“Smell Like a Monster” on YouTube
Thank you, Sesame Street! (And thank you, too, Wandering Scientist!)
Chicken, Mozzarella, and Asparagus Pasta on The Coterie Blog
Yum. Just, yum.
23 Fun Summer Bucket List Activities for Families on Parenting Squad
If August finds you running out of ideas for what to do with your kids, here are some more.
Cats in Sinks
You really shouldn’t need more explanation than that.
Perfect for the crazy days.
Photo by super-structure, via Flickr.
The On Mom has a post about party planning and Pinterest that definitely is worth a read. As for me, I like Pinterest. I think it’s fun, and I use it a fair amount.
I don’t base my life on it.
See, my approach to Pinterest is to save and share things I like. I just want to look at them, not transform my existence. But I keep reading about how Pinterest is increasing “mom guilt” as real-world moms feel their efforts don’t measure up to the perfection on Pinterest.
Sorry, but I think that’s your fault. You shouldn’t be taking pins so personally.
Even in the real world, I’m apt to scale back from what I see. We’ve been to a number of birthday parties for our neighbors’ children and Baguette’s classmates, and they’ve all been nice. We’ve been to several indoor playgrounds, a backyard pool party, and one bounce house/ball pit/wading pool fiesta.
My thoughts? The indoor playgrounds are expensive, but really easy. So that’s tempting, because I don’t have to clean the house. The pool party was nice, but we don’t have a pool. And I am not yet ready to rent a bounce house. I’m just not.
So far, Baguette’s birthday parties have featured family getting together for a cookout followed by cake. We have not invited her friends. Our thought has been that she didn’t understand gifts, and she didn’t know what parties were.
Well, she does know now–and that’s fine. We’re not trying to keep the concept of parties from her. So when her third birthday rolls around, we’ll plan something more child-focused than the birthday parties we’ve had so far.
We’ll invite some of her friends, I’ll make a cake (if I have time), and I’m totally open to buying themed plates, napkins, and cups. I’ll even spring for the coordinating banner.
But why should I worry about whether it matches something on Pinterest? Baguette couldn’t care less, and it’s her party.
Photo by asleeponasunbeam via Flickr.
That’s it. That’s your warning. If you read beyond this (which I’m adding for those of you who get previews in your RSS readers), then consider yourself to have made an informed choice. You’re about to read plot and character details from a book that I’m reading and loathing. Ready? Here we go:
So I’m reading Secret Lives by Diane Chamberlain (not to be confused with The Secret Life of Ceecee Wilkes, by the same author). It’s my first book by Chamberlain, and it’s likely to be my last.
The basic story is this: Eden, an actress and divorced mother, goes back to her hometown to write a screenplay about her late mother. In the process, she discovers long-hidden family secrets which serve largely as counterpoint to her own dilemmas.
One of those dilemmas–and this is where the book completely loses me–is whether she should have a relationship with a convicted child molester.
He’s innocent, of course. The book makes this clear, and Eden believes in his innocence almost immediately. But here’s the thing:
The love interest, Ben, has been convicted of molesting his own daughter. Eden has no qualms–literally none, about leaving her own young daughter alone in his care. She refuses to spend even a moment thinking about how this would affect:
Seriously, when her agent points out that Eden’s ex-husband may go to court to change their custody agreement to keep her away from the convicted child molester, Eden’s response is, “I have an excellent lawyer.”
Then, when the totally predictable public reaction occurs, Eden is shocked and devastated. Because she had no idea it could happen. Because she is a complete moron.
Eden is able to identify the real molester after he touches her own daughter inappropriately. But she’s not angry, really, because “I’m sure he thought that was the only way he could get me to figure out what was going on without actually telling me.”
What?
Look, I get it. Women do this. They trust their children with people they shouldn’t–and the reason they shouldn’t is that those people aren’t innocent. I know this happens in the real world. And the fact that it does is horrible.
But this is a novel, and I’m clearly supposed to relate to Eden, and find her decisions to be reasonable. And they aren’t. I can understand that she believes in Ben’s innocence. I cannot believe that she doesn’t think about how others will perceive the situation. I cannot believe that she thinks her ex-husband is small-minded when he objects to his 4-year-old spending time with a convicted sex offender.
I cannot relate to this woman. I don’t like her. I think she’s self-centered and oblivious to a degree that is potentially damaging to the most defenseless people around her.
And beyond that, I’m really bothered that the real problem is how inconvenient this problem is for Eden, because she reallyreally loves Ben. The close second is how horrible it’s been for Ben to be living with this false accusation and conviction. But isn’t the real horror what happened to his daughter? Maybe not, because Chamberlain doesn’t seem to want to spend much time on her.
So why am I finishing this book? I guess because I want to see how it ends, and because it’s like that accident on the side of the road that everyone slows down to look at.
I’m not reading, I’m rubbernecking.
As of today, I have been blogging for seven years. I think that hyperlinked text may be longer than my first blog post. So how has my blogging evolved?
In fact, (as you may be able to tell from that first post) I started two blogs–one was Cake Batter, and the other was Tragic Sandwich–which I later merged.
At some point I migrated from Blogger to WordPress, and haven’t looked back. (BTW, the “Tragic Sandwich” blog that’s currently on Blogger? Not me. I should have figured out how to keep that URL.)
It took me a while, but I did learn how to embed photos.
Over time, I got better at it.
What I write about has changed.
The structure of my posts has changed (I still like this one about disgusting wine, but I would definitely hyperlink it if I were writing it today).
With more years of marriage (Mr. Sandwich and I had been married for about 14 months when I started blogging), a home purchase, and most importantly the much-desired arrival of Baguette, my life has changed far more than my blogging.
That said, I am beginning to have an idea that I may be at the point where blogging starts to change my life. Fingers crossed.
How long have you been blogging? And what’s changed for you?
Photo by TN Something Special Cakes, via Flickr.
It’s not just Kristin Wiig’s Suze Orman.
Nope. Baguette is obsessed with her raincoat. Why do I find this noteworthy?
So, really, none of us needs a jacket–of any kind. But Baguette has us all wearing them. (Except Wicket. Apparently the dog gets a pass, and I think we can all agree that’s for the best.) She will open the closet door (Oh, BTW, she can open doors now. Huzzah!) and pull down a peacoat for me and a fleece jacket for Mr. Sandwich. On Friday, she insisted on wearing her raincoat to school. (She also insisted on taking a bag of egg noodles with her, but I think her love of egg noodles is better suited to a separate post, don’t you?)
I missed the walk she and Mr. Sandwich took this morning, but apparently today’s favored accessory is rain boots. Which leads me to wonder: Why all the concern about rain?
What do you call a community of some 40,000 women who support each other? SITS!
Just like the name says, the secret is in support. Each day, the site features a blogger, and today’s my day.
Those of you who are new to Tragic Sandwich may be wondering what’s up with my name. You can find that on my About page.
So who am I?
This blog is about our daily life–things we do, and things I think about. If you’d like to take a look around, here are a few recent-ish posts to get you started:
Tales of the Dragon Mother–I’ve always been fight-y, but motherhood means that my ferocity sometimes surprises even me.
All the Single Ladies–I’m not a single mother, but I think society should stop giving them grief and start giving them more support. Because this job is hard.
It’s Not Rat Poison–Everybody calm down. It’s just formula, and it’s fine.
Guest Post: Mr. Sandwich–Our marriage is based on teamwork and mutual respect, and that extends to my blog. I can’t leave out this post!
Work-Life Balance–I think this sums it up.
Thanks for stopping by–I hope you’ll come back! And please feel free to comment wherever you’d like. I’m always open to civil discourse, regardless of whether we agree with one another!
So I’ve gone through a spate of celebrity memoirs lately, which is interesting–because I pretty much never read celebrity memoirs. This binge, though, had a theme.
Growing up, I was a huge Little House on the Prairie fan. I’d read all the books (at least, through The First Four Years), and I adored the show, even though it deviated from the books before it even started–when tiny Melissa Gilbert announced to the camera that the show would be set in Walnut Grove, even if that was from On the Banks of Plum Creek.
Then, in college, I wound up with a set of friends who developed a ritual of watching syndicated episodes of Bonanza, Little House, and CHiPs (I guess we needed a break from TV westerns at that point in the day). We were all struck by how our perception of Melissa Sue Anderson’s Mary Ingalls had changed; while we remembered her as a bland goody-two-shoes, she was much more wry than we had noticed as children. And she was much more likely to punch Nellie Oleson in the face.
Recently I became interested in Alison Arngrim’s Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated. It’s an incredible story, and parts of it are very hard to read, but Arngrim is a lively writer who earns your sympathy–and is, as far as I can tell, much more likeable than Nellie could ever have imagined anyone to be.
Next up: Melissa Anderson’s The Way I See It: A Look Back on My Life on Little House. This one lived down to its Amazon reviews. Anderson was never close to her co-stars; Arngrim clearly found her standoffish to the extreme. And this book is incredibly unrevealing. Between the title and the lack of information (a significant chunk of the book consists of episode summaries), I can only assume that Anderson felt like she had to write it. It doesn’t even have the personality she showed as Mary. The most interesting thing? The episode summaries are in narrative form, and incidents from Anderson’s actual life are written like a script.
Finally, I read Melissa Gilbert’s Prairie Tale. It wasn’t as strong as Arngrim’s, but Gilbert does seem to have a fair amount of self-knowledge, so it was an interesting read.
So what am I reading now that I’ve finished Melissa Gilbert’s memoirs? Why, Rob Lowe‘s, naturally.
When she’s on the verge of frustration, she goes into her Karate Run. It’s her usual Stompy Run, but with vertical karate chops to the air as she goes.
She likes to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” but she only knows two lines, and not all the words to those. The result is that she sounds like she’s reciting a prehistoric incantation.
Bananas are peeled with the hands. All other fruit is peeled with the teeth. Including oranges.
She eats very little cake at parties, never asks for juice, and wants fruit so much that it’s hard to make it to the checkout counter.
But she will only eat processed meat.
She likes her pacifier to coordinate with her outfit, and will exchange the one in her mouth for a structurally identical one in a different color.
We keep telling her that the dog door is not a girl door, and she keeps proving us wrong.
I read a lot of other blogs. And on one of them was posed the question: What surprised you about becoming a mother?
Note: I’m sorry I’m not crediting you and linking to you, Other Blogger. I would, if I could remember which blog was yours!
The first thing that surprised me about being a mother was how immediately I became protective of my tiny baby. I expected it to happen–but I was also so tired that it was hard for me to feel connected to anything for a while. I don’t think I had full-blown PPD, but I was probably close.
So there I am, in the hospital, not feeling much except exhaustion and a lot of pain from trying to periodically turn over or, god forbid, sit up. And one morning I made my way to the bathroom, because brushing my teeth was clearly a necessity, regardless of how I felt.
When I came out, an unfamiliar man was bent over the bassinette, prodding Baguette. And I was astonished at my first impulse, which was to bellow, “Who the f–k are you and what the f–k you’re doing to my child?”
Another note: I have a deep voice. “Bellow” is pretty much what you think it would sound like. More than one person has told me that I can be scary.
But before I could act on that impulse, some other, more rational part of my brain whispered, “Mr. Sandwich is here. He wouldn’t let this happen without good reason. So there must be a good reason.”
That’s when I realized that I had been about to destroy my daughter’s pediatrician. I was fully prepared to incinerate and consume him, merely for touching her.
More recently, I read George R.R. Martin’s series A Song of Ice and Fire. Fans of this series are passionate, and look to the various characters to find reflections of themselves. What I realize is that I don’t identify most strongly with Arya, or Catelyn, or Ned, or Daenarys.
I identify with the dragons.
Photo by eigirdas, via Flickr.
I like to think my Independence Day tradition is watching 1776, but the fact is that I don’t always do that. In fact, I suspect I usually don’t. But I love that movie so much that it feels like it ought to be my tradition.
My second favorite Fourth came when I lived in Austin. It was incredibly hot, as Austin is wont to be, and my apartment air conditioning was working poorly, as my apartment air conditioning was wont to do. On the spur of the moment, I called my brother in San Antonio and said, “What are you doing for the Fourth?” He said, “[Best friend] is coming over, and we’re going to grill.” I said, “Can I join you?” and then did so. We grilled everything but the french fries–burgers, buns, corn, you name it. After dinner we all went up to the second floor and watched fireworks on the horizon. And because my brother was house-sitting for my parents, the air conditioning was much better.
My favorite Fourth doesn’t even feel like the Fourth, because the highlight of the day had nothing to do with American independence. Nine years ago today, Mr. Sandwich proposed in a way that was so perfectly us that I can’t imagine it happening any other way.
In more recent years, we’ve gone to a variety of parties–last year I think we hit four in the 3-day weekend. But none of those materialized for today, so we woke up this morning with no plans. We talked about whether to take Baguette out to see fireworks–would she love them? would she get scared? After deciding that it would probably keep her up (and us out) too late, we opted for a daytime visit to Travel Town.
When my brother and I were kids, he adored Travel Town–after all, you could climb all over the trains and even sit on top of them. On one visit he spotted a birthday party and announced that he wanted his next birthday to be at Travel Town, and it was.
But we moved away and grew up, and I hadn’t been back. Now, with Baguette, it seemed like it might make a nice outing. We decided to head over as soon as they opened, and I began to get ready. As I was packing the diaper bag, I looked up and discovered that Baguette had passed out on the couch. Apparently she was ready for her nap–two and a half hours early. In the interest of letting sleeping babies lie, we moved her to the bed and postponed our departure.
I’m glad that we did, because she loved it. We read about different kinds of train cars, peered into a car that had been used by USPS, examined a variety of engines and box cars and lounge cars, ran around an empty passenger car (now used for parties, but not being used for anything at the moment we were there)–and of course rode the miniature train that circles the grounds.
She fell asleep on the way home, resulting in an unusual second nap. So while we’re still set on grilling later on, the question remains: will we, or will we not, bundle her up in PJs and shoes to watch fireworks?
Regardless, may you all have a happy and safe Fourth of July. And if you don’t celebrate the Fourth of July, just be happy and safe.
