Thrift Store Treasures and Trials

This morning, the kids decided to launch a concerted campaign to get to the nearby thrift store. The store has a great racket going: the volunteers bag up random toys that they don't want to price individually. They write "Grab Bag" on the outside, price them $1 for big bags and $.50 for small ones, and sit and wait for the Joneses to come.

The kids dashed around the house, making cleaning offerings to appease the household god ("Look how clean the living room is, Mama!") Addi eagerly finished her math lesson. They scavenged up three dollars. Meanwhile, I realized I had a big load that needed to go to the thrift shop. In the end, it all worked in their favor: we got in the van and went.

But a terrible discovery awaited them. The price of the grab bags was doubled. Now it was $2 for a big bag, $1 for a small bag. It was unfair! It was monstrous! "It's life," I said. Fortunately, there was enough change among them to get a big bag and a small bag.

Back home, the four of them sorted through their loot. It included several Mardi Gras necklaces and three plastic eye patches. For a while, there were several pirates rushing around saying, "Arrrghh, mateys!" When Pip finally got ahold of an eye patch, he strapped it over his nose and ran around shouting, "Raarrgg, babies!"


After some obligatory fights over toys that they forgot about within twenty minutes, the household is now content.

-- SJ

SH&SW: Householdy Charm

The title is a play on a remark by a character in Harry Potter #5. Tonks tries to pack Harry's trunk with a wave of her wand and fails. She explains, "I was never good at all those householdy charms like my mum." And women everywhere thought, "Hey, let me have a try at those householdy charms! I NEED those!"

But I don't have them. So I have to use, for instance, a vacuum cleaner. However, I often sweep my carpet instead of vacuuming the whole area. That way I can make four or five little trash piles, then turn the 2- or 5-year-old loose with the vacuum hose. It's satisfying all around.

In news of household residents, Daphne had me tape her balloon string to a stick. She jerked it around a while and realized she could whap the balloon with the stick.

Daphne: Hey, Mama! I bet you can't guess what the name of my new game is!
Me: Um, Bump the Balloon.
Daphne: No! 'Hit The Balloon With The Stick'! But you were close. I'm on Level 10 already."

-- SJ

Sh&Sw 2: 1200 Calories

Darren and I are tracking our calories to get our eating under control. (It's odd, from a historical perspective, that we are so well off that we have to train ourselves to eat less.) On the one hand, it's a lot more fun working on it together. On the other hand, it's no fun whatsoever to be the female half of the team. You know how many calories Darren gets in a day? Hm, let's see... he considers 750 for lunch to be a good target. That's more than half of my entire daily allowance. Not only is life unfair, but biology is too.

In fact, for the first two weeks on myfitnesspal.com, I ended each day nearly in tears. Even with walking or running a mile or two a day, I was still overshooting my goal. And it's not like I sat around eating candy bars and doughnuts all day.

Here's what has made a difference:

1. Darren's friend Maureen, who is helping keep him on track, wrote to me that "1200 calories can be a little food or a lot of food, depending on what you eat." She suggested lots of veggies... as in, entire packages of frozen vegetables. So I took her up on it, filling up my bowl with broccoli or soybeans and adding a bit of rice or cheese or chicken to make it more interesting. It works, it really does.

2. Tracking my calories is like budgeting: it shows up where I spend the most. In my case, it's snacks. I can eat 245 for breakfast, 312 for lunch, 390 for supper... and 500 for snacks. Getting the snack section under control has made it much easier to see green numbers at the end of the day.


The scale is consistently five pounds lower than it was a month ago, which is pleasing. Darren's progress is even more remarkable, because he's been disciplined, active, and because biology isn't fair.

-- SJ

Short&Sweet Post 1: The True Meaning of Smekday

Due to time restraints which prevent my blogging as much as I'd like to -- by which I mean children who either read everything I post, or who actively interrupt every fourth thought -- I'm going for short and sweet on the blog these days. Like chocolate truffles infused with orange flavor.Or chocolate-covered cherries; those are good, too. I also like toffees. I'm not fond of chocolate-on-chocolate, but I'll eat them if they're chilled. Mint and chocolate is always a good combination -- especially an Andes Mint Ice Cream we discovered a few years ago. Hm, it seems I've wandered into a high-calorie fantasy, brought on no doubt by my recent switch to sensible eating habits. 

Back to the original topic, I hope to blog more often, in smaller portions. A lot like how I'm eating these days. Except without all the bonbons.

The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex (aimed at upper elementary and middle schoolers) was a serendipitous discovery. "Serendipity," as I defined it to my kids, means "a happy accident," and that's how I regard this book. Either Addi or Stuart brought it home from the library, having pulled it off the shelf at random. The premise didn't look very rollicking at first glance.

The year is 2013, and Earth has been taken over by aliens called the Boov. They've renamed the planet "Smekland" after their glorious Captain Smek who conquered the new land. Since the Boov decide they have need of most of North America, they order all Americans to board rocket pods and head to Florida.

Eleven-year-old Gratuity (her friends call her "Tip"), who watched the aliens abduct her mother, decides she'll drive to Florida instead. But she crashes somewhere outside Pittsburgh, and ends up in the company of one a Boov who seems to be on the run from his own kind. When Gratuity finds out why, she also finds out that there are other, scarier aliens to worry about.

So now she has to save the world.

Yeah, so it didn't look like a great read, especially for middle schoolers... until I actually started reading it. It's absolutely hilarious. The alien, for instance. Gratuity asks his name, and he replies, "Forto be saying my name you must have two heads. I haveto taken as my Smekland name, J.Lo." So for the entire book, Gratuity refers to this blue eight-legged frog-faced alien as "J.Lo." In Florida, they hide out in the Happy Mouse Kingdom, an alternate-reality Disneyworld. All the humans have been relocated to Arizona because, it turns out, the Boov like oranges. "Wait, they eat the oranges?" says Gratuity, who knows J.Lo's odd ideas about what constitutes food. "No," says someone else. "I think they wear them."

They travel to Roswell, New Mexico (via a flying car) where they find out that something really DID happen all those years ago. The story also -- in case you didn't catch it -- partially retells the story of the Western conquest of the New World. But Rex never lets his message overtake his story.

I've read the book twice. I don't know how many times Addi and Stuart have read it. (And Daphne's managed to get through the first 50 pages, which as far as she's concerned puts her in with the big kids.) This is definitely one that will stick around in the Household Library. Which it shouldn't be doing right now, because it's overdue at the Public Library.

-- SJ

P.S. Um, I intend for future Short&Sweet Posts to be actually, you know, short.