As We Were Saying

This morning I opened my eyes at 7:00. There was time to get Hank to school before the 7:40 bell rang. I lay there. I could hear a gentle rain falling, the overnight rain that had been much talked about and wondered over all week long. Would it or wouldn't it rain out trick-or-treating? Friday tennis? How to move forward not knowing? But there it was, conveniently pattering in the dark, on nobody doing anything important.

I thought, "I will let the kids sleep in. I haven't checked them in late all year, and they need post-Halloween rest." I closed my eyes again. I had a dream so absorbing yet so boring that I actually thought, while asleep, "Well this isn't really going anywhere."

When I opened my eyes again it was 9:00. I had been aware, dimly, that the kids were up. I stepped out onto the landing and croaked, "Kids! Let's get this party started!"

From somewhere in the house, Hank piped, "Okay! I am wearing pants!"

"That's a good start, buddy!" I called. We can work with that. It's all about a good start.

Thirty minutes later, we were all underway, so civilized, in full daylight. Leisurely.

Then the whole day followed and it was nice too.

But enough about me. We are all fine here. How are you? I didn't exactly mean to not blog for six months. I got busy with non-computerized things. All good things. And for a while, maybe back in the late summer, when asked about my silence, I would say, "Well, I don't feel like I really have a narrative anymore." Or some lit grad horseshit like that.

Then, in the last few weeks, I've grown to feel that I don't even care about a narrative. I don't care, I just want the words. I miss talking to you guys and I miss the putting-together of words. And now November rolls around, and for the last several (three?) Novembers I have blogged daily.

So let's get this party started.

Weekendly

EB hid all the eggs in the backyard. I don't know why that chair is there.

My sister has a LOT OF NERVE. On my SubMat facebook page (you click that little fb logo up there on the left and "like" my page and then you don't miss a minute of her 'tude), she's all, "Um, blogging 'every day in March.'" This from someone who hasn't blogged in a coon's age. And I was like, March is a long month, gah, and then my Dad helpfully pointed out that there's a difference between metric March and Imperial March. Or something to do with the switch to the Gregorian calendar?

Anyway, I think I liked having my previous post at the top of the page for a couple of days. And we had kind of a whirlwind weekend here so far.

We celebrated Easter with the kids on Saturday morning, because Laura has since headed to the beach with her friend's family for Spring Break and wouldn't be home on Sunday morning. Matt the Easter Bunny hid two dozen eggs out in our backyard, which is a lot of ground to cover and a lot of different terrain. Before long, the kids needed hints. He requested a garbage bag, I brought it to him, and he told the kids that for every few pieces of litter or broken plastic crap they gathered, they would get a hint to an egg location. So they were out there picking up trash and finding eggs at the same time. Truly, he is the Master of Revels. Also, his hints rhymed:

"If not at first an egg you see, get thyself to the crook of a tree."

"If eggs you seek, follow this command: look deeper down into the sand."

There were a bunch of these, each more poetical than the last. I sat on the porch drinking coffee and cracking up, proud to have helped him pass his genetic material into the next generation of humans.

I spent the rest of the day helping Laura get ready to go, with a few bumps in the road. She had recovered from her virus and went to school on Friday, and was feeling fine, but then Saturday afternoon, she went for a run with Matt, and came home complaining that her ear hurt. I was all, damnation. I didn't want to send her off with another family for a week if there was a chance her viral head cold had turned into an ear something. So we headed to the clinic at the CVS. That place looked like an extras casting call for "Walking Dead." There were about six people ahead of us and the nurse was at lunch.

I thought, "To heck with this, I'm calling my neighbor." One of Hank's little buddy's mothers is a pediatrician. They live around the corner from us, I see her almost every day, and I have never never sought her medical opinion or asked for a bus stop consulation. I don't know, I just feel like it's an imposition? Though she has never said anything that would give that impression. But I texted her and asked her if she would look in Laura's ear, and she came right away.

She couldn't get her little ear flashlight to work, but she said the easiest thing, given that Laura was going out of town, was to prescribe an antibiotic and call it a day, so she phoned the pharmacy from my kitchen and we were all good. Normally I would have just kept a watch on her and not gone for the ab's, but Laura was nearly in tears because she thought her trip was imperiled. And I didn't think it was an ear infection, I thought it was exercise-induced ear pressure. But I am not that kind of doctor. Anyway, my neighbor told me several times that she was really glad I'd asked her, and I thought, well maybe she became a pediatrician because she wants to help children, even if they just live around the corner. And her husband is a plastic surgeon, so between them, we're covered.

Later, to Matt, I was like, "That was so convenient!" And he was like, "Having the doctor come to your house? Yes."

As Laura gathered her things together to get out the door, her ear pain lessened and lessened until it seemed she'd made a full recovery. I think my ear-pressure diagnosis was correct. Humanities PhD power! So I delivered her into the care of the other family. Matt and I feel comfortable with her instincts and judgment, as well as with that family, so I'm thinking she'll have a wonderful week. My biggest fear is drowning, and I told her not to go past her knees in the Gulf, which she won't because she thinks there are a lot more sharks than there really are.

Then Matt and I, the carefree parents of one child, threw all our stuff together and headed up to the mountain house, late. Hank fell asleep immediately, and we rode along companionably. One fun topic for musing was, if our family life were a sitcom, who and what would be the best potential spinoffs? Like Archie Bunker spun off the Jeffersons, who were the Bunkers' neighbors. Following that template, we thought the telegenic black family around the corner (my friendly kitchen pediatrician!) would make good viewing. And we conceived of a hipster office comedy involving Matt's twenty-something employees.

I guess the two of us have already talked about all the important things.

Now I'm just telling you everything that happened to me since we last spoke. Sorry.

I hope you have had a wonderful weekend. xoxo

Nostalgia for The Immediate Past

Well, it didn't turn out to be such a shabby month of blog posts. I tell you though, halfway through the month, I would click back to last November's 30 posts, over there in the left sidebar, and think, "People should just read these again. There were some good ones in there." The time Matt tried to fix the toilets, the time Hank said the f-word, no the other f-word, the time I fixed the garbage disposal, the post about my health insurance, all worth reading again. IN MY HUMBLE OPINION.

But this month was fun too, blog-wise. It had its moments. I don't know, it's too soon. I'm sure in three weeks, I'll be all, remember that stuffed swan I bought in Tennessee! Golden Age! What was it Sir Philip Sidney said in his 1579 Defense of Poesy? Something about how the world is brazen, but bloggers make it golden. That was it, I think.

It is a golden age, truly. And in this particular golden age, Matt and I just ended the day by spending fully twenty minutes discussing how we both, at different times and unbeknownst to each other, heard a woodpecker tapping on our front door frame. It tapped exactly as if it were trying to gain entry into the house, but didn't know quite how knocking or doors work, being a bird. Yes, we had a lot to say about this experience. What we each heard, what we thought when we heard it, what we did next, how we noticed the bird--obviously this was a rich vein that needed mining, and it made excellent pillow talk.

In my recounting of events, I finally opened the door and the bird said, "What the FRACK. I've been knocking for HOURS."

Thank you for reading so diligently these thirty days. Looking forward to more golden times for all of us.
xoxo

We Builded That

Y'all, today I paused while smearing a thin layer of Aquaphor all over my face to think, "I really need that dang blogroll back." Remember how over on the right I used to have a long list of blogs? Somehow, during the GoDaddy debacle and domain loss, that went away. I have no idea why. Like, a magic donkey stopped turning a wheel and that list vanished into thin air.

As a result, I am a really bad blog friend. If I don't see your link on facebook or twitter, I am missing things. This came home to me tonight when I spied a picture on Beth's instagram feed that said she'd given herself a gel manicure at home and had blogged about it, and I was like, wha? I need this information RIGHT NOW INSTANTLY. Then I went over there and there was stuff all about a cute spider web she made from an embroidery hoop, and I had not noticed it before Halloween because no blog roll! So many missed opportunities.

So, if you used to be listed over there OR if you hang around here and want to be listed over there please let me know in the comments! We can rebuild her! Then I'll go back to being basically on top of everyone's developments and I will be a better blog friend. Okay? And if your blog isn't obvious from your little blogger profile, leave a link! Let's get this barn raised!

And if you see me and I am glistening all over, it is the petroleum products. xoxo

Midnight in The Garden of Awesome

Oh you know it.

I had these two completely outrageous stories to tell you and I thought, "Perfect way to restart blogging!" then I woke up and realized I had dreamed both of them. And I don't know if we really want to start dreamblogging because where might that lead? Also, one of them involved tennis, anyway.

I feel like I have to pick up and tell you about the thing which was about to happen during my last post, like I am a book that you just put down. So it was that Matt was taking me out of town for our anniversary and I didn't know where. I continued to not know where as we said goodbye to the kids, got into the car, and drove out of town. I still didn't know where until we got on I-16 toward Savannah, and then, with Holmesian powers of deduction, I turned to Matt and said, "Is it Savannah?" And he goes, "Do you want to know yet?"

It was Savannah! And the first thing we did to see the town was Segway. Matt was like, "I have a surprise for you. But you can guess it if you remember that I always stick to what works." And I was all, "Segway!!!"

Segway is the perfect mode of transport for a place like Savannah. You can cover the whole historic district in fine style. All those pretty squares and monuments and shady trees. So romantic, I loved it. Our guide was an earnest SCAD student who told us Who Slept Here or Who Was Born or Who Haunts Here at every house. My takeaway was that, if nobody every quartered troops in your house, you are nothing in this town.

Remember Kevin Spacey's house in that movie?

At one point we were strolling along and I heard a familiar peal of bells. When my iphone screen did not show an incoming call, I turned in a slow circle, confused. "Oh!" I realized, "That's an actual church!" The look on Matt's face made me say, "WHAT." His only comment was, "I think you are interesting and fun," and he left it at that. Smart guy.

Bedscape.

Mattscape. Those vases are glued down, I don't know.

The next stop on our getaway was Tybee Island. I had never been there, and if you are needing the Hilton Head experience, this is not it. Definitely not fancy, but it reminded me a lot of how Pensacola Beach was when I was growing up. Just your basic beach but it had a lot of charm. We stayed in a hotel right on the sand. They set up an umbrella and a couple of chairs for us, and on Sunday, I sat in those chairs from 10:30-5:00. Tough day at the office. It occurred to me that it has been years since I went to the beach without a kid to keep track of. Like, seriously years. It was just what I needed.

Bonus Mattscape

Tybee Lighthouse

Seventeen years, baby!

Oh, and because I didn't know where we were going or exactly what the activities/weather would be, I packed: two pairs of jeans, pair of black pants, two dresses, bazillion tops, fugly shorts, and bathing suit. I wore: one t shirt, one sweater, the shorts, bathing suit, and one dress as a cover up. I could pretty much throw all of my clothes away, but isn't that always the lesson?

Okay, now that I have cleared away old business, I can move forward with blogging and gear up for NaBloPoMo. It dawned on me that I have been living the unexamined life and you know we don't want that.

Enough about me, what about you? How's tricks? xoxox

More People Who Are Bad

Friends, I am really upset. Due to a cascade of screw-ups, some mine, some GoDaddy's, my suburbanmatron.com domain expired without my knowing and was scooped up by some garbagey company who stalks expiring domains so they can buy them and redirect them to ads for cheap viagra. So now my links all over the internet are broken. Unless you are in the market for some cheap viagra.

GoDaddy is supposed to "park" a domain when it is in the final stages of expiring. That is, when you go there, you see a GoDaddy page that lets you know something is up. But my domain worked fine--I updated this blog on the 14th--and then all of a sudden, it was whisked away.

This business of buying up expiring domains is a whole shady corner of the internet. The guy who got mine is a 21 year-old who lives in his parents' basement in Chicago. He offered to sell it back to me for $5,500.

Think of all the boner pills that would buy him.

Or don't think of it.

So, I don't even know. Any advice or ideas you have are welcome. I'm left with the plan of trying to continue to get my correct links out through facebook and twitter, though I know this only reaches a small part of my readers. I mean, it's not like this domain was my livelihood, but I'd been building it for over four years.

Maybe I'll still get it back. I can't think that the traffic generated by people google searching my blog will generate this domain-stalker any real money. Certainly not enough to live on his own and maybe kiss a girl one day. We'll see.

Makes me way madder than my purse being stolen.

I will still be here, and if you have me linked on your blog and are seeing this post, please change your link to the URL that is up top, www.suburbanmatron.blogspot.com. And follow me on fb and twitter and all that so I can keep you in the loop. And if you are following SubMat on fb, maybe share this news with any friends you have who are also readers. Sniff.

Meanwhile I'm going to go do some emotional eating. But first I'll favor you with an emoticon.

xoxox

Well, July.

Sometimes that happens. You're talking with a friend, you pause to look down at your sandwich for a moment. You might be saying, "Well seriously, I don't know, yeah, I know, totally! Do you want this pickle?" And then you look up and your friend is gone and doesn't blog for a full month. You look back down at your pickle. Its juice is soaking your potato chips. This happens sometimes.

Amy and I both, by unspoken accord, took an unannounced summer breaky from blogging. Then, as she has already revealed, we were the recipients of a snippy email from our dad earlier this week:

Saturday will be one full month since either of you has blogged. In recognition of that landmark date there will be no cake and cocktails on the deck at the Briar Patch. Please make no plans to attend. Love, Dad

He has such a way about him.

In response to this, Amy hastened to post an update, but I reacted to this epistle with the stony silence that makes me so beloved in the family. When I want to ignore something, I can ignore it thirteen ways to Sunday. Shhh! I was resting!

How are y'all? You look good! I mean some of you literally look good and I am sure of this because I've gotten together with two bloggers in the last month, Jenni and Aimee. So, meeting and greeting, swimming and sunning, sweating and swatting. Summer ramped up and with it came an increase in activities for every member of the family. On one hand, I feel like a ton has happened, and then again, if you asked me, "What have you been up to?" I could with truthfulness say, "Nothing much." So it will probably take me a couple of weeks to tell you about the nothing much. I mean, you know how I do.

Tonight I'm in North Carolina at the mountain house. Tomorrow at dark o'clock we're heading up to DC to spend the 4th with Dave and Katie and Baby Gabriel. It will be moist and steamy and patriotic and we can't wait. I'll be checking in. I swear! Don't look like that.

The other morning, Hank announced, "Mom, I've grown my first patch of man hair." I asked him to show me this man hair and then he couldn't locate the man hair, but insisted that "It's on my tenders." I mean, that could have been a whole three-paragraph blog post right there. You're so sorry you missed it!

If you're on the road for the holiday (not you, Aussies and Canadians but Happy Belated Canada Day), travel safely. I kiss your face.

Useful Information

A few nights ago when I was in the throes of my daily blogging adventure, I asked Matt, "What should I write about?" I asked for his input in spite of the fact that a few days earlier, he admitted that he had only skimmed some of my April posts. Skimmed! He goes, "I kind of read for the main idea; there's been a lot of tennis."

!!!

So then I got onto him about never having commented on my blog, never in FOUR YEARS, a period in which my father, my brother, all of my male friends, my brothers-in-law (ALL OF THEM), and my MALE COUSINS (3!) have dropped by my comment section. This conversation was on my blog anniversary, and I said to him, "So this is four years of your unbroken record of silence. Congratulations!" And he was all, "Well at this point it's kind of part of the schtick, right?"

The schtick!?! I mean, honestly! I can't even.

Okay. But obviously we are still in love and we can work through this.

So I asked him what I should blog about, and he goes, "I like it when you post useful information." He cited my broccoli-cauliflower post, my health insurance post, and my toilet-cleaning post of yore. I said, "Okay, what else would be useful information, do you have any?"

He offered, "Well, when you're playing basketball and you're really big but you're not that great at basketball, but you still want to make a contribution, remember that when you're guarding someone, nobody likes contact. So get in under the basket and box out. Fight for your spot." He went on, but that was the gist. Hmm, I thought about that. Nobody likes contact. A useful sports insight but I don't know if it's that tailored to my audience.

So here is my recipe for lentil soup instead.

You need:

bag of dry lentils, rinsed (lentils don't need soaking)
four slices of bacon
an onion, chopped
celery stalk, chopped
couple carrots, chopped
clove of garlic
32 oz. box of broth
2 cups water
salt n peppa
bay leaves if you wanna get fussy
an immersion blender or even a potato masher

In your heavy bottomed pot (I use a cast-iron dutch oven) cook the four slices of bacon. Now, I have made this soup with sausage and also with no meat at all. So you don't have to use the bacon. But...why wouldn't you? So cook the bacon and then use a fork to pick the pieces out and put them aside on a plate. Leave the bacon fat in the pot. Cook the onion, garlic, carrots, and celery in the bacon fat. Your kitchen will smell like heaven at this point. One of the guys who works in your basement (you have those, right?) might wander in like a child and just stand there, sniffing the air.

When the onions are looking cooked, pour in the broth and dump in the lentils. Add two cups of water. Add whatever seasonings you feel up to and stir the whole thing together. Bring to a good boil, then turn down the heat, put the lid on the pot, and simmer for maybe 25 minutes. The lentils will start to come apart a little bit and then they're done. Tear up the bacon you cooked into tiny pieces and put them back into the soup.

At this point you need to decide what consistency you want the soup to be. Before I had a handheld blender, I would give the pot a good going over with a potato masher, just to break up some of the lentils and leave others intact. Now I give a few pulses with the immersion blender, but the basic integrity of the lentils remains.

Serve with a dollop of sour cream. Vital.

Even Hank eats this, and there is no greater endorsement that I can give for its kid-friendliness.

Hopefully you will find this to be Useful Information. Enjoy in health, and also remember that when you're playing basketball, get in there and work that caboose.

xo

Flashback And Sort of A Before And After

I was going to share some pictures from my doctoral graduation last summer, because I never blogged about it. So I dug back in my flickr sets and looked at the pictures, and I was like, "Whoa, I was thirty pounds heavier." Look, here I am with my beautiful friend Erika last June, and below that is one taken of me this Easter.

June 2011

April 2012

I don't know that I've actually seen the comparison before. Even with my being slightly hunched over in this pic and thus accentuating my honeybaked ham belly, I can really see the difference in my face and arms. It's funny, in my mind's eye I've always looked the same.

So, my graduation last June. Remember how I had wanted the whole family to go and then I almost didn't go and there was crying? Well I am so, SO glad I went and shared those days with good friends. It really properly marked the ending of that grad school chapter in my life, in a true valedictory way. Before the graduation ceremony, I was always feeling slightly melancholy for Santa Cruz. I loved living there--we had so many happy, major, formative times there. Laura arrived there as a newborn and left ready for Kindergarten, and it was a complete intellectual, social, and emotional passage for me. I guess that is why they call it an education.

Getting my hood

With my friend Jon

Our engagement photo

Braintrust: David, Erika, and Veronica

Beach Boardwalk

Even as we settled into our lives here in Atlanta, I always felt a little like I somehow should still be in California. But somehow going out there and walking in the graduation helped me feel happy that it all happened but not sad it was over. There might something to this whole mark-a-life-moment-with-a-ceremony thing. It could catch on.

If you are into it, more pictures are here.

And you guys! It's the last day of our month of daily blogging. I have loved our talks. It has been more than worth the loss of evening netflix time. (Believe it or not, it takes like an hour to talk about nothin'.) Thank you for coming around and reading and commenting. You are such a peach.

If you haven't already, go click on the facebook button up there on the left and "like" SubMat on fb. That is, if you like SubMat. Then we can be all chatty all the time. I'll be like, "OMG," and you'll be all, "I know!"

Four More Years!

On this day I have been blogging for four years. I cannot account for my persistence in this habit. I must really be getting something out of it.

And of course I am! (That was my trademark dry humor that you've come to love! RIGHT?)

Three big somethings come to mind: I have made real friends of people I met entirely on the internet, and I've grown closer to people I already knew because they became readers here; I have learned a ton from the people who comment here, on matters practical and more metamagical; and the third thing is more interior. It's that sometimes, on this blog, I have known the satisfaction of saying something the way I meant to say it. Anyone who writes, even if it's just an email to a friend, knows that that is an elusive butterfly.

I certainly don't achieve it in every post, but it flickers in and out, even if only I can see it. And I get satisfaction from reading back and discovering moments that make me say, "Oh, this is a true record of how I thought about this thing," or, "This is exactly how this was for me."

I don't mean for this to be horn-tooty! I'm just talkin' 'bout Shaft.

By way of anniversary retrospective, here are the posts from the last several months that stick out in my mind. In these posts, in places, I said it the way I hoped to:

Old Picture
The one about the snapshot of my brother, sister, and me. I think about this one still.

He'll Be Here All Week
The one where I took Hank for his five year-old checkup. I'm saving it for his rehearsal dinner.

All Happy Families Are Alike
The one about being with my whole family in the mountains and the group picture and the nightstands left in the Swap Hut. Reading it makes me feel like we're still together. A close second in this regard is Cricket Finger.

Let's Name Numbers
The one about my health insurance clusterfuck. To put it delicately. The comments on this one are invaluable, really.

The Report on That Dildo Party
I read this and still laugh. Read it and you never have to go to one of these parties. And thank you for being a friend.

Lovin'
The one about having The Talk with Laura, sorta.

My memory only goes back to late last summer, apparently. Thank you for indulging me in this look backward. You people are in my head. You're in there when I'm writing, and I'm thinking, "How to tell them this?" It is some of the best fun that can be had.

xoxo

My Children Select Costumes for Their True Selves

Angel and professional halo polisher.

Not as bad as he would wish.

I would like to be able to tell you that I painstakingly home sewed these two costumes. But we both know me too well. What I DID was to hie to the Target last November when all the Halloween stuff was 90 percent off. I bought a trunk of costumes for two and three bucks each, and then--here's the pro tip--didn't show them to the kids. Then I put them in a storage bin and forgot about them, and the calendar pages began to flutter and flip themselves faster and faster as the seasons went around. When the air grew crisp and the first peep about Halloween costume selection was peeped, I unearthed the tub of costumes and said, "Kids, behold my harvest!"

That is my story of the housewifely arts.

The kids had a wonderful time trick-or-treating, and really, how could it have been otherwise? I mean the whole scene is stone-cold awesome and they enjoyed it fully. Laura and her buds continued their tradition of going out on the golf cart with Mr. Normal Neighbor, which lets them haul in a truly excessive amount of candy. I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet. Laura's bag weighed 8.5 pounds.

Hank climbed in the back of the neighbor's truck and got to go to an extra street, while I continued my Halloween tradition of having a beer with one of the K(C)athies.

Next year I might say No Motorized Conveyance for trick-or-treating. It's like shooting from the jeep while on safari. Not sporting? That will be an unpopular policy, why do I sound like such a killjoy all of the sudden? But an idea for all this candy is needed. What are y'all doing? I have heard lately of the Halloween fairy, who takes the candy and replaces it with a toy, but that somehow makes me almost as queasy as letting the children eat a pillowcase full of candy. Like, there are moments when you don't just suspect, you KNOW that you are raising some of the most indulged creatures on earth, at any time, ever.

They are cute though. Hank asked me, not once, but on multiple occasions, if the neighbors would think he was "really a robber," and whether they might be worried to see him out marauding. He really seemed concerned that he might be caught up and put in a paddy wagon. I told him that, first of all, he was a kid, and that also the contextual help of it being Halloween would prevent any misunderstanding. He was reassured.

I do love Halloween. I love the season and everything about it. A few more pics are here. Did y'all have a good night?

Oh, I almost forgot! My sister and I have goaded each other into agreeing to do the blog-every-day-in-November thing. That will be a thing! That will happen! Will you come around and read? I think I need to go sign up somewhere official or get a button, but I'm telling you guys first. There is no piece of paper or button that could make what we have any better, baby.

Spoiler Alert

I don't know. Sometimes I want to pop in here and share a quick thought with you guys, and then I think, "That's not a blog post." And then a week goes by. And then the irate messages start arriving from my family. And then I feel all awkward, like I really owe you Something Great.

That Something Great is an elusive butterfly.

So let us unburden ourselves of these expectations.

There now. Last week Matt went out of town for work. This is rare for him. I was all, no problem, I got this, we're cool. Then at 6:30 the first morning he was gone, Laura walks into my darkened bedroom and says, "I'm ready to go to the bus stop." I was all, "What? Who? ZOMGWTF?!?" And I said, "Don't you usually walk to the bus stop?" And Laura's like, "But it's raining," and I was like, "Okay, GAH." So he was missed most keenly.

Alone at night, after the kids were in bed, I made the genius decision to watch Paranormal Activity 2 on Netflix. Just me in a quiet house, darkness pressing against all the windows, nearest neighbors absent or weird.

Two-thirds of the way through, I had to pause it and text Beth:

You have to tell me if this baby dies. Why am I watching this movie?

She reassured me. Beth always answers texts quickly and she's seen every movie. She should operate a kind of moviefone for these questions. But here's the spoiler alert...

I think that having viewed Paranormal Activity 1 and Paranormal Activity 2: Mo' Paranormal, I am finished watching movies where women get dragged by the feet by invisible demons, demons who drag them offstage, presumably to invisibly demon-rape them. Yeah. Done with that. I mean, a little goes a long way, right?

It is a spectacle that I no longer enjoy. I mean, not the way I used to enjoy scenes of invisible demon rape.

The weird thing is that if you take out the scenes of women being dragged backwards by the feet, I thought it was a pretty okay movie. Oddly, it was a good portrayal of the mundanities of normal family life. And I'm into that. I never thought to look for that in a horror movie, but there it is. It's something these "found video" movies can do well, and this one does.

So that was something I did last week.

What are you doing? Are you ready for Halloween? Do you like scary movies? Any good ones to recommend? Talk to us.

Sunday Science

Are you curious about what happens when you drop a smoke bomb into a glass of water? The SubMat family bravely carried out that very experiment last week and I give you the results here. Please forgive the odd moment when I turned my iphone sideways while recording.

Does this count as a vlog? Am I a vlogger?

What are y'all up to? Except for our trip to the hardware store yesterday, I have not left the house. Last night the Hamiltons came over, and we had Mexican takeout and played a card game Matt made. Speaking of science, today I taught Laura how to clean a toilet. Then I showed her how to use Spotify. (Guess which one she liked better?) Actually, an old post of mine about the proper way to clean a toilet still gets Google traffic every day. Yet Klout continues to say that I'm influential on "parenting, Manhattan, photography, and shoes." What the hecks, Klout? Why are you so blind to my toilet influence? I've now blogged about toilets like three days in a row. (Sorry.) I mean, Manhattan? I did go there one time.

So Laura and I tackled the bathrooms today, then I vacuumed the downstairs, getting the baseboards and all the corners where it turns out Fabienne had been kinda half-assing it. Yes Virginia, there is such a thing as vacuuming under a couch. Then I cooked a chicken. Then I jumped on the trampoline with Hank and pulled a muscle. Now I'm reading a library book. I know it is boring, but I said I would blog every day and this is what happens.

Shall we reconvene tomorrow?
Love,
Me

Cue The World's Tiniest Violin, Again

Last week, while I was in North Carolina, my house cleaner Fabienne broke up with me in a text. I'd been expecting to hear from her about which day she was coming to clean, but what I heard instead was that she's taken a full-time job and won't be cleaning anymore. Her text also said that her stepmother could take me on.

I read this text and my mouth fell open, just like a comic strip character's. I felt happy for her but also sad for me. And confused about what stepmother and who is this stepmother? I felt this needed to be a phone conversation, so I called her and left her a voice mail saying how happy I was for her and that I wanted to hear about the job, etc.

The next morning she called me back and apologized for having texted me. She went on at such length that I realized she felt my phone call to her had been some kind of admonishment for texting. Anyway, Fabienne has been hired as an administrative assistant at a non-profit, with hopes that the job will convert to something more down the road. She is a single mom of two kids and this is a good move for her. I told her how glad I was and she said, "I'm ecstatic not to be cleaning houses anymore!"

Then I was felt like I needed to say, "Yes, that must have sucked!" or something but it also didn't seem quite right. So I jumped in with, "But I will miss you!" and she was like, yeah, miss you too, whatevs, hasta ya later, gator.

I also thanked her for the offer of her stepmother's services, but told her that this was probably a good time for us to take a break from having a house cleaner and to use that money to beef up our emergency fund. As I heard myself saying these words, I was like, "What the HELL am I saying? This sounds like some adult has seized control of my body! GET OUT." But it is the truth, and spending two grand on our cars in a single day the other week made this crystal clear to me.

So I came home from the mountains and stood in the kitchen with Matt. It was a solemn moment. "Listen," I said. "We're on our own now." I pointed to the downstairs bathroom that he and his coworkers use all day. "Nobody is coming to clean that bathroom anymore." He said, "You mean, Larry Bird is not going to walk through that door?" And then he laughed and laughed. I looked quizzical and he explained that this was a reference to the world of sports and that it was hilarious. Yes, so no Fabienne and no Larry Bird and no Big Bird. This seemed like a good time to tell Matt that I would not be cleaning the new Blue Mammoth Games bathroom being installed in our basement. So I did tell him that.

Funny, one of my very first blog posts was about getting rid of our old cleaning lady, back when I had only four readers and not the dozen(s?) I have today. It's all about fat years and lean years, I guess.

So I am still a little shaken at the prospect of losing Fabienne, but I will rally. It is some comfort to look back over the highs and lows of our relationship.

A low point: when she broke my Red Wing bowl and also when she wasn't dusting in my bedroom.

A significant point that I don't know how to categorize as high or low: when she was standing there at ground zero of my getting diagnosed with breast cancer.

A high point: when she gave me all those wigs. 

I mean, I knew this day would come, that either she would break it off or I would. But I wasn't quite ready. What various permutations of this sitch have you experienced?

So, that's another feature of my mental topography this week. And hey, I have an idea that I'm going to blog every day in August. I'm two for two already! This will result in my telling you some really boring stories about stuff like getting new tires and not being well-dressed enough to enter Walmart. See you!

Bedscape: Opryland Hotel in Nashville

When I got to my room at the Blissdom blogging conference in Nashville, naturally the first thing I did was photograph the bed. It's what I do.  The room was perfectly comfy, and the bathroom had two sinks, one inside the bathroom and one just outside, which is great if you're sharing a room with multiple ladies, all with different grooming commitments and schedules.

Keely checking out our view of the snowy pool.

Photo from Emmie's Mommy's Flickr stream.

The gift bag was an embroidered Lands End tote, very cute.  Happily, Blissdom did not reach BlogHer levels of swag, and I was able to escape with my dignity intact, not having bartered my soul for some canned-meat branded merchandise. Ugh, I still feel a ripple of shame when I think about it.

And this hotel, the Opryland. Oh my Lord, y'all. This is the place that got wrecked on the ground floors by the Nashville flooding last spring, yet they reopened in November. It is huge, like Vegas-huge, and is organized around three (or more?) glass-covered gardens. There are some exotic and beautiful plants there.  One of the gardens has a river running through it, and they give boat rides.  So it's all very over the top, but somehow not.  It's grand but still comforting.  Kind of like if Coleridge's Xanadu had been designed by Vera Bradley. 



Naturally, Keely and Beth and I had to take the boat ride.  Here we're setting out, and you can see that people's rooms face the garden with those little wrought-iron balconies. It's a pretty effect. It turns out that it's hard to take pictures in the dark while floating on the sacred river Alph, down to a sunless sea, but here are a few.

Just your typical purple indoor waterfall, like you have.

I love this picture of Beth and Keely because they look like the brightest, most attentive students in the world as they listen to our tour guide. At this point I think the guide was telling us that when they filled the river with water, at the hotel's opening ceremony, they poured it out of a giant Jack Daniels barrel. Which, of course they did. Please tell me something less surprising than that. You can't do it.

Putting aside the social aspects of Blissdom for a moment, I thought it was a good conference and well worth going to. It seemed a little more content-oriented than BlogHer, possibly because there weren't so many carnival sideshows going on all around and outside the meetings. I thought the sessions were useful, and a nice mix of big ideas and hands-on help with stuff, like photography.  The parties were nice and didn't have the sameness that the official BlogHer '10 parties tended to, as fun as they were.

The main event was getting to hang with my lovely friends, like Mary Anne and Michele, and meeting new people. I drove, which meant that I didn't have to be disciplined about my packing and could bring all the purses I want.  Also, every time we turned around, somebody was wanting to give us a manicure or a chair massage, or to stuff us with food every three hours like newborn babies, and who am I to argue with that?

And I got some ideas for this here blog. Also free panties.

I Am A Second-Class Citizen in My Own House, Technologically Speaking

The laptop that I use, an IBM Thinkpad, will not start and only beeps, rudely, and says it has a "fan error." I tried leaving it alone for a few hours to rest. Matt and I both tried blowing on the fan. I tried swearing a little and then I tried acting like I didn't care. Then I crept back into the room, snuck up on it, and tried to turn it on. That did nothing. Of course the warranty has expired and it will actually have to be taken somewhere to be fixed.

This is really putting a crimp in my blogging.  The only computer in the house now is the one in Matt's office, which he spends most hours of the day entangled with, Borg-style. It is not a family machine.  I'm only able to type this because he's in the bathroom.

There are a couple of large posts forming in my consciousness, but I don't know how they will ever see the light until my computing situation improves. And have I mentioned that Matt is a computer game developer? Something about the cobbler's children comes to mind. Getting him to take the laptop to be fixed will require special pleading. 'Cause get this: he hates computers.  He likes programming, but he has mostly contempt for the actual machines, and anything to do with fixing them, buying them, talking about them. And who suffers? Moi.  Virginia Woolf was totally freaking right. See how the tools of literacy are being withheld from me? It's amazing that I didn't have to finish my dissertation on the backs of envelopes.

Somebody call the wahmbulance.

So I thought I'd tell you what I'm up to lately. What are you up to?

The last two days I've gone over to Pretty Neighbor's house and done the 30 Day Shred workout with her.  We were doing it the week before I went to California and got snowed out of Atlanta and took a giant break.  So I shred and then I come home and make sure to announce to anyone around, "I've already worked out today."

Then I read my daily chapter of Les Misérables.  I've mentioned this on the Twitter but I don't think I told y'all. Somewhere on the internet, around the end of the year, I glampsed the fact that Les Misérables has 365 chapters. Oh ho, thought I.  There are also 365 days in the solar year. A person could read a chapter a day and, through the magic of compounded interest, read the whole novel in the course of 2011.  The idea appealed to me, because it's not something I was otherwise going to read, so I downloaded it to the Kindle app on my phone. The book is basically free on Kindle.  So I've been reading along and I'm 18 chapters in.

Now, is it in fact true that the novel has 365 chapters? I have not verified this. It wasn't like an authoritative source that gave me this information, it was some discussion thread on Metafilter. I could be in for a rude awakening on December 31. But I'm really enjoying reading it, so let us defer this vexing question. The challenge is that when I get to the end of a chapter (they're pretty short) I sometimes really want to go on, but I make myself wait for the next day to read more. My rule is that each day's chapter is sufficient unto itself.

Now Matt's on the phone with his business partner, so I'm still bloggin'. Hee!

I am also, in addition to these pursuits, tending children. We went to the fourth grade musical tonight, the one for which Laura was Sacagawea's understudy, as you may recall.  Well, despite it being cold and flu season, and what I know to be several viruses circulating in the school environment, Sacagawea was able to perform, so Laura was relegated to the corps. In the car afterward I told Laura that I thought she would have been a hundred times better in the role, and Matt was all, "Whoa, now, I don't know if that's how we want to talk about this," because I was not modeling gracious behavior.  Whatever, I model that shit all the time, I was just speaking the truth. I am not a Tiger Mother, I guess.

Good night, friends. My housecleaner Fabienne is coming tomorrow, after a loooong snow-mandated absence, so I need to go half-heartedly pick up stuff off my bedroom floor.

I love you all.

I Forgot I Even Said All That

Are we doing this? Listing our favorite posts from each month last year? I like reading people's digests of their blogs.  I like seeing what they enjoyed of the things they've written and what was significant to them, because sometimes it's not what I would have thought.  And so I maked a list for you.

These are in order starting from last January.  There are fourteen months in a year, right?

Three Things I Observed While Bowling
"It being 'boutique bowling' did not however mean that nobody wore overalls or chewed tobacco and spat in a clear plastic cup."

That Neighborhood Party: Houses
Embedded decor journalism. It's a thing.

Here's What's Going On with Me
From when I got diagnosed with breast cancer.

Y'all! I Almost Forgot!
Reading this makes me miss some of the drugs I was on.

Now That Was A Retail Experience
The one about my sister and the IKEA.

The Wrong Beach Reading
I always enjoy this topic and again, the comments are so much better than the post.

A Mommy Dearest Moment
You know, just yelling at the neighbor's kids, like ya do.

That Bar of Soap Birthday Party
Oh the humanity.

Suburban Matron, Ph.D.
Plenty of good things happened in 2010 and this was one.

Segway Tour: Walking Makes Me Sad Now
But this is the best thing that has ever happened in any year.

Suburban Matron on Ohdeedoh Today
I got lots of new readers from this (hey guys)!

Last Week of Radiation Treatments
I nearly have amnesia now about my radiation treatments but this post reminds me of what it was like.

I Don't Think We Are Four Loko Material
This makes me laugh.

I Guess That Does Sound Pretty Fun
One of my few very favorites of the year.  Sometimes you just really like a post, you know? It reminds me of how I was in a snitty mood around my birthday, a mood entirely turned around by my champ of a husband. I don't think it all comes through in the post, but to me it is a mood piece.  Yes, a mood piece like Solaris.

And, my favorite picture from last year. Maybe my favorite picture I've ever taken, from this post:




If you've got a retrospective post, please toot your horn in the comments.  Toot TOOT!

Happy Monday! Our kids are still out of school.  So maybe one more day of padding around in socks until evening.

xo
B

Suburban Matron on Ohdeedoh Today

Y'all!  I am featured today on Ohdeedoh, the parenting section of the Apartment Therapy megablog.  Beth Callaghan, who writes for them, in addition to her blog Remarkably Domestic, sent me some great questions to ponder and respond to, and then she did a truly sweet profile of Suburban Matron.  It was so much fun to do, and  she is the best blog friend a girl could have.  Go over there and have a look! And if a bunch of us leave comments, maybe Beth will win the pink cadillac, or be elected Homecoming Queen! Or something good, which she definitely deserves.

I have mentioned this before, but if you are not familiar with her blog, Beth is crafting her way through the Martha Stewart Encyclopedia of Crafts, from A to Z.  She is, I believe, working her way through "F" for "Foliage" right now (or is it "B" for "Botanical"?)  She's done about 30 crafts and documented the labor involved, always ending with a "Was it worth it?" section.  I expected this project to be interesting, but I did not expect it to turn into such an exposé.  Many of the items on Martha's supply lists, it turns out, are practically Unobtainium and cannot be tracked down by a normal person without a staff of minions. Her latest project had her harvesting seaweed.  

Y'all, when one of the steps in a project is "Harvest seaweed," that is a sign that I'm going to be doing something else.  But it makes for great reading.  And I'm not just saying that because Beth has now catapulted me to fame. But I AM famous now, RIGHT?  

Go check me out!

Air kisses, 

B

Left us hanging by a soapy thread

Well, she's done it again. Becky's off to California for a few days. (This is Amy, by the way.)

I called her a couple nights ago. "What are you doing?" I asked. (Which is code for Why haven't you blogged?) "Watching Mad Men," she said. "Mom--would you pause that?" "Hey--I didn't know Mom and Dad were there," I said, surprised. "Yes," Beck answered, "I'm seeing our parents behind your back."

After I got over the shock and betrayal, I learned that Mom and Dad had come to ride herd on Hank and Laura because Becky had to go to California for a few days. That can happen, you know. The sudden urge to fly to California. Perhaps it's the guacamole?

Not to worry, though! She's flying home on Saturday, and when I talked to her today, she thought she'd be able to check in and update us sometime before then. It's a good thing, I told her, cause we all need to know what the deal is with the Ivory Soap. You can't just throw that out there and then leave.

I would never do that to y'all. I'm the responsible one. Or wait, maybe I'm the guilt-ridden one. I can never remember.

Anyway, just wanted to put you at ease. Becky is just fine, and all is well at the SubMat household!

Now, Beck--resume your post!

BlogHer 2010: In Which I Tire of My Wig

I know, another post about the BlogHer conference. I mean, move on already, you've been back for a week! I know, this is the last one. I just have some snips and snaps to share.

In addition to my ladies up there, Keely, Jenni, and Gretchen, I got to meet:

Kim Tracy Prince, total sweetheart.

Casey, as hilarious as you'd think.

Carrie Kirby, the Frugalista, I've been reading her since I started blogging.

One upshot of all this photo snapping and seeing myself in photo after photo was that I became heartily sick of Codi. Codi is fine but she never changes. She is always just sitting there being a wig.

I met Jenny the Bloggess, who famously wears "confidence wigs" to these conferences, though this year she went with a fake ponytail, which was cute as a bug. I was starstruck. Anyway, she was as friendly as could be and she complimented my hair, and I was all, "Thank you but it's a wig because I had chemo this year and I'm going to be fine but I'm totally sick of this hair." To her credit, she did not say, "OMG, what can of worms have I just opened?" Instead she told me that I need several wigs. Six, she said. So I guess I am doing this wrong and I need more wigs. They can't all cost as much as Codi though. I need to track down a source of fun but cheap wigs. There's a sentence I never thought I'd write.

I am also growing to embrace the hat look more. It feels less fussy. And anytime there will be sweating involved, I leave the wig at home. In NYC, it occurred to me that a bald lady doesn't attract the attention on the streets that she does in my burb. It is really hard to attract attention in NYC, there is one of everybody there. So one day of the conference I declared to be wig-free day.

Bald girl in the ci-tay! More pics of the whole affair are here. Oh, and Gretchen showed me that little Hipstamatic app for the iphone. I like the snaps it takes.

The cafe at MOMA was very good, and not really expensive, considering. Thanks to Femme Follette for that pro tip.

And this impressed me (last pic, I swear):

The high chairs at MOMA are Stokke Tripp Trapps. I like all the different colors they have. And these are much cleaner than the one at my house. That's what impressed me--that a high chair can be clean. Maybe they have a lot of beagles that lick them, I don't know.