Author Archives: metamegan

Guess Who’s Back

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The answer is: me.  The other night, Luke asked me to make an apple pie pancake for breakfast, and I not only remembered to do it, but it turned out perfectly.  Yes, I did wait until Dave and Jack had left the house for the day because apple pie pancake can’t be rushed, AND it doesn’t really make 4 servings.  (It does, but I eat one and Luke eats 3.)  Plus Dave and Jack were headed to Father’s Day breakfast at day care so…..  So yes, it was awkward when Dave came back home for something he forgot, only to find Luke eating a delicious breakfast fit for a king.

So, what have you missed while I have been on hiatus?  Mostly just this:

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That’s a pie that I dropped on the floor after burning my hand.

My Little Buttercup (has the sweetest smile)

Last night when Jack was getting in the car, I said, “Buckle up, Buttercup” because I find that to be a delightful thing to say.  What I mean is, “GAH!  Every time we get in the car, you need to buckle your seat belt, please don’t make me say it every time.  Just do it when you get in the car for the love of God.”

Me: Buckle up, Buttercup!

Jack:  Mama, didn’t you say that Buttercup was a name you should never call anyone?

Me.  No…

Jack:  Yeah, you did.

Me:  No, why would I say that?  I think it’s a sweet name, and I could sing you a whole song about it.  If your aunt and uncle were here we could do a choreographed song and dance routine.

Jack:  Maybe the bad word was Butterhead.

Me: Ummm, yeah, don’t say that.

Jack:  Yeah, that’s it, it definitely had “cup” in it.

Me: ?

Sleepover

8470_10151696292266064_95809891_nThese are the faces of three cousins who weren’t planning to get a lot of sleep. Missing are the two cousins in the other room who also didn’t get a lot of sleep.  Aunt Beth got them settled, and then I sang some lullabies and then Aunt Beth and I went out and left Uncle Scott to administer the second and third warnings.  Everyone was asleep when we got home, so it seemed like a success.

Jack has no memory of the time Aunt Beth got up to go to the bathroom and found him whimpering and offered to take him downstairs to find me, or the time Uncle Scott ran into him either.  But around 5:00 am, I ran into Jack and Hope, and she was helping him find me as I was heading to the bathroom.  Jack was upset, the cat was scratching to be let in, and I really had to go to the bathroom.  Jack said, “I had a TERRIBLE NIGHT.  There was a FAN, right by my HEAD.  ALL NIGHT.  A FAN in my FACE!!!”  (Note that there is no fan in that picture.)  I said, “Shhhh.  Shhhh.  Shhh.  Go lay down on the couch, I’ll be right back.”  And I headed for the bathroom.  The door was shut and the light was on.  Hmm. I really didn’t want to go upstairs to the bathroom because it was all the way upstairs, and I feared I would run into a lot of kids that were awake, and it was too early for that.  So, Jack was awake, the cat was scratching and really had to go to the bathroom.  I turned to Jack.  He said, “Blah blah FAN in my FACE blah blah etc.”  I checked the bathroom, someone was still in there.  So I let the cat in.  One thing dealt with.  Fan in my face, someone still in the bathroom, upstairs still too far away.  I started to knock, because some truly strange sounds were coming from the bathroom when there was sort of a crash and the door opened and Anthony rolled out.  He had a tiny table full of legos in there and he was busy building something.   I said, “Uh.  Anthony?  Can I use the bathroom or would you prefer that I go upstairs?”  He said, “Go upstairs please.”  OK.  Upstairs I went.  And then I was on the couch, getting under a blanket and snuggling in with Jack for a couple more hours of sleep.  Really snuggling in, under a big thick blanket, right next to Jack, on a hot summer night.

Jack said, “Ok.  NOW I could USE a fan.”

~~~

But we did survive the next day, even if we were sleep deprived.  I wish we could do it again this weekend.

Baseball

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I was at a baseball game the other day (every day) and I heard a mom say, “I have to send the family to Noodles just to have time to go to the grocery store!”  And I was like, “I hear ya sister!”  But I only said that it my head because I had never seen any of these parents before, which is weird.   Then I heard a dad say, “Ugh!  Noodles!  I refuse to go there!  You can buy 4 pounds of noodles for what it costs for one meal.  It drives me crazy, etc.”  And I said, “Those dry noodles aren’t going to cook themselves, jerk.”  Just in my head again.  Clearly, I needed to move someplace else, which I waited to do until one of the parents said Luke just made a lucky catch to tag a kid out as he stole home.

What is my point?  I have been watching a lot of baseball.  In the picture above, I am doing the pitch count during one rainy game.  So focused. Jack was playing with my phone and clearly, I have been so busy with baseball, I have not had time to blog, or get my eyebrows waxed.

Birthday Baking

As I may have mentioned before,  I’m not good at baking in moderation.  My friend Laura sometimes bakes a batch of cookies after dinner, and I mean, who has time for that?  Just finish dinner, and bake a batch of cookies?  No.  Once a year, I bake 17 dozen cookies.  It takes a month of preparation, weeks of baking, days of decorating, minutes of eating, and so on.  Then I take 10.5 months off.  Or, I volunteer to bring in pancakes for Luke’s class and the day before they say, “Thanks, be here at 7:00 am, there are 60 kids.”  What?  I was going to send 20 pancakes in a ziplock bag.

When Luke was in kindergarten, I was overcompensating for not being a stay at home mom, and I made elaborate cupcakes for his class.  But as you all know, Luke really prefers pie to anything else, and a while ago I saw a recipe for hand pies, and then I thought, “Why not make tiny individual pies for all the kids in Luke’s class this year?”  I bet lots of people could think of reasons not to do that, but before I could come to my sense, Luke’s friends were saying things like, “Only 30 days until we all get pie!”  and it was too late to back out.

Have I mentioned the 10 stages of excessive baking?

1.) Announcing my grand plan

2.) Planning, browsing blog posts, imagining an extremely large group of people being delighted my beautiful pastries.

3.) Kind of wishing I hadn’t ever said anything about anything related to baking some crazy dessert

4.) Actually planning, deciding on a recipe, shopping without a list

5.) False start, realizing I don’t have all the ingredients I need

6.) Second trip to the grocery store

7.) Making the dough that needs to chill for some period of time

8.) Worrying that I won’t have enough/procrastinating

9.) Making the dessert, making extra just in case

10.) Having way too much of a dessert that tastes fine, and looks ok.

I’m sure you can guess where I am now, with 30 hours left to go.  Dough is in the fridge, and there probably isn’t enough!

MetaMagazine

I have a love/hate relationship with magazines, as everyone knows.  Remember my monthly column about Panic Attack Magazine?  Hey, I wrote it for 3 months, that is some serious dedication.  Well, now that my children are all grown up, and I have stopped caring worrying enough to read parenting magazines, I have moved on to cooking/decorating/lifestyle magazines, and the love/hate affair has continued.  Mostly I read recipes in the car on the way to Eldora, decide what to make someday, fold down the corners to mark the page, and then lazily cook the same old meals and recycle the magazine because it told me to get rid of clutter.  But when I was reading all my magazines on the beach, it was dangerously close to New Years Day, and I decided to turn over a new leaf and cook some of the recipes.  For real.  I also read an article that was so wonderfully awful, I could write about it for days.  It had the perfect mixture of a good idea taken too far, first world problems, pretention, and hypocrisy.  I laughed and laughed and then mocked it with my friend Laura.  And then…  and then we came up with an article I could write about my own family that followed that exact formula and it would be so perfect for that magazine.  So do I link to the article and make fun of it, or do I write my own version and become magazine famous?  It’s a real Sophie’s choice.

In the meantime – here is a round up/review of the recipes I have tried last month:

Martha Stewart Roast Spatchcocked Lemon Chicken – (Martha Stewart Living, January 2013) Dave made this one, so I can’t comment on how hard/easy it was, but it tasted good.  It wasn’t the best or worst thing I have ever had, but it was necessary for the following:

Roast Lemon Chicken and Rice Soup – (Martha Stewart Living, January 2013) I usually have an idea of whether or not I am going to like something, and I usually like it.  This was the rare exception.  This soup was gag-inducingly bad.  “It tasted like a cough drop” was the nicest thing I could say about it.  It was gross.  Thankfully, I didn’t use all the leftover chicken from above, because it would have gone to waste.  I did make the kids eat the chicken out of their bowls, and I did the same.  Dave made a valiant effort to eat the leftovers but most of it got tossed.  Oddly, the Daily Camera featured this exact recipe this week and I gagged all over again.  Do Not Make.

But I did use the rest of the chicken in a noodle bowl recipe from Sunset February 2013.  The noodles are here, and the veggies  here, (I just used veggies that I had and that the kids like) and I threw the leftover chicken in broth with some scallions.  I seasoned half the noodles and half the veggies and let people pick what they wanted in their bowl.  Everybody went with broth, chicken, noodles, and veggies.  (Kids unseasoned, adults – seasoned.)  The kids LOVED it.  Luke said he wanted me to make it for his birthday dinner.  We’ve already had it twice.  I may have set the bar really low with the cough drop soup.  The noodle bowl recipes were in an article about this book: The Hakka Cookbook.

Quinoa and Pumpkin Seed Granola – (Better Homes and Gardens January 2013) I am not going to link to this one because it’s from Better Homes and Gardens and you have to login to see the recipe.  But if you are motivated, you can find it.  It was really yummy, and good, but I was the only one who liked it so I probably won’t make it again.  The kids were sad that it was nothing like granola made with oats, and it was very crumbly so it was hard for them to eat by the handful.  I liked it on top of oatmeal, and in yogurt.  It’s great if you get your organic quinoa in a giant bag from costco and then worry about what to do with it.  Yep, that is a problem that people have.

So there you go – not too bad for January.

 

Ladies Who Lunch: Frasca Caffe

Laura and I are aiming for more frequent lunches together this year, and we started off the year with lunch at the Frasca Caffe.  I did my research and it looked like they had lots of yummy options, but I was worried about the “small space” description on the website.  I thought maybe it was a tiny coffee shop with some food behind glass and 2 tables.  Sometimes on my lunch break, when I used to leave the house on a semi-daily basis, I would think it was a good idea to go to a coffee shop for lunch and 100% of the time I would look at pre-made sandwiches and salads behind a glass case and get really sad and indecisive.  Then I would end up getting coffee and a pastry and still eating whatever lame lunch I had brought and then needing a nap.   I was pretty sure that wouldn’t happen with Laura because she would either be able to talk me into something, or we would just leave and sensibly pick some other place.  But everything worked out beautifully, because although I could stand in the middle of the Frasca Caffe and touch all the walls if I had, like, 5 to 7 foot long arms, there were three tables not 2.  AND the food behind the glass looked really really good, and they made our sandwiches to order so it was not in any way sad.

I thought it was a little odd that there were three people working behind the counter, when it wasn’t really very busy, but maybe we were there early.  They were all very friendly and helpful and we appreciated the full disclosure, “Would you like a pickle with that for 30 cents extra?”  No one wants to be caught by surprise by a pickle surcharge.

So – what did we get?  I ordered the Toast Panini Caldi, which was basically a hot cheese and tomato sandwich.  The bread was delicious, and the cheese was delicious, but I kind of wished it was 100% melted.  The tomato was for texture, because it’s January.  I liked it.  Laura had the Verdure, which was mozzarella and grilled vegetables.  I didn’t order that because I had no idea how to pronounce it.  I think she liked it, I may have forgotten to ask.  I know there was one type of vegetable in there (we think eggplant) that was un-bite-through-able.   That’s not a good quality in a sandwich vegetable in my opinion.

But it was a very cute interior, and I do want to go back to try some of the breakfasty stuff and the pastries.  In an alternate universe, I’d bike there for a pastry and coffee before doing some shopping on Pearl Street or working on my latest volume of poetry.  This alternate universe may exist in the Spring, but it snowed here this week and it’s cold and I’m in one of those, I may never leave the house again moods.  Although, I do have plans for lunch with Laura again soon.

 

 

Professional Cyclists as Role Models

Kids love their sports, and regardless of whether it’s football, baseball, or cycling, kids are going to find role models.   And that is great, because there are so many opportunities for discussion about life choices.  Who doesn’t love those teaching moments?

The crazy thing about being a cycling fan in Boulder, is that you aren’t so much watching the sport from afar as with football and baseball.  Luke races his bike, and one of his cycling coaches was an Olympian.  Professional cyclists race in the same events he does, they cheer for the kids, and he gets to meet cyclists all the time. Luke has ridden with Tommy D, and we know someone who knows  Rory Sutherland.  (We have been huge fans since hours before he won Stage 6 in the USA Pro Cycling challenge. )

Many of my tens of readers (hi Mom! hi Dad! hi Aunt Linda!) may only know of  the cyclist who is on Oprah, but Luke doesn’t watch Oprah, so let’s just be thankful for that.

So, there is a lot to be said for the positive influence of all the cyclists we have met in terms of encouraging Luke, inspiring Luke, and giving Luke real skills and knowledge to perform well in races. But what happens when kids start to emulate lifestyle choices?  Well, I will tell you.

Here is a picture of Luke meeting Alex Howes, who was very friendly and motioned for Luke to come sit next to him and chat when he could see that Luke was shy about approaching him.  Very cool.

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Here is Luke two months later.  Eerily similar haircut, don’t you think?

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So what happens when Luke idolizes professional cyclists?  He gets more fashionable.  I love it.

Mas Tequila Boss

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When we were in Mexico, Luke decided to participate in a ping pong tournament.  And by that I mean he said, “I’m going to win the ping pong tournament.”  Well, the only issue was that the tournament was at 4:30, and none of us had watches, and there were no clocks anywhere.  So, we just decided that after lunch we would spend the rest of the day at the pool nearest to the ping pong table.  That plan worked well and before we knew it, Luke had won the ping pong tournament and all was right with the world.  Oh, except for one little thing.  The activities directory had told Luke there was a prize and then he faded away into the sunset before any prizes were awarded.  I told Luke that we’d just find Luis tomorrow, and that he should just be happy with the bragging rights as an award.

That night we went to dinner at the fancy resort restaurant, and got on a 1 hour wait list.  So I ran the kids over to the buffet for an appetizer while Dave held our spot.  On the way back, we saw Luis, and he said, “I’ll be right back!”  Into his office he went to rifle through drawers for a prize.  I told the kids he was saying, “Shot glass? No.  T-shirt? No. etc.”  He came out with a tee-shirt, a plastic sun visor and a shot glass.  We said, “Thanks!” and went off to find Dave.  I told Jack to wear the visor and act like it was no big deal.    This translated into Jack putting the sun visor on upside down, hair everywhere, arms raised, head bobbing from side to side saying, “WHAT!?  It’s no big deal?!?!”

The king of subtlety.

Bonus Jack story, because I never want to forget the period of time (currently happening) where Jack wrote BOSS on everything.  When we were doing our Christmas cards, I gave one to Jack to write for his teachers at daycare, to go with some cookies.  He can write most of his letters, but he can’t really read or spell much.  So when he wants to write something, he tells me what he wants to write, and I tell him how to do it, letter by letter.  When he can’t remember how to do a letter, I draw it in the air, or try to form it with my fingers.  This explains why some of his letters look a little odd.  ANYWAY, he said he wanted the card to say, “To the boss of <Daycare name redacted>”  I told him how to spell it, and that was that.   But somehow, he remembered how to write BOSS, and now he writes it on everything.  His drawings from school say “JACK BOSS” on them, doodles say “BOSS” etc.   Dave and Luke and I find this to be totally hilarious, and we want to call him boss, and start using boss as a synonym for awesome, and everything else.  But, unfortunately, Jack thinks we are making fun of him, and he doesn’t like it.  And yet, BOSS lives.

I just want to hold onto this phase.  Pretty soon he’ll be reading and writing, and leaving for college.  But for now, I am loving this BOSS phase.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!  I spent the holiday on a beach in Mexico, and it was the best, I highly recommend it.  But now I am suffering in the cold, not used to working, or moving, or wearing clothing other than a bathing suit.  Alas.  It’s time to start 2013, since we are already 10 days in.  And what a coincidence – last year my resolutions were all about 10.  How did I do?

  • 10 pies – Accomplished!!!!  Plum, apple, keylime, chocolate, snickers, peach, cherry/blueberry, cherry, plum, apple tart and 1 other that I can’t be bothered to research right now.
  • 10 science experiments – Um, yes, accomplished!
  • 10 blog posts per month – FAIL!    I counted 43 blog posts, not 120.
  • 10 crafts – In addition to doing my crazy craft day with Jack, I also finally made two aprons that I had meant to make the year before, so that was a success.

So, I didn’t write a lot in 2012, but I did do a lot.  We spent a week skiing and snowboarding in Steamboat, we watched a lot of baseball (I think Luke played 60 games?), we went to Arkansas, we spent 5 days mountain biking in Fruita, we spent a week in Ohio, and we went to Mexico.    I read 34 books, with only about a third of them being young adult books, so that isn’t bad either.

This year I have made 1 official resolution:  write.

I plan to write every day, for the entire year.  My minimum is a page in my journal, but I hope to average at least one blog post a week, and maybe do some work on that book that is languishing on my computer.

Other tinier, resolutions, or more accurately, “things I am considering doing” are:

Ride my bike more -(average at least an hour a week in strava)

Ride a century?  Maybe, we’ll see.

Read 40 books.

I feel like I need to add something food related.  Have 10 dinner parties?  Ten seems like a lot.  Maybe 1 dinner party per season.  That seems easy and doable.

OK – world, now you know my plans.

Happy New Year!