The Rinrins

One of the few

Everyone who knows me knows I am a purger. Not the kind in the bathroom; the kind who has a permanent Goodwill box running in the garage at all times. I can't handle too much stuff. I can't even handle the stuff I love. I look at those Buddhist monks in their sparse plaster rooms with nothing but a bed and I breathe deeply. I know it wouldn't work for long, but I could really dig a vacation there, the way most women want to go to a spa.

So, naturally, I didn't keep every little piece of baby clothing, every little toy, all the baby blankets, or heck, even the cribs. All three of our kids have had their own crib. Although that's not from me purging. Garrett's crib was supposed to go to Brenna, but the wood cracked irreparably when I was moving it to her room. It cracked a little, which angered my pregnant self, which then caused me to hack it to bits with nothing but a screwdriver and my bare hands. When Rick arrived home from work, I growled "getttt riiiiiid of iiiiiit" in a tone that sent him backing out of the room slowly, while keeping his eyes on my screwdriver.

We sold Brenna's crib in a yard sale five years ago, because we didn't think we were having any more children. Ellery's crib is soon to go because she has NEVER SLEPT IN IT EVEN ONE TIME. It won't be a sentimental parting. She has a little toddler bed about to go up in her room, because damn it, I'm going to get some use out of that organic wool crib mattress we bought.

But some baby things have become treasures, and a few days ago the little tricycle we've held onto for ten years was again ushered into another era of hard, daily use and intense love.

Seeing Ellery on it kind of makes me wish I had kept more of the bigger kids' stuff to pass down. But really not. I saved a few favorites and let the rest go. We can't keep everything, right? Anyway, I always have this feeling that the amount of stuff I consider important should fit inside a car or a Buddhist monk's living quarters in an emergency, like a fire. This trike will always be with us. I have a thousand million memories of our kids on that trike, and a thousand million more coming.

Edited to add: I can't believe this slipped my mind last night, but I am seriously overtired. I almost lost this trike for good. When Brenna had outgrown it and we thought our toddler days were over, I let my sister in law give it to a friend's one-year-old. I felt at peace with that decision until a few months before we were expecting a new baby. I begged her to explain how distressed and ridiculous I was to her friend, whose boy had outgrown the trike and no longer cared about it. She did, her friend understood, and I was so relieved to have it back. How could I forget that?!

A penny saved is a penny earned

Is the rising cost of health care getting you down?  Looking for ways to keep the cash from flying out of your bank account?

Look no further, friends! I have an ingenious solution to help those of you who are feeling the crunch of the economy when it comes to everyday necessities.

As we know, our eye sight is a precious gift. When we can't see, we can't fully appreciate the beautiful world around us. You might be saying, "I know what you mean, therinrins, but glasses are too expensive! What can I do?".

Well, by george, you can make them yourself! And I'm going to tell you how, FOR FREE! All you need is a pair of scissors, which you probably already have or can borrow from a neighbor, and a six pack of beer.

Drink the beer.

Then, save out the plastic can holder.

Next, cut away the middle until it looks like this:

On one of the sides, the plastic will be turning downward instead of upward, like so:

You have to snip it a bit, to allow the plastic to go away from your face at the right direction:

I mean, you don't want to be going around town looking like a dumbass, right?

Now, after making the cuts, you might want to round all the edges with your scissors, for comfort. And in just a few minutes, costing literally nothing but your time, you will have a new pair of glasses!

My lovely assistant, my mother, who did all the product modeling, will benefit greatly from her new reading glasses that are so lightweight, she won't even know she's wearing them:

My grandmother also looks wonderful in these new frugal glasses. She recently had very expensive cataract surgery on one eye and an appointment to have the other eye done, but I think I may have just solved her conundrum, FOR FREE.

Not everyone is enthusiastic, though. There will always be naysayers and poopooers to any brilliant new idea. This is the exact face Ellery gave me when we tried to fit the glasses on her.

That's fine, though. Someday when her eyesight starts failing, I know who she's going to come crying to.

Conversations part 2:

I've been meaning to bring this up for a while and I keep forgetting. Think about all the commercials for cleaning products on television right now: mops, Swiffers, Mr. Clean, Scrubbing Bubbles, Dawn, vacuums, dusting products, carpet cleaners.

There is not a man to be seen.

Anyway, I was using a new gadget, the Shark mop. I don't generally like gadgets, new or old. I don't like the idea of complicating something just to make it "easier". Such as having an electric mop instead of a bucket and a rag.

But a few things made me buy it. First, it only uses water. It specifically says no chemical cleaners or soap. I am all over that. The strongest thing I ever use on my floors is maybe a squirt of Charlie's Soap. I love this stuff and recommend it to anyone. It's so gentle, your kids can do the cleaning without you worrying about searing their little lungs. And for free labor.

Second, it's fast and easy enough that I might just get into a habit of washing the floors more than once a month. As much as I adore digging my kneecaps into the hardwood floor while I aggravate my bursitis, sometimes the joy is just too much for me. And we really need cleaner floors around here.

So I'm Sharking the floor. And the Girl comes to me and asks, "Why are all vacuums and mops purple?"

"Hmm, I don't know, Brenna."

"Maybe because girls like it, and it's the ladies who are always doing the cleaning. Like you."

"Well, your Daddy was vacumming earlier."

"Yeah, but girls do it mostly."

Time for another debriefing.

Conversations part 1

We're working on my OPAM that Tara's leading over on her blog. I posted my before pictures, but I believe that post may have been eaten. My OPAM is two bookcases we bought at an unfinished furniture warehouse.

Yesterday was a fine day, so we worked out on the patio. The Boy came over and looked intrigued. "Can I paint some?"

Some days I would say quickly, "no". Because I want it to be just right, because I want to hurry and not run out of time, and because I don't want to deal with the extra mess. But I'm trying to say yes more often. I waited until I had an area that he could easily slather some primer on to, then gave him the brush. He found it to be more difficult than he imagined, since the primer was sticky and the area I had chosen was rather high. He gave up after a few minutes.

I wanted him to be able to contribute and not feel as though he wasn't capable, so I set up a better situation: lower surface, flatter area. I set him to painting. Rick came over and we were sitting on the step, watching our Boy. I commented, at a whisper, how cute he was.

"Look at him; he just wants to do big-kid things. He wants to be trusted to do big-kid things."

We sat watching him, while I thought about how no one can really learn how to paint without doing it. The paint comes off a brush in a pretty exact manner; you have to feel it to understand how to manipulate the brush just right, so you don't have blobs and so you use the paint inside the bristles. You have to be painting to understand when to get more paint, and you don't learn a thing by having your mother say, "get more paint on your brush". I stood back and resolved not to try to "teach" him by opening my mouth. I was feeling pretty satisfied that I was definitely having a "good parenting" moment.

Until the Boy mubmled while still hunched over his work, long hair hiding his face.

"You're just trying to get free labor."

So Typical

Here all this month I was thinking today was my blog anniversary, but it was actually yesterday. Why I didn't look back at the date of the first post until right this second, I have no idea. But it's typical of how I feel these days. Always behind, drowning in a sea of gonnas.

I could work up some funny post and do a giveaway (love how that has become one word in our modern language), but if I want to be honest, this last year has been the hardest year of my adult life. Last year, on June 12th, I started this blog full of optimism about decisions we needed to make, the secure financial position we were in, relishing the final days of living in a place that had worn on me for seven long years and changed me as a person, and maybe not needing antidepressants to make it through the day. I'm not sure what happened, but it feels a lot like aliens descended from space, inserted their crazy telepathic communication devices into my head, and turned off my common sense meter so I could serve as a minion in a dastardly plan.

Nothing is ever just as we plan it to be, and I realize that. But usually it doesn't turn out exactly 180 degrees from what you tried to do. I had to accept certain things, that I will be on medication for the rest of my life, that my mother has to build her life all over again from the very beginning and there isn't anything I can do to help, that our children are growing older with each passing moment that I sit paralyzed by fear and indecision, and that now we are mired in an economy and housing market that has me caught again in this place, perhaps with no chance of escape for years.

I wouldn't say this blog has been a lie; rather, it has been my microscope of sanity. A place where I could focus on the good and ignore the bad, as we all struggle to do every single day of our lives. As I look back at the posts, I can see how each one marks a particular arc in the daily swing, and I can remember very acutely how I was feeling on that day. Whether this is a blessing, I don't know.

What I do know is what a wonderful thing this blog has been, because of all of you. I appreciate each and every one of you more than I can say. I have been humbled by many of your comments, inspired by many of your own blog posts, and comforted to know that you are out there, sharing the same thoughts, parenting moments, surges of creativity, and vast periods of complete sloth. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled program.

Busywork

Tomorrow is the last day of school. Brenna came home with a backpack full of completed work that I was excited to see. I'm always a little giddy when opening one of their folders; it's like Christmas for me. Will there be a new, sweet little drawing? A funny story? An amazing poem?

While we were generally happy with their elementary school this year, it is, after all, still school. All told, I was disappointed in the amount of real quality work the kids brought home this year.

Brenna's teacher is very worksheet-oriented. She loves her some worksheets. They're easy, simple, you can have a parent volunteer whip them out on the Xerox, and they require no actual thought. Worksheets are the standard of modern public school laziness. They serve no purpose, they inspire no imagination, and they do nothing to cement the "lesson" into the mind of the student.

In the stack of Brenna's completed work was a fat blue folder with a note from the teacher. It was a poem, something about if you're getting bored and having nothing to do over the summer, pull out one of these papers and have fun!

This is what was inside.

One hundred and thirty blank worksheets. I counted them. There are twenty four kids in that class.

I could really go on here about my philosophy on public schools today, that goes far beyond the mind numbing characteristic of the typical worksheet. It would include such highlights as:

• supreme waste of school supplies that yields no gain (think about all that crap your kid brings home amidst the rare gems of actual accomplishment)
• waste of parent volunteer time (teachers could save everyone a lot of time by not creating so many written worksheet projects and mimeographed cut-and-paste "art" and would therefore not be in such need of parent help
• repetition is memorization, not learning
• educational cop out that requires no effort on teacher's part
• dizzying sense to the child that there will be no end, hence there will be no "success"
• patronizing assumption that a cute animal next to math problems makes it fun
• patronizing assumption that children must be wooed and tricked into learning by cute animals
• dangerous assumption that perfection on a worksheet equals mastery

Do you find it ironic that the poem instructed the student to pull out a worksheet when she gets bored? I do.
When the kids in Brenna's class finished work early, they all had stapled booklets called "fun packs" filled with more worksheets, waiting in their desks. Why not let them read? Get out some play dough? Work on a self-chosen project, like a long running story? Why not (and I realize this is revolutionary) let them rest and enjoy the rewards of finishing early?? 

Well, that would be chaos in a room full of twenty five same age kids with only one adult to supervise.

Worksheets serve as a crutch in classrooms, as much of a crutch as television serves at home. Why is it okay for our kids to sit in a classroom writing on worksheets all day, but it's somehow more of a sin if we let them sit in front of the television for six hours? Give me one good argument. Just one. 

Photography basics

I've been wanting to post this here for a while, because I've received a few questions about photography. But, you know how things are. You get to thinking about your dirty dishes and how you need more soap, then you try to find your shopping list and realize your phone needs charging, then the baby blows out of her diaper and needs a whole new change of clothes which brings you upstairs to find that the laundry you washed three days ago is rotting in the washer. Pretty soon you can't remember your name.

While my first advice would be to practice as much as possible, I came across these little gems last year and love to share them. They make everything seem much less intimidating and serve as a great starting point for branching out. The scrapbooking website Two Peas in a Bucket has a photography message board where some really nice person with a lot of time created a 12 part photography course called "12 weeks to better photos". The lessons deal with the very basics of learning how to use your camera, and how to take advantage of the light around you.

Why the folks at Two Peas haven't created a tidy page with all the pdfs together, I don't know, and they're rather hard to find, so I dug them up out of that nice time-advantaged lady's posting profile.
http://is.twopeasinabucket.com/photocourse/weekone.pdf
http://is.twopeasinabucket.com/photocourse/weektwo.pdf
http://is7.twopeasinabucket.com/photocourse/weekthree.pdf
http://is7.twopeasinabucket.com/photocourse/weekfour.pdf
http://is7.twopeasinabucket.com/photocourse/weekfive.pdf
http://is7.twopeasinabucket.com/photocourse/weeksix.pdf
http://is7.twopeasinabucket.com/photocourse/weekseven.pdf
http://is7.twopeasinabucket.com/photocourse/weekeight.pdf
http://is7.twopeasinabucket.com/photocourse/weeknine.pdf
http://is7.twopeasinabucket.com/photocourse/weekten.pdf
http://is7.twopeasinabucket.com/photocourse/weekeleven.pdf
http://is7.twopeasinabucket.com/photocourse/weektwelve.pdf

I love Two Peas. I don't go there anymore, but I love them. I found them about 5 years ago when I started scrapbooking, and it's where I got ideas for layouts. About 98% of the members are LDS, of course, as it's widely known that the LDS invented scrapbooking and now hold the world's secrets to brads and ink over there in Utah. You can learn so much about food caching on those message boards. It's truly fascinating.

I am technically in the LDS system by being blessed into the faith as a baby. Am I on some list somewhere, of lost children?

If you have been wanting to learn more about basic photography without taking a class or, worse, READING your manual, that's the best free resource I've found online yet.

ETA: the links to weeks 5 and 10 are fixed now!

I was all set to bust Tara on her stinky soap

A few weeks ago I saw this post on Tara's blog and thought to myself, hey, I'm in the market for a new soap! I love new soap, especially real soap like that. We went to Whole Foods, which was specifically designed decades ago in a board room full of people who said, "A child will be born, who will grow to be Visty Lindgren, who will spend all her riches in our store..." And so it was done.
I saw the soap, but couldn't remember the exact fragrance. I knew the one on Tara's post was purple, so I bought the purple one.
I love it!
I use it every morning. Later, sometime throughout the day, Rick and I will have a conversation like this one:

"What's that smell?"
"What smell?"
"Something stinks."
"Well, one of the cats just shat in the litter box."
"No that's not it."

And he walks around searching for the source of the smell.

"Seriously, what STINKS?"
"I don't smell anything! What does it smell like?"
"It smells like bread."
"Bread stinks?"
"Moldy bread. It smells like mold."
"Is it that hairball there on the floor? Is the baby poopy?"
"No."

He inches closer, closer, closer....

"It's your damn soap."

I keep using it, because I love lavender. I know it can be sort of strong for some people, but I leave the house each day believing that I smell good, not like rotten bread.

Until I came to make this post, and realized that Tara's favorite scent is Lavender with Damiana Tea. The one I chose is Lavender with Cardamom. Really popular for making curry. Or Scandinavian baked goods.  Or rotten bread.

Grocery Shop

Just some photo fun today. I am experimenting with the horizontal pictures; I want you to be able to click on them for a larger version sometimes, but not have them look all squished in the column. If you know the secret, please enlighten me! I have to make the pictures 470 pixels wide, and if I make them wider for a pop-up enlargement, they appear on here like something viewed through a 400 year old window.

 

Handslapped!

We received a warning letter in the mail today from our HOA, complete with a picture of our offensive house! You see, we mowed the grass a week before we left for Jamaica, and while we were gone, after only about 10 days of growth, someone cased our house and took the picture. What nasty, trashy people are we.

Here is the email I sent back, for your viewing pleasure:

Dear James,

Thank you so much for your recent letter warning us about the length of our grass in the front yard. I feel comforted to know that while we were on vacation, you (or someone else) were taking pictures of my home because you were so horrified by the grass.

If only we were richer, we could have paid someone to mow it for us. But we mowed it and weeded it thoroughly exactly one day after you sent the letter. I am sure you are relieved.

How I wish you were scouting the neighborhood during the last 8 months we've been living here, while our neighbor had his unused basketball hoop (sans net) in our strip, which had killed ALL the grass and left nothing but a festering mud puddle. We finally moved it ourselves onto the sidewalk (his section) and paid to put new dirt and sod over the deep hole. As it was on our property, I was sure the HOA would have something to say about it, thereby giving me an excuse to make my neighbor move it.

Alas, apparently big, ugly, unused, broken sports equipment sitting in a puddle of mud and rocks is not unsightly enough to warrant your keen attention.

Rest assured our grass is now perfect enough for you.

Thank you for caring,

Visty Lindgren