avocado8

The Next Day

I was planning to write a basically cheery post about how the Beaner woke up happy this morning, as is usual after a meltdown the previous evening, but then his teacher called. We knew he'd been taken out of the classroom a few weeks ago because he was having "body control issues," but when Al asked about it, no details were given. When his teacher called to ask that we reinforce this at home, I said that I needed to understand better what the problem was, or I wouldn't be able to reinforce whatever messages they were giving him at school.

So it turns out that the Beaner has been pushing other kids periodically, and that he's especially bad about touching other kids' work. He can't seem to focus on his own work; he wants to watch other kids work, and then interfere with whatever they're doing. This is obviously not acceptable, and he's been told (by the teacher and other staff) that if he wants to watch other kids work, he needs to keep his hands behind his back.

He seems unable to do this, however, and after messing with another kid's project today the teacher took him out of class again and talked to him about it. She asked him why he did it, and he replied, "because I wanted to." Well, that's a familiar (and frustrating) refrain.

I'm hoping we can get this under control, but at the same time I'm also a little annoyed that the school didn't bring us in earlier. Perhaps they didn't want us to overreact, but now the situation is dire, and I'm feeling the pressure to fix it fast or face having the Beaner be ejected from the class. Ugh.

Talking About It

I was trying to think of a name for this post before I started writing it (sometimes a good idea, but just as often it's better to wait until I'm finished), and Fat Boy Slim's "Won't Talk About It" is playing on my iPod at the moment, so there you go. I was worried about signing up for NaBloPoMo this year, especially with my full plate and the still-trying-to-keep-myself-on-the-upward-spiral situation (I've been mostly successful in, if not exactly staying up, then at least in keeping myself from spiraling down), but now I'm more worried about blowing my wad all on day 1 and having nothing to say for the next few days.

Anyway, what I'm posting again to say is that I did talk to the Beaner about the school situation before I blogged about it, but that it was bugging me so much I went downstairs to talk to him again. I know this is tricky with toddlers, but man, I was sad. (See above re: trying not to spiral downward.)

Luckily he and Aura were sitting in the big chair watching Diego, so I just asked if I could have Aura's spot. She quickly gave it up and went upstairs to wash dishes (thanks for that, Aura!) while I snuggled the Beaner. I realized pretty quickly that his entire attention was consumed by Diego, so I just went with that. When the credits rolled, I mentioned that I was sad about school still. That I wanted him to do well, get along, and not interfere with other kids' work.

"I can do better tomorrow, Mommy," he said.

"Really?" I asked. "You will keep your hands behind your back when watching others work, and not push other kids? If someone else wants to work on the same thing you want to work on, you'll say, 'Can I have a turn when you're finished?'"

"Yes," he said. "I can do that."

I smiled at him weakly, and he smiled back, much more broadly. "Are you happy now, Mommy?"

"Yes, Boo. It makes Mommy happy to know that you are doing well at school, that you're getting along with others."

Incidentally, one of the things I was planning to post about this week but hadn't gotten around to was our playdate with Sarah and the Goon Squad. Sarah lives close to my in-laws in Northern Virginia, and we went down for a visit last weekend, so we arranged to meet at a small playground near a Little League field. This is related to the above discussion because right when Sarah asked how I'd managed to potty train the Beaner, he saved me from having to try to remember all the advances and setbacks along that route by shoving Claudia away from the steering wheel attached to the play structure and making her cry.

He was positioned above my head at that point, which made it difficult for me to grab and separate him from Claudia, but I gave him a stern "[NAME]! Claudia was using that! You have to wait your turn!"... at which point he burst into tears. I tried to grab him from the slide side [see photo below; the steering wheel is just to the right of Ian], which is when he made the grab for his crotch. Visions of him peeing in his pants from the stress flashed through my brain. "How could you do this to me???" I thought frantically. "Sarah was just asking about my brilliant potty training skillz, and now you're going to wet your pants!"

Instead I said, rather urgently, "do you need to pee?" He nodded while continuing to wail. I said, "just hold on, buddy, we'll find you a bathroom. Hold it, please." I asked Sarah if there was a bathroom nearby, and she indicated that the square building a few yards away was my best bet. Good news: It did indeed have bathrooms on the other side. Bad news: They were locked. I said to the Beaner, "OK, we don't usually do this; it's only for real emergencies, and this is one. We're going to pee outside. Here, step over to this area, and I'll help you avoid peeing in your pants."

"Look," he said. "I'm peeing through the fence." Yes, folks: Mad potty training skillz *and* great aim.

Anyway, after I'd gotten his clothing straightened, I picked him up and said, "it's not OK to push people. If Claudia is doing something you want to do, say 'can I have a turn when you're finished?' Whether she says yes or no, step back and let her have some space. She'll be done soon anyway. OK?" He nodded, and play resumed amicably.

After this incident at the playdate, it wasn't hard for me to imagine the scenario involved when his teacher mentioned on the phone that he was having trouble with pushing. I also knew that the "don't push, ask if you can have a turn" message would be somewhat familiar to him, and I reminded him of the steering wheel dispute with Claudia to jog his memory. It's why this time I believe him when he says he can do better tomorrow; I know he has a frame of reference for improvement. I assume he knows what his teacher expects of him; now he knows what I expect of him, too. Hopefully my message is very similar to hers (or rather, vice versa), and that he'll take it to heart.

Before I leave the subject of the playdate entirely, I want to say what a fun time I had. Sarah was really normal, and I mean that as a compliment of the highest order. I've been trying to think of a way to explain it that the extroverts in the audience will also understand, and "normal" is the best I could come up with. To introverts I would say that I didn't have to work to be around her, and they'd get it immediately.** (See stars for side story that just occurred to me.) She's totally down to earth, smart, nice, and funny. Her kids were a riot, too. There was a small dispute between Claudia and the Beaner over the wagon in addition to the steering wheel incident, but it was funny (at least to me) rather than stress-pee-inducing.

Claudia tries to extract the Beaner from the wagon, but he's all, "I can't hear you."

I can't show you the rest of the photos from the playdate because all three kids ended up taking their shirts off, and posting pictures of shirtless kids on the Internet is asking for trouble. (The photos are available to close friends and family only on Flickr.) It all got a little crazy when the Beaner spotted the ball field and said, "look, a baseball field! I'm going to need my golf clubs." Hilarity (and surprisingly few injuries) ensued when I got his set of 3 clubs (convenient!) out of the trunk of the car, and Sarah and I spent the next 45 minutes or so trying to keep enough space between the kids that nobody got clubbed.

Oh wait, here's one of Ian with his shirt still on, inspecting his driver for defects:

So bottom line here:

• Sarah: very cool.
• Playdate: fun.
• School situation: will improve tomorrow. crosses fingers
• Lori: easily-saddened introvert, prone to giving small children blunt weapons with which to play.

** The story that occurred to me was about MAX, where I presented four sessions this time last month, to the dismay of my bowels. My colleague, Kin, said that it was interesting to see the behind-the-scenes stress and then how I "turned it on" as soon as the microphone went on. He said it was like seeing a split personality in action. This may help explain better what I mean by having to work at it; I think I'm a decent speaker (not a great one, but adequate), but it takes an enormous toll on me emotionally and physically to get into my "on" state. Being able to interact with people without having to switch "on" is an enormous relief.

Not Bad. Not Bad At All.

Y'all, he did it. He went to sleep on his own.

We went to Wegmans for dinner/grocery shopping tonight, and we got home a little past the time when the Beaner would normally have his bath or shower. I said I'd put away the groceries while Al took him upstairs and got him ready for bed. While I was stuffing soy milk into the storage room, I heard a bout of wailing from upstairs; the word "snuggle" was distinct a few times, but the rest was not. I continued putting groceries away.

When I was finished, I went upstairs to find Al and the Beaner practicing watching each other "work" with the Beaner's Diego dominoes: hands behind back, no comments, no reaching in to grab anything. That's when I got to see the urge to interfere in action, and I wondered if we've accidentally been teaching him this behavior (though it's partly his personality as well). Montessori materials are self-correcting, so the child can figure out for himself when he's done something wrong and fix it, no adult interference necessary. At home, however, the Beaner often tries to use various gadgets that weren't meant for children, or that were meant for children but aren't obvious how to use. We're always doing the "here, let me show you" thing. I've been consciously trying to let him figure things out for himself for a while now, but I'm probably still taking things out of his hands "to show him how" more often than I should.

Anyway, after a few rounds of practicing watching, I showed him how to get out something else and focus on that while Al was working with the dominoes. "See? You don't have to just watch; you can do your own thing, too. Circle time and play deck time are for interacting with others. When others are working, you can be working, too." He wanted to work *together*, however, so we got out some old baby bottles and worked on matching the caps to the different bottles.

When we finished that, I picked him up and gave him a snuggle, and then I announced I was ready to read him his bedtime story. He asked me to drop him on the bed, so I did, and then I pulled the covers up over him. (Usually he sleeps without covers—unless he's putting himself to bed, as in a hotel room.) When I sat down in the dining room chair I'd brought upstairs and placed next to his bed, he sat up. "No, lie down, silly," I said.

"But I want to sit next to you," he said.

"You are sitting next to me," I laughed. He smiled, but he didn't lie down all the way. "Here, I'll hold the book so you can see it. You won't miss anything."

He settled back onto his pillow, and I read Good Night, Blue! We sang Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star when it got to the part about singing a bedtime song, and when I reached the end, I leaned over to kiss him goodnight. He threw his arms around my neck and said, "you gotta snuggle me."

"No, sweetie," I laughed again (trying to keep it light, so he'd know I wasn't punishing him). "I'll snuggle you in the morning. Remember how you came out this morning and said, 'Mommy! I'm awake!' and I said, 'OK, go pee pee, and I'll be right up!'? We can do that again tomorrow morning. Tonight I'm going to kiss you goodnight and tuck you in, and tomorrow morning you can tell me when you're awake. I'll come up and snuggle you for a bit, and then we'll get up and brush our teeth and get dressed!"

"OK!" he said. And with that, he pulled the covers around him, flipped over, and bade me good night.

About 15 minutes later, when I was downstairs talking to Al in the kitchen, I heard him call, "Mommy!" from the top of the stairs.

"Yes, boo?"

"I have a boogey."

"OK, sweetie. I'll bring you your very own Kleenex box, and you'll be all set," I said as I climbed the stairs. When I got to the top he smiled at me, thanked me for the box, and turned to go back to his room. "Gimme kiss," I said. He did, and that was the last I heard from his room. I waited about 45 minutes before coming back upstairs to work some more (I used the time to start switching the contents of my closet from summer shorts and Mossimo Ts to Gap Tall shirts and sweaters.)

I haven't peeked in to see if he's OK; I'm sure he's fine. And I'm curious to see who wakes up first in the morning: me or him. (It used to be him on a regular basis, and it was him—at 6:25—this morning, but for the past month or so it's been me poking him awake at 7:30am.) I'm also dying to see if it lasts.

Oh, I forgot to mention: This bed might have been the incentive he needed. I showed him the photo online last night, when he was in the middle of his meltdown, and he expressed interest in it. (I'm glad I saw the link to it on ratphooey's site yesterday when I was catching up on my blog reading.) We'd been telling him that we were going to get him a bed "just his size" soon, to warm him to the idea of going to sleep on his own, but we haven't had the time to pick one out yet. He asked about the tent bed again in the morning, so I decided to just go ahead and order it.

On our way home from school he said, "is my new bed here yet?" I replied that I'd ordered it, but that it wouldn't be here for a couple weeks. It's all he could talk about, though: the picnics he'd have under the tent, the fun he'd have climbing it. He's very excited.

Ow, WTF?

So I've been packing on the poundage lately, most likely because (a) I've been depressed, (b) I've been sedentary (well, I *did* start walking daily in August and playing hockey in September, but before that my injured ankle made me less active than usual), and (c) I can't seem to get the pregnancy and nursing nutrition guidelines, wherein fat = good, out of my brain. I haven't been nursing the Beaner since December, 2005, and yet I'm still eating like I am.

When I got up to what for me is a rather alarming number a couple weeks ago, I decided to start counting Points again. (I use the old Weight Watchers point system from the early 90s, before the fiber modifications, because it's worked for me before.) I'd been doing great; maybe not feeling thinner or noticing the change so much in my clothes, but I did feel like I'd at least reversed the upward trend.

This morning, however—despite having neither gained or lost any weight for two days—I suddenly can't simultaneously breathe, sit, and wear pants. One of these things has to go. Picture baking a double recipe of cake batter in a single 9" pan, and you have an idea what my stomach looks like spilling over my jeans. It's not only ugly, it HURTS! Ow! What the f&^% has happened?

And why does this painful scenario make me want to eat more rather than less?

Update: I removed my jeans and put on stretchy, too-big yoga pants. It was an emergency, y'all!

NOT Expired

Several folks had commented here, in person, and in my Flickr stream about the neat photos I've been getting from the expired film in the Vivitar IC 101. As an experiment, I decided to try some non-expired (i.e., fresh) film in the Vivitar to see if the results were any different.

I'm here to tell you, folks: It ain't the film. Aside from what I perceive to be a slight increase in film speed with the fresh Portra 800vc and 400vc test rolls, there's really no difference between the expired rolls I'd been using and the refrigerated fresh ones. The colors are just as wacky. See for yourself:

Portra 800VC, not expired, stored in a film refrigerator. Developed at Walgreen's.

Portra 400VC, not expired, stored in a film refrigerator. Developed at CVS.

I'm trying a roll of fresh 400CN (purchased from an unrefrigerated rack at Walgreen's) in the camera now and will post the results as soon as they've been developed. I'm also hanging out in eBay's film section, looking for cheap lots of C-41 film. Man, this camera is fun.

At The Horsey Park

Let's not talk about how I forgot to blog yesterday, shall we?

The Beaner to me, minutes ago: "Hey, you're under the jungle jingle, Mommy!"

Lentil Stew

I'm trying to remember now what inspired the lentil stew recipe I make regularly every winter. I think it was a similar dish served at the World Bank cafeteria 15 years or so ago; I know it was while I was living in Arlington, VA and working at the World Bank that I started making it, so that history seems plausible. I do remember that the dish I was trying to imitate was called Lentil-Mushroom Stew, so of course my version has mushrooms in it.

I made a batch yesterday that was so tasty that I ate it again for breakfast this morning. It may just be the best batch I've ever made. It was also the easiest, since I used bagged, pre-cooked potatoes, pre-sliced mushrooms, and baby carrots. I also had pre-diced onions on hand, but I like my onions a little bigger in this dish, so there *was* actual chopping involved. Here's what I threw into the crock pot/slow cooker:

2 cans Progresso Lentil soup
1/2 bag baby carrots
1 cup (roughly) frozen pumpkin or butternut squash (I can't remember which) from last season

Because I didn't have the rest of the ingredients, these two got a 2-hour head start. The carrots actually could have used more time, or perhaps a higher heat. When we returned from Wegmans, I added:

1/2 bag rosemary and garlic-seasoned, diced, pre-cooked red potatoes
1/2 container sliced baby bella (crimini) mushrooms
1/2 med-large yellow onion, coarsely chopped
a couple dashes dried thyme
a pinch of dried rosemary leaves, crushed

I stirred the whole mess together and let it cook on Lo for another couple hours while we took the Beaner ice skating for the first time in his life.

When we got back, I opened one of the bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon that I'd picked up in New Jersey when we were on our way to Wegmans earlier, and I poured myself a glass. I then poured a couple splashes into the stew.

Next I mixed about a teaspoon of cornstarch with maybe a tablespoon or so of water in a wee little mixing bowl until all the lumps dissolved, and then I dumped that into the stew and stirred until it disappeared.

Then I drank two glasses of wine. I think it was two. Anyway, eventually, maybe another hour or so later, the stew was ready to eat. As mentioned, the carrots could have used a little more time, but the rest was perfect. I actually served mine with some slices of Honeycrisp apple (stuck right into the stew), a bit of grated smoked cheddar cheese, half a slice of crusty multigrain bread, and a shake of very coarse sea salt. YUM.

It's not a photogenic dish, so I didn't bother snapping any pictures of the end result, but it's a great option for cool fall and winter afternoons. I also recommend the cabernet; it worked really well with the stew (though not so much with the apples).

iPhone Time Zones

I am LOVING my iPhone. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE. Don't know how I ever lived without it. I am, however, having one teensy little frustration (OK, a couple, but this is the one that's giving me fits at the moment): I can't seem to sync my Outlook calendar properly to my iPhone when meetings (or rather, one particular recurring meeting) are scheduled in another time zone.

I have a meeting that's scheduled every Monday, Tuesday, and Friday at 11am Pacific time (2pm Eastern). After syncing with my iPhone, Outlook seems to think that the meeting is scheduled at 2pm Pacific time, and blocks out the 5pm-6pm hour on my calendar. Meanwhile, the iPhone is hunky-dorey and reports the meeting correctly at 2pm. If, however, I move all the meeting blocks from 5pm-6pm to 2pm-3pm on my Outlook calendar (manually, because I don't control the meeting invite and thus can't change recurrence without screwing up the exceptions to the invite), they end up at 11am on my iPhone. Arg!

I'd rather have the times right on my Outlook calendar, if I had to choose, because that's the calendar everyone else on my team sees and schedules around. However, what I most want is to have the iPhone and Outlook tell me THE SAME THING.

Since it's only this meeting that's screwed up, I might just erase the original invite and put my own meeting reminder in manually. But in the meantime, does anyone reading this know what happened, and how to fix it? Besides setting my Time Zone support to "on" on the iPhone, what else should I be doing? (Or is that wrong to begin with?)

The Squid in the Bathtub

I mentioned in an earlier post that my friend Kristin came to visit a couple weeks ago, and she brought the Beaner a bunch of cool! presents! One was a motorized squid that Beaner could not *wait* to try in the tub. (He won't take a bath without it now, actually.) I shot this video the night the gift was given, but my lazy ass just uploaded it tonight. I offer it for your amusement, though you may not find it as entertaining as I do.

All Kinds of Trouble

Gah, I thought it was just a fluke that I couldn't connect to my site via FTP for the past three days from my Mac, but it wasn't. I discovered that I can't connect to it from anywhere. My ISP is looking into the problem now.

To top off a bad night technically, I was trying to figure out why the squid video wasn't showing up, and I went to look at a hockey blog entry to see what I'd done *right* over there. Whole hockey site is 404. WTF? The pages are all there; looks like maybe somebody over at the ISP cut off my lori-and-al domain, maybe?

Busy, Busy

I'm starting to find my footing again at work, but at the same time I find myself wishing I could have more time off. Running the household, I found in 2003-2004, is a full- time (or nearly full-time) gig. Why I think I can do it competently while also taking on more responsibility at work, I'll probably never understand, but that's my expectation.

I was going to make a long list of the things I would do if I had the next week or three off from work, but one bullet point in I realized that (a) it's too hard to write HTML blog posts on an iPhone, and (b) I'll have to do the first 8 or 9 things on the list before Friday, work or no. The things that will fall off the list are catching up with e-mail and written correspondence, shopping for the perfect birthday gift for my sister, reading, and sleeping. Probably some writing/photography/blogging/web projects, too. All the other stuff, from sending out invitations for--and then planning--the Beaner's third birthday party to paying bills and filing expense reports, must get done. Oh, and so must the work I actually get paid to do.

I've got to figure out what I can drop or delegate while still feeling like I'm accomplishing something professionally, being a good parent, and expressing myself creatively. Just your everyday Mom dilemma, I know. How clichéd.

Can't Do It

Yeah, so NaBloPoMo is pretty much over for me. I'll keep writing when I can—and for all I know, that might be every day for the rest of this month and into December—but it's just not my first priority these days. Keeping myself above water emotionally, writing my version of my annual review (yep, it's even *more* fun this year, when I feel like a total failure—woo!), giving feedback on no less than five colleagues, fixing bugs, paying bills, writing new code, keeping track of five engineers to make sure they're happy and on track, managing two hockey schedules, a Thanksgiving commitment, a soon to be three year-old's birthday party, my first parent-teacher conference, and... oh crap, open enrollment for our benefits.

Didn't I already write this post, you ask? Yeah, I think I did. Sorry about that. Hopefully whatever I write next will be totally original.

Oh, and though I'm behind in posting my photos to the NaBloShoeMo pool, I *have* been taking pictures of my Danskos every day. I'm also catching up on my My Every Day photos in spurts because sometimes the photo I want to use for that day is on a roll of film, and I only get those developed every 3 or 4 days. So I do have a creative outlet, and of course I have hockey (though I haven't been writing about that, either, I *have* been posting some videos to vimeo). I guess it's more about the photos and videos than the words these days.

Expectations

I found this New York Times article, Bad Behavior Does Not Doom Pupils, Studies Say, interesting, not so much because of any implications it might have for the Beaner's school career, but because it highlighted something I'd already been thinking about: emotional maturity. The quote that stuck out for me:

“I think these may become landmark findings, forcing us to ask whether these acting-out kinds of problems are secondary to the inappropriate maturity expectations that some educators place on young children as soon as they enter classrooms,” said Sharon Landesman Ramey, director of the Georgetown University Center on Health and Education, who was not connected with either study.

I was saying to my sister yesterday that because the Beaner is rather clever and articulate (not to mention somewhat large for his age—at his 3-year checkup on Friday he measured in the 95th percentile for weight and the 76th percentile for height, and he's been wearing size 4T for the past six months at least), I sometimes forget that he hasn't even turned 3 yet. My expectations for how much he should be able to focus, how responsible he should be, how reasonable he should be might be too high.

He's already risen to several challenges; he goes to the bathroom by himself, turns on lights by himself (with the aid of a stepstool), puts himself to bed now (victory!), and even gets his own breakfast some days. He can help unload the dishwasher, sort the laundry, and put away his toys. He can now sit through—and even asks for—longer stories that he shunned a few months ago, such as Make Way for Ducklings or Paddington Bear at the Circus, or even a chapter or two of an Arthur story or Harry Potter. He climbs the stairs to his classroom all by himself, and he's started to remember what he's done at school and tell us about it.

In short, he's made great strides over the past year and even the past two or three months. We can still keep our expectations high and let him know how we expect him to behave, but we also need to cut him some slack and give him some time. He's got a lot of new information to absorb, and a not-yet-three year-old's attention span.

Redesigning

I realized this morning that all the (non-work) projects on my list involve re-designing/re-configuring. Apparently I am in need of change. I want to rearrange my office, get a new chair, and get an L for my current desk so I have actual space for all my computers. Currently my MacBook is up on a pantry rack, both to keep it cool and so that I have space for two mice underneath; my personal laptop is on the too-high-for-a-seated-person project table; and my chair, which was bought for my old drafting table-style desk, is too high. My shoulders are always aching from hunching over.

We've been giving some thought to moving my office into the guest room, getting rid of the queen-sized bed in there in favor of a sleeper sofa, and returning my current space to its original sitting area status or leaving the project table here and using it as the craft area. I'd like that, since I lost my combo craft area/office when the Beaner came along. The trick will be Internet access; currently there's none in the guest room. There's a line running up from the cable modem in the basement in the Beaner's room (again, because it used to be my office), as well as a second cable modem hooked up to the cable line in there. We could move the second cable modem to the guest room and run all my connections through there, but we'd have to do some thinking about how everything is split.

Meanwhile, the frame for the Beaner's new bed arrived yesterday, and we've been thinking about how we want to rejigger his room to accommodate it. I didn't bother to get the dimensions of the bed or measure the room before I ordered it, so we're now wondering if the slide's going to work at all. Al has suggested moving everything out, Trading Spaces-style, and then reassembling the room around the bed. We might have to do that.

We also need to make some adjustments to the storage in the living room, and we're considering moving one of the Expedits down there and getting rid of the white dresser, which was supposed to be an interim solution (one I never liked). The living room and the entry hall both need fresh paint and photos or art on the walls. Oh, and speaking of painting, we still need to touch up a bunch of spots in the bathroom. I really want to get that finished and cleaned so I can take photos of it to show y'all.

Last, but not least, I want to redesign my websites. Both the avocado8 and the hockey blogs have gone a long time with their current designs (avocado8 has gotten some tweaks over the past couple years, but I realized yesterday that the hockey blog's last redesign was October 2005). This is obviously rather low priority, as they're working fine the way they are, and I haven't even been updating the hockey blog as much as I'd like to anyway.

I think the bottom line is: I'm in need of a little Autumn Cleaning, and I need to take 2-3 weeks off work to do it. Hrmmm. There's got to be a way to get this all done before summer.

Babo To the Rescue

It's been a rough night workwise, and I think I'm about to throw in the towel and go to bed, for Pete's sake. But before I do, please allow me to share with you the photo that's been getting me through the day:

It was amusing enough on its own, but then Myla went and commented that it looks like a stick-up, and now it's hi-fucking-larious. A snort-inducing laugh is always a good thing.

Sock It To Me!

I've got a lot of things I want to write about on the parenting front, but I've been sitting on them because I'm not sure I want to share publicly. It's a funny thing how sometimes you'd rather share with random strangers than with those closest to you; in those cases, since many close friends and family members read my blog regularly, I usually choose to keep the posts to myself. I either write them in a paper journal, or I post them in a private blog just for me and Al, as I did when I was pregnant.

I've been going the paper route since the Beaner was born, but I'm thinking it might be time to start another private blog. Whether I do or not, I need to get it all out for both posterity and sanity, and *then* decide whether I want to share. While I'm on this subject, a big thank you to anyone reading: Y'all have been really good about not trying to offer advice via e-mail or other posts when I turn off comments. Thanks for understanding my need to spew into the void sometimes.

Anyway, what I'd intended to post about tonight was SOCKS! I've been posting photos of my shoes (more specifically, my Dansko clogs) in the NaBloShoeMo pool for the past 26 days, and lately I've also been showing off my socks... mainly because I was induced to buy a new pair of Dansko mary janes* by the NaBloShoeMo craziness, and mary janes just CRY OUT for creative sockage.

Either my Danskos have become boring, or my socks have become interesting, because lately most of the comments on my shoe photos have been about the socks. This morning BipolarLawyerCook suggested that I start a sock pool for December, and I immediately searched Flickr's groups to see if there was a group called Sock It To Me.

Well, there is now!

If you're not totally sick of blogging/photographing your shoes every day and have some interesting socks to share, come post in the pool starting on December 1. You don't have to post a sock photo every day; just post when you're wearing a pair that you wish more people could see.

* I consider myself conservative on this front; I suspect many more women bought many more pairs of shoes after seeing all the cute offerings in the pool.

All This Time, He's Had a Polaroid

Al swears up and down that he told me this a long time ago, but I don't remember it: He has a Polaroid. All this time it's been sitting in a dusty bin somewhere in the basement. All this time!

It's out now, mainly because the weekend before Thanksgiving we were talking about games to play at the Beaner's third birthday party, and I mentioned that Martha Stewart had this sweet idea for a "pin the face on the jack 'o lantern" game that involved taking Polaroid photos of each kid's attempt. I lamented that the Beaner's birthday fell after jack 'o lantern season, and that we did not have a Polaroid camera. "My sister has one, though," I said. "Maybe I could borrow it?"

"I have a Polaroid," said Al.

If he's right that he told me this before—more than once!—then I must be as bad at listening as he is sometimes. In any case, minutes later he'd dug it out for me, and I was on eBay looking for cheap 600 film. (That shit's EXPENSIVE when you're paying retail.) The 4-pack I got for a bit of a discount on eBay arrived today, and of course I had to test it before I could leave proper feedback for the seller.

Expect more like this to pop up in my Flickr stream from time to time. Meanwhile, Al is starting to worry about my camera and film habit...

Mushroom Stroganoff From Memory

I just got a craving for something warm, creamy, and savory for lunch, so I decided to make the mushroom stroganoff I used to make when I was in high school and college. The problem is that I haven't made it in about 15 years, and I couldn't remember the recipe. Also, I only had a single can of mushrooms, no fresh ones. (I *am* handicapped, aren't I?)

The one thing I remembered was that it tasted good over Minute Rice, which I also don't stock. I substituted Trader Joe's brown rice (in the stand-up package), and found it to be too hard. Next time I'll go with the traditional noodles. Anyway, here's what I did:

1. Melt about 1 T. butter in dutch oven or large saucepan
2. Dump in about 1/2 a bag Wegman's chopped onions (mine were in the freezer)
3. Saute onions while opening small can mushrooms (large can, two small cans, or a container of fresh mushrooms would have been better
4. Dump mushrooms in with onions and continue to saute
5. Open can of reduced-fat condensed mushroom soup (regular would have been fine, too) and dump into onions and mushrooms; stir to combine
6. Dump in 1/2 a bag of Trader Joe's vegetarian meatballs (I wish now I'd left these out, but in the absence of more mushrooms, they acted as filler)
7. Cook until meatballs are heated through, then reduce heat to Lo
8. Throw in about 8oz. sour cream and stir thoroughly
9. Decide mixture should be soupier, consult Joy of Cooking, dump in some Pinot Grigio from a box (or whatever white wine you have on hand
10. Stir and heat through
11. Serve
12. Decide the mixture is still too thick, go back downstairs and saute some more onions in a bit of butter until browned
13. Deglaze with about 1/2 cup more white wine, and let some of the alcohol boil off
14. Dump wine and onions into stroganoff and stir

Much better. Note to self: Buy more mushrooms.