black cloud

Ever felt like you're having one of these days ...

Well, today was one such day for me ... it was almost laughable. The kind of day where every errand leads to more errands instead of a satisfying check off the ole' list. I had a compressed morning as it was - only 2 hours to spare and a to-do list a mile long. The bad luck started immediately ... grumbling girls, unpacked backpacks, karma was off for sure. I went to the 8am school assembly on the tip that my little ladybug was part of a presentation - but the presentation was rescheduled (20 minutes down the drain). Went to the local smaller grocery store to get bare essentials and save time - store doesn't stock 5 of the 7 items on my list. Went to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription - to my shock, it's $135 ... turns out our new plan has a deductible - a deductible that will reset in 6 weeks when the calendar year changes. Went to the bank to drop off mortgage refinancing paperwork - went to the wrong branch. Did I mention that it was also pouring rain with piping wind gusts this morning? It definitely added to the drama ...

So after driving to the correct branch, and thus getting one errand checked off my list, I came home to do things like call the insurance company to get to the bottom of the $135 charge and catch up on my volunteer work that's starting to slip behind schedule. Better to be safely at home than behind the wheel if my day was going in that direction, right? But when I went to pull the trash barrels and recycling bins out to the curb, I noticed that the trucks had already come. Six hours early. Really? Was there no end to the road blocks today? At that point, I was definitely tangled up in knots - frustrated, rain-soaked, and defeated.

Until I came inside, dried off, and sat down to reply to emails ... a new email had come in from a good friend - a high school friend who had not come to our recent reunion. I've had trouble connecting with her at length to find out the reason, she had been vague at the time and I had a feeling something more was up. Turns out she's having a lot more than just a bad morning ... her husband has cancer and their "dream house" (bought just 4 years ago with dreams of restoration and renovation) has turned into a money pit. They're now trying to sell the house for a considerable loss and her husband, though he has beaten the cancer, has fallen into depression - to the point where she couldn't leave to join us at the reunion.

Can you say reality check? Sure made me forget about the laughable drama I had experienced on one rainswept and down-on-my-luck morning. Mantra for the day ... Recognize your blessings and stop stressing ...

pardon us while we interrupt this blog ...

Anyone else a Mac user out there? My Manbug is a full on computer junkie - more like a computer whisperer - he understands them completely, speaks their language, understands all their codes and inner workings. Shouldn't we all be so lucky to have 24/7 technical support in the house! So after Windows kept failing him over and over again like a bad girlfriend, he left it all behind and went over to Apple about 3 years ago ... and he's never once looked back ... if I could cue the music of the 1967 song "So Happy Together" and have video of my Manbug running in slow motion hand in hand with an Apple logo through a field of flowers, that would sum up the perfect union between them. They've been a match made in heaven ...

... until he ran an iphoto update about 2 weeks ago. Uh oh - trouble in paradise. His first harsh words about Apple in their entire 3-year romance.

At first the upgrade seemed fine, but soon we noticed new photos were disappearing. After hours (and hours) of troubleshooting and rebuilding, it turns out that Apple had changed the permissions settings for the "shared file" location where we stored our photos. Bottom line: new photos and edits (post-upgrade) were not able to be saved and simply vanished once you closed the program. So poor Manbug spent the better part of this last weekend at the computer backing up a 10-year total of about 18,000 digital photos in our iphoto library and then transferring them to a new storage location on the computer. One with the right permission settings.

Painless process? Nope. In fact, the whole library vanished during the transfer. All 18,000 photos. A complete wipeout. But Manbug kept his cool because, being the computer whisperer that he is, he had backed up a duplicate library into some sort of external system before he started the transfer. But it took a whole lot of time to rebuild from scratch. Quiet time. Like don't interrupt him and let him focus on the job kind of time. But at the end of the weekend, everything was fully restored and we were up and running again ... and Manbug was our resident hero ...

Huzzah!

So now that life is back to normal after our technical difficulties, tomorrow I will begin playing catch up. As in - catching up with bills and emails and those dreaded paper piles of mine ... but on the bright side, I'll also catch up with the 150+ photos that have been backlogged on my camera card. Photos with stories. So many random stories from the last 2 weekends while we were frozen in iphoto limbo ... stories of Baking and Books and Boots - oh my! Can't wait to share ...

norman rockwell and me ...

Jen at Denton Sanatorium was hosting another link-up party yesterday ... you'll notice I'm a day late and a dollar short - perpetually. Anyhoo ... Jen was the one who a couple of weeks ago had inspired her readers to participate in a "real life" challenge to expose the reality of our day-to-day lives rather than the edited and polished images we tend to publish instead. That post was a whole lot of fun for me - and very cathartic - I laughed out loud as I peeked into the similar realities of my bloggy pals ... great therapy ;)

This time the subject is the evolution of our families - the backstory of how they came to be. Definitely a deeper kind of therapy with this topic. Jen's own post about her amazing journey to becoming the mother of seven incredible children is so honest and inspiring ... in short, she amazes me. Other bloggy friends, too, have opened up to reveal some very personal stories - I've welled up with tears this time around - clearly a loaded topic.

You'd think this would be an easy one for me - my family is so simple - just 2 girls and a Manbug ... heck, we don't even have any pets! But, simple or not, this topic is a loaded one for me as well ... I myself come from a very complex and fragmented family tree ... it's filled with half-siblings, step-siblings, 2nd cousins twice removed, and everything in between. Death, divorce, remarriage, children born with every union ... my tree is a mess! My mother's mother was married an astonishing four times (bold for a woman born in 1919) and had 2 girls by separate husbands ... and years later, my own father was married 3 times ... with children each step of the way - 8 in all (5 biological and 3 stepchildren). To say I had a complicated childhood doesn't even begin to cover it ...

As a child, my family tree was a source of embarrassment and anxiety for me ... I felt a bit like a circus side show and vowed to stop the insanity - as a young girl, I daydreamed incessantly about growing up and getting my big chance at a fresh start ...

One ticket for a perfect Norman Rockwell future, please! Well, after a few misses, I found my Norman Rockwell boy when I was 25 - and by 27 we were married, when he was a budding marketing genius and I was an energetic and starry-eyed middle school teacher. Right away, we bought a charming little fixer-upper in his hometown and about 3 years later we started our family - Rockwell indeed.

We had our beautiful first-born on a hot July day in 1998 ... an easy birth, free of drama and complications. Likewise, she had been easily and quickly conceived, right according to plan ... and the entire pregnancy was one of those glowing amazing periods where my skin had never been clearer, my nails had never been stronger, and my hair had never been shinier ... I literally radiated with joy and good health and I loved - LOVED - every single minute of it. And I couldn't have been any happier when I was a new mother to that precious baby - the mommy and me classes, the long walks pushing her stroller, the breastfeeding, the adorable baby clothes, we traveled back and forth to see my family easily and often ... I couldn't get enough of it all ... my life was exactly the Norman Rockwell portrait I had dreamed it to be ...

But the Rockwell image began to fade when it wasn't as easy to conceive the next time around. I was a control freak who was in the process of putting together her perfect lifelong plan - I had gotten everything I wanted up until that point, so when it took a full year (seemed more like an eternity) to conceive our next baby it became a very stressful experience. Then once we finally conceived, my pregnancy was a difficult one. I was exhausted and sick the whole way through, the opposite of the radiant mother-to-be I had been just 3 years earlier. By the third trimester, I was begging to get it over with and on a beautiful June day in 2001, I got my wish and our second little ladybug came into our lives.

But the roller coaster ride of 2000 and 2001 was an important reality check for us after our picture perfect early days. Because it turns out that despite our best efforts, there are things in life you actually can't control. We had gone from a perfect Norman Rockwell portrait to this:

Did I mention we also moved during that time - that alone was enough to kill us, we lost 2 dream houses in a competitive housing market and then nearly lost the buyer to the home we were selling in the post-9/11 fallout ... and, of course, there was the trauma of 9/11 itself too. And, oh yeah, the new baby had difficulty nursing and was colicky - like crazy colicky. Mind numbing, lose your marbles colicky. For my husband, this series of beyond-our-control reality checks was enough for him to cash in - he wanted to quit growing our family while we were ahead - 2 healthy kids, a huge new mortgage, college funds ... he was feeling the noose for sure. Manbug is nothing if not practical - he had rationalized his decision and it was final. Two kids was his comfort limit.

But I would have none of it. I was a hot hormonal mess and pined, literally pined, for just one more. I loved the sisters that my girls were becoming and was so envious of their amazing bond - they were ying and yang, fric and frac, sugar and spice ... they had something I had never known myself - my goodness, the Norman Rockwell image was coming back together - that's the family I had been daydreaming about throughout my entire youth! So naturally they deserved to have more siblings, right?! I tried everything in my power to convince the Manbug, but he was not to be moved. Patience, I thought. Patience. I will have a third.

In 2002, we had a close local friend, also a father with young children, diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and by 2003, he was gone at just 33. Throughout his illness, and throughout his life before that too, this friend embraced a real Carpe Diem attitude, and he fought an amazing fight with the most incredible attitude. For me, the experience of losing him was gasoline on the fire ... why live your life worried and overly practical? Let's try for that 3rd baby! Carpe Diem indeed! But Manbug was still not to be moved. He saw our dear friend's death as the ultimate reality check on why to stick with two. Patience, I thought. Patience. I will have that third.

At that point, I became obsessed with the idea of three ... my Rockwell vision would not be complete without it. It became so real to me - I envisioned another girl, I could see her in future family photos, smiling away with her doting big sisters. It felt so right to me. So real. I even had her named, and I was carefully saving and labeling all of our baby gear and clothing for her ... in my mind, it was a done deal. Surely it would happen eventually. Right?

Nope. Having a small and manageable family of two was a comfort level that I was never able to shake the Manbug out of and a third baby never came to be. I cried and cried the day we passed along our crib to another family ... the gear, the clothing, eventually it all went off in different directions. Letting go of the "stuff" also meant letting go of the dream for my beautiful third daughter whose name I still hold dear. An imaginary daughter I had never even conceived let alone held in my arms ... and yet there I was crying for her, almost mourning her as I let go of the dream.

It's been 5 1/2 years since that day and my life as the mother of two has been so blessed. Our girls are growing up to be incredible people with their own unique voices and talents. I love them more than words could ever say. My life is definitely not as perfect as in those blissful newlywed/new mom days ... the roller coaster ride of life with children has been colorful to say the least (see aforementioned reality post). I must confess that families with 3 girls still seem to catch my attention, and I admit that I still wonder "what if?" from time to time - but I have to believe that this is where I was meant to be. And I know deep down in my heart that I have been blessed beyond measure, right down to that simple family tree I always wanted ... 2 beautiful and healthy ladybugs who are as thick as thieves and their wonderful and loving Manbug dad. Turns out this is my Norman Rockwell after all.

soup nazi ...

Over the course of my years here in frosty New England, I've really become a fan of homemade soups to get me through the cold cold months. There's nothing better than a wintry football Sunday where we're all tucked into the house and it's filled with the aroma of a slow-cooking soup simmering away. What's not to love? It's comfort food at it's best and one Sunday's yield can feed us all week long. The newest soup in my recipe collection is a potato-cauliflower-cheese soup that is absolutely delicious! Smooth and creamy, quick and easy, this one's a keeper!

First of all, you only need a handful of easy everyday ingredients - my kind of recipe already!

An onion, a baking potato, one head of cauliflower, 1-2 tablespoons of either butter or oil, 4 cups of chicken stock (vegetable stock is a great substitute too), 1-2 cups of shredded sharp cheddar cheese, and 1 cup of cream (depending on preference, you could also substitute milk). Start by heating up your stock pot and dicing up your potato and onion ...

... then melt the butter (or oil) in the pot and add the diced pieces - gently soften/sauté them for about 10 minutes. At the same time, chop the cauliflower into florets - add them into the pot next, along with the chicken stock ...

Bring it to a gentle boil and simmer for about 15+ minutes, until everything in the pot is really soft. At this point, one of these handy tools is your new best friend to purée it all together in a matter of seconds ...

All you have to do is just submerge it into the mixture and the blade whips it into a smooth mix (looks kind of like cream of wheat). At that point, you pour in the cream and toss in the cheese ...

Just stir it all together until the cheese is melted and and it's ready to serve ... I added a sprinkling of cheese in the center of my bowl for a little visual interest ... but no matter what it looks like, it's sooooo delicious, especially with warm bread!

The amounts that I used with this batch could easily feed 8+ ... and around here that that's a few days supply ... easy to reheat too - just warm it in the microwave with a little extra milk mixed in. If you're like me and love the low effort and big payoff of a hearty soup, this one's really worth a try ...

Bon appetit!!

america's got talent!

Did anyone follow this show throughout the summer? The ladybugs and I did - very enthusiastically. So when I found out after the season ended that the top 10 were going on an "AGT Live Tour", I was all-in ... I wish I had video footage of the moment I told them about our tickets, the littlest ladybug in particular just about had a seizure - the screams of delight were deafening - in that moment, I was the best mom ever. Hey, I take it where I can!

Well, after 2 months of waiting, the show finally arrived in Boston last night for its one and only night here ... big deviation from our usual school night routine! We arrived around 6:20 for what I thought was a 7:00 show ... turned out to be 7:30, so we waited in a line for quite a while and chatted with the other fans in the lobby of Boston's beautiful Wang Theater.

We finally got to our seats around 7:00 and the show finally started around 7:40 ... yikes, bedtime for my 9 year old ladybug is usually 8:00!

The show opened with Christina and Ali, a singing sister act who were big audience favorites throughout the show - they have cystic fibrosis and lost a sister last year to the disease ... the little sister, Christina, is particularly amazing since she's only 13 (Ali is 20) ...

The next act was Anna and Patryk - amaaaaazing 12 year old ballroom dancers - man, can those kids ever dance, they were really something ...

Taylor Mathews followed them, I think - he's that really adorable 19 year old singer who was known for how humble and nervous he was throughout the summer show - he was really good ...

Next came the magic act, Michael Grasso ... he did 3 mini acts all in a row - the first was slight of hand stuff (we sat way to far away to see it), the next was a disappearing lady in a box trick ... first she disappeared, then she came back, but with another lady too. Pretty cool, but the last trick was really incredible - he locked a lady in a small clear raised box, stood next to it, then lifted a hand held curtain in front of them and in the very next instant they had switched places - that was crazy - like Krazy crazy ...

Prince Poppycock was a big fan favorite throughout the show, so of course he did a larger-than-life flamboyant over-the-top act for us (to huge audience applause) ...

And as if that didn't get the audience going enough, next came this pint sized superstar ...

10 year old opera singer Jackie Evancho was absolutely incredible ... what a voice! They may have overplayed the fact that she's just a kid a bit too much (she stood on a box in front of the mic, she wore a fluffy white dress, she skipped as she left the stage, etc) - but there's no denying she has an amazing gift with that voice of hers ...

The bright stage lights swallowed her up in this iphone video clip of mine, but the audio is in tact - isn't she incredible? And the producers know it for sure - she sang at several different points throughout last night's show. I hope she's gonna take a long break out of the spotlight once this tour is over, she's so young ... the mother lion in me wants to make sure she doesn't end up the next Lindsay Lohan :-(

After Jackie came the big act for us - our absolute runaway favorite throughout the show last summer (and our main reason for being there) - Fighting Gravity ... see for yourself if you haven't already:

They were absolutely incredible and had people clapping and shouting before it had even ended - including us. The bugs and I were really sad that they never came back for another act afterwards because they really stole the show. AMAZING. A couple of the singers came back afterwards, Anna & Patryk did a second (and even more incredible) dance act, the bike kid (Jeremy VanSchoonhoven) did a few cool tricks (but not many since he had broken his hand about 4 weeks ago) ...

And another great act that they waited far too long to bring out was Studio One, a group of amazing acrobatic street dancers ranging in age from 10 - 22 ...

They were also big crowd-pleasers, we loved them!! But it was about 9:40 by the time Studio One finished up and my thoughts turned to leaving - lord knows, we were already way past our bedtime! Unfortunately, that's when they brought out the big million dollar winner, Michael Grimm ... he's a very talented singer (sounds a lot like Joe Cocker), but man did they ever keep him onstage too long ... and of course the shameless promotion of his upcoming Vegas Act was starting to try my patience ... so by the time we were actually walking out of the theater (with over 3,000 other people) it was past 10:00 and even my enthusiastic curfew-breaking ladybugs were ready to call it quits. We got home just in time for an 11 pm bedtime ... they were hanging their head low at the breakfast table this morning for sure! Today's gonna be an awfully difficult day at school for them, but I think it was worth it ... it's ok to break the rules every now and again, isn't it?!

belated ...

I had wanted to post some of these adorable costumes a couple of weeks ago (btw, none of these photos are my own, they're just ones that caught my eye online) ... but (as is typical for me) I left it incomplete and it languished in my 'drafts' bin ... so alas, it's now untimely and belated - but still cute enough to push through ... they don't even need narration, so I'm not exactly sure why I let it go ... anyway, here they are - late, but still worth a smile or two ...

("baby gaga", in case you're wondering)

So with that, I now officially close the book on October ... so long farmer's market and autumn leaves, so long trick-or-treaters and candy corn, so long bright blue skies and fresh cool mornings ... hello, winter winds and comfort foods, hello holidays and family time ... Happy November, everyone!

r.o.w.d.i.e. that's the way we spell rowdy ... rowdy! let's get rowdy!

Anyone remember that cheer? I must have performed it a dozen times at our costume party on Saturday night, complete with a dance routine and jumps. And the longer the party went on, the louder I cheered. It was so. much. fun. Dare I say ... legendary. The weather was with us, the guests were excited to run with the SNL theme, and the kegs were flowing freely ... it was the perfect recipe for a fun night filled with more than a few laughs. We had about 80 people at the height of the party, which went on until about 1 a.m. for the last handful of stragglers ... but of course the best part of the night was having laugh-out-loud Saturday Night Live themed costumes of all kinds. As you know, Manbug and I were the Spartan cheerleaders, along with 4 other couples ...

(3 of the 5 Spartan teams)

Gabe will be happy to learn that there was not just one, but two sets of Hans and Franz weightlifters ...

Didn't get a photo with both Hans/Franz sets together and unfortunately, I didn't do a great job of making sure that the camera in my hands at all times, so I have only a few photos to share ... probably better that way, right? I'll try my best to recap ...

For the first hour of the party, the little ladybugs joined in the fun ...

You'll notice that just behind my little hula-hooping Twister bug, there's a sheet on the wall ... for the SNL video clips that were running throughout the whole party. An old childhood friend of Manbug's was in charge as our dj/vj ... what a great job he did, 2 hours of pre-party a/v setup in his own little nook of the garage ...

Yes, swooper, you do know who that is - looking so handsome in his fur vest at his dj/vj post! As is typical of this particular person, he initially thought the theme was Saturday Night Fever and not Saturday Night Live ... he realized his error with just days to go and was (mercifully) able to change the party playlist he had initially created, but kept his disco costume figuring that it had to match with someone in an early season of SNL. Phew - disaster averted! So back to the costumes ... as I said, we had 5 Spartan cheerleading teams, 2 Hans and Franz, 6 Wayne's World teams, 2 Mary Katherine Gallaghers, a church lady ...

Behind our church lady you can see one of our synchronized swimmers (a character played by Martin Short in the early 90's) complete with USA swimcap, nose plug, and orange life vest. Behind the swimmer you can see a shiny shirt and hat - it's the back of one of our two "wild-n-crazy guys". We also had these characters ...

From left to right this is Christopher Walken from the infamous "gotta have more cowbell" skit (I got a fever - and the only prescription is more cowbell), the 2 in the middle are Team MacGruber, and the guy on the right? Well, isn't that obvious? We even gave him an award for Best Costume ...

Honestly, it still makes me laugh out loud when I see this costume - I absolutely loved having a Mr. Bill come to the party! Our other winner for Best Costume went to the guy in the middle of this photo ...

Do you recognize who he was? He's Patrick Swayze from the Chippendale dancer skit that he did with Chris Farley years ago ... you can't see it in this photo, but he was complete with the sleeveless tux shirt and the lycra dance pants- and I mean just look at the work that went into that Swayze wig. Please. He's surrounded by musical guest Avril Lavigne on the left and by the Belushi bumblebee on the right.

Clear to see it was a night filled from end to end with laugh-out-loud fun ... well worth every bit of work to make it happen. And even worth the painful day-long cleanup on Sunday after just a tiny bit of sleep ... made for some very groggy and unfocused trick-or-treating with the ladybugs last night, but we went to bed still giggling about party stories 24 hours later ... zzzzz ... tee hee hee ... zzzzz ...

Happy Halloween!!!