Jenmenke

Road Warrior

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A [Current] Day in the Office with Jennie

I had more flies yesterday. A lot more.

But when Ollie Cat came in looking for dinner around, oh, 2:30 pm — daylight savings is a real stretch for my 4-legged friends — and I didn’t respond to her meows, her sitting on my keyboard effing everything up, her move to a spot on my wacom tablet, directly in front of my screen. –Well I finally responded by pushing her aside and she settled down for an apparent nap on my paper cutter.

(Still meowing pathetically.)

It took me a while to register the sound she was soon making: the sound of eating.

And I realized she was eating my flies that I had been saving to make myself feel better about my accomplishments for the day. She ate about half of them before I screamed at her to, and I swear this is verbatim: “HEY! STOP IT! THOSE ARE MY FLIES!”

And I find I have little else to show for, or to say about this day.

 

 

Inspired Chair Re-Covering. (aka: avoiding window washing.)

BOO! Happy Halloween!

I am in the midst of window washing.

After a particularly (exhaustive? efficient? accomplished?) (i can’t think of the word . thank you menopause.) Saturday and Sunday of window washing last weekend, I took a break. I figured I should work on weekdays. And, to be honest, I’m mostly waiting for my new credit with Audible.com because why wash windows if you can’t listen to a good book at the same time.?

So this weekend was shaping up to be perfect for finishing the task. Only, when it came time to fill my bucket,

I suddenly found myself in the garden. I’m not sure how that happened. Was I emptying the compost and suddenly realized the garlic needed to get planted?

I couldn’t tell you.

But I rationalized it by telling myself it was a beautiful day for garden chores, and not a day to be inside washing windows. You see, I finished all the windows that I could get to on the ladders and now needed to finish the highest ones by repelling down the side of the house from the chimney.

I’m kidding.

But only barely.

I hang out the window, stepping on the mini-roof outside each of the remaining casements upstairs to wash the outsides. It’s not a ton a fun. Which makes it rife for procrastination.

Anyway, all day long I said I’d get to the windows. After I planted the garlic. After I cleaned up the tomatoes. After I burned the pumpkin vines. After, after after! But I didn’t. Here are all the things I did instead once I came inside:

1) Cleaned out my broom closet. (I know. It doesn’t look all that tidy. But trust me. It’s an improvement.)

2) Cleaned out Dave’s coat closet.

Yes, you read that right. Dave’s closet. He has a jacket fetish and a whole closet dedicated to the debauchery. Only now he’s telling me he’s going to install yet another closet in the lower garage for his hunting stuff. Because, you know — duh — it just doesn’t make sense for it to be in the upstairs closet. [Full disclosure: as you can see in the picture, Dave’s closet has been somewhat cannibalized by Charlie’s airsoft supplies and the cat box. Which is, admittedly, gross.]

3) Cleaned out the laundry supply drawer. (Again, hard to see the point here, but it made me happy to swab out a year’s worth of powdery detergent spills and find home for the odds and ends that find their way into this drawer.)

And it was still only 5 pm! I had loads of time before I had to start dinner, right? So what did I do? I decided to re-cover the mildly disgusting office chair.

It’s pretty bad:

Inspired by a recent HowAboutOrange tutorial I decided to give it a try. I mean, I didn’t even know you could recover an chair like that. But of course you can, and it was pretty simple!

Only, you must remember this about me: I: 1) don’t plan, and  2) don’t go to the store. So I had to make do with upholstery fabric I had on hand, which left me these fabrics to choose from:

 

The obvious choice should have been the middle one: a neutral gray green. I had enough of it, but was conflicted for two reasons. First, it is the fabric I used to re-cover the camper cushions and it would be nice to have this in case of a rip or something. Second, I just thought it was too safe and boring.

But I didn’t have enough of the two I really liked: the red/gold or the tan/green/blue, which left me a choice between the gold and the plaid. Sorry, no plaid in the office, so by default it had to be the gold.

Seriously.

It took a total of about 2 hours. And I have to say, I kinda like it!

Even though now I can see it’s a bit off center. Frankly, I didn’t really think about that until now. I don’t plan, remember?

Thanks for the idea Howaboutorange!

 

Sneak Peek at my Birthday Presents

Yes, it was my BIRTHDAY today!! And after last year’s dismal performance, this year shined brightly. It was a great day. The sun was actually visible!!! I got sunburned!!!

Anyway. I just had to share this gift that I got from my kids. And it wasn’t some, get-it-at-the-only-store-in-Watertown kind of thing. Morgan actually picked Charlie up after school and they drove to the CITIES to shop.

Today Charlie said, “I can’t wait to give you your present. It’s so awesome. You will love it.”

And then I opened this.

20110526-103106.jpg

I shit you not.

And I’m wondering, “hmmmm.”

Is it bad that I really DO love it, or does that make me dysfunctional?

Tired of the Eggroll Post Yet?

What an amazing discovery. All these amazingly cool and nice people read the stupid stuff I write. They actually cook some of the recipes I post. It’s utterly baffling.

And wonderfully flattering.

And very guilt provoking when I’m not timely at updating.

And terribly frightening. What horrible things have I written about again? Good thing I can’t remember pretty much everthing or I wouldn’t even be able to look people in the eyes anymore. Poor Dave.

(for new readers, we like to work “Poor Dave” into the occasional post as a celebration and honor to my husband who, in his ever loving and constant devotion, has to put up with me). Hopefully new readers will also know where to place my witty sarcasm.

Anyway, I so wish I could just cut and paste some soccer emails here just so you could see the inanity that I deal with this time of year. Hundreds of mind-numing emails a day:

Filled with mind numbing questions… and helpless people… and….

I digress. I digress. I digress.

What I really wanted to talk about was my annual post about mud.

And rain.

And snow.

And my car.

…which is filthy. But not nearly as filthy as it could be, given our recent weather.

And that thing hanging off the bottom?

…I’m pretty sure is a worm.

And my driveway.

… that the FedEx truck got stuck in a few days ago.

And the reason

…that we had to drag the garbage all the way to the top of the God-forsakken very long and muddy driveway.

Which is responsible for

…this extra stash of mud I like to carry around on my running boards.

That is, no doubt, the source

… of the worm.

Think Spring!

 

The Coveted Panda Hat

Warning to Bennett (my brother): you will not find this post interesting.

To the rest of you: sorry ’bout that. I just take so much flak from my brother, I thought I’d save us both some time. His from reading it and mine from his play-by-play critique.

On with the show!

Also. I just want to say that right now, my office thermostat says 59.9 degrees. It feels like my office window is open. That’s what happens when we have a stiff west wind.

Sorry ’bout that, too. I just wanted to share my pain. You see, if you had read this year’s Christmas card, you will know that I am a heat-miser. I punish mostly myself (it’s the martyr in me), and have it bounce back up to between 66 and 68 when the kids get home from school. Ah the bliss of 3:30 pm when I warm back up and start peeling off layers.

I digress!

This is about the coveted panda hat that Morgan begged and begged and begged me for, oh I don’t know… around early November? You see, she spends her free time mostly surfing the internet in various outlets of debauchery: facebook, youtube, make-up and shopping. I know when she’s been “window shopping” online because my email invariably fills up with messages from her containing nothing more than underlined blue links directing me to her latest “must have” accessory or dress.

We live in Watertown. She has absolutely no need of dresses.

This falls on deaf ears. Because you know mom, there is a Sadie Hawkins dance coming in February…

I know what you are thinking, but you are wrong. In our quaint village, Sadie Hawkins is not what you remember it to be where girls wear their hair in pigtails and don outfits of cut-offs and plaid. It is the one and only formal dance of the year for underclassmen. Is that the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard? Our homecoming ‘dance’ is akin to a bonfire in the gym after the football game and Sadie Hawkins is a formal dance — the one and only — that girls ask boys to.

It boggles my mind.

Honest to Pete. I just don’t understand how I get off on these tangents.

The panda hat. That panda hat.

So she was shopping in November, and sent me a link to this stupid panda hat on topshop.com. No, I don’t know what topshop.com is, but for some reason I remember that’s where it was. As usual, I ignored the email. A week later, I received another email with the same link.

Now, I could just delete these emails, since I never actually buy these things for her. But there is a small part of me that just can’t help but click them to see what insane thing she thinks she needs. Usually, it’s a strapless dress that hits mid thigh or some other random dressy thing. Cute yes. But why not a Patagonia fleece? Where did I go wrong in my parenting?

Doesn’t everyone want a Patagonia fleece?

I ignored the second email as well. Then, she yelled to me from the other room and said “Did you get my email??!” At which point I walked out there and said something critical and nasty about why would she want a stupid panda hat and to stop wasting her time online. When she didn’t drop it, I told her to put it on her Christmas list. Because, contrary to how stupid I thought it was, I’d be all for buying it for Christmas.

“They won’t have it then. You have to buy it now!”

“You can always find what you want. They will have it. Put it on your list.”

So, early December rolls around and I sit down to order the stupid panda hat.

And, they don’t have them.

Sold out.

Of course, I do not believe this, so I spend approximately two hours trying to find this stupid hat. It turns out that between the time Morgan earmarked it for coveting and early December, Katy Perry wore the identical hat somewhere, her picture was taken and the hat was identified as the “River Island Panda Hat available at topshop.com.”

Great.

Sure, I could buy it from the UK on ebay to the tune of $50 plus shipping.

Not.

So I did what any insane, multi-tasking, over-achieving, martyr-type, lapsed-knitting mother would do.

I knit one myself.

I love knitting. But I have no one to knit for. I don’t wear scarves, I already knit mittens for everyone, I’ve made several felted bags that no one uses, and sweaters are too ambitious . The opportunity to knit was exciting!

I bought some cream yarn, used some brown yarn I had, found an online hat pattern and scrutinized the itty-bitty panda hat photos on the internet to copy the pattern for the face.

I thought for sure Morgan had figured out what I was up to since I always forget to close the windows in my browser and clear the history. She’s on my computer all the time. Not to mention the fact that I was suddenly knitting again.

Anyway, aside from my very poor attempt at integrating the face color into the main color (I had never done that before and the eyes and nose sort of pucker because the yarn in the back was too tight:)

it really turned out cute. A little big, but then I’ve got the world smallest pin head, so it was hard to truly gauge.

We don’t wrap our Santa presents, so when she came downstairs on Christmas morning, it was the first thing she saw: “Panda!”

Then she said “You’re such a liar! You said you couldn’t find one anywhere!”

“I couldn’t.”

“But you did!”

“I didn’t.”

“Mom, you obviously did.”

“I knit it.”

“You didn’t!”

“I did!”

“No way!”

“Yes way!”

And so it went. Seriously. That is practically verbatim. She loves it and tells everyone “My mom knit this for me.” I still think it’s stupid.

But it was the best Christmas gift ever.

(For me.)

Merry Christmas to All!

Thanks to anyone who takes time out of their busy lives to stop by and read this drivel. I am truly honored, because I know how hard it is to carve out time in my own day to read other’s writings.

It’s Christmas and WE MADE IT!

(I mean, I think I made it. I’m actually writing this on Christmas Eve, so I guess I can’t be 100% sure I made it. But that’s kind of morbid, isn’t it?)

These last few weeks/months have been a whirlwind of ugh. I’m trying to enjoy this time in my life, but honestly, it’s just too crazy. I’m not “living in the moment,” I’m living in the minute. I can’t even think about tomorrow or even what going to be happening tonight. I just tick through the day reacting to whatever needs the most attention at at that very second.

And I know I’m not alone.

We live in crazy times.

So enjoy Christmas, if you can. I’ve tried hard to focus on the true gift of Christmas this year. I was far from successful, but I was better than last year. And hopefully I will be better next year. It’s one foot in front of the other and…

Oh CRAP! I JUST REALIZED I FORGOT ABOUT THE BREAD DOUGH RISING IN THE REFRIGERATOR!

And with that stunning revelation of hope, I leave you with my 2010 Christmas Card. It is far from my favorite, but it’s what I could manage at the time.

My cousin Kev told me that he got my card and started reading it and was like “What the heck? What is she talking about? This is totally random.”

“And then,” he said, “It all came together at the end. It was brilliant.”

Brilliant. Brilliant! Obviously, I couldn’t agree with him more. Finally. Finally. Someone besides me has called me brilliant.

The best Christmas gift of all!

Merry Christmas!