July 18, 2009
Add another check to the Home Improvement Project List. Hip, hip!
On Saturday, our neighbor came over with a whole mess of power tools and helped Matt de- and reconstruct the stoops leading into our garage. Said stoops stuck about 1″ too far to allow our garage to be a two-car. Fine now, but believe me, when both parties are leaving around 5:30 am no one wants to be stuck with the driveway parking spot, scraping us at the crack o’ dawn. The reconstruction was successful and seemed to go pretty quickly, in my non-helping opinion.
Which is sayin’ alot, cos guess what I was doing while the HIP went on? Baby-sitting.
Don’t get me wrong: I love little kids, and I was a tried and true member of the baby-sitting circuit from about 1994 right up through grad school. (Even post grad school when I first moved to Winston which made my parents proud. Look, Ma, I’m putting that Master’s degree to great use!) I consider myself someone with a well of patience and a vast tolerance for the peppering of questions that all children over the age of 3 seem to dole out.
But ya’ll, I wasn’t exactly expecting to baby-sit. I had a touch of a wine headache and plans to make my hardwood floors shiny and my laundry folded.
Enter stage left: Neighbor, age 7. “Boy, your house sure smells like a dog.”
“You look fifteen. Are you fifteen?”
“Do you have anything to eat?” “I have carrots or apples.” “YUUUUUUCK.”
“Your socks smell. Do you know how to do laundry?”
“Do you have water balloons? I have a hundred. Let’s fill them.”
All I can say is, Thank goodness for Spongebob. Whew. Good thing I’m warming up with a canine – trouble as he may be, he has never rejected my food OR asked me a single question. Wonder what happened to that vast well of patience….
April 21, 2009
It’s been a little windy the last two days, so we’ve been at our pool rather than on the beach but hey, turns out you can still get a wicked sunburn without getting any sand in your swim suit. I SWEAR I USED SPF 30. Small children clambering on you = stealthy sunscreen removal process.
The fam that eats clams together stays together.
(Because there’s only one butter dish, so you have to huddle together real close.)
There are 20 of us here in one house – but the house is huge, and there’s these little nooks (i.e. where I am hiding with my computer, although the 4 yo found me hiding a minute ago and asked me to play.) There are 5 children under the age of 5 -like little stair steps they go 5 yo, 4 yo, 3 yo, 2 yo, 7 mo. If there was ever a “are you ready for parenthood?” boot camp, this is it. (Answer: I better get a dog.)* The smallest one is the snuggliest sweetest girl ever…. DANGEROUS. If I could get a guarantee my first would be like that, I’d pop one out tomorrow.
Who know drool was the secret potion of love?
And also, sunburned, I know.
*Family factoid: At the age of 25, this was my Grandma’s life. 5 children under the age of 5. Oh, and she couldn’t drive a car. Suddenly, the biting sarcasm and penchant for Dewar’s is much, much better understood.
Just five of the seven siblings. (#’s 1, 3, 5, 7 & 4.) April 20, 2009
We are at the beach. We are happy.
April 19, 2009
Our first night was pretty much TMZ-worthy. Every year when we get here we have a big clambake and there’s an astonishing amount of beer consumed and then we all play Kings. This is a great recipe for someone to do something embarrassing and be added in to the stories that will be retold at Christmas, Thanksgiving and the next decade’s worth of beach trips. This year my sister’s boyfriend looked like he was itching for that title – by the 3rd round, he had instituted a rule that whenever anyone wanted to address him they had to call him “Mister Master” only it came out “Mishter Mashter.” Katie was pretty thrilled. The next 2 rounds he would interject with random outbursts like “I didn’t work hard all week to act like your sister!” or “Positive Mental Attitude Katie, Positive Mental Attitude!” After round 5, Katie put him to bed.
One would THINK Dylan would enjoy the embarrassment of the next day. But oh no, it got worse. We all went to bed around 2. Katie & boyfriend, husband & I were sleeping in a downstairs room right near the stairs to the kitchen. Around 4 am, Matt said he woke up to a noise that sounded like “Shelves holding a 100 lb of stuff collapsing.” Only he did not investigate. (Matt & Meghan: Not Ready for Parenthood. I don’t wake to loud noises, he wakes but assumes “eh… must have been nothing.”) Turns out that nothing was my aunt taking a nosedive down the stairs. She went to the powder room next to our room and tried to clean up…then finally gave up and went and got her sister. Her sister, alarmed by the SKULL she could see through her gaping head wound, called 9-1-1. Matt awoke again to the noise of the paramedics hollering “Hello!” into the hallway next to our room, and finally went out to investigate. (Me: still sleeping.) She had a huge gash in her head, and they ended up taking her to the hospital. (I did finally wake up when Matt came back in our room and started rifling through my purse to get my keys.) She ended up having stitches down from about the middle of her forehead back to behind her ear. (And apparently the doctor’s demeanor towards her changed drastically when she pointed out she was here with “her nephew, the doctor.”) *Um, he’s not a doctor just a student doctor, but that can be a moot point when you want someone to stop explaining things to you in “poor stupid drunk lady” terms. She’s okay now, and in fact the stitches come out today.
Yesterday I was uploading pictures to my computer and her daughter (the 5 yo) came to sit on my lap. We were flipping through pictures and she looked at one and said “That’s before Mommy bumped her head!” so she clearly gets the concept of where the stitches come from. (Another great comment as we flipped through pictures…. “Lets count the beer cans in this! 1….2….3….10…11….12….12 beer cans! How many people drank those beers?” Can you do long division, sweet child?)
We are happy to know that for all future family vacays the answer to “Is there a doctor in the house?!” will always be a resounding “Yes!” (And by resounding, I might mean resigned. He’s kind of stuck with us.)
April 17, 2009
Today I woke up in Myrtle Beach, SC. *Cue the Hallelujah chorus.*
Myrtle Beach has been my family’s traditional vacation forever – starting with my mom going with HER parents. (Then: camper. Now: 3 story house on the beach with kegerator by the pool. I like my version better.) It is so much a part of our family’s tradition that I threw an all out fit when I was in 3rd grade because my parents planned a family trip to Hawaii instead of our usual MB vacay.
Yes, that’s right, I was enraged at the idea of going to Maui over the Redneck Riviera. What can I say, I’m a suckah for tradition. And oh yea, I was 7. What did I care about volcanoes and mai tai’s?
In the last 8 years, other members of my extended family starting joining us, until gradually we grew from a family of 5 in one house to last year’s grand total of 20 in two side-by-side houses. This year we’re going for a major dice roll: 19 family members. One house.
Since college and this little thing called “employment”, I’ve only been able to come down and stay with my family at the beach for a long weekend. This year, the stars collided (i.e. I rearranged my teaching schedule) and lo and behold, I was able to get the whole week off. Pretty much, I could not be more tickled. I’d probably still at 26 years old, take an entire week at Myrtle with my fam over a few days in Maui. Although I do anticipate needing those mai tai’s with that many family members in close proximity.
My plans for the beach week include: reading approximately 7 books and 4 magazines, revisiting my neglected journal, using up an entire bottle of SPF 50, getting sand in my running sneakers, teaching my 5 year old cousin Amelia how to use my (old) digital camera, playing race cars with my 4 year old cousin William, playing princess with my 3 year old cousin Mae, getting sand dumped on my head by 2 year old Scott and trying to figure out a way to bottle up the precious new baby smell of 6 month old Charlie.
As you can see, I will be very busy this week.
February 17, 2009
My parents are here visiting now, back from being with my sister down in Charlotte. For the last 24 hours, my dad has had the same GI bug that Matt and I fell victim to a few weeks ago. I think my sister feels a little jipped – that I had him healthy on Saturday, he spent the day in the bed/bathroom on Sunday and Monday, and now that he’s healthy he’s headed back up here. Oops… sorry sis? While I’ve been toiling at work (slash blogging), they’ve been roaming the aisles of Harris Teeter, stocking me up on soy sauce, Frosted Mini Wheats and toliet paper. All the essentials. Sigh – they are some generous people. I’m anxious to finish up work and go hang out with them, so I suppose I should work instead of blog. I think the game plan is to go to Milner’s tonight – my fave WS restaraunt. Southern gourmet. Yummmmmers. Last night we had a dinner for the my research study staff at another new restaurant called Ombu which is also super good and way cute/trendy. I’m getting way overfed this week, but I can’t say I’m complaining.
February 15, 2009
Valentine’s Day Table Setting
Yesterday my parents arrived to spend a week, half with us and half with my sister down in Charlotte. Since they were going to be here for Valentine’s Day, we decided to invite Matt’s parents as well and have a dinner party. Hey, an excuse to use some of the wedding presents we’d received a year and a half ago for the first time ever! Nothing more exciting than taking the tags off new napkin rings, right? My parents were bringing down a beef tenderloin, so to go along with it I decided to do roasted potatos, asparagus, a spinach salad and then chocolated covered strawberries and Moravian cookies for dessert. For my first schmancy dinner party, I had to call upon two of my favorite hostessing experts. Nope – not Martha and Paula D, but my Aunt Jennifer and Aunt-in-law Paige. Both of these ladies are from North Carolina – Jennifer from Gastonia and Paige from Lincolnton – and these Southern ladies know how to throw a par-tay. My Aunt Jennifer is famous for her theme parties, including a Tequila-themed wedding shower she hosted for me in DC, where everything matched down to the cactus-shaped napkin rings and the invitations that arrived snuggled around an airplane bottle of Jose. Paige hosts Christmas dinners where each dish is literally something straight off the Food Network. The meat might be Emeril, the potatos Giada, the vegetables Bobby Flay… and everything is smack-yo-momma delish.
The Menu from my Tequila Dinner Party Shower. Yum!
So, I called up Jennifer and got her tips on how to cook the asapargus while the tenderloin would be monopolizing my oven and got a spinach salad recipe that Paige had used last Christmas, that featured pomegrante vinagrette and little pieces of granny smith apples and toasted walnuts. With these two ladies reinforcing my game plan, I felt good to go. The hardest part of throwing a food-related party for me has always been the timing – the meat will take longer than you expect, or the potatos are done too soon, or something unexpected always seens to happen. This was almost the case, as my dad took out the beef declaring it done while my potatos were still a little too al dente to get by as edible.
In the kitchen with daddy
However, I took a look at his determination of “done” and realized that with the exception of he and I, the carnivores extreme, no one else would appreciate the still moo-ing meat. So back in it went to my melt-your-mascara hot oven, and the taters and cow finished at exactly the same time. Whew. Timing is everything.
Moo…
Dinner was delicious, the conversation lively, and the evening relaxed and enjoyed by all. Matt and I are both thankful that not only do we genuinely enjoy time spent with both of our respective parents, but they seem to enjoy each other’s company as well. If Valentine’s Day is meant to be shared with your loved one, it was even better shared with five of my loved ones. Especially because that means ten extra hands to wash and dry dishes. (What, they’re family. I can put them to work after a dinner party, right?) Matt’s family headed home after dessert, and my parents left this morning for Charlotte to spend the day with my sister, capping off our short but lovely holiday weekend.
Ready to eat!
February 2, 2009
Saturday night we went down to Matt’s hometown to hang out with his family to celebrate his Pa’s birthday and his grandparent’s 64th wedding anniversary. Sixty-four years! That is a long, long time. We gathered for a meal of hushpuppies (and fish, but I tend to ignore anything else when you put hush puppies in front of me) the night before the lunch celebration. I was glad we had a chance to do that, becuase during the night Matt came down with the same GI bug that had knocked me out the week prior. Oops – and I always thought he was the most immune person ever for surviving his peds rotation without even a sneeze! Once he felt about 30% human, we packed it up and headed back home to Winston where he spent the next few days quarantined in our house and slurping Gatorade. I felt awful for getting him sick and having to call it quits on the celebration, but glad we had the night before for a quiet dinner together with the fam and Nanta & Pa.
I just have to say, I am so fortunate to have a family-in-law that just makes me feel like one of their own. They have done that from day one, and I know that more people have in-law situations that are a little less everybody loves everybody and a little more Everybody Loves Raymond. Although I have laughed until tears sneaked out of my eyes as my girlfriends try to one up each other with mother-in-law stories – it’s a tie between the mother in law who rearranged all the kitchen cabinets while her new daughter in law wasn’t looking versus the soon-to-be MIL who is pushing relentlessly for a Stampin’ Up themed-wedding – I have just always felt totally blessed that I married into a family like this. My parents were both very close with their in-laws, even calling them “Mom” and “Dad” and I’m so fortunate to have the same.
So here’s a little shout-out to my wonderful family-in-law, who did a brilliant job of raising a son who puts all his dishes in the dishwasher and a brother who knows never to knock on the bathroom door while I’m doing make-up and ask if I’m ready yet. Thank you, fam-in-law, for the open door you’ve held since day one.
MIL & FIL.
Sis-in-law & Nanta and Pa.
December 25, 2008
The loaves had been rising for 2 hours and threatened to spill over the top of their greased pans, looking for all purposes like mushrooms ready to topple over on teeny tiny stems. We kept joking about how we were going to walk in the house and have to push our way through a ginormous cloud of dough, as one could imagine seeing on a cartoon. Finally, after rising all day, I declared them poofy enough to convert to sticky buns.
I sprinkled the bottom of the pan with walnuts and raisins and Matt happily set to work tearing into the dough and covering the pan with golf ball size pieces. I got to work creating the goop that pores over the dough and settles into the crevices, turning the entire pan into a sticky delightful mess. I melted the butter, stirred in the pudding mix, and dashed in some cinnamon. I peered into my mother-in-law’s cabinets, looking for brown sugar. I had brought some of the less obvious ingredients – the vanilla pudding, the walnuts pre-chopped and ready to go, but had naively assumed there would be brown sugar in just about stocked pantry. I should have known: this is the kitchen famous for scotch kissies, the delectable dessert treat that requires an entire box of brown sugar.
She was out. The dough torn, the butter melted, I started to panic. Here I had built up the anticipation of my mom’s famous sticky buns ALL day long, hoping to share this tradition with my new family, and in the moment of truth, I had failed to provide an essential ingredient.
I started racking my brain for substitutions. Matt’s Nanta, supervising the process, started peering into cupboards. She pulled out a box of granulated sugar and a bottle of Eggo syrup and placed them in front of me. “Here. Mix these.” Nanta, who is famous for making her own ketchup once in a pitch, is always to be trusted when it comes to substitutions.
Into the melted butter mixture went this concoction. The color was off and the smell distinctly maple, but the texture was right. I crossed my fingers and drenched the sticky buns with the goop, and put it back in the fridge to rise overnight. In the morning, the aroma of pancakes filled the kitchen while the buns baked. When the timer went off, I pulled them out with hopeful anticipation. The first bite secured my success – despite the slight hint of maple, which turned out to be not a bad addition, they were every bit as delicious as the sticky buns I had consumed every Christmas morning for the last 25 years. My family-in-law’s praise was abundant, and the tradition from one family was successfully incorporated into another family.
December 21, 2008
Last night we went to Matt’s Aunt Paige’s house for the beginning of our Christmas festivities. The feast was amazing as usual – Paige cooks like she is an understudy of Paula, Giada and Ina. After stuffing ourselves silly (apparently just continuing the trend), we retreated to the living room for a round of Dirty Santa. Each “participant” in the game brings a gift-wrapped package of something from their home that they no longer desire. Perhaps it’s the one thing that’s been sitting your “regift” basket for years, or the smelly lotion set that just isn’t your flavor (could it be the glitter?) or maybe even that Spin Shade you were just given the day before and had no idea what to do with it. (I’m just sayin’….) Everyone draws numbers, and the lowest number picks a gift. Up the number count you go, selecting gifts that draw reactions from uproarious laughter (leopard print hat) to genuine delight (Santa Claus wine coozie?) to curiousity (Spin Shade, again.) After the last person picks, back down the numbers you go – you have the option to keep your gift or steal another person’s gift. This was a relatively tame group, as far as the pilfering goes. A pair of snowflake dish towels went through 3 grabs, and I caused a little family tift by stealing a set of word puzzle and sodoku books from my SIL, but most of the grabs were fairly benign. That is to say, no one dared claim the grape-smelling teddy bear from the six year old!
Today, despite their being 4 days left until Christmas, Matt and I took down our holiday decor. Last year the lights twinkled on our tree from October until almost February. It is quite sad and anticlimatic to see the bare mantel and empty front porch now. My Christmas spirit feels as deflated as our blow-up Santa, stuffed in his tupperware bin back up in the attic! We are going to be in and out over our Christmas vacation, and I was dreading taking down the decor and tree without his help in January (when interview season kicks in again.) But, in a few days, we’ll be home with family and my mom’s collection of snowmen (in the hundreds, I daresay) will more than make up for the fact that Santa won’t find our stockings hung by the chimney with care. In the meantime, maybe I can convince Matt to mute the Panthers game and put the Holly station on the XM, instead. Or… not.
