogroll to my blog (you knew it was coming, didn't you?)
b) check email

I'm itching to add a c) and d), but I really should be finishing report cards and training for the 10K I'm going to run on Memorial Day, and doing some yoga and laundry and hanging out with my kids and sweetie. So that's it! Just a) and b). Plus, if I actually do some stuff to get ready for the wedding, instead of just reading about what other people have done and drooling over their pictures, I'll have another strategy update later in the week...

Green budget wedding strategy #1

2009-03-21T10:23:00.002-06:00

My first strategy involves the lack of paper invitations. We created a gorgeous wedding website with all of the information, as well as some interactive elements (a cheesy vow contest and a place for people to suggest music for the reception.)

This is not traditionally acceptable. Oh, well. All of our friends and most of our family are very comfortable online. I don't even know anyone's real address, let alone have time to address invitations. Since it's free and doesn't use unnecessary resources, I've got no regrets. I did phone both sets of grandparents to tell them we're engaged and to personally give them the wedding invite link. Other than that, we've sent the link via text, email, and Facebook.

According to stats I've seen, the average cost for 100 invitations is between $225 and $450, but some people spend as much as $2000! On invitations! People, do you realize how much good you could do in the world with $2000? I also read somewhere that invitations should be about 3% of the total budget, so for our budget, we should be spending $54-60 on them.

I'll take zero dollars instead, thank you. Web-based invitations also mean zero trees wasted, zero pieces of plastic stamp backing to throw away, and zero carbon emissions to deliver.

Lots of wedding sites offer free websites for couples -- if you are interested, take a look at mywedding.com, theknot.com, or weddingpearl.com. If you are goth or want something not quite so...um...traditional, check out nearlyweds.com -- but that one is $49, not free. Might be worth it, though, if the templates are your style.

planning a budget green wedding

2009-03-21T03:46:00.014-06:00

I've given up on reading wedding books, because mostly they don't seem relevant. They have advice about duties of the bridesmaids and groomsmen, proper etiquette for seating people, how to address the invitations, and how to have a budget wedding for $5000-$10,000. We're not having bridesmaids or groomsmen, or a "bride's side" and "groom's side," or paper invitations, and we definitely don't have $5000. Oh, yeah, and we're not 20 years old, and we've got four kids. So I took all the books back to the library.

That said, I'm also not taking the advice of people who have told us we should just have a potluck wedding. What we're trying to pull off is something in between the traditional formal church wedding and the casual backyard hippie wedding. I guess we'll find out in a couple of months if it's possible. So far, my best resource has been the offbeat bride tribe, even though I'm not wearing a red dress (sorry, Dante) and don't have any tatoos.

I initially wanted to do our wedding for under $1000. Will told me that was impossible. I still maintain that we could do it, except we're not. I got the brilliant idea to have a scavenger hunt the morning of the wedding, and that plus photographs already put us over $1000. If I had more than 2 1/2 months, I could put together the hunt myself, but we decided that in this case it is worth outsourcing. So our revised budget is somewhere in the $1800-$2000 range, which will allow us to rent space, pay for the officiant, have beautiful photographs and the scavenger hunt, plus all the incidentals and food for the reception. I think that's still pretty good, considering that we're figuring on around 100 people for the ceremony, and that the festivities will start on Friday evening and end on Sunday afternoon.

Obviously, our other big concern is environmental. We're going to attempt to have a waste-free, no-new-plastic wedding. I'm not entirely sure this is possible, but we're going to try. As we go, I'll post a series of strategies and updates to dazzle and inspire you all! Or, um, something like that...

plastic-free kids?

2009-03-19T22:10:00.004-06:00

I've written before about how much I struggle to balance my values with raising kids who fit in with their peers enough that I'm not scarring them for life. Sometimes the values win out, and sometimes the cultural pressure does, and sometimes, just sometimes, I manage to pull off a win-win.

Dante hangs out with a bunch of boys who love, love, love nerf gun fights. He hasn't been to a single birthday party this year that hasn't involved all of the kids bringing their nerf guns for a huge battle. Weirdly enough, it's not the battling that bothers me as much as the plastic and the fact that the guns and bullets are made in China. I'm sure that some people would disagree, but nerf gun fights don't seem any more violent or disturbing to me than an old-fashioned snowball fight. However, there is an unbelievable amount of plastic involved, and I don't even want to think about the factory conditions in which they are made. Despite my discomfort, we've got a veritable arsenal of nerf guns upstairs, and they get hours and hours of use.

When I was a kid, I was the freaky hippie girl who brought nori in her lunchbox and hid her whole wheat-natural peanut butter-homemade jam sandwich under the table because all the other kids had white bread with bologna and american cheese. See what I mean about that whole scarred for life thing? Fast forward 25 years and my kids are the freaky hippie boys who bring hummus and tabouleh and broccoli and kale in their laptop lunchboxes. (Yes, I know they're plastic, but I have searched high and low and haven't found a good stainless steel alternative. Wah.)

Side note: I always hated that natural peanut butter when I was a kid, because the oil would rise to the top and then I would try to stir it in with a knife and it would slop all over the side of the jar and still wouldn't be mixed in right, so the peanut butter was either really dry or really oily. As soon as I grew up, I switched to Jif, and loooooooved it. But Jif only comes in plastic, and it's full of sugar, and guess what? Now I make my kids eat the natural stuff. I solve the whole oil mixing problem by grinding my own (in the bulk section at Whole Foods) into an old glass pickle jar, leaving half the jar empty so that I have plenty of room to mix it up every single time I use it. Works great!

As for the win-win...my boyz are involved in way too many after-school activities. Those of you who don't have kids may not realize that virtually every after school activity involves some kind of snack commitment on the part of the parents. And virtually every snack involves tons of packaging and trash. However, I have solved the problem without turning my boys into outcasts. On our snack day, I send a big tub of buttered, air-popped popcorn, a stack of reusable plates, and a stack of reusable cups for water. The plates and cups are plastic, but I got them years ago at the dollar store for parties, and over that time they have replaced many, many disposables so I don't feel bad. They are unbreakable, and I don't care if a couple get lost along the way, so it's no big deal to send them to school. It doesn't hurt that this is also way cheaper than buying a big package of goldfish crackers wrapped in individual serving portions and a 12-pack of gatorade...

But speaking of gatorade, here's one that has me stumped: what can I send on game days when I am the "drink" parent? If it's soccer, I could bring a cooler with lemonade and those same reusable plastic cups, but that doesn't work for basketball. Drinks for basketball need to have lids and the kids always take them home after the game. I've thought about making up reusable water bottles (ideally stainless steel) with lemonade or something, but I can't afford to give those away. Any ideas?

buzzing lash? not sure I like the name, but

2009-03-19T11:53:00.002-06:00

my superhero alter-ego is pretty groovy.

gotta love this kid

2009-03-11T20:25:00.004-06:00

Tonight was the first night I had a chance for a quiet minute with Dante (age 11, the oldest of the four kids) since the engagement was official. Sebastian is still (!) sick and Will was upstairs taking a shower. Here is a transcript of the conversation Dante and I had while loading the dishwasher:

Me: So, how are you feeling about this whole wedding thing?
D: A little weird.
Me: Why?
D: You. In a white dress. Doesn't compute. Why don't you wear red velvet or something? I think you will look cuckoo in a white dress!
Me: So it's the wedding that weirds you out, not the idea of me and Will getting married?
D: Yeah. I always knew you guys would get married eventually.
Me: And really, your life isn't going to change once we're married. For you, nothing will really be different than it is now.
D: Yeah, except I'll have healthcare.

OMG, I love him so much! I didn't know whether to laugh because he was so matter of fact and grown-up about it, or cry, because he's obviously been listening to way too many adult conversations!

nice day for a green diamond

2009-03-09T12:52:00.010-06:00

I've had "White Wedding" by Billy Idol running through my head for a couple of days -- maybe 'cuz I'm officially engaged as of Saturday night?!

But as my dad reminded me last week, I'm used goods. Mostly he was trying to talk my dowry down to two goats instead of a camel. The fact that he doesn't have either goats or a camel to give, and the fact that Will isn't really expecting a dowry didn't figure into this conversation at any point, but the fact that I've been around the block was apparently relevant.

At any rate, "white wedding" didn't seem like an appropriate title for this blog entry, especially since our plan is to have a green wedding. We're still figuring out exactly what that entails, but it all started last fall when we first talked about getting married...

We went to the jewelry store to look at rings and it was soooo fun and they were soooo pretty. Then I did some research, and realized that those beautiful, sparkly stones hide a really brutal reality. Apparently, things have gotten better in the diamond industry than they used to be, but there still isn't any guarantee that a diamond that is purported to be conflict-free really is. So I decided that maybe the best idea was to get a Canadian diamond. No blood involved, right? Well, sort of. Plus, even Canadian diamonds have to be mined.

I can tell you from experience that it's a bummer to get excited about celebrating your love for someone only to find out that you'll be leaving a trail of blood and tears and ravaged earth behind. But I wasn't willing to give up on the whole diamond thing. Maybe this is one of the few ways that I'm a typical "I've dreamed of this since I was a little girl" shallow, materialistic traditionalist. I know that there are other gems, and that deBeers is like the mafia, and that synthetic diamonds are pretty good these days. But {insert whiny voice here} I didn't WAAAANT another gem, and I didn't WAAAAANT a synthetic diamond.

Then we moved into our new house and life got so hectic that we didn't even have time to think about rings, let alone figure out a solution to the dilemma. In the last month or so, things calmed down a bit, and we started talking about getting engaged again. I decided that the only way I could have the diamond ring I wanted was to get a used diamond (just like the only way I can buy sweatshop clothes is from the ARC).

On a whim, I checked the jewelry section of craigslist, and found what turned out to be the perfect diamond for us. The lady wanted much much more than we had planned to spend, and it had appraised even higher than that, but she liked us and our story and accepted our offer. Because we don't know enough about diamonds to take her word for anything, we shopped around a bit and found a custom jeweler who was willing to meet with us and check out the diamond. He confirmed that everything was on the up-and-up, facilitated the transaction, and set the stone in the ring I wanted (he's also designing my wedding band, using estate diamonds and recycled gold).

Oh, and in case you were worried, it's not a bad karma diamond either -- no acrimonious divorce or dead husband or someone selling her jewels to avoid the poorhouse -- just a simple story of an engagement that didn't work out. He's happily married now, and she's happily single. They are still friends, but she decided it was time to let go of the jewelry from that relationship.

Will was worried that getting engaged would be anti-climactic, since we've talked so much about it and it wasn't a surprise. He's been married before, but I never have, and he wanted to make the proposal special for me. He also knew that I really wanted to be wearing the ring for our housewarming party last weekend.

Far from being anti-climactic, the proposal turned out to be like our lives -- hectic and thrown in with everything else we had to do, but totally perfect and full of love. He did get down on his knees, and we both got tears in our eyes while he talked about how he feels about me, and then he asked me and I said yes and we kissed and hugged, and then we rushed off to separate rooms to finish getting ready for our party (this was at 6:40, the party started at 7:00, we were still not done cleaning the house, and neither one of us had showered yet!)

For more info (probably the most unbiased summary I found) on diamonds and alternatives, click here.

really fascinating exercise

2009-01-14T19:59:00.004-07:00

Today I needed a "filler" assignment to give the kids in my class. We were finishing up a couple of tests and projects; everyone was at various stages of completion, and the room had to be quiet without a lot of kids up and moving around. I also didn't want to assign something that I would have to grade and enter into the computer (especially since I knew that some of the students wouldn't even get to this assignment, because they had too much other stuff to finish, and since several kids were absent.)

A couple of weeks ago, my brilliant friend from across the hall had given me a worksheet to use for just such a purpose. Basically, it is a blank piece of paper, landscape format, with space for name and date and the following instruction: In the space below, draw the most accurate world map that you can (include labels).

The results were really interesting -- so much so that I brought the papers home to show my mom, and then we had the boyz draw their own world maps. A few minutes ago, she and my dad knocked on the door: he wanted to turn his map in, too.

Try it and see how you do. Don't cheat -- just take a blank piece of paper and draw from memory. What comes easily? What do you forget?

go here now!

2009-01-10T11:32:00.004-07:00

I've got a couple of new posts in the works, and plans to get them up this weekend. In the meantime, click this link and follow the directions. Seriously. Do it now! Super important, and she says it better than I could. I knew this whole new toy law thing was freaky (or, as we say around here, pweaky*) but this aspect of it really has me pweaked out.

*Just like we still say Whole Poods, yip dyoss (that's lip gloss for you folks who didn't know Sebastian at two) and soooornbread (corn bread, with a drawn out long o from the time that Dante tried to correct my mispronunciation when really I was just imitating his mispronunciation: "It's not sornbread, mom, it's sooooooornbread!") even though it's been years since my kids couldn't pronounce those words

on activism and the mystery of food

2008-12-28T18:53:00.012-07:00

In trying to reduce the amount of plastic we use, I've also been reducing the number and kinds of convenience food we get. This extends to fast food and restaurant food -- we've partly been avoiding those from a financial standpoint, but from an environmental standpoint as well. I get a sick feeling in my stomach now when I see how much waste our (admittedly large) family creates with just one fast food meal, whereas before I knew about the Pacific garbage patches I didn't really think about it that much.

This is really a post with two parts. The first is about activism. The other night it was just four of us -- Will's kids were with their mom -- and it was late, and neither one of us really wanted to think about dinner, and there wasn't really anything to eat in the house anyway. (I'm sure all of you are so much more organized than I am and this never happens at your place, right?)

So the kids asked if we could get a take-out meal from a local fast food restaurant which shall remain anonymous. I told the boyz that the only way we could do it is if I went to pick it up, and if the people there were willing to pack our food in containers I brought instead of in the usual styrofoam. To make a long story short, they did, but JUST THIS ONCE and only after I telephoned the owner at home to ask. He said that he could get in BIG TROUBLE with the health department, and I promised not to tell anyone (which I'm really not, because you really don't have any idea which restaurant it is, right? Of course right!)

So the activism comes in where I march into the restaurant with a bag full of containers and make a big deal about the fact that I'm not willing to spend money there unless I can do it in a way that doesn't violate my core values. I wasn't at all obnoxious about it -- if anything I was very polite and apologetic -- but I was firm. And it worked this time, but JUST THIS ONCE, so tomorrow I'm going to write a letter to the health department about this stupid rule. I can understand that they don't want restaurants contaminated by the crazy germs that I'm carrying on my tupperware, but seriously, can't they just wipe down the counter after they give me my food? It takes quite a bit to embarrass me, so I'm willing to march in and see it through, but I know that most people aren't. In order to save the planet, we've got to make it easier for peeps to do the right thing.

And I keep running into this "rules" answer about why we have to do things a certain way. I had a very similar convo this morning with the pharmacy guy, when I asked him if he could refill my prescription in the same bottle they used last time. They're not allowed to, but he couldn't actually tell me who made that rule. Is it state? federal? he thought it might even be from the drug makers themselves, because of liability when the child-safe cap wears out? Soooo frustrating. I don't even know who to write to!

The huge exception in my life to this pervasive "rules trump conservation" mentality is Whole Foods. When I walk in there with all my containers, they happily weigh them and thank me for doing my part to reduce waste. So while I feel like they still sell way too much stuff in plastic, and way too much processed food, I'm gonna keep on spending way too much money there.

The good news, though, is that plastic avoidance (with a little frugality thrown in) is actually teaching me how to cook. Seriously, and this seems crazy when I think about it, until recently I had absolutely no idea that lots of packaged and restaurant food is totally replicable at home! I made this fantastic chocolate syrup (look ma, no plastic! Well, except the lid of the cocoa 'cuz I can't find that in bulk) thanks to the recipe Beth posted at Fake Plastic Fish.

(Doesn't Dante look grown up? Note the milk in a glass bottle!)

Tonight we had the most delish Thai curry with bamboo shoots, red peppers, zucchini, and pineapple -- seriously, I had been spending $9.50 for a plate of this at my favorite Asian place downtown. It was so freakin' easy to make, so yummy (both boyz cleaned their plates -- well, Sebastian didn't like the red peppers, but Dante ate them for him) and I fed all of us for about the same amount as it would have cost just me to go out. Next time I'm going to use broccoli and carrots, since Will loves broccoli and Dante thought carrots would be a good addition, and we'll skip the bamboo shoots, since they came in a can and didn't really add enough to the dish to justify the garbage or the cost. Look, I even have leftovers!

I've been doing more and more cooking, and food is becoming less and less of a mystery. Did you have any idea that those gourmet roasted red peppers that are so yummy and cost like $4.00 for a tiny little package can be made at home in under 20 minutes total? For just the cost of the peppers themselves plus a teeny bit of olive oil? Cheesecake? Made it from scratch! Indian potato cauliflower curry was a huge hit here, and all four kids ate all of their rasta pasta, made with pumpkin sauce from our CSA pumpkins.

The next step is mixing more of my own spices (why in the world are we still buying packets of taco sauce??) and learning how to do stuff like make butter and cream cheese.

I read lots of sustainability blogs, and it seems like so many people are so far ahead of me. They grow their own food, do tons of canning and freezing, and can feed themselves from their own labors all year. I call it a good week if I don't have to run to the grocery store every single day and sometimes twice. But the whole point of this blog was that anyone -- even people who work full time and have kids and have a life -- can make enough changes to make a difference, without having to completely go back to the land.

gift guide part 3C: gifts for 3-5 year-olds

2008-12-13T08:26:00.003-07:00

Wooden blocks
Wooden airplane or trucks
Scarves or playsilks
Red wagon
Flashlight
Writing kit -- A notebook or two, a hole punch, pencils (preferably made out of wood, newspaper, or old currency, not the ones coated in cute plastic designs!) and crayons, stamped envelopes (with your address on them!), looseleaf paper, a wood or metal ruler, a clipboard. This is a great opportunity to reuse/recycle office supplies you don't need any more. Put them in a box or tin, or make a fabric bag to hold them. My old gift guide recommended transparent tape and markers or highlighters, but if, like us, you are trying to cut down on plastic, here are some alternatives: a staple-less stapler, fancy paper photo corners, and watercolor pencils.
Felt board -- Staple black felt to a board, then cut out multicolored felt shapes.
Sewing cards -- You can buy these, or make them by cutting shapes out of cardboard (collage it if you want it to be pretty) and punching holes around the edges. Tie a shoelace on and you're good to go! Or if you want to get really fancy, get this one.
Jacob's Ladder
Wooden spinning top
Clothespins -- No joke! Give a kid a dozen clothespins, and it'll keep her busy for hours.
Tea set -- Collect mismatched but pretty pieces, put them in a nice box or individual velvet bags along with a promise to share tea together.
Organic canvas or leather pouches to store treasures in
Stick pony
Dress up box -- Go to a thrift store or two and collect wacky ties, jackets, scarves, shoes, hats
Playdough -- There are lots of good recipes for homemade dough. If you want to get really fancy, put a little dab of paste food coloring in the center of a plain ball of dough and seal the dough around it. As the child plays, the color will permeate what was formerly white/tan dough. Throw in some cookie cutters and it's the perfect gift.
Tool box -- The year he was three, we gave Dante a real red metal toolbox, with real hammer, wrench, screwdriver, plus nails, screws, nuts, bolts. We also wrapped up a couple of pieces of pine (about 8 inches square and 2 inches deep). You could use any soft wood. One of the pieces had predrilled holes for screws, the other was plain to hammer nails into. He loved it!
Magnet -- A big horseshoe magnet, or several smaller magnets, and a box of washers is a gift that's both educational and fun.

gift guide part 3B: gifts for babies and toddlers

2008-12-09T19:51:00.004-07:00

Wooden blocks
Wooden airplane or trucks
Small silverware set
Flashlight
Wooden pounding bench
Handmade books -- We have some that my mom made for me when I was a baby. She used white tagboard, cut it into pages (about 5" X 7"), glued pictures on each page, covered them with contact paper, punched holes on the left edges, and tied them into books with pretty ribbon. Do these with photos for far-away baby relatives, or cut up an art museum catalog to expose babies to masterpieces. When Sebastian was a baby, my mom and brother made him a book called "Sebastian's Pictures of the World." It's a three-ring binder with page protectors designed for trading cards, but instead of cards they cut out beautiful photographs from magazines. He used to look at it for hours.
Beanbags -- This is another project that you can do yourself. Just stitch up some squares of fabric and stuff them with beans.
Nuts and bolts -- Nice big ones that can't be swallowed
Telephone -- Another great opportunity to recycle
Transistor radio -- They love turning the knobs and watching the dial move and hearing the stations and volume change.
A roll of toilet paper and/or a roll of tape
A box of junk mail or a newspaper
Step-stool
Radio Flyer makes a baby bike with four wheels
Natural teether -- thread empty wooden spools onto a leather thong and tie the ends of the thong together to make a circle.
Sorter -- Cut a 1/4" or 1/2" wide slit in the top of a coffee can lid. Reinforce the slit with masking or duct tape (this also makes the edges safer). Put a few metal juice can lids in the can, replace the lid, and you've got a great gift. To make it prettier, you can cover the can with contact paper or fabric. I made this for my kids when they were little, and they loved it.
Empty boxes -- I kept telling everyone that this was what my toddlers wanted for Christmas. Unfortunately, no one ever believed me. I don't know what would delight a toddler more than empty boxes of assorted sizes -- the ones with lids are even more of a treat!

gift guide part 3A: gifts of time together

2008-12-09T19:42:00.006-07:00

A trip to the fire station
A dance performance, play, concert, or trip to a museum -- Or, if you really want to get extravagant, how about season tickets or a membership that you can enjoy together?
A trip to the swimming pool
A picnic (indoors or out)
An offer to teach the recipient something: how to ride a bike, how to play chess, how to do origami
Read aloud to the recipient (consider making a recording, so they have a tangible record of your time together)
Go to the movies, or have a movie night at home -- Dante once received a present of an empty popcorn tub with a packet of microwave popcorn, some Hot Tamales, and a Blockbuster gift card
Ofter to listen, really listen, to anything s/he wants to talk about
Skip all gifts and take a trip together
Graffiti the neighborhood together -- Just kidding! (Sorta! It's okay with me if you do really cool, artistic, politically astute and graphically compelling graffiti with stencils. The police and your neighbors may disagree, however)

gift guide part 2C

2008-12-09T19:24:00.002-07:00

More questions to ask as you select gifts:

Will this gift just be clutter at the recipient's house? Am I giving the gift out of obligation, or because it seems just right for this person?

Oh, how I wish that the person who gave us a coconut monkey-with-a-pipe piggy bank had asked himself this question and decided to skip the whole gift thing altogether.

Can I really afford this? Will buying it stress me out financially?

Please, don't go into credit card debt just because you're "supposed" to give gifts for the holidays! Don't snap at your kids or partner or friends because you're freaking out about money because you felt like you had to spend more than you could afford.

Does this gift support or contradict my core values?

This is an ongoing struggle for me (and I suspect I'm not alone). It started with the whole toy gun thing when the boys were little, and encompasses way more than just gifts. Dante had some money of his own, and last week asked if he could buy a new game for the Xbox. It was rated E (for everyone), so should have been ok for him to play, and I ordered it for him online. It came yesterday, and I was horrified when I saw the actually contents of the game, which included battling a gang of thugs brandishing metal pipes. So then I had to be the mean mom and tell him that even though it's rated E, he can't play it.

It's true that he would have really enjoyed playing it for hours, but it's equally true that I don't want my kids exposed to the glorification of violence. On the other hand, Rock Band was the big present at our house last year. Even though it's a video game -- not my favorite type of toy -- it's interactive, it's nonviolent, it's musical, and it fosters cooperation among family members instead of competition.

gift guide, part 2B

2008-12-08T18:56:00.008-07:00

In considering gifts and companies to list, I used the following criteria, which I altered and expanded from a list by Alicia Daniel found in the Nov/Dec 2003 issue of Mothering Magazine. The article was No More Junk Toys: Rethinking Children's Gifts by Judith L. Rubin.

Will this eventually turn into dirt -- i.e., could I compost it?

This is really a question about natural materials. You can't compost rocks, but they make a great gift! No, that wasn't a joke! Just tonight we were playing with some beautiful, smooth, flat rocks that my brother brought the boys several years ago from the coast of France. Those rocks sit in a wooden bowl in our living room most of the time, but they can be stacked G0ldsworthy style, or used for any number of other things. Tonight we didn't have any nuts or candies to play dreidel with, so we used the rocks instead. It was lovely and satisfying to slide them in and out of the "pot" in the middle.

As you are considering this question, think Beavis and Butthead: Bread, good. Clay, good. Some wood, good. Metal, okay. Plastic, bad.

If not, does it reuse or recycle something that would otherwise go straight to landfill?

I know some people have issues with used gifts -- I'm not one of them, especially if you find something that was really nice quality to begin with and is still in great shape. This probably works best when getting gifts for younger kids and teens or adults who share your values. I've never seen a 3-year-old turn up his nose at wooden blocks simply because they were "preowned," and one year I gave my siblings and parents all books from the library book sale. There may be some older children/younger adolescents who will reject a used gift, but if you find just the right thing, even they may not care.

What are the hidden environmental costs of the production, transportation, and disposal of this gift?

When we buy cheap plastic toys from overseas, we are not paying the true cost of the poisonous, oil-dependent manufacturing processes, the plastic packaging that may well end up in the Pacific, the trees that were cut down to make the cardboard packaging, and the cost in global warming from transporting these "cheap" goods from the poorly regulated factories to the store. We also aren't paying for the cost to our bodies from living with them, or the cost to the environment that comes when we try to throw them away.

Do I know who made this? Are they well-paid and well-treated? To whom is my money going? Is the CEO of the company getting rich while workers are starving?

Rubin's article has some frightening information about this topic, as well.

Is this gift beautiful?

Beautiful doesn't always mean perfect, it can mean the grace of something made by human hands. In fact, many of the gifts in this guide can be made by your hands! I know you're busy, and maybe you don't think of yourself as crafty, and that sometimes handmade gifts seem like they're just, um, useless or lame, but these ideas are so jammin' and easy that I hope you'll try at least some of them.

Will this gift capture the imagination? If it's a toy, can it be used in many ways, or is it self-limiting? Will it foster the child's natural inclinations? Will it help him more fully engage in life? Does it help her reach her goals?

So often, the best toys are ones that don't represent any one thing -- ropes, sticks, playsilks, those rocks I just told you about...

gift guide, part 2A

2008-12-08T18:39:00.004-07:00

"Rings and jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"No one wastes resources out of meanness; we do it when we think, maybe this thing will make us happy. To know that happiness does not come from things changes everything." - Laurel Robertson

"I have come to understand, finally, and even to accept, that in almost everything I believe and care about I am a member of a minority in my own country, and in most cases a very small minority." - John Holt

Three quick items before we get to the criteria that I used when deciding what to include:

Shopping locally: I'm listing mostly online sources for gifts on this list. By definition, local is only local to me and the small number of people who happen to both read this blog and live near me. So I encourage you to find local sources for this stuff whenever you can. By listing online sources, I'm trying to follow Laurel Robertson's definition of buying local, which says that money is a form -- a projection -- of our life force, and that we should put it to good purposes in each transaction. I hope this guide helps you do just that. Order soon, though! Christmas is coming quickly!

Cost: This is a tough one. The truth of the matter is that beautiful, environmentally friendly products whose makers were paid a living wage cost more in the short run than crap that was produced at great cost to our earth and water and whose makers don't earn enough to eat or live in anything remotely resembling a house. You decide: is it better to give a small, simple gift that you can feel good about, or a whole bunch of gifts that you should feel guilty about? In this guide, I've tried to include ideas that will fit a wide budgetary range. Remember that a gift that won't be loved, enjoyed, and used by the recipient is no gift at all, it's just clutter.

Wrapping: Once you've got your gift in hand, stick with the whole sustainability idea. Wrap it in recycled gift wrap, a paper bag from the grocery store, a newspaper, or, the best idea of all, make fabric bags (using organic fabric, of course!) It's easy, just cut squares or rectangles to the appropriate size, put right sides of fabric together, stitch up three sides and hem the fourth. Put the gift in, tie it with a ribbon, yarn, or string, sew a spare button on a piece of scrap paper to make a pretty tag. Voila!

gift guide, introduction

2008-12-08T17:57:00.007-07:00

I used to be the director of religious education at a church. For a couple of years at that job, I published little packets of "fun, creative, useful, and sustainable gifts for everyone" to set out where people could pick them up before or after the service. I just came across a copy of the one I did in 2003, which might have been my last Christmas at that job, and I've gotta say, it was pretty dang great. So I'm going to reprise some of it here, because I think it's still just as good now as it was then, and because the issues are even more urgent now than they were five years ago.

As a side note, I know that changing conceptions of the season is really difficult to do, especially when there are kids, traditions, and in-laws to deal with. When I wrote the last issue of the guide, in 2003, I had two very little kids whose only experience of Christmas was the one I had provided, with my values and limited income clearly at the forefront. My family is basically a tribe of hippies, so there were no issues there. My ex didn't really participate in Christmas, and we had limited contact with my in-laws, so no issues there.

Fast forward five years, and I've got two elementary age kiddos, a new partner whose kids have grown up very differently from mine, and lots of people around us with a desire to give our kids gifts. We're negotiating traditions and values and finances and it seems like an emotional minefield at times. So yeah, I know it's not easy.

In a conversation with my sweetie last night, he expressed that he doesn't know how to change the way he's always done things without disappointing his kids. He knows that they will be getting plenty of gifts, both from us and from others, but it will definitely be scaled back from the mountain of presents that they've gotten in the past. So while in terms of environmental and consumer values, we agree, and we also agree that none of our kids really need anything, it's still a change, and change is uncomfortable. My contention was that this is a good year to change expectations, since everything else is changing, and we're starting new traditions. And if we give lip service to conservationism, and say that we don't want to be mindless consumers, but then go out and do it anyway, how does the cycle ever stop?

I'll keep ya posted on how it all works out at our house this year, but in the meantime, I'll go ahead and post the guide. I'm dividing it into sections for ease of reading. This is Part One, which serves as an introduction of sorts. Part Two is some thoughts about gifts and the criteria I used for the guide. Part Three is the source list and gift guide itself, divided very roughly by age group. Even if you're only shopping for an eight-year-old, read the whole thing, as you'll probably find appropriate ideas in every section. Part Four may or may not happen -- the original guide contained a bibliography/reading list. I may incorporate that throughout, or I may do it at the end, or I may skip it altogether.

yet another reason to go locavore

2008-10-30T11:26:00.005-06:00

Just in time for Halloween! Poison candy!

From truthorfiction.org: “Melamine is an industrial chemical compound that some Chinese milk-based product manufacturers have added to their products in an attempt to artificially inflate the reading for protein levels. Chronic exposure to melamine can cause a number of severe health issues including bladder or kidney stones, acute kidney failure, reproductive damage, respiratory irritation and bladder cancer.”

Melamine is the substance responsible for killing several Chinese babies and sickening thousands more who drank tainted formula.

We know for sure that there are products (pet food, for example) that have been imported to Canada and the US that contained melamine. We also know for sure that melamine in Chinese milk products remains an issue. Candies from China that were tainted with melamine were definitely exported to Canada and England. Specifically, Pirate’s Gold chocolate coins and White Rabbit chocolates sold in Canada, as well as 11 different Cadbury products in Great Britain and some Asian markets.

Right now, the FDA is basically telling American consumers not to worry about candy found in the U.S. (though this link does contain a list of other food products that have been imported from China and found to contain melamine.)

However, I think perhaps more caution is warranted for a couple of reasons. First, it is certainly possible, given the global nature of our economy, that candies originally slated for sale at Costco and dollar stores in Canada have made their way to Costco and dollar stores in the U.S. Second, and more importantly, it is possible that the problem is much greater in scale than just a few brands or types of candy.

According to the FDA website, the U.S. imports milk-derived ingredients including whole milk powder, non-fat milk powder, whey powder, lactose powder, and casein. The FDA is sampling and testing these products when offered for import from Chinese sources to determine if they contain melamine.

The Associated Press says that Hershey has never imported milk products from China for use in its candies. However, the AP reports that Mars North America’s statement says that its operations in China do not get any ingredients from companies found to be selling melamine-contaminated dairy products. It says the Chinese food-safety agency tested samples of Mars China's milk powder suppliers and found them to be free of melamine.

Maybe I’m just paranoid, but I really don’t trust Chinese food-safety agency tests at this point. And we really don’t know the scope of the contamination, so it’s possible that even if Mars doesn’t source from companies known to be selling melamine contaminated products, there are companies doing so that just haven’t been found out yet. Mars makes Snickers and M&Ms.

If you want to err on the side of caution, you might want to avoid any candies made by Mars, and really, ANY food products from China (this is more difficult that it might seem!) However, if you want to just eat your candy and not worry about it, this statement about toxicity levels from the FDA might make you feel better:

“In food products other than infant formula, the FDA concludes levels of melamine and melamine-related compounds below 2.5 parts per million (ppm) do not raise health concerns. This conclusion assumes a worst case exposure scenario in which 50% of a person’s diet is contaminated at this level, and applies a 10-fold safety factor to the Tolerable Daily Intake (TDI) to account for any uncertainties. The TDI is an estimate of the maximum amount of an agent to which an individual could be exposed on a daily basis over the course of a lifetime without an appreciable health risk.”

As a side note, the FDA says that NO level of melamine in infant formula is safe.

Happy Halloween!

what i did on my summer vacation

2008-09-21T16:53:00.007-06:00

Summer 'O8 photo highlights! We went camping a couple of times with friends of Will's. The campground is perfect for us. It's only a little more than an hour out of town, and there is plenty of hiking, fishing, and forest to explore...These are just four of about 400 pictures that I took!

Seems like Wednesday rolled around really often -- that's our day to pick up CSA veggies. I wasn't organized enough to use and store nearly as many of them as I should have (I gave a bunch away, and ended up throwing some out when I didn't use it fast enough) but here's some gorgeous spinach that I got into the freezer in time.

Will and I did the Great Urban Race with my sister and her boyfriend. Part costume contest, part scavenger hunt, part photography contest, part foot race, this was really fun, despite the fact that we all ended up with bloody feet. We figured that we probably walked/ran at least 20 miles over the course of 4 1/2 hours. We didn't even come close to winning, but we've got some strategy planned for next year...

yeah, yeah

2008-09-21T16:42:00.007-06:00

So much for blogging every day in July, eh? I was a little busy...hanging out at the pool, moving Will and kids into our house and out of his, getting his house rented, figuring out what to do with all the stuff, having a HUGE yard sale, hanging out at the pool, putting a contract on a house, running a couple of races, hanging out at the pool, playing at the river, camping, going on picnics, watching bat rush hour outside our house, hanging out at the pool...Over Labor Day weekend, I was going to do a whole "what I did over my summer vacation" post, but, well, you can see how well that worked out. I'm going to put up some photos of highlights, call it good, and move on from here.

perhaps a name change is in order?

2008-07-10T09:13:00.003-06:00

Four and a half years ago, I officially became a single mom. I had been functionally single for a looooong time, but still wasn't really prepared for the reality of raising two little boys entirely on my own. (And yet, that statement is misleading, because I've never been entirely on my own. What's true is that the buck stops with me. I've got - for the moment, anyway - sole legal and physical custody of the kids. I'm entirely responsible for their physical, mental, and emotional well-being. But I'm entirely supported by a community that starts with my parents and siblings, and expands to include neighbors, friends, teachers, and various groups to which we belong.)

There's a part of me that has taken a huge amount of pride in the fact that I'm doing really well as a "single mom". I'm not really sure how to express it, but it has been the core of my identity for the last four years. Maybe there's a little (a lot?) of ego tied up in the fact that my kids are doing well academically, that they've made huge strides socially, that they are involved in lots of different activities, that I'm politically active, that I find time to exercise and take care of myself, that I maintain close friendships, work full time and (mostly) do a good job of making a home for the three of us, and that I've done all of this successfully without a partner. My kids definitely wish that their dad was a dad to them, but I hope that despite his general absence, they'll look back on their childhoods as happy and filled with love and fun.

So I guess that all of the above is why I'm feeling that this summer is a bittersweet time for me, because our family is about to change, and that identity is about to shift. I'm so happy that I've met someone who will truly be my partner in every sense of the word, and yet...I won't get to be a single mom anymore. Adding another adult to the equation changes everything, and while the changes are good, the dynamic of our happy little family will inevitably shift.

And on top of the emotional changes, we've got the physical changes involved in consolidating households -- what do we do with 4 sets of silverware? How many sheets does one family need? Who is going to sleep where until we get a house that's big enough for all of us?

At any rate, I think it might be time to rename the blog. I'm considering something like, two boys, a mom, and a snake plus a man, two more kids, a dog and a fish. Whaddaya think?

yeah, right!

2008-07-03T12:53:00.006-06:00

From my dad's blog:
"...one of the favorite pastimes of the family is putting me in humiliating situations." I have no idea what he could possibly mean by that.

yet another goal

2008-07-03T09:00:00.004-06:00

(Pretend like I wrote this one on July 2 lol)

My sissy posted about her gas goal on her blog, and one of my friends has set a goal for herself of 25 miles of driving a week. I was really trying to be conscious of my driving through May, when I was biking to work a couple of days a week, but I couldn't seem to get below about 150 miles/week.

The problem is not short trips -- there are definitely days that I don't drive at all, since the grocery store, pharmacy, dairy queen, park, pool, etc. are all within biking or walking distance. I'm not driving at all around the neighborhood, and I'm trying to double up trips and not drive to either end of town more than absolutely necessary.

But my sweetie lives about 20 miles away, at least for the next couple of weeks (before he moves in with us!!!! ACK!!! whole 'nother post on a whole 'nother topic!!!) and even though I make him do most of the driving back and forth, I still end up doing some. Also, any time the whole family goes out of town, I end up driving because my car seats 7 peeps, so it totally makes sense for me to be the one to drive. Otherwise we'd end up taking two or three cars, which would be way worse in terms of carbon footprint. Two boys, a mom and a snake don't need a minivan, but two boys, a mom, a grandma, a grandpa, an aunty, an aunty's boyfriend, a sweetie and his two kids sure do! And my brother and his wife are moving here this month!! So, yeah. Minivan.

And I guess we go out of town more than I thought? It's a trip to the zoo, or a trip to see relatives in the mountains, or a camping trip, or going fishing in the next town over or...none of them are super long trips, but 50 or 100 or 120 miles on the weekend really bumps up the amount of gas I'm using and the volume of emissions I'm spewing.

So 25 miles/week definitely doesn't seem like a reasonable goal for me. On the other hand, 150 miles/week seems outrageous, not to mention expensive.

During the school year, 5 days/week X 5 miles each way to work is 50 miles. I can and will definitely bike often in the spring and fall, but honestly I feel a little wimpy about it in the winter. I want the goal to be something that's actually attainable. Oh, and if I'm taking classes toward my master's, that's like 60 miles round trip. So one class a week plus driving to work puts me over 100 miles/week even if I never drove anywhere else. Crap. Maybe I need to transfer to the university in my town? I really don't want to because of the fact that the program is much better where I'm going now, and I can do it at my own pace. The university here in town has a cohort program, so I think you have to take classes with the cohort. On the other hand, I could probably get done faster without the commute, which would be a very good thing, and maybe the degree is what really matters, and even if the program isn't as good, I would still have the piece of paper that lets me be a principal, which is the ultimate goal of the whole endeavor...

Sorry, getting a little off track there. But if you've got comments on this whole university dilemma, I'd love to hear them.

Ok, back to gas and mileage...When my sweetie lives in town, that will probably be 40 miles a week that will fall off automatically. Maybe I should try for an average of 90 miles/week over the course of a month -- that way if I end up driving out of town one weekend, I could be really frugal with driving the next week, and still come out ok. I just filled up my tank yesterday, and I've already driven 23 miles, so this will definitely be a challenge...

totally cheating

2008-07-03T08:51:00.003-06:00

I set a goal for myself to blog every single day in July, but here it is July 3 and I still haven't done a single entry. So I'm totally cheating, and pretending that this is my post for July 1, when in fact I didn't even write it myself. It's a meme that my mom did for me and emailed, so I just had to cut and paste. Even the commentary is hers...

1: Type in “[your name] needs” in the Google search:
September needs to hurry up and get here
(yup)

2: Type in “[your name] looks like” in Google search:
September, Kinda Looks the Same
(as?????)

3: Type in “[your name] does” in Google search:
September does football season
(really?)

4: Type in “[your name] hates” in Google search:
apparently, nothing
(nope not a hatuh)

5: Type in “[your name] goes to” in Google search:
september goes to you
(yes, you!)

6: Type in “[your name] loves” in Google search:
September Loves Young Dream.
(and is apparently Japanese?)

7 Type in “[your name] eats” in Google search:
september eats.
('nough said)

8: Type in “[your name] has” in Google search:
September has Become Synonymous With a Lack of Preparedness
(despite BEST intentions)

9: Type in “[your name] died” in Google Search:
not yet she di'n't

10: Type in “[your name] will” in Google search:
September Will Include New Features
(that's always good)
September will bring clarity to GOP race
(WOW)
september will never end
(awwww)
September Will Never Be The Same
(ok, it's me again -- maybe this should have been my 6 word memoir title??)

My favorites are the ones where I'm late and unprepared, cuz they're true, and that I'm bringing clarity to the GOP race, cuz I want to make it clear that you shouldn't vote for McCain!

diy worm bin instructions

2008-06-21T11:26:00.022-06:00

You, too, can have this in your kitchen for under $15!

My first thought was to go to my local eco-friendly store and buy a ready-made worm bin. It seemed like it would be cleaner and easier and require less thought than trying to make one myself. I wanted something totally self-contained, and I needed it to fit under my kitchen sink, which is really the only indoor space I have available.

To keep a worm bin outside would involve insulating it somehow, or having it open to the ground so the worms could crawl down and not freeze in the winter. This seemed a) complicated and b) like it would be unsuccessful because it would involve me going outside to put the scraps in, and I'm pretty lazy.

Yeah, well, the best laid plans and all that...I went to the store and the smallest worm bins they had were $120 and there is no way they would fit under my kitchen sink. So I got online and did a little research and found directions that seemed not too complicated and decided to bite the bullet and make my own.

I will say that at some point I just started making stuff up so I could do it in a way that worked for me, and my worms seem to be doing fine. I'm going to give step-by-step instructions here, so if you are cheap and lazy you can follow them with confidence. Or, take what you want and adapt it to suit your own needs...

1) I went to Target and got two Rubbermaid Roughneck storage tubs, 10 gallon size. The dimensions are 23.9 x 15.9 x 8.7 inches. I read in more than one place that the tubs should be at least 12 inches deep, but these were the deepest I could find that would still fit under my sink.

2) I left one of the lids intact, and drilled lots of little holes in the other lid so the worms can breathe. These holes are not big enough for the worms to get out of. You can barely see them in the picture, but I made a pretty star pattern on the lid.

3) I turned both of the bins themselves over and drilled bigger holes in the bottom of each one. I tried to make the diameter of these holes around 1/4 inch, which is big enough for the worms to crawl through. I didn't actually have a drill bit this big, so the holes turned out not to be perfectly round. The purpose of these holes is twofold: to let the liquid drip out of the bin, and to allow the worms to crawl into the other bin when it's time to harvest the castings.

4) I read in several places that the best thing to use for bedding is damp black and white newspaper pages, cut into 1 inch strips. I don't get the newspaper, and I thought to myself, "it's not like worms can only live in newspaper bedding out in the wild," so I actually started by using old leaf matter for bedding. I went out to my yard and gathered up the stuff that I should have raked last fall (see, procrastination can be a good thing!), wet it down with water from the sink, then put it in one of the bins. I think you're supposed to have about 6-8 inches of bedding at any given time, so this picture actually doesn't show quite enough bedding in the bin.Lately, I've started making the worm bin into a paper recycling bin as well, emptying my dad's shredder, wetting down the little strips, and using them as bedding. This actually seems to work pretty well.

5) The final step for setup involves putting it together and adding the worms. I took the intact lid, and set the bin with bedding on top of it (the lip of the lid serves to hold the liquid that drains out). Worms went in -- I was lucky enough to be able to get some from the worm bin at the school where I teach, so I didn't actually have to buy them -- and I put the lid with airholes on top of the bin. It fits really neatly under the sink. (I considered linking to some sites where you can buy red wigglers, which are the type of worm you'll want to use for vermicomposting, but since I've never used any of them and can't vouch for their service or reliability, you'll just have to google.)

6) I have a little container that sits on my counter and I just put the appropriate food waste (basically no meat or dairy, any fruit, veggie, grain scraps are fine) into the container and then when it's full, I empty it into the bin. I haven't cut scraps into 1 inch pieces like I think you're supposed to, and it works fine anyway. I use a big kitchen spoon to stir the scraps under the bedding and mix them in with the nice dark organic stuff on the bottom of the bin.
7) Whenever I feed the worms, I drain the liquid in the bottom lid into the same little container. This "worm tea" is supposedly really rich in nutrients, so I either pour it on my plants, or send the boys over to my mom's with it, so she can pour it on her garden.
The whole feeding process takes less than 5 minutes a couple of times a week. The only bad part is that (as you can see from the photo above) that the length of the bin is wider than the cabinet door, so if I'm not careful about how I take the bin out of the cabinet, I end up getting worm tea on the floor. The bin itself doesn't smell at all, and you would never know I'm composting in the kitchen (even when the lid is off it just smells good and earthy, not at all like all the rotting food that's in there) but the liquid is pretty smelly so I'd rather not have it all over my kitchen.
Worms can be poisoned by their own castings, so after 2-3 months, you are supposed to harvest the castings. This setup seemed like the simplest diy harvesting method out there.

8) When it's time, I'll take the lid off the bin I'm using, put bedding in the second bin, set the second bin on top of the current bin, put the lid on that top bin, and start feeding the top bin. The worms will crawl up through the holes in the bottom of the top bin, and when they have evacuated the bottom bin, I can remove that, use the compost, rinse it out, and it will be free to serve as the second bin when it's time to harvest again. Nice, huh?

Worm composting is fun and easy!

(Dante took these last two pictures while I was drilling -- apparently he thought I just wanted cute pictures of myself leaning sideways?? and didn't realize that the point was to show the drilling and the bin! He did do a good job of taking all the other pics in this post that have me in them -- and threw in the bonus one of Sebastian while I was pouring the worm tea!)

The New York City Compost Project has some good general composting info, as well as detailed information about vermicomposting. Another worm bin how-to(very similar to mine, but different enough that it might be worth a look) plus troubleshooting ideas and a list of what can be composted in your bin can be found here. If you've got kids who want to read up on the topic or build a bin themselves, try this link. If you feel like my plan is too simple and you want to use rubbermaid tubs to make a more complicated bin, click here.

better late than never?

2008-06-06T08:11:00.007-06:00

Robin tagged me with the following:

1. Write the title to your own memoir using 6 words.
2. Post it on your blog.
3. Link to the person that tagged you.
4. Tag five more blogs.

Right away I started thinking about it, but then we had the tornado (still haven't blogged about that yet), and our trip to Vermont (still haven't blogged about that yet), and the end of the school year (report cards!) and the murder, so I never had a chance to post. But I kept on thinking about it.

The first one I came up with was, "rats in freezer, worms under sink." Every time my landlord comes to work on the house I feel like I need to warn him about what he might find and why. They're to feed the snake, really!! They're to fertilize the garden, really!! I'm a pretty girly girl in some ways, but snakes and worms and dead mice don't bother me, and in fact I sort of see them as a sign that I'm doing the best I can to raise boys without a dad in the house.

I also considered something like, "smart girl, bad choices, happy anyway," but that seems a little too...I don't know...glossy, like it simplifies some aspects of my life (both difficult and fantastic) that have been really complicated.

The one I finally came up with is something that everyone who knows me will completely agree with, I'm sure:

Oh, crap! I'm running so late!

Once I checked a book out of the library called Never be Late Again. It was waaaaay overdue by the time I returned it. That is not a made up story, just a sad fact. I'd like to not be late, but I seem to always try to squeeze too much into any given amount of time. I have a friend who points out that I'm never late for yoga, because I know that it's not an option. He sees this as proof that I am perfectly capable of being on time when it's important, but I actually once showed up 15 minutes late for a job interview (and I really wanted the job!). Amazingly enough, my tardiness did not stop them from hiring me.

I'm cheating and tagging six, because these are the blogs I read regularly: Dante, Masasa, Silver, Heather, Sarah, and Colin. I think Sebastian is too young to get it. I bet he would just say, "I love to kiss Dante's lips" or something equally weird.

I would tag Corina, too, but -- oh, yeah, she doesn't HAVE a blog! Hers would probably be something like, "didn't waste time on the internet."

yes, we can!

2008-06-04T19:59:00.004-06:00

Obama '08! Lots more to follow (probably more than you'll want to read in the months leading up to November LOL), but today is a good day!

This is the kind of neighborhood

2008-06-01T15:33:00.004-06:00

where we gather on the street every night to hang out and talk and watch out for the kids riding their bikes up and down. It's the kind of neighborhood where we have barbeques on a regular basis, and know the names of everyone who lives in every house. It's the kind of neighborhood where the kids run from back yard to back yard, knowing that someone's parents are watching out for them. It's the kind of neighborhood where everyone knows who is visiting whom, because we recognize most of the cars that drive by.

Two examples of typical interaction around our neighborhood:
1) Last week I was out in the street talking to my next door neighbor. She commented on the fact that I never fill my garbage bin, and neither does she, and we decided to cancel my service so we can share one bin.
2) The other day I came home and one of my neighbors from across the street came over and told me that she had seen Dante home around 9:00 that morning (school starts at 8:30). He told her that he had forgotten his library book, and was back home to get it. She offered to give him a ride back to school, but he said no, that he would walk. She waited a few minutes, then called the school to make sure that he had gotten there safely. (Note: Dante never bothered to mention that my mom and Sebastian were actually waiting around the corner for him, so he wasn't even walking back to school alone. He also never mentioned to my mom that my neighbor had stopped over to check on him. Silly kid!)

There are so many more examples I could give of the kind of neighborhood this is. It's the kind of neighborhood where it takes us an hour and a half to trick-or-treat around the block, because we have to stop for photo ops, and wine, and to wait while the whole gang of neighborhood kids gets candy at every house, because even though we didn't start out together, we've ended up in a big group. It's the kind of neighborhood where my burnt-out headlight is fixed for free before I even knew it needed to be replaced, and where Sebastian learned to ride on a bike that his buddy across the street learned on and outgrew.

And this is the kind of neighborhood where a young woman was sexually assaulted and murdered in her home on Friday before the perpetrators set the house on fire. She lived next door to the people who live directly across the street from me, and our house was considered part of the crime scene until late Friday night.

It was the last day of school, and we had a half day. I came in from doing bus duty around noon, and checked my phone. There was a voicemail from one of my neighbors -- it had been left about 15 minutes before, and her voice was shaking. "September, you need to call your mom and tell her that our street is a crime scene and not to bring Dante home this way. Oh, God, here's your mom! I have to go talk to her!" Click. I called my mom and all she knew at that point was that there had been a house fire and someone had died. Later I found out that the reason our neighbor had been so worried about Dante was that they had just taken the body out of the house and she wanted to make sure he didn't see.

When I picked Sebastian up at preschool that afternoon, I took him directly to my parent's house (around the corner from mine, but out of sight of the media and police circus). I went home and had to be checked in to cross the police line that was blocking access to my house. I also had to dodge all the cameras and reporters and trucks with live feed satellites. I got overnight stuff for the boys, and after I was interviewed by the police, we went to my sweetie's house for the night.

When we got home on Saturday morning, the tape around our house was down, and there was plastic covering the broken windows, so the burnt-out shell that was the inside of the house wasn't visible anymore. However, even today the INTERAGENCY COMMAND CENTER is still set up in front of the house next door, the street is still packed with police and fire vehicles, we are still being accosted by reporters every time we leave the house, and our quiet, friendly neighborhood is anything but back to normal.

And, of course, life will never be normal again for this girl's family, especially for her parents. The worst part might be that they arrived on the scene just in time to see their daughter's body pulled out of the house and dumped naked on the front lawn. There aren't words to express how hard it must be for them right now. Please keep this family in your thoughts and prayers.

say, say oh playmate

2008-05-11T07:44:00.004-06:00

come out and play with me
and bring your dollies three
climb up my apple tree
holler down my rain barrel...

Rain barrel? What the heck is a rain barrel? Now that I've gone all diy with the worm bin, this seems like a cool project. But did you notice that barrel is one of those words that looks like it's spelled wrong and stops making sense the more you write it or see it?

four things

2008-05-06T05:49:00.006-06:00

On Saturday, I was teaching Sebastian to ride a two wheeler. I told him the same thing that I told Dante when he was learning: "You have to do three things to be able to ride by yourself. Pedal, balance, steer." Sebastian said, "And imagine. So that's four things. Pedal, balance, steer, imagine."

I guess it worked! On Saturday, he couldn't ride at all without help, but on Sunday he could!

And I know this sideways video thing is lame, but my computer can't read the file, so I can't get it to rotate before I upload it. I'll have to either hold the phone differently when I record video or get some technical help. In the meantime, just be glad it's short so your neck won't hurt too much! Or you could pretend that not only can he ride a bike, he can also defy gravity and ride on a street that's perpendicular to the earth!

yay, me!

2008-05-04T20:12:00.005-06:00

I ran my first 10K this morning! My goal was to do it in less than an hour, which I did (57:28 so a 9:17/mile pace). I loved it, and it felt great while I was doing it, but my hip flexors are awfully sore right now. Maybe not such a good idea to do a race this long when the last time I ran over 6 miles was Christmas break?! On the other hand, the race served its purpose, which was to motivate me to get back into a running/training schedule.

As I ran, I was thinking about how weird it is that just over a year and a half ago (the week I turned 33) I went running for the first time. I ran slightly less than half a mile and thought I was going to die. If anyone had told me then that I would be able to finish a 10K, let alone actually enjoy running it, I would have thought they were crazy.

That fall I ran three days a week, adding half a mile each week (so the first week I ran 3 days x 1/2 mile, the second week I ran 3 days x 1 mile...) until at the end of last summer I was logging around 30-36 miles a week. Then school started again, and I've had trouble finding the time to do more than 2-3 miles a couple of days a week.

But the weather is getting better and school is almost out, so I'm planning to pick up the training pace again. If only my damn hips didn't hurt so much!

this might just be the freakiest thing I've ever seen

2008-05-02T16:17:00.004-06:00

I guess some people really don't like anyone reading over their shoulders?!

maybe I should change the name of this blog

2008-05-02T07:39:00.002-06:00

to awfullysweetbrothers

stuff we were already doing

2008-05-02T07:07:00.013-06:00

I realized that we already do some things that qualify me for environmental geek status, so thought I'd throw a quick list here, since they don't really fit on the list of changes.

Stuff we were already doing:
Walk to the grocery store with our wagon and a bunch of cloth bags. We got this wagon for $7 at a yard sale. The trailer definitely makes grocery shopping more doable.

Use cloth napkins instead of paper, and washcloths instead of paper towels.
Buy lots of stuff at thrift stores and rummage sales instead of buying it new.
Program our thermostat so we're not heating an empty house (and it goes down to 55 degrees at night, while we cuddle up under blankets.)
Turn off lights when we leave a room.
Buy as much organic food as possible.
Buy in bulk to reduce packaging.
Reuse and recycle.
Leave produce loose when buying it, instead of putting it in a plastic bag.
I'm sure there's more...I'll add to the list as I think of stuff.

Stuff we used to do but don't need to anymore:

Cloth diapers -- did this for both kids from the time they were about 2 weeks old. I was so committed that I used cloth even when we didn't have a washer and I had to haul the dirty diapers to the laundromat. I'm convinced that cloth also made potty training much easier and earlier than if we had used what my mom calls artificial diapers.
Breastfeed. I didn't do it for the environmental benefit, but that was a nice side effect!

Stuff we used to do and somehow got out of the habit that I really need to start again:

Hang wet clothes on the line.
Use non-disposable menstrual products.
More home cooking, less eating out or eating convenience food.

environmental geek

2008-05-02T06:49:00.003-06:00

This is what Dante calls me, based on the following little changes I've made in the past couple of weeks.

Switched from buying organic milk at the grocery store to buying organic, local milk that's delivered in glass bottles.
Moved our garbage out from under the kitchen sink to make room for a worm bin (more on that later).
Stopped having a disposable cup of yogurt for breakfast every morning. I found some yogurt that comes in glass jars, since the plastic containers aren't recyclable. I've been using that for smoothies and to substitute for sour cream.
Rode my bike to work 5 out of the last 14 days. It's not great, but it's a start! Four of those days I never got in the car at all.
Opted out of junk mail (more on that later, too).
Switched out the boys' plastic water bottles for stainless steel ones. I tried to do this years ago and they resisted, but this time the water bottles are smaller and have sport tops, and the change has been taken with grace.
Took the food canisters that sit on my kitchen counter to Whole Foods and filled them directly with bulk foods, to avoid the plastic bag middle-man.
Called my landlord about the leaky bathtub.
Switched one of our lightbulbs to compact fluorescent. This was actually not entirely successful -- I think it deserves it's own post, too (see how I keep promising more info -- that's not really for you, it's to motivate my procrastinator virgo self to keep posting!)

can you see why i'm super in love?

2008-04-23T23:38:00.007-06:00

Just for you yaapsters, this is my favorite recent photo of me.

you're right, i never really do get tired of showing off

2008-04-23T23:26:00.006-06:00

Photos of how I hang my photos. Note the couch that is exactly like the one featured in a Sunday NY Times article on super classy decorating -- well they didn't call it that. Mid-century modern in a small apartment is what they thought it was about. Really it was about super classy decorating. (Craigslist, $250, yay me!)

why yes, I AM a showoff!

2008-04-23T22:45:00.010-06:00

We are another one of those small house families, so we keep all of our art supplies and games and puzzles (and library books and kid's nonfiction books and school stuff, including finished schoolwork to save) in our dining room. Oh, and my CDs, and some magazines, too...) Our living room opens onto the dining room, so everyone walking in the front door gets to see it. Actually, even people who don't walk in get to see it. You just have to knock at the door. Schwann man, Jehovah's Witness lady...everyone sees it. Here's what it looks like tonight. (I might come back and edit out the overhead light. I think the picture would look much better without it.) And here's a closer look at how I store our art supplies. It's an entertainment center that I got at a church rummage sale for 30 bucks. The baskets on top are for finished school work to sort through/keep for posterity -- one basket for each kid. Next to that are some photo boxes that actually do hold photos in case I ever start scrapbooking again. Then a bin for paints of all kinds. Below that are labeled plastic drawers with all kinds of art supplies. The big drawers are full of paper, puzzles, and games. It's all totally accessible to kids without driving me crazy.
I tried to do a close-up of the cool sticker labels on the drawers, but I'm not sure it came out well enough to make it worth it. They are glittery and funky fonty. Oh, and here's how it looks when my sweetie comes over with his kids and two five-year-olds stay up way too late with the slime they made at the science carnival, the "metal findings" drawer, and the "clay tools" drawer...And in case you're curious, here's a sample of what's in the metal findings drawer.

Happy Earth Week!

2008-04-23T22:37:00.005-06:00

For awhile now, we've been taking these lovely containers (as far as I can tell, they are #5 plastic) to restaurants with us, so that we've got something to bring our leftovers home in instead of a styrofoam container. Last week (or maybe it was the week before?) I took the concept a step farther, and we went to the local sub shop down the street. I asked if they could make our sandwiches in these, to eliminate the carry-out trash. They thought I was weird, but agreed. So here they are -- fast food with no trash! Yay! PS We took out the removable dividers to make room for the sandwiches, but the dividers are great when we go to the Rio (beans or rice on one side, chile relleno on the other, so the only thing I leave behind is the leftover margarita. Oh, wait, there never is any leftover margarita!)

OK, fine. Here.

2008-04-23T22:33:00.003-06:00

I've been feeling guilty about not posting anything -- tons of stuff going on and I'll compose entries in my head and then not actually make it to the computer to write them, but mostly it's been the idea of pictures that has me all worked up -- seems like it will take to write explanations for all the pictures I have wanted to get up. So I thought I'd do a bunch of pictures with not much text just to post something, and I'll try to go back and add text in the next couple of days...

the problem with changing your life

2008-04-09T17:06:00.004-06:00

A couple of days after I made my threat to the boys about starting an awfulbrothers blog, I stumbled across a link to a sustainable living blog written by a woman in our area. I was super excited at first, because I read her intro and profile and thought, "Hey, it's true that this lady has a husband, but she's got three kids and I've only got two. And she's got a full-time job that might even be more exhausting than mine is! So if she can make a serious commitment to reducing her family's carbon footprint and eating only local organic food, I can do the same thing!"

Then I read on. Oh. Well. Never mind. She quit her job. So now not only does she have a husband, which I don't, she can devote all of her time to creating an environmentally sustainable family life. I'm not bitter! Really! I just wish that I could find a role model who is enough like me that her example would seem doable given the constraints on my life.

So then I decided that maybe I can just do it anyway and be the role model for other single moms who are trying live in a way that won't accelerate global warming and give migrant workers cancer and increase the disparity between haves and have-nots. Maybe interspersed with the videos of my kids fighting with eachother (still haven't figured out how to download those off my phone, but I will soon, I promise -- I know you can't wait!) I can post inspiring stuff about our sweeping life changes! Yeah, that's the ticket!

Except, the problem with changing your life is that you have to change your life. Or, as my dad always says, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." So all week I've intended to start riding my bike to work. But I've been running late, or had plans after work that would make biking complicated, or...this morning I woke up and they said on the radio that we were going to have 20-30mph winds all day, with a good chance of rain turning to snow. Yeah, I wimped out. And I shouldn't have, because the rain didn't start until after I was home.

lather, rinse, repeat

2008-04-03T09:15:00.001-06:00

This week, I was standing in the yard talking to my mom and watching the boys (aka Darth Tyranno and Snake Eyes) fighting again. Each came running to me with tears and tales of the woe inflicted by the other (evil) brother. Then they ran off to start the cycle again -- Sebastian jumps on Dante, or pinches him, or kisses him on the lips. In retaliation, Dante -- twice his brother's size -- swings out a leg to trip Sebastian, or elbows him, or pushes him to the ground... Feeling helpless to do much else, I took out my cell phone and started filming it. "I'm going to start a blog," I threatened, "and call it awfulbrothers.blogspot.com and it's going to be nothing but videos of you guys fighting." They liked the idea.