With friends like these who needs a climate change?

Last week I did something I normally don't - I bought kids chicken nuggets. They were on sale, kids don't eat normal chicken anyway, and it would make dinner preparation for a few nights much easier - so why not? Well, I THOUGHT I was buying chicken nuggets. Instead I picked up a pack of chicken cutlets shaped like dinosaurs. How I have made that mistake is still a mystery, but really, who cares because it was really for the best.

As I was baking those cutlets, DS, who is currently in love with all things dinosaur and at that particular time very antsy in anticipation of eating a DINOSAUR, picked one frozen cutlet out of the bag and started playing with it. I had done something else I normally don't do - I let him play with food. He was very cute about it, but got bored after about 10 minutes or so. He came over to me and said, "Mommy, I don't want to play with him any more. I will put him on my plate. But I will not eat him because he's my friend." Yep, once you play with DS, you are pretty safe from being eaten. At least that night.

Well, it would be funny in itself if were the end, but... As DS and DD were settling down to eat the finally cooked cutlets (and DS repeatedly reassured that he wasn't eating his new friend), DD pretended to bite DS's dinosaur. DS took his cutlet, mumbled something about "tail booboo", kissed his dinosaur's tail "to make him feel better" and within seconds bit off dinosaur's head.

Well, as long as it wasn't his friend, right?

Peculiarities of the toddlerese cleaning

I have come up with the list of pros and cons of teaching your 3 year old the basics of tidying up the room.

Pros:

1. It teaches the 3 year old how to tidy up the room. Better him than you.
2. Hopefully, since you are starting early, it will develop into a lifelong habit. Unless you have done it all wrong, pushed too hard, nagged too much and he started despising cleaning at a very early age thus developing a lifelong hatred towards this activity. But we are discussing pros.
3. Maybe he will think twice before trashing the room if he knows that he will have to clean it up. Maybe not.
4. Few things warm up this mother's heart like her son's offer to clean up the mess he didn't even make. True story! It could happen to you too!
5. He actually does a decent job doing it.
6. Even though you don't really know what happens to half the things he picks up (trash can? laundry hamper? some forsaken drawer? the space between the wall and the crib? - stay tuned, the answer might surprise you!), at least they are not in the plain view and no longer an eye sore.

There's only one con on the list, but for most it might outweigh all the pros:

1. Unbeknownst to you, the cleaning genius in training decides that the best place for all of the dirty clothes he can get his little hands on is your purse. You discover this little factoid upon trying to pay for your morning java at the coffee stand and must rummage through a pile of dirty socks and underwear that includes a pair of your own undies in order to get to the wallet, all in front of the cashier and 37 people standing in line, 7 of whom are your co-workers... Not that it ever happened to me, just saying... But it could happen to you too...

To brie or not to brie - Update

I know, you folks couldn't sleep at night without knowing what happened to my brie. Hence I present you with this update.

As of the time of this post, I still have a square inch of brie left in my refrigerator. No, I did not enjoy it in the least, but I have a thing about throwing out food. Brought up by grandmother who had survived an artificial famine in 1930s and the World War II, I simply cannot throw out food that is at least somewhat edible. To be eligible for trash can, food has to be unquestionably poisonous, resembling science experiment, covered in fungus - or preferably all of the above. (Before I scare off some potential guests and such, 1) I do not serve or consume food that hasn't quite reached this awful state; I patiently wait for its inevitable demise. I know, I should just toss it once it becomes questionable, but it's a psychological issue over which I have little control. 2)I do take poetic license.)

The problem with brie, though, is that it will never satisfy my strict requirements for being tossed because it already satisfies them. I know, confusing, but bear with me. As far as I am concerned, brie in its fresh state already resembles a food experiment gone terribly wrong, tastes poisonous (and unlike Windex doesn't have a warning or a Poison Control phone number printed on the back). And, unquestionably, it has already grown fungus, which Google advises us not to cut off. The only way to get the darned brie out of my refrigerator was to eat it.

So I did. And did not acquire that elusive taste for it in the process.

To brie or not to brie

For some time I have been passing by fancy cheeses that all of a sudden appeared in our local kosher supermarket thinking that I should give them a try. I am fairly adventurous when it comes to food; as long as it's kosher I'll give it a try. Unless it has carrots in it. Or sweet potatoes. Or it's waaay too spicy. On the second thought, I guess I am not that adventurous. But for someone who grew up on meat and potatoes diet, I have come pretty far (read: tofu).

But back to cheeses. A few years back SubHub and I have been talked into buying some blue fancy cheese by the store owner. Once we came home and unpacked our precious (very, very precious might I add) cheese, we ended up both looking at each other and wondering whether we have to eat THAT or eat around it. On the second look, there was not eating around IT. We both concluded that if we had an ear infection, pneumonia, syphilis or any other ailment requiring penicillin, we would be immediately cured upon tasting that cheese. We both bravely took a bite, both spit up in unison and swore off trying food that had the word "blue" in it.

Fast forward a few years, and my adventurous spirit was taking the better of me once again. These fancy cheeses, inconspicuously thrown in between mozzarella and a strange concoction commonly known as American cheese (an oxymoron, really), were calling my name. A few times I reached for them, but the price tag stopped me. Eventually I remembered that upon my untimely (it always is, isn't it?) demise I would be held accountable for every permitted food I could, but haven't tried. Could I possibly go to hell over not trying some stinky cheese? I couldn't think of any other reason that would cause this unfortunate turn of events, and I was not going to let this happen. Next time as I was passing by the cheese section, I decided that while paying kids' tuition is a noble ideal, it is definitely not noble enough to miss out on the wonders of heaven. So I took the plunge and bought brie.

I couldn't wait to open it and give it a try. Once the kids were asleep and the house in reasonable order, I opened the brie. Upon inspecting it and not finding anything blue, I noticed that it had rind. I immediately called my parents for advice and was given their standard response, "Google it." While I was searching for the answer, Mom said that they were told to eat the rind. She eats it, but Dad refuses to. Finally Google confirmed that Mom was right, I hung up, cut myself a wedge and took a bite.

What came next cannot be described in any words normally associated with food. I can assure you that I have never participated in urinotherapy. Nevertheless, I felt absolutely certain that what I had just eaten tasted and smelled like very concentrated urine. Or maybe Windex, mixed with urine. The mushroomy goodness promised company's website was neither mushroomy nor good. The released ammonia was so strong that I felt as if I was punched with it in my nose.

"It's an acquired taste," said Mom. I am persistent, so I tried again and again, with and without rind. The feeling that I was eating urine did not go away with subsequent consumption of rind-surrounded cheese. Without rind, brie tasted like bad cream cheese. SubHub wisely refused to even try.

But I do not give up. Next week, Camembert!

My masterpiece

Last night I read Hannah's post and found out that November is a NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Basically, one has to write a 175 page novel in 30 days, with quantity, not quality being the prime objective. Since I spend most days wondering how to keep myself busy, I got very excited at the prospect of actually doing this. They (the organizers and I wonder who they are) even expect you to do a bad job, so what's there to lose?

The excitement was very short lived, and very soon I became preoccupied. I was thinking about my future novel all night and the whole day today.

Novel

by

SubWife

I told you, got nothing better to do.

And now, 24 hours later, I came to a sad realization - I have nothing to say to the world. I just don't know how I can possibly fill those 175 pages. I am too young for memoirs and too blah to write anything else. I would love to write something - anything - just for the heck of it, but - goodness gracious - 175 pages??? Even if I write pure cr4p (I am using the words from the introduction letter), I still can't fill up 175 pages with it unless I introduce a lot of beans to my diet . Of course, I could go the Tolstoy path and describe my breakfast in four pages, lunch in two, afternoon hunger pangs in seven, all in excruciating details, but I might die of boredom doing this, I am just too young to die.

This is a sad day in the life of SubWife. Those organizers (really, who are they?) weren't lying - one will find out something about oneself at the end of the process, even if one doesn't get to finish the novel or write full 175 pages. Only the end of the process for me came on October 26 and I discovered that I just ain't no writer. (Something all of you already realized, and I am the last to know...) So you can all breathe a sigh of relief - my 175 page novel will not be on the summer reading for your kids. And I am going back to my beans.

Captain Noah Morgan's table

Once again, all that effort DS's teachers are putting into his education is paying off. When I got into the car today, DS proudly announced that he had made a pirate ship as part of his pre-school project. That seemed a bit suspect, and I could barely contain my laughter when I realized that the pirate ship was actually Noah's Ark.

In related news, DD refuses to accept the harsh reality that Noah is not known for building furniture or that she could be wrong, and persistently continues singing "Noah built a table, a table, a table" (instead of teva, "ark" in Hebrew).

In other related news, DS actually knows that Noah built a teva, not a table, and continues correcting DD. His negligent parents, however, refuse to cooperate with the educational process and set him straight about the true nature of the ship DS has built. With persistence, matched only by DD, they continue believing that having a happy with his pirate ship 3 yr old is more important than having a 3 yr old who knows about Noah and his Ark.

In even more related news, not out of principle or because of their views on child rearing and education, both parents would love to be there when DS refers to his Ark as a pirate ship in front of his teacher. We would love to have the picture of her face as well. We are even willing to pay for that, but not much.

With a little help from my neighbors...

I just shocked my neighbor, profoundly. No, I did not run around the neighborhood in my birthday suit, set anyone on fire or robbed a local grocery store. I had done something much, much stranger. I decided to be nice.

About two years ago the house next door to ours was sold and new neighbors moved in. According to my husband there are at least three families living there. Whatever, they don't disturb us and we don't disturb them. As a matter of fact, they seem to be of the rare species in our neighborhood - the ones that actually use their garage and driveway and don't take up precious parking space on the street. And that seems to be about all we know about them. They could be some cult leaders, practicing polygamists, a band of psychopaths or the latest most popular reality family on TV - and we would be the last to know. Well, turns out that they know about us even less than we know about them.

I was taking out garbage tonight when I saw neighbor's daughter pulling into the driveway. As good manners dictate, I made my way to open the gate and save the girl trouble of getting in and out of her car. All of a sudden I heard honking, then again. I stopped opening the gate and heard the girl telling me, "Hey, I live here!" I asked her if she wanted me to open her gate. She repeated about what she and I and now you already know - that she lived here. Finally I said, "I KNOW. I am your neighbor! I just wanted to help."

It finally dawned on the girl that she was not heroically stopping the robbery of her house. She started thanking me, still rather surprised that anyone would actually do something nice for people she doesn't know well. Then she said something that shocked me even more than my good will gesture shocked her. She said that she had never seen me around, but she probably had seen my daughter. She went on and on and turned out she wasn't referring to either DD or the baby, but my college age daughter. In a nutshell, she was mistaking me for my landlady, who is 1)the mother of TWO college age and still living at home daughters, 2)is 5 inches shorter and 3) is at least 20 years older than me.

Once again, SubHub found the whole age thing quite amusing, but left me wondering whether marriage had aged me THAT much.