Erika Mitchell's Blog, page 15

Highlights and Hijinks

We survived! Even better than survived, actually. We had fun. Lots and lots and lots of it. Turns out, the beach is a really fun place to hang out as a family. I wasn’t sure whether building sandcastles and exploring tide pools would be quite as much fun as a parent as I remembered it being as a child, but man, it so is.

To my immense delight, we also managed to survive the drive, though I will admit things got a bit dicey on the way home. Right around Olympia (halfway-ish) the kids started getting a tad feral, engaging in the same hijinks and generalized naughtiness kids the world over have always pulled out when bored on long road trips.

I saw a sign for a Safeway off the freeway and implored Wes to pull over, which he did, though a tad grudgingly. You see, we were having a bit of trouble with Google Maps, who had just informed us that the freeway ahead was a trafficked-up nightmare. I was trying to manage the kids, who were a few miles short of turning our backseat into the Thunderdome, trying to figure out an alternate route to avoid the traffic, doing my best to avoid getting carsick, and also? I had to pee. Irritated husband aside (I’ve never met a man who didn’t mind pulling over for a pit stop on long road trips. Every guy I’ve ever spent long periods of time in the car with has always had a ‘let’s push through and make it in one straight shot’ mentality. Why is that?), Wes pulled over and let his hot mess of a family out of the car.

Once we’d stretched, walked, used the grocery store’s bathroom, and obtained some inappropriate starches (hat tip to Joss Whedon), everyone was back in the car and more or less quiet.

“Thanks for pulling over for a rest stop,” I said to Wes while the kids contentedly crunched on Pringles in the backseat. “I was about to need a new pair of pants and I thought the kids were going to go Mad Max back there.”

“That kind of stuff doesn’t bother me,” he replied, eyes on the road.

I blinked at him. “Wait. What part doesn’t bother you? The peeing all over the car part, or the savage children tearing each other apart?”

He shook his head. “What? No, I just meant I would have just kept driving.”

I’m pretty sure he’s going to stock up on Depends for me and tranquilizers for the kids the next time we have a four hour car trip ahead of us.

Hijinks and upholstery destruction aside, we had a great time. I’ve definitely got the post-vacation blues now. Our home is lovely and all, but it isn’t walking distance to a beach and that, my friends, is just super sad all the way around. Everything should be within walking distance to a beach.

Oh! Hey! There’s the bright side to global warming! Within a few decades, I bet just about everything will be walking distance to a beach! Thanks, fluorocarbons!

Thanks for sharing!

Heading Out Into the Great Blue Yonder

Posting might be light this week, as Wes and I are strapping the kids into the car for a four-hour drive down to the Oregon coast, a trip during which, hopefully, none of the following will happen:

Vehicle breakdown. Not likely, but would definitely be a bummer should it happen. I can think of many things I would rather do than try to help Wes fix the car on the side of the road by fanning his face and answering what would surely be the millions of questions asked by our four-year old son.
Multi-state tantrum. Please God, no. Let them sleep. Does Dramamine believe in you if you believe in it?
Realizing I forgot something crucial once we’re too far away to turn back.
Natural disaster. That’d be kind of a downer on our first-ever family vacation. It happened to my family once when I was growing up, though. We were camping in the middle of BFE, way past nowhere and square in the middle of no-one-can-hear-you-scream. One night, my parents woke me and my brother and told us to hustle everything back in the truck because there was a forest fire coming right toward us. We broke camp and hauled ass out of there, driving the one-lane road back to civilization past burning hillsides while my brother and I scarcely contained our excitement over how cool it was. I think we even stuck our heads out the window to better see the flames as we drove past. We were not smart.
Injuries of any kind. We’ve had a rather expensive year when it comes to medical expenses. It’d be really great if all of us could avoid breaking, straining, injuring, and/or scraping anything. Especially given that Wes broke his leg during a trip to the Oregon coast as a kid when he visited with his family.

In making our lists for the trip, Wes and I compared essentials. Can you guess which list is Wes’s and which one is mine?

Bacon, steak, Pringles, rum, fruit juice to mix with said rum, beach chairs
Chocolate covered macadamia nuts, brownie mix, chocolate-covered peanut butter cups, vodka, lazy beach read books

Wish us luck and fun as we embark on what will hopefully be a fun adventure. My kids have never seen an actual beach with actual waves before. As a former Californian who spent much of her childhood on the beach, getting road rash from wiping out on the beach after boogie boarding and inhaling oodles of sea water from looking the wrong way when a wave came to clobber her, this is inexcusable to me. My children need waves in order to be well-rounded human beings!

See you on the flip side, my friends.

Thanks for sharing!

Inchoate Vegetable Sludge

Basically what I served my family for dinner, minus the sodium.

I’ve blogged about my fantastical failures in the cooking arena before. I’m not shy about the fact that, if anyone’s going to find a way to detonate a head of broccoli, it’ll be me. And probably when I’ve got a whole bunch of people coming over, because that’s HANDS DOWN the absolute best time for everything in the kitchen to go spectacularly awry.

Those of you who have come over for a meal and had to help me turn off my smoke detector know what I’m talking about, here.

In the latest episode of the Epic Cooking Fails reality TV show that is my life, I give you…Pot roast. Or, rather, Trader’s Joe’s pot roast. Here’s the story:

I was at Trader Joe’s, shopping for dinner supplies for the week when I noticed some Cabernet Pot Roast. I thought that sounded yummy, so I tossed it into my cart and began wondering what I’d serve with it.

A container of fresh Asian stir fry vegetables caught my eye. I took a look and saw mushrooms, broccoli, and carrots, all cut up, and thought I might be able to add those to the pot roast and baby, I’d have a stew going.

So I get all these things home and, come Tuesday, decide it’s now or never for the pot roast because I’m having dinner with a friend and if I don’t make the food now, it’ll spoil. I remove the pot roast from its package, add the vegetables, and discover there’s, you know, Asian-y stuff in the vegetable mix. Like baby corn, bok choy, bell peppers, and a couple other things I can’t identify.

This comes as a total shock to me despite the fact that the container clearly says ASIAN Stir Fry Vegetables.

Because I am an awesome chef (and because I don’t really care, let’s be honest) I pick out the weirdest stuff and dump the rest into the Crock Pot along with the pot roast. I turn on the Crock Pot, plunk down the lid, and congratulate myself on making dinner for Wes and the kids even though I’ll be gone.

Come dinner time, I give the pot roast a stir and discover that the Asian vegetables have radiation sickness or something because they’ve dissolved into inchoate vegetable sludge, the proverbial ooze from which my overcooked pot roast had to climb.

Wes, peering over my shoulder at this tiny slice of primordial culinary swampland, cocks an eyebrow at me to which I can only reply, “You’re not supposed to eat those. I added them for flavor.”

Now, we both know this is BS. Pure and simple. But the key to a happy marriage is letting your spouse keep what dignity she has left by pretending she didn’t just mercilessly simmer hapless vegetables to death.

And with that, I skipped out the door to go eat pizza with a friend.

I hear from reliable sources that Wes served the pot roast with pancakes (?) to critical acclaim from the tiny humans, and that the carrots were at least somewhat salvageable.

Win?

Thanks for sharing!

Hiding From My Phone

If I add a few more cat pictures, this blog could turn into Reddit!

Of necessity this summer, I’ve taken to leaving my phone in the car when I go on adventures with my kids. I don’t know if you know this, but kids are messy, splashy, sunscreen-smeared creatures who leave impossible-to-clean-off smudges on iPhones. If you’re taking your kids to the beach, do yourself a favor and give them one less valuable thing to knock into the water.

A funny thing started happening, though, that I couldn’t quite put my finger on until months had passed. I started realizing that I’m actually a lot happier when my phone is out of reach.

Weird, huh?

It’s not that I dislike my phone. Quite the contrary, actually. I find it handy and convenient when I need it. The Google Maps application has helped me un-lost myself dozens of times since its installation, and I adore having Pandora play me fantastic music while I drive.

Rather, it’s taken me all summer to realize that I’m happier when I’m not so accessible all the time. I really like not having my attention diverted every few minutes by the chime of an incoming email or text. Surprisingly, those can all seem to wait a few hours while I go live my life.

Silencing my phone and only checking it periodically (or, you know, hiding from my phone) has also made the querying process more pleasant. It no longer feels like I’m clinging to my phone, desperate for good news. Instead, I’m giving myself permission to think about other things. I think that’s healthier for everyone all around, don’t you?

Who would have thought, fifteen years ago when I got my first cell phone, that I’d need to set healthy boundaries governing its use?

How about the rest of you? Do any of you feel the need to ditch your phone every once in awhile?

No One has Crabs

“Go ahead and laugh. Do it. I dare you.”

I took my kids to the zoo last week with some friends, where maybe one of the funniest conversational oopses I’ve ever been witness to happened and brought me great mirth and joy. It was refreshing to be on the laughing end of one of those for once. The situation was as follows:

Friend 1 pouring tea concentrate packet into hot water.

Erika: Still doing the (name of eating plan here, anonymized to protect the dignity of my friend) thing? How’s it going?

Friend 1: Oh, it’s going great! I’m sleeping better, I’m losing pounds, losing inches, the fog is gone, the crabs are gone…

Friend 1 keeps preparing tea. Erika, brow furrowed in confusion, dissects Friend 1′s last statement, trying to determine whether she perhaps misheard what her friend said. Confused, because Erika didn’t know she and Friend 1 were on STD-discussion terms, Erika looks over at Friend 2, who somehow manages to keep a straight face for two whole more seconds before bursting into laughter.

Friend 1: Oh! Oh, no. Crabbiness. The crabbiness is gone!

Erika: Embarrassed, relieved laughter for five minutes, after which she swipes away the tears in her eyes and proceeds to dissolve into fits of giggles throughout the rest of the day.

In the car on the way home, I was dictating a text message to Friend 3 using SIRI, which went something like this:

Erika: SIRI, please send a text to Friend 3.

SIRI: Ok, what would you like it to say?

Erika: “When you get home, ask Friend 2 why Friend 1 has crabs.”

I’d no sooner hit send when my son piped up from the backseat.

Four-year old son: Mommy, why does Friend 3 have crabs?

And that, my friends, is the reason I had to explain to my son why no one has crabs. When asked why it was a joke, I replied that sometimes, crabs are just funny.

It’s possible my son will grow up thinking I have some kind of weird attachment to crustaceans, but I won’t care, because I’ll always have the memory of the day my son asked me why Friend 3 has crabs.

LAUGHTER FOREVER.

Two Lids, One Pot

I was at Costco with my kids yesterday, stocking up on quintessential Costco items (you know those ones. The ones you’re out of and would like more of eventually but their absence isn’t pressing enough for you to go replenish them immediately so you just make a list and then every other month or so you go out and buy a whole bunch of mismatched stuff all at once?) when we came across the kids clothing section.

We’ve had some strange weather this summer up here in the Pacific Northwest, from record-breaking heat to record-breaking summer cold, all within the same week (and with the thunderstorms to prove it). As I wheeled my relatively-empty cart past the kids clothes, I realized it might be a good idea to buy my kids some pants. After all, Winter Is Coming, so why not stock up on warm clothes while the deals are good?

So I reached over to rifle through the selections, my nimble fingers maneuvering around the different colors and sizes in search of ones that would work, and that’s when everything went wrong.

You see, they were offering those three-piece selections, where it’s something like $14.99 for two long-sleeve shirts and one pair of matching pants. A great deal, right? But also? SIGNIFICANT KINK IN ERIKA’S BRAIN.

Why? Because it’s two shirts to go with a single pair of pants, that’s why. I like to buy my kids clothes as such: I buy them five pairs of pants or shorts, five shirts, four sets of jammies. I run laundry twice a week, and every day each child gets a clean outfit and a clean pair of jammies. Laundry pile never gets too formidable, all the clothes I buy get worn, bing bang boom.

The whole two-shirts-one-pants thing mucks all that up, man. Because if I buy those, then I have to take a separate trip to buy ancillary pants. If I’m going to spend twenty minutes sorting through the nonsensical arrangement of sizes and colors at Costco in an effort to solve my whole my-kids-have-no-winter-clothes problem, why on Earth would I voluntarily force myself to have to go to another store to make up for the arbitrary decision to package clothes in sets of three?

I have no idea why this gums up my gears so much, but apparently it does. I was so baffled by the whole three-item-deal thing that I couldn’t even buy the kids jammies from Costco because why buy half the clothes we need when I can just go to a different store at a later date and get everything done all at once?

I’m sure somewhere, somehow, the whole three-items thing makes marketing sense. It might even be a better fiscal decision that way. Who knows? What I do know is, I have no intention of buying 75% of what I need when I could buy 100% of what I need elsewhere.

It’s like buying two pan lids and one pot. Who would do that? What am I supposed to do with a lid that has no corresponding pot?! IT’S CHAOS, I TELL YOU.

People like me are why pharmaceutical companies developed Xanax, aren’t they?

Vacation Eating

There’s no way I’m picking an apple for breakfast when these are just sitting on the counter in front of me. I mean, come on. What am I, a cyborg?

I’m going to go out on a limb and assume I am not the only one who falls so completely off the eating healthy wagon while on vacation that not only does the wagon hit her while it rumbles by, it backs up and promptly collapses on her, too.

What is it about vacation that brings out the competitive eating side of me? It’s like no sooner are we out the door than I’m like, “Hey Wes, you know what would be great? If we could find a bagel sandwich to tide us over until we can get our hands on some Frappuccinos and donuts!”

There’s just something about the relaxation, limited time window, and overabundance of junk food in my nearish proximity that converges into this perfect maelstrom of dietary apocalypse. I wouldn’t want to live like that forever (I like it when my pants fit), but man is it fun to not give a crap while you’re on vacation.

Then again, you have to deal with the post-vacation letdown when you get home. There’s just something dispiriting about sitting down with an afternoon snack of almonds and string cheese when you’ve spent the last week whiling away the afternoon with Hershey’s bars and hard apple cider. I don’t care who you are, getting back into healthy habits is kind of depressing. I mean, sure. Yeah. Vegetables are good, and I definitely like how I feel when I’m eating well, but in no way does chomping down on baby carrots compare with the irresponsible, negligent pleasure of eating Pringles and hot dogs for dinner.

For the record, though? My knee hurt worse on vacation than it has in months. My mouth was happy, but the rest of me? Pretty pissed.

Just goes to show you, no self-destructive deed goes unpunished.

Oh, on a related note: I’m feeling pretty repentant for my many and obvious dietary sins from last week, but can’t go to the gym this week because of Wes’s work hours, so I decided to do a ten-minute Pilates workout I streamed through Hulu. I ended up trying to do half the workout with my son glued to my side (because he wanted to do it too, but reeeeeeeally close to me) and my daughter darting under my upraised legs, squealing with mischievous glee every time I had to dodge kicking her in the head.

Sigh. Welcome back indeed.

Hornets for Spite

“Hi. I will destroy everything you know and love.”

I’m on vacation with my husband’s family right now, in this fabulous little resort community on the other side of the mountains from where I live. It’s all dry desert out here, but they’ve miraculously transformed it into a land of golf courses, swimming pools, and man-made lakes. In that way, it’s exactly like southern California.

The wildlife sure is different out here. The insects are more…aggressive. Yeah, let’s go with aggressive. For example, we have dragonflies back home (which is to say, one hundred miles away), and those dragonflies have the good sense to stay outside. We’ve never had one invite itself in, no matter how long the sliding glass door was left open, and we all live together in relative peace. The dragonflies here, however, are perfectly content to come right in. They see an open door and think, “Sure. Why not?”

The dragonflies are no big deal, though. Even though they’re noisy, they’re mostly harmless.

The hornets, however? Those a-holes mean business. We tried to eat lunch out by the pool today and they would. not. leave. us. alone. They grow ‘em big out here in eastern Washington, too, which makes it even worse. They’re aggressive, they’re big, and they will sting you for spite.

If you want proof, look no further than the woman who was standing in line next to the pool and got stung. For no reason.

You really get a sense for people when you see how they react to hornets. It’s fascinating to observe panic spread like a communicable feeling across a group of people until everyone’s swatting, fanning, jumping, dodging, shrieking, and walking away with that jumpy little jitter-walk people do when they’re afraid of winged stinging insects.

It really makes you wonder, doesn’t it? We’re ostensibly at the top of the food chain, and yet all our brains and brawn count for relative little when we’re faced with a pair of wings and a stinger.

Sportsing

To the victor and the birthday boy go the spoils!

Last night was Wes’s birthday and his parents graciously agreed to hang out with our kids so Wes and I could go cavort around on our own for a few hours. After grabbing dinner at our favorite Chinese dumpling house (where the wait is normally an hour plus at dinner time), we hit up a nearby bowling alley and then played a couple games of pool before seeing Guardians of the Galaxy.

First of all, Guardians of the Galaxy is wonderful. It’s not too derivative of the other Marvel movies (I get the feeling they writers/producers are trying hard to make sure each movie functions as a stand-alone, worthwhile film) and doesn’t skimp on anything: action, emotion, laughs, it has it all. If you like that sort of movie, definitely go check it out.

Anyway, about the sportsing. I am…not very athletic. Like, at all. My hand-eye coordination is great, but when it comes to things like muscle memory, tracking incoming projectiles, replicating a physical motion I’ve watched someone else do…so not my thing. Hasn’t ever been, as far as I can tell.

For the longest time, I thought I was just defective. It was a bit of a joke in my family, about how uncoordinated and un-athletic I am. I’m pretty darn smart and I have a terrific vocabulary, so I always figured you can’t have it all and resigned myself to being fine with being clumsy.

It turns out, I have a mild form of dyspraxia. It’s no big deal at all, it just means I have a hard time communicating with my extremities. My brain understands the concept behind riding a bike or catching a ball, it just takes a lot more work for me to get my body parts on board with those concepts. Six year old me is very relieved to know there’s a fancy scientific reason she isn’t able to ride a bike yet.

Even though I know I’m slightly dyspraxic, it doesn’t make it any less annoying to suck at sports. I like being good at things, dang it!

So that’s why you could’ve knocked me over with a feather last night when I bowled a frigging 116! For those of you who don’t know much about bowling, that’s actually pretty decent! I think I ended up with five strikes and a couple spares by the time all was said and done in that game. Not too bad!

I’m not going to lie, it felt good to be good at something different. It felt kind of nice to walk around with a little bluster, to hold my head high knowing Wes actually had to try to keep up with me unlike when we play pool and he basically has to shoot one-handed to keep from destroying my spirit entirely.

What has two thumbs and bowls a decent game?

This gal!!!

I Had a Paleo Knee and Didn’t Even Know It

This is roughly the size of my sweet tooth in relation to the rest of me.

Those of you who have been reading for awhile already know this, but for the uninitiated (lucky?) ones, here’s everything you need to know about my knee: It sucks. It’s a lemon. If it were a car, it’d be a Ford because the acronym Fixed Or Repaired Daily applies perfectly.

Long story short, it has an irreparable meniscus tear and chronic inflammation. Doctors have tried a few things but, without resorting to extreme measures (meniscus transplant), are short on options for me.

I had synthetic joint injections a few months ago, which helped a bit, but in the intervening months I’ve begun noticing that the inflammation pain comes and goes. It feels best in the morning, when I wake up, and fine all day until I have…sugar. Oh crap.

It’s too early in the process to know exactly how much sugar and of what kind (because oh my gosh, did you know there are, like, ten different kinds of sugar in the world? And they all do different things to your body? Bizarre!) makes my knee flare up, but one thing I can tell you is I lost three pounds last week by cutting out refined sugar and my knee only twinged a couple times.

This is both good and bad news.

Good because, hooray! A solution that doesn’t involve cutting my knee open (again)!

Bad because, well, I have a Megalodon-sized sweet tooth. I love dessert. I love treats. I love mochas and scones for breakfast, lemonade with lunch, and chocolate truffles with Mai Tais for dessert. Chocolate? Love. Candy? Yes. Caramel? Absolutely. Cookies? Please.

Hi, my name is Erika and I’m a future diabetic.

If sugar is causing an inflammatory response in my knee (in addition to unholy joint pain oh my GOSH) then something pretty drastic needs to be done. We’re talking a lifestyle change, here. So far I’m leaning in more of a paleo direction as opposed to a low carb direction. I mistrust synthetic sweeteners and think it’s nifty how all those paleo people have managed to figure out desserts without, you know, any of the bad-for-you stuff I’d always attributed to dessert deliciousness.

We’ll see how it goes. I baked some low-carb brownies the other day with Truvia that were frigging DISGUSTING. Then I tried some paleo brownies made with honey and almond flour and they were pretty darn tasty.

This could be the start of something pretty cool. Or pretty gross. More likely a bit of both. Stay tuned.