The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner

The cover of the book says “One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World.”

Good thing too, it was the grumpiness that made the book.  This grumpy author travels to ten countries and shares what he learns  in chapters with titles like:

“Switzerland – Happiness Is Boredom”

“Iceland – Happiness Is Failure”

and

“Moldova – Happiness Is Somewhere Else”

Had this book been written by some positive thinking, sickly sweet personality, the world is a wonderful place and I’m a wonderful person,  ( yes Eat, Pray Love, I’m thinking of you) it would have been a total failure. Fortunately Eric Weiner is an unhappy grump, (his words not mine) and so what could have been a nauseating topic turns out to be amusing and informative.

Would I recommend it? Yes. It’s also full of interesting facts. Did you know the smiley face was invented in 1963 to cheer up workers at an insurance company? 🙂

Reason #8 We Do A Lot Of Laundry…

…because yesterday was like this:

“Where are your pants?”

“Oh, they are just full of chicken poop.”
Later after new pants it was:

“I think a duck pooped on me.”

“No, I think you rolled in duck poop.”

Shortly after with a naked girl it was:
“Can you turn on the bathtub for me I have poop on my foot.”

How can someone who looks so sweet be so full of…

… it?

Art Guilt

Guilt.

It’s a common theme amongst mothers.  A mother can find something to feel guilty about in anything.   Working mom, stay at home mom, public schools,  McDonald’s, nursing , co-sleeping, formula feeding, diapers,  soap, playing,  learning,  reading, house cleaning, TV watching, socialization, pretty much if a mom or a kid can do it some mother somewhere is feeling guilty about it.

I like to think I do pretty well at avoiding feeling guilty, not perfect but perhaps better than average. Lately though I’ve been struggling with a doozy dose of Mom Guilt.

My current dilemma…

…artwork.

Admittedly what Ivy creates has only recently achieved a status that I would call artwork, but whatever you call it what do I DO with it? In the last few days she went on a frenzy and turned most of a package of computer paper into pictures for us.  In the past her pictures have involved five swipes of color on one sheet of paper.  I can leave them sit for a few days by which time they get eaten, crumpled or spilled on and then I can throw them away guilt free.   Now I have a ream of pictures, many of which are family portraits. (Just in case you were wondering these aren’t heads and necks, they are heads and legs. Just wanted to clear that up for you so Ivy didn’t have to.)

The sensible part of me says to follow my past plan and throw them away after a few days. The sentimental part of me wants to keep them. The sensible part says, “Where Jessie, Where would you keep them?” to which the sentimental part answers that there must be someplace that I can stash a few drawings. Then the sensible side says that there are truly NO artwork storing area in the house and I’ll end up putting them someplace stupid, lose them, forget about them and find them in ten years having been eaten by mice. The sentimental part retorts that at least I’ll have tried.

As my multiple personalities war inside me,  all I end up with is a big dose of guilt as I slowly filter pictures off to the garbage. To combat the Mom Guilt I have collected a few pictures and stapled them together into a book. The sentimental part of me is going to go put them some place stupid, lose them, forget about them and probably find them years in the future having been eaten by mice.

But at least I’ll have tried.

 

Trout, Trout, Trout! (A Fish Chant) by April Pulley Sayre

This week I checked this book out from the library just so I could write about it…

.. and read it to Ivy 20 million times, becuase she likes it…

…which is fine by me, I sort of love it.

The key to this book is the little comment in parenthesis it is “A Fish Chant.” When you go find this book and bring it home, you can’t just read it. Nope, it won’t work, you won’t love it, your kid will think it’s lame.  You have to find the rhythm of the words and chant it.  If that sounds ridiculous please keep in mind that I can’t clap along with a beat, but I can read this book with a bit of a rhythm to it, so therefore, you can too. Then when you do chant it, you’ll also love it, accidentally memorize it, and then have fish names like “Sockeye Salmon, Arctic Char, Mooneye, Walleye, Gar, Gar, Gar!” rolling around in your head too. Which will turn out to be a good thing, becuase you’ll be able to “read” the book while cooking, cleaning, changing diapers or driving. Then your kid will also start to memorize it and help with the “Gar, Gar, Gar!’s. And then if you’d like to know what exactly these crazy fish are that you have been chanting about all day, you can look it up in the back of the book where they have a little blurb on each fish.

Or at least that’s how it happened here!

Would I recommend it? It’s a must!

Independence

I have independent girls.

Sometimes people exclaim how wonderful it must be to have such independent children, I say yes but… Have YOU ever heard your daughter say from two aisles over at the grocery store: “Do you know where my mom is?” This is a normal occurrence for us. Unfortunately the adult being asked where I am is unaware of this and I see a bit of panic in their eyes when I pop around the corner. Because while Ivy may not know where I am she’s pretty easy to keep track of, you just listen for her constant chatter. But I digress…

Some of their independence is just personality. Ivy has always been out and about on her own without a problem, and now that she’s three that’s been taken to a whole new level!  Clara also seems to have got some of that same personality.  She won’t even let someone hold her hand while she walks, try to do that to help her out and you get rapid head shaking followed by yelling if you persist in trying. Clara is going to do it herself!

Other parts of their independence (particularly Ivy) is a learned thing. My favorite parts of motherhood do NOT include putting on clothes, shoes, socks, jackets, getting glasses of water, finding toys… Therefore the general rule I follow is if she can do it I’m not going to. Which is why last year when Ivy was two I woke up one morning to the sound of firewood being dropped on the floor. I went downstairs to discover my two-year old had gotten up, gone down stairs, put on boots and a jacket and hat, gone out to the porch and brought in a load of firewood.

She was very proud.

I was a bit worried that I was able to sleep through all that.

Truly though I love that Ivy is so self-sufficient and independent. Today as we were getting ready to go to the park I tried to remember that.  Last year, I would find the clothes and shoes and things and she would put them on. This year she does it all. The problem is she does it all on a three-year old’s time table (which translates to no timetable or urgency but lots of stories about princesses).  As we slowly, slowly got ourselves out the door I thought how easy it could be…

If I found her clothes and put them on her, if I found the socks and shoes and stuffed her feet in them, if I found the toys that were apparently completely necessary for our five minute drive we were taking and if I loaded her into and buckled up her car seat.

It’d take ten minutes.

But when we got to the park would she have played by herself and with Clara while I walked dogs  in circles around them?  Fixed her shoe by herself? Figured her own way up the unfamiliar ladders?  Relentlessly followed other kids around the park talking to them? Maybe.  But after the 30 minute struggle to get out the door I like to think that what I’m doing is actually helping her become a better person rather than just torturing all of us.

Besides had Ivy been glued to my side she never would have had the opportunity to excitedly yell across the playground: “MOM! Guess what!? I can get boogers out of my nose with my tongue!”

Clearly this is not a recent picture of Ivy. This is Ivy with her finger up her nose at four months. At four months it’s sort of funny, a current picture of her activities would not be so endearing!

Flocking

Flocking birds fascinate me. Therefore I have spent much of my free time and some of my not-so-free time the last two days staring out my window at this giant flock of red-winged blackbirds. Even Ivy said they were “Marvelous!” and I’ve only ever heard her use that word before when she discovered that some trees turn pink(!!!) in the fall. They were awesome, really awesome.  If you are also fascinated by flocking birds you can click on the picture below. It will link to my flicker page and my mediocre attempt at video taping them. I by no means did them justice but I tried!

Tippeary by Frank Delaney

Recently I said that I loved historical fiction because it’s, “a painless form of accidental learning ” which I think is true.  Except for when it isn’t.

Set during the time of the Irish war for independence Tippeary had so much promise, the first page was totally intriguing…

…187 pages later I thought to myself ooohhhh, now it’s getting good.

Three Signs You May Be Reading A Boring Book:

1) You lose it under your bed for a few days because you forgot you were reading it.

2) You put the book down when the main character is being held at gun point and forgot what was happening before you pick it back up.

3) You put the book down when arsonists are lighting their fires.

Really to be fair, it wasn’t boring, there was a guerrilla war going on after all, it was just that I hated all the characters.

Would I recommend it? No, the last third of the book was good, but not good enough to make up for the first two thirds!

It’s On!

This is my favorite cooking utensil. It has no equal and I don’t even know what to call it. It is made of bamboo and came with a wok as a wedding gift, sadly its brilliance went unnoticed for the first few years of married life. But now… now, I know this thing, (what ever it is called) is perfect. It tapers to a fine point on the end, perfect for scraping up things like scrambled eggs. Its odd shape makes it perfect for stirring the entire bottom of a pan of sauce. It’s perfect for stirring pasta. It has no equal when sautéing onions in butter in cast iron. It can serve things like rice just as well as a spoon.

I love it.

When I cook at other peoples houses I always wish I had brought it with me. When I wash the dishes I never put it in the dishwasher because it would take too long to get clean and I might need it. That’s how much I love it.

Or should I say loved it.

My beloved bamboo, thing (Help? What is it called? Anyone?). Now looks like this:

And the mouse war, it’s ON!

Sadly the mice are already winning—-

–We interrupt this post with breaking news!—

Upon going to check the mouse trap set previously in the day when the damaged “thing” was found Jessie discovered a rat under her sink.

—We now return you to your previously scheduled post.—

Earlier today I set a mouse trap under the sink. Shortly after starting this post I checked on it – tripped and empty. So before relaying by how much the mice were already winning I went to check again…

…and there was the rat.

The rat was facing away from me in the cupboard under the sink, I was peering in the door and we were both frozen. I had a rat, not moving, and I couldn’t come up with a good way to kill it. So I did what any self respecting house wife would do. I grabbed the rolling pin off the counter and tried to smash it while it ran around in circles under the sink, then screamed like a girl when it came out by my bare toes. Now I had the rat corned in the kitchen and my toes were feeling awfully vulnerable. It was time for reinforcements. PIPER! Had the dog out of her warm bed under the covers at a run. Piper skidded into the kitchen and when I yelled “GET THE RAT” to my amazement, she did! When it was dead she accepted my praise, followed me to the garbage outside to see it thrown out, barked once at the night and then went back to bed.

My dog rules.

So now the mouse and rat war is on.

Trouble.

We’ve beaten the mice in winters past.

The rats are on a winning streak.

But they chewed the wrong kitchen implement this time, I’m serious now.

It’s on rats, ITS ON!

Halloween Hater Part 2

Another Halloween has come and gone and I can’t say that I’ve converted into a fan.

There have been Halloween’s in the past that were worse.

-There was the year my roommate got into a bar fight and got punched in the face. She only weighed about 100 lbs.

-There was the year I got food poisoning. Thankfully that coincided with the year the swim team was stalking the streets of Stevens Point looking for the wrestling(?) team over some infraction I have since forgotten but it involved a lot of crying girls.  I missed it all and only heard about it the next day, no big loss.

-There was the year I tried to avoid all Halloween related activities. Piper as a very large puppy gave me a black eye that night.

Last night while there were no catastrophe’s I’m not sure the amount of fun had was worth… well, all the rest of it.

The problem stemmed from the fact that I have a three year old.  (If you are unfamiliar with daily life with a three year old or need a refresher Motherhood Uncensored described it fairly well today in Congrats on your 3-year old!) The three year old had a problem with her costume.  It started about an hour before we were reading to go trick or treating and it went like this…

I don’t want one. I do want one. I want to be Pooh. I want to be a fairy. I want to be a princess. I want to be a fairy princess. (At this point I gently nudged us away from the princess line of thought since in the hours before trick or treating I stepped on and smashed her crown, shhhhh don’t tell!) Fairy. I don’t want wings. I don’t want a skirt. I don’t want a wand. I do want all those things. No, I want flowers not a wand. I want all the flowers. I want no flowers. I don’t want shoes.

… get the picture?

Meanwhile I was dressing Clara.  She doesn’t talk.  Some days I love that about her.

Finally I assembled an uncooperative lamb and a fairy in the yard: As I took pictures of the girls in the yard (quickly before someone decided to take her wings back off) I discovered something. Both real sheep and pretend sheep take about two minutes once they hit our property to get burrs in their wool.(No Clara is not picking her nose in all these pictures she’s picking the scab from getting a gigantic sliver in her face after falling in the garden, but that’s a different story)

As I deburred Clara we waited for John. We were waiting because, as everyone knows, the best time to butcher sheep is just before you go trick or treating with your kids…at the last minute he came running to the house changed his clothes looked at me and said, “Now, do I have any blood on my face?” I tried to convince by color blind husband that this was the one night it really didn’t matter… He didn’t care, something about real blood vs. fake blood… in any case we loaded up and headed into town.

When we got there the girls had an hours worth of fun filling their buckets full of candy. That night while John was back outside skinning sheep in the dark (talk about creepy Halloween activities) and I was putting Ivy to bed  I tried to decided if it was worth it.

You know, I’m still not sure, but I can tell you with out a doubt that I love mini Milky Ways!