Amusing Links, plus the weirdest and stupidest thing I did today

Usually Mondays around here are busy and stressful, but since we’re in Neverland or Wonderland or maybe Stranger Thing’s Upside Down world, I tried to infuse some stress back into it by filling the house with the fresh scent of rotten meat and Chinese fringeberries.

I’m on day 3 of a migraine and I’m pretty sure Jim feels like he’s married to Professor Trelawney . Since word coming out of France and Spain is to avoid ibuprofen at all cost right now, I decided it would also be a good idea to avoid my alien powered, high octane migraine prescription as well. I call it yoga for the trigeminal-autonomic reflex pathway…. I’m trying to work with the pain, listen to my body, and not just medicate and power through at 100 mph like I normally do. It’s not going well. So far my “don’t hyperventilate and work with the migraine” plan caused me to make 4 lbs of rotten meatballs. This is not normal for me, I have poor eyesight but a highly tuned olfactory system. The fact that it took me a few hours to identify the weird smell as rotten meat cooking in my oven is something that never happens in this household. I indigently thrust a freshly cooked rancid meatball under Jim’s nose while he was trying to do his job on the front line of the current healthcare crisis, and demanded he smell it and taste it. He said it tasted fine, but he’s also known to eat moldy things and uncooked chicken, so he was no help. Thankfully I caught it before I ruined the entire batch of sauce… the sauce… as in the sauce that Jim’s late Italian grandmother taught me to make in order to be married to her grandson. The one that heals all woes and is the perfect quarantine relief food (and I almost screwed it up).

That was the stupidest thing I did, the weirdest thing I did was toss a bunch of Chinese fringe berries and dandelions into the vitamix. The kids are like Pavlov’s dog when they hear the vitamix’s jet engine ramp up in the kitchen. William looked at the gray sludge and asked dubiously what kind of smoothie it was. Robbie was the only one who cheerfully volunteered to try the fringeberry dandelion concoction, but it wasn’t for human consumption. I listened to a gardening podcast about not being irritated with pests, weeds, etc but instead work with nature instead of fighting it (noticing a trend here?). Our neighbor has a Chinese Fringe tree that dumps these olive berry looking things all over our flower bed and sidewalk. I googled it and they don’t compost very quickly, but they’re full of great nutrients, so I decided to work with nature and toss them into my vitamix and then compost bin. The dandelions were just innocent bystanders that got swept up with the tide.

My compost now smells very good. Apparently you can also pickle these berries like olives and eat them (which I’m adding to my list of possibilities if the grocery store stays empty).

I love lists of links, and in case you do too, here is my current list ( know they don’t look like links, because I can’t figure out how to format my squarespace skin, but I promise they’re all clickable)

1. 13 edible plants you can find in urban environments.

2. I wish our church would do something like this creative Russian Orthodox priest. Or at least keep the doors unlocked like the Catholic and Episcopalian churches.

3. A free book on rational thinking.

4. The most powerful fire engine in the world

5. A book review about President Hoover that is almost better than the book itself.

6. An ex Pickup Artist’s thoughts on how to pray.

7. And last but not least: The aforementioned Sauce recipe that heals all woes (or at least it does for everyone in my husband’s family)

I’ll just be over here enjoying pepper tree tea with some sauteed dandelion and pickled fringeberries. My liver has never been happier even if my head is not. The only thing I have left to do is install a bidet.

The one where I attempt to garden...

Happy Spring! I took this picture because I loved the contrast of the colors, and was so excited to actually be planting something in the garden I’ve worked so hard to dig. But you can tell I’m a newbie gardener because within a few hours my nails looked like this. 

When I picked gardening as one of my New Year’s resolutions, I had no idea it was going to fortuitously be one of the only hobbies still legal by spring.  

It’s supposed to be relaxing, but is instead stressing me out. I couldn’t buy plants because I’m not independently wealthy, which leads me to my first question. For those out there who are sewers as well as growers, is gardening like sewing? You know, where it costs you twice as much money to buy fabric, own a machine and buy basting tape and buttons than it would to just buy a dress from the store (but you do it anyway for the love of sewing and the fact that you can’t just waltz into Target and buy a Daenerys Targaryen costume?) 

I carefully researched which vegetables and herbs grow in partial shade because our urban-ish backyard backs up against a towering apartment complex that blows out Marijuana smoke like a forge of Mordor. Add an out of control elm tree of some kind and a straggly pepper tree, and it’s clear our backyard is just perfect for gardening. I’m not in over my head at all. 

All of the seed packets say “full sun” even though the internet very clearly tells me “partial sun”. I’m sure this makes sense to real gardeners, but to me it feels like there is some sort of secret cabal going on where everything can be blamed on Apollo.  

And what in the world do the watering instructions mean? Does “two inches” of water mean the width, length and volume is optional? There are too many variables! I watched several YouTube videos to figure it out and that did nothing but convince me gardeners really love their plants and they sound like they’re speaking a foreign language. I need a cheat sheet for dummies.

.... Or flash cards because I’m going all Hermione Granger on gardening when it probably takes more of a Luna Lovegood touch. 

How to lose weight, find the bad guy, and cure the coronavirus

An oh so helpful list to enjoy over the weekend.

1. When people ask me how I stay so fit, I tell them it’s because I have four boys. They laugh, but it’s the gospel truth. I made myself poached eggs over curried vegetables for breakfast and got approx 1.2 bites before it was consumed by my ravenous children who beg for cereal and then act like they’ve never eaten five minutes after the dishes are cleaned and the food is put away. I have a current thing for stir fries. Stir fry with udon noodles…stir fry with couscous….stir fry with lentils. But doesn’t matter what kind of stir fry it is, I rarely get to eat it. I could put fried worms and rotten fish in my stir fry and all of my children would think it was amazing. I know it’s my own fault, but they’re so cute when they ask for a bite. The problem is there are four of them and a few of them have gigantic mouths. I guess I should be grateful they’re eating vegetables.

2. Part of the reason I don’t watch many movies or TV shows is because I am the most gullible and easily spooked person ever, and pretty much have to watch every scary-ish movie sitting in Jim’s lap, clutching him in terror (which he considers a perk…especially when we were d̶a̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ courting). I need clues, big obvious clues about who to trust and who not to, which is why I was stoked to read this: “Apple won’t let bad guys use iphones in movies”. This may make me actually like iphones a little….hmmm…or not.

3. Approximately 62,000 men and 26,000 women die from alcohol related deaths every year, which means that Corona (the beer) is more deadly than the virus (Thank you Owen for that one). I thought since my kids know their Latin, they would get a kick out of something being named “crown”, but no… they instead think it’s hilarious to pretend like they’re popping open a can and then clutching their throat and dying violently on the ground. I’m trying to nip such behavior in the bud, but it’s not going well. We haven’t been hit by the Corona virus, but we have had some lingering coughs here, and it rekindled my love for the Lobelia herb. Seriously works amazing on coughs, but tastes like death. My husband says that it cures your cough by making you never want to breath again. I use this one, but if you use it, don’t blame me if you sprout horns out of your tongue.

Pineal Gland, Repentance, and Smooth Moves

Or as I screw up and say it “Pineleal gland, repenitence and smeeoooth moves, which is totally unintentional, but in my opinion an improvement. (despite my husband dying of laughter every time I say stuff like this).

When I found out a few of my kids have legit auditory processing issues, I realized that it probably comes from me. Somehow I sidestepped the more difficult parts of an auditory processing problem by burying my long-skirted, homeschooled, nearsighted self in books where everything makes perfect sense (or not…but at least it’s all clear cut).

So take this with a giant grain of salt, but I had an epiphany the other day: What if listening to music or watching something on a screen is the same difference as watching somebody eat vs ingesting food, or watching someone have sex vs actually having it? There is absolutely no comparison between listening to a symphony (even if it’s on $300 headphones), and being in a symphony hall. Listening to an old message of a loved who has passed away is never going to be as good as actually having them in front of you. What if we’ve been sold so much on listening devices (I blame the inventor of the phonograph) that no one can actually play instruments in their home? Live?

I read a book(ish) on the the pineal glad (i.e. the intersection of ancient thought and modern thought, which is my kind of book, you can buy it here). Your pineal gland (located in your brain) has always been called the 3rd eye, but the only real thing we know about it these days is that it regulates melatonin and other circadian rythym things, but they think it’s very sensitive to music. Also, calcification is bad.

There’s an interesting study on it here.

They say organ music opens the pineal gland because of the vibrations. As I cried through a hymn in church today, I wondered if that’s why we have organs in churches the same way some churches have amazing stained glass.

Whatever the case, an open pineleal gland really helps with the repenitence.

Use every part of the buffalo and the reading chair that backfired

One of my firmly half gen-x/half millennial hobbies is to peruse Google Books for old, completely intact books. Since I don’t have time to go find actual physical old books in thrift stores and library sales, and since I have physical touch dyslexia when it comes to enjoying the smell and feel and whatever else book lovers gush about, google books is my poison of choice. Gutenberg and other open source platforms are too easy and don’t have helpful answers to inquiries like “books on prostitutes during the Middle Ages” and other pertinent information I need to know. Part of the problem (and brilliance) of old books is you get the original source. I don’t want some college professor’s take on housekeeping in the 1700’s I want to read the actual book on house keeping in the 1700’s, which is how I found Mrs. Beeton’s Book Of Household Management. I couldn’t put it down. This lady was the centuries bygone version of Martha Stewart and the Pioneer Woman rolled into one beautiful book on how to fix your life, make friends, take care of your house and throw parties all with a sick toddler on a hip.

Someday I will throw a dinner party using the exact menu/recipes and decor laid out in one of the chapters (and anyone is invited who is willing to eat such things as “Haunch of mutton, boiled turkey and celery sauce, boiled tongue garnished with brussel sprouts, blancmange and cabinet pudding.” . I have no idea what “blancmange” is and I hope that “cabinet pudding” is not a descriptor of where it sits for any length of time.

I hadn’t had a chance to put the book to practice until a friend gave me some Montana, happy, cow-in-a-field knuckle bones. Jamie has been down with the flu for the last five days, and I decided it was time to pull out the bone broth with the help of Mrs. Beeton. Since we’re the type of family to save things forever, it was hard to actually use the bones since we usually can only afford meat from mass produced sources. To assuage my guilt, I p̶u̶l̶l̶e̶d̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶t̶r̶u̶s̶t̶y̶ ̶M̶r̶s̶.̶ ̶B̶e̶e̶t̶o̶n̶ ̶b̶o̶o̶k̶ er… fired up the computer and google searched a recipe in the book for “Marrow dumplings”. So after turning the bones to almost mush in the crockpot for 30 hrs, I then tossed all of the marrow, fat and cartilage into my vitamix (which I’m sure Mrs. Beeton totally had) with the rest of the ingredients.

The results were…interesting. Not wanting to traumatize my children, I fished them out of the soup after steaming them and put them on a separate platter on the dinner table. When the pile of brown, squishy… (never mind, I won’t describe what they looked like) got some interesting comments from my offspring, I promptly set out a gummy bear reward to anyone willing to try them. I had a 75% success rate with this strategy, although the gummy bears may have negated any health benefits from the marrow balls, but whatever, I’m still counting it as a win. I ate several myself and kinda sorta liked them, I enjoyed them more when I pretended I was in a castle in a German forest.

My children do not entirely approve of my love for Mrs. Beeton, and they would approve even less if they knew that I have plans to make elderberry barley water if Jamie doesn’t improve soon. In a renewed effort to inspire and encourage more reading in the household, I bought this reading chair. The proprioceptive input you get from gently swinging is great from the brain and for sensory seeking kids who have a hard time sitting still long enough to read.

The chair as a gentle haven of learning backfired though, because a design flaw ensures that one side will slide to the other side when you least suspect it. It’s like a Venus fly trap that snaps shut and drops you on the ground just when you get to the good part in a book. It’s not inspiring anyone in the family to adopt my hobby of reading strange books.

It’s ok though, Jim says he can fix it and meanwhile I have bone broth and marrow dumplings for any injuries incurred.

How To (Truly) Do Whole30 On The Cheap

Whole30 is amazing. A super easy and rewarding journey filled with absolutely delicious food that you'd be happy to eat for the rest of your life.  

Jk. 

 It's really a time consuming, difficult monster that will take over your life and kitchen (and keep it in such a state of towering dirty dishes and pots, you will contemplate burning the whole thing down and moving to a different state). And that's not even counting the cost which can be enormous if you're not expecting it. 

But after five (or six?) times, you start to come up with strategies. So here is the ultimate way to do whole thirty on a budget (at least in my experience), when the desire to do whole thirty is tempered by your lack of money.  If you're trying to do the most inexpensive Whole30, this is the secret:

Don't be picky.  

For real though, in this day and age,  you can find inexpensive, cheap food for whole30 but it requires reversing the order you do things.  

i.e you type in "Whole30" on Pinterest and get hundreds of pictures of beautiful, mouth-watering dishes.  If you join any groups or follow any whole30'ers on Instagram you see platefuls and recipes for delicious foods. 

And maybe they work for those people without spending too much money, but in order to do Whole30 cheaply, you have to completely reverse your thinking. Instead of picking what you want to eat and making a grocery list, you buy 1. Meat, 2. Veggies, 3. Fat that can be procured on sale and inexpensively.  

What this might look like for a family (scale up or down accordingly) 

STEP 1

40 lbs of chicken.   $50 (business center Costco or online co-op or restaurant supply)
16 lbs Beef brisket or roast $40 (same as above)
16 lbs Pork Shoulder $16 (any store should have some cut of pork on sale for around .99/lb
4 lbs Applewood sausage $12 (Walmart) 
4lbs Bacon (as healthy as you can buy...ignore the sugar if you need to) $12
10 dozen eggs $14 (Costco or Walmart currently) 
24 cans coconut milk $25 (Costco or ethnic grocery store)
6 lbs frozen berries $20
6 heads of Romaine $3
20lb bag Carrots $5
50 lb bag sweet potatoes $14
7lbs frozen broccoli $8
5 butternut squash $5 (99 Cent store)
25lbs onions $4 (Costco) 
Coconut oil $10 (Walmart) 
Garlic-$2

Total $220 per month
$220/4people= $55
That's $55 for one person per month, not week.

Cook up massive amounts of meat at once, and steam/saute/roast veggies on Sunday night if you are able. Then every night, figure out what veggie and protein you're having the next day. Sample: Squash and sausage for breakfast, broccoli, and chicken for dinner, sweet potato and roast for dinner.  Simple, but effective.   
 

STEP 2

You can totally eat delicious, nutritious, flavorful food that gives you an adequate amount of calories for a month with the above menu. But most people have a little more money than that...even most food stamp programs will give you $50/week per person.  So fill in the edges with whatever is on sale...

tomatoes
bananas
zucchini
oranges
apples
celery
ginger  
Lemons/limes

Often give you the most bang for your buck as far as expanding the things you can cook. 
Avocados, homemade mayo, ghee, nuts, coconut aminos, fancy oils etc are things that DO NOT give you the most bang for your buck. And while they're nice, they're also expensive and unnecessary even though they're super popular in the Whole30 world.  If you really are trying to do Whole 30 on a budget, google recipes based on what ingredients you have vs just browsing, because you'll get depressed at all the super expensive food everyone else is eating.

CONCLUSION

I firmly believe anyone can afford Whole30, but you have to have a mindset of abundance.  Imagine you are a wealthy medieval lord who is collecting rents from the peasants and there was a bumper crop of sweet potatoes and onions that year.  Be amazed that you can have chicken and beef on the same day.  Eat like royalty because it's 2017, don't feel sorry for yourself that everyone else is eating something different. In the grand scheme of the world, avocados aren't more important than coconuts, and the healthy fat from the later is cheaper.  We're so sucked in by trends and doing what people around us are doing, we lose sight of the big picture which is this: There is an excess of food in the Northern Hemisphere.  Find it, procure it, and eat it with a grateful attitude.  Eat veggies and meat for breakfast (pretend some Viking ghost is looking down at you and nodding with satisfaction).  Live above the fray.  

And reap the benefits of sleeping better, having more energy, thinking more clearly and equalizing to a healthy weight.  Even if you just do it once as an experiment, I think it's a bit like shaving your head or getting a tattoo (just the less permanent version).  The whole world just looks sort of different. It shows you patterns in your body you may not have noticed before. And it builds healthy systems and habits.  

Have fun and if you hate it, feel free to tell me so. 

RANDOM FOOTNOTES

-If you're single or can't afford to buy in bulk like this plan requires, find a few friends who will do it too and split it with you.  
-If you live in a big city, find the restaurant supply district and figure out how to get plugged in. 
-If you don't have a Costco membership, find a friend who does or see above. 
-This plan assumes you have a fully stocked spice cupboard, but if you don't... salt, garlic and fat cover a multitude of sins but I would recommend at least getting some vinegar (which thankfully is cheap). 

 

Maybe being a medieval peasant wouldn't be so bad...

We just recently switched to a once a month grocery shopping budget and I feel a bit like a 17th century sea captain stocking a giant barquentine.  Granted my chicken these days comes pre-neck-wrung and sometimes even precooked by Squire Costco, but the modern trade off means I don’t spend my days tearing my hair out getting enough food for my family, instead I tear my hair out trying to make sure they’re literate and well educated.    

For kicks and giggles I added up our monthly food consumption:

58 lbs of Grains

186 lbs of Dairy

63 lbs of Meat

83 lbs Vegetables

61 lbs Fruit

9 lbs Fat

Total- 460 lbs of food

Which came out to be 2.5 lbs of food per person in our family (per day). That seemed like a tremendous amount of food to me, but according to the national health statistics the average American eats 4.5 lbs of food per day. However since we aren’t wasting away I have to assume we make up the rest in eating abroad. Also, that number is the mean average for our family, some of us consume far less...or more than others (Jamie...cough...Jamie).  

According to the FOA, the world average is 4 lbs/day, which is why America is a bit on the hefty size.  It’s intuitively obvious that height averages increase when there’s a max amount of minerals and nutrients being absorbed...but interestingly if you go too far over onto the obesity side of the graph, average height starts dropping again.   A lot of research suggests this is not because fat makes you short, but that the high processed diet making you fat, also makes it difficult for your gut to absorb any minerals and nutrients from your food.  

In further randomness, the average prosperous peasant in the Middle Ages ate 2-3 lbs of bread a day, 8 oz of meat/dairy and 3 pints of beer.   

I fully endorse this being the next new diet craze after the Paleo one dies out...in fact I may be already on it.    

How Church Is Like Hot Yoga

Granted, I don’t know much about yoga...hot or otherwise (i.e. does “hot” define the goal or the physical temperature? That’s how little I know). But I noticed the New York Times has no compunction about telling Christians what they believe, so I’m taking advantage of this “hot” new trend. Har Har. .  

I recently read Richard Dawkins “The God Delusion” which scared me a little. I thought maybe it would work like a Harry Potter spell and I’d find myself magically transformed into a neo atheist de facto. It didn’t. Not that atheists aren’t lovely people with heartfelt ideology, but the book wasn’t an intellectual heavy hitter. It did however, lead down a personal rabbit hole on the existence of God, which is all a less-than-innocuous way of showing I’m cool enough to have doubts and pander around with the smart people. All of my toe dipping though lead me to a tangential realization “You are what you love”. The physical is shaped by the abstract. Humans can’t help but be liturgical beings.  

We are what we love, and our love is shaped, primed, and aimed by liturgical practices that take hold of our gut and aim our heart to certain ends. So we are not primarily homo rationale or homo faber or homo economicus; we are not even generically homo religiosis. We are more concretely homo liturgicus; humans are those animals that are religious animals not because we are primarily believing animals but because we are liturgical animals—embodied, practicing creatures whose love/desire is aimed at something ultimate. (p. 40)  James K.A. Smith - “Desiring The Kingdom”

Some people have CrossFit liturgy, other people have yoga liturgy, I personally have more of a messy house and laundry liturgy. Instead of reciting the Athanasian Creed or doing downward dog, I step on a lego and then hop around gesticulating wildly while speaking in tongues.    

Not that there is anything wrong with Stay-At-Home mom liturgy, but thank goodness that isn’t the only liturgical process in my life. I have The Church. Not church, but the one with the big C that goes backwards in history and forward through time and will exist long past hot yoga’s expiration date. I think I failed to grasp this growing up in Calvary Chapel (which I won’t diss right now because it’s all still a part of the big “C”). I thought Christianity was more an abstract concept, and church was sort of “Weight Watchers” for Christians. In which case of course you stop going if you decide you don’t need or want to lose weight. Or you maintain that while you do want to be healthy or love Jesus, you don’t prefer to do that at Weight Watchers or church. I didn’t realize Church with the big “C” it is quite literally magic. It’s the wardrobe to Narnia. You walk through the doors and regardless where those doors are, what denomination it is or what race you are, they’re magic doors ushering you into the presence of God.   

You can't escape the liturgical shaped hole in your heart.  It's just a matter of what you put there.  

A Mom's Minimalist Guide To The Beach

Frankly I knew it was inevitable. Life is always a Faustian trade of evils (or joys...depending on how rose colored your glasses are). When the two older kids left for their very Parisian-esque rural outsourcing of summer (see Bringing Up Bebe), I was tempted to think of all the amazing things I was going to accomplish. It’s hard to get anything done when you’re doing your best impression of zookeeper/professor/therapist twentyfour-seven for nine months of the year and I was much looking forward to the break.  

Well I got it. Truly. From everything. No violin, no sports, no therapy, no school meetings, no staying up until midnight trying to grow rock crystals on a toothpick. I traded the busy life of four kids where I couldn't keep the house clean, but did accomplish important things (like how to take a booger out with tissue), to a the slower easier life of two kids where the house stays clean but not accomplish anything big. Mainly because you belatedly realize the younger two are stuck to you like glue without their built in entertainers and playmates. But going backwards in family size (temporarily) does have its fair list of perks. The laundry stays only one or two loads behind, the kitchen is almost always in a mildly presentable state (the fruit flies are suing for breach of contract), and the house actually gets vacuumed regularly.    But I was kidding myself to think I could get any big mind-blowing projects accomplished. Thus it was with great difficulty I let go of my pipe dreams and resigned myself to sleeping in every morning, putzing around the house teaching my preschooler how to fold washcloths before finally going to the beach or pool.

I would like to say that I’m so organized that going to the beach is a painless affair, but instead it’s the opposite, I’m so unorganized going to the beach is a (mostly) painless affair. Of course I’ve got “science” to back up all of my justifications for this, and I thought I’d share them in case someone else is looking for a way to spend more time having fun and less time trying to get out the door. 

Disclaimer:  (If you are one of those uber prepared types that has a ziploc baggie for your ziploc baggie, then please close your eyes and don’t read this.  The world needs more of you and less of me.  In a Darwinian experiment I’m the first to die out i.e. I’m more than grateful for the times I’ve been helped by the preparers)

Don't bring sunblock or snacks and only bring a limited amount of water (or none if you know there's a drinking fountain)

I say this somewhat tongue in cheek because I do actually have a thing of sunblock that stays in my beach bag, but it usually takes us the whole summer to get through it. And the logic is this. Your body is an amazing machine that knows when it's hungry, tired, and had too much sun. Things like pretzels, doritos and sunblock override this built in safety mechanism which means you end up at home exhausted bloated, overly slathered with chemicals and cranky from the combination of artificial cheese flavor and that sunburned spot behind your knees you missed. Trust the human body to go “ugh, I’m really hot and hungry and I swear I can feel cancer cells forming on my body right now.” That’s when you know it’s time to load up the kids and head home. On the plus side, this usually means everyone gets their naps (or have gotten their naps), and you have time to plan dinner, paint your toes and eat bon bons.  ( here is a harvard medical publication advocating the health benefits of moderate sun exposure).

Don't bring a picnic blanket, chairs or umbrella

In the book “Blue Mind” Wallace Nichols talks about the science behind going to the beach or even just being in water. Dopaminergic pathways, neuro plasticity, auditory cortex physiology, textural and vestibular input are all scientific ways to say the ocean is really good for you. The chemical makeup of the salt water, the minerals, the ebb and flow of the waves, and the sand are all incredibly soothing and healthy for your brain and body. I like to think of a little beach trip being like a soft reboot. Between all of that and the vitamin D, I also try to take my kids to a deserted beach when they’re under the weather. But back to the packing list… most of those things don’t work if you’re sitting on a chair, on a blanket, under an umbrella, with water shoes, rash guard and sun hat on. If you have kids who are low threshold on the sensory spectrum then they likely won’t want to budge out of the little fortress of protection against the dread elements and will take any suggestions to the contrary as torture of the highest degree with you as the grand inquisitor. It may take awhile, but they'll be happier in the long run. (note: ignore this if you have kids with severe processing disorders)

Don't load and unload the car

There’s no scientific theory behind this one, unless it’s Newton’s first law of motion (An object at rest remains at rest until mommy decides the towels are starting to smell). I use a big green plastic container from IKEA and that’s where the sand toys, floaties and towels live in the back of the car. The baby carrier also lives in the car so literally all that needs to be done to go to the beach or pool is getting in the car and leaving. (which if you have kids, you know is a feat in and of itself)

Do pack a magic sand eraser

There’s only one gimmicky item that’s made it into my super lazy...er minimalist beach container and that’s a bamboo swaddle blanket. I discovered this black magic entirely by accident last summer.  West coast sand has these gold flakes in it that stick to skin like glitter (which isn’t nearly as pretty as it sounds). Anyone who has tried to get four kids rinsed and sand free before they get in the car, knows it’s on the same level as completing a triathlon (one armed with a wet cat zip tied to your leg). Once, in desperation I yanked the blanket off the weakest member of the tribe in an assuredly futile attempt to get at least some of the caked wet sand off…. and Lo and behold it worked! So the swaddle blanket earned itself a permanent spot in the beach bag. I have considered getting myself a booth at the county fair “Step right up and let me show you the one and only MAGIC SAND ERASER for a low low price of $49.99 today only!!”. If however you decide to get yourself three for that price on Amazon, it does have to be the bamboo one. The cotton ones don’t work as well for some reason.  

And that’s it. Simple! Easy! (I’m kidding, we all know it’s never easy). And sometimes I do pack all of the foods and huddle under my friends umbrella and lust after all of the cool beach stuff everyone else has. But hey do whatever you gotta do. (and if you’re a preparer and you’ve made it to the end of this, then here’s a Valium and some wine, thank you for loving me).  

Content Link Block

Select a page and create a visual link to it. Learn more

Blog

Multitask Your Way To A Skinnier You

Every now and then I get into a hardcore debate with someone who thinks Myers Briggs is scientific rubbish.  I don’t mind.  Life is multiple choice that way, the other options for conflict include theology, politics or parenting and after you’ve been in a few nuclear showdowns about baby led weaning vs. rice cereal at 3 months ( that are so passive aggressive any eavesdropping man would have mistaken the napalm as showers of lily blossoms) you find joy in discussing whether or not sixteen personality types force 7.4 billion people into a box or not.  

Multitasking is another thing that’s scientific rubbish these days.  But I would argue (regarding this and Myers Briggs) that it all depends on your perspective and definitions.   

Sometimes I feel like  a terrible female.  I know I’m supposed to love yoga, small dogs and world travel, but I prefer to practice pàisdean (gaelic for “children”, i.e. muscle suavity obtained by chasing four active little boys around all day), I only like dogs large enough to eat bad guys, and would happily claim a plot of earth with my husband and swear fealty to it.   When my beloved little sister asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding...across the country, I immediately started charting “how much do I love thee” on an x y axis.  After much denial, head-in-the-sanding, and throwing my phone at outrageous ticket prices I summoned the strength of my inner viking ancestors and sallied forth on a metal coffin with no leg room and eight dollar drinks.    

Unfortunately I don’t have a phobia of flying or germs or anything conveniently treated with valium.  I prefer to pack my demons with me in their more tangible form.   Small children you have to trundle along to your destination without a) them killing themselves, b) someone else wringing their neck c) you doing all of the above.   J being the wiser half, decided he had work requirements that kept him at home.  

But on to the secret cure-all workout.

1. Fly a budget airline that doles even water out with all the stinginess of a desert crossing nomad.   Pack all of your belongings into carry-on.  

2. Bring a lap child.  Make sure your connections are too tight to gate-check a stroller.

3. Sabotage the weather so those short connections turn into multi-hour delays.  

4. Release the kracken...er toddler into a busy airport and follow it.

What this will gain you (besides a cardio and functional strength workout that rivals Crossfit) .  

This is where the multi-tasking comes in.  At the end of three hours you will have…

1. Memorized the floor plan of every concourse.  This is helpful if there is a mass shooting as you are on a first name basis with all of the emergency exits your child tried to go through.  It is also helpful for your career as a virtual signpost, pointing bedraggled travelers to their port in the storm.  

2. You will have an in depth comprehensive analysis on what the current fashion trends are and who should and should not wear them.  

3. You will start to see patterns of human behavior.  Like creepy men smile and look side to side a lot, and attractive men stare straight ahead like a predator. I know...it doesn’t entirely make sense and surprised me too.  Normal looking people have facial expressions that are totally neutral and chill...like they too were once a toddler who cut their teeth terrorizing every square inch of the place.  Also, grandmas of every nationality like to give out candy and treats.  I can only assume this is how the Hansel and Gretel story originated.

I was worried I would come back from the south ten lbs heavier from a steady diet of biscuits and beer, but instead I’m slimmer and wiser.   The nervous twitch, and tick bites are barely noticeable at all.