Tues Ten 041310: Notices They’ve Paved Paradise

I had a crazy experience last weekend. I went to the local not-so-urban, but sprawling shopping center where they keep my local Kroger grocery store. Normally, that wouldn’t be all that crazy, but I went on a Friday evening at 6:00pm. That definitely contributed to the crazy, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

Do you know Joni Mitchell? I have her album (read CD), Miles of Aisles. It’s a great compilation of her work from mostly live performances with the L.A. Express and offers a nicely jazzed up version of some of her classic folk tunes. Big Yellow Taxi is one of the classics included. It’s the tune that sprang to mind during my crazy Kroger on a Friday at 6pm experience.

In honor of convenient, but harrowing grocery shopping and the incomparable Ms. Mitchell, I give you this week’s Tues Ten: Confirmation Notices They’ve Paved Paradise (and put up a parking lot). And just for fun and juxtaposition and sanity promotion, I’ve included a BONUS Ten: Proof Positives Nature Still Blossoms (this time of year in the South despite prevalent concrete). The photo edition.

1. If your car stalls at the front of the turn lane, you might consider switching on your hazards. Just a thought.

2. Those giant 15-passenger vehicles aren’t really designed to be able to make u-turn into the parking space angling AGAINST you on the OPPOSITE side of the lane. Just sayin.

3. Neither is the brand new-to-me mini-van I’m enjoying. But, to my credit, I know that and don’t try it.

4. Even if you are in the middle of a parking lot on a Friday afternoon sporting cute blue jeans and flip flops, it’s still a good idea to look both ways before crossing the street. At least that’s what Mrs. Kendrick taught me in K-5.

5. Wowza with the nice Spring weather we’ve been having here over the past week. The sun off the windshields is practically blinding me.

6. Where is a good master plan when we need it? Seriously. How many angling lanes of traffic can funnel into one right of way?

7. What very friendly check-out clerks and baggers my local Kroger continually has! Smiling faces were a craziness bright spot. [Self: take note.]

8. The appropriate sequence of scan-and-remove-quickly required to use my Kroger discount card AND my debit card at the gas pump is difficult to discern. But, admittedly, that could be the result of holding a sick baby all day.

9. Wait. There’s a gas pump in the middle of the shopping center parking lot. Ok.

10. I can’t believe I actually found myself complaining about having to park 20 spaces rather than 5 spaces from the front door of the conveniently-located store where I can purchase cold milk and pasteurized apple juice for maybe more, but still next to nothing (compared to most of the mothers in the world) every single day. Somebody’s spoiled, and it’s not the gallon of whole milk.

AND, the bonus ten photo edition…

Tues Ten 033010: Pantry Surprises

Has anyone noticed that I’ve gotten unusually sentimental and nostalgic in my Tuesday Ten posts lately? Yep, I’ve been looking back over the last several “lists” in this category–the one that was conceived as an easy and quick-witted way to post on Tuesdays–and found a super-sized helping of provoked thought, infused meaning and best of times. Naturally, I’d like that “theme” to pass quickly. I’m probably more prone to sentiment and nostalgia than most, but every Junkie needs a break. And, that’s what Tuesdays were intended to provide. I’m in serious need of a marshmallow-style list at the moment.

Good news! Poor organizational skills to the rescue. For this week’s list I give you a Tuesday Ten: Pantry Surprises… pleasant or otherwise, they shocked the heck out of me.

1. One empty box of Cheez-It crackers. What?

2. Two jars of peanut butter… creamy AND extra crunchy.  Equal opportunity “kiss” cookies.

3. A disproportionate number of Zoo-pal knives — alligators, beavers and such. You know, they’re the eating utensils with handles shaped like animals. The knives, forks and spoons all come in one box. I’m guessing the forks and spoons were used for various birthday parties and living room picnics. But, really, who turns their preschoolers loose with plastic knives? And, really, what can I do with said knives once the forks and spoons are gone?

4. Keebler fudge-lined ice cream cones. HOW has this escaped my attention?

5. A can of peach pie filling that is bursting out of its aluminum seems. Expiration date = sometime in 2007. Gross and solidifying my homemaker of the month award.

6. 1/2 package of white chocolate bark. Was this from Christmas? For making chocolate covered pretzels? It’s a good thing chocolate doesn’t go bad. Now, let’s see if I have a 1/2 bag of Rold Golds to match.

7. One plastic package of “Crazy Straws.” This has great potential.

8. A 5 oz package of Mahatma Saffron Yellow Rice. Holy Grown-in-the-U.S.A! Where have you been hiding? And, where are my pork chops?

9. Four half-eaten boxes of Wheat Thins. Does anyone check the pantry before making the grocery list? Who does the grocery shopping around here anyway? Oh. That would be me.

10. An enormous box of 13-gallon tall kitchen bags. Will be putting those to good use very soon.

Alas, no Rold Golds. Sigh.

Flying Cheesy Dogs and the Art of Perfection

Makes you wanna cuss. And, I don’t mean “curse” in that polite and grammatically correct way. I mean cuss. In the vernacular.

The other night (seriously) I made “cheesy dogs,” the quintessential kid-friendly dinner composed of hot dogs stuffed with cheddar cheese and wrapped in crescent rolls. The parts are out of their respective packages and on the table with presto combined deliciousness in under 20 minutes flat. The pervasive opinion of the preschoolers in my house is that they are best accompanied by tator tots. No, preparing them probably doesn’t actually constitute cooking, and they don’t have much true nutritional value. But, they’re popular, and they can be a Mommy’s salvation after a long day of work.

So, last Friday I took full advantage of my own need for a quick fix at the end of a busy week. I made cheesy dogs. Eight of them. They were fresh out of the oven, and I was prying them from the pan with a spatula in my usual “grip with the pot-holder and scrape with all you’ve got” method. They always stick for some reason. The first one is the hardest to remove from the cookie sheet because of the close quarters produced by eight wrapped hot dogs arranged on about 180 square inches. Plus, the melting cheese always eliminates any space left between them.

I was holding with the pot-holder. I was scraping with the spatula in the upside-down position that almost always works. Almost. Before I could say “beefy jumbos,” cheesy dog #1 flew off the pan and onto the tile floor.

I told you. Makes you wanna cuss.

Don’t you just love the best laid plans? The table was set. Little Drummer Boy and Bug were in the living room announcing “I’m hungry!” I don’t remember, but I’m sure Baby Girl was on top of the coffee table. The week of a thousand heart-filled preschool parties was finally over. Tator Tots were on the table and ice in the glasses.

Just to recap: Cheesy dog #1 was ON THE FLOOR. And no one else was in the kitchen. So, what did I do? NATURALLY, I picked up #1 from the tile, blew it off and gave it a prominent location on the yellow serving plate. I popped those other seven suckers off the cookie sheet in short order, and “Dinner is served.” (Please send Martha Stewart Living subscriptions. Quick. And, Mama, just forget you read this.)

The bad news: Sometimes things just don’t work out the way you planned. The good news: No one has ever keeled over from a little grit on their cheesy dog. Honest.

Life isn’t perfect. In fact, perfection is an overrated and hopelessly flawed pursuit. And although I hate to play the role of the realist, realistically, a life lived in whatever moment of perfection I might enjoy is perhaps a life spent waiting for the other shoe to drop (or the other cheesy dog, as the case may be.) Perfection just can’t be maintained. And, TRYING to maintain it can be a nerve-racking, tension-filled, white-knuckle attempt. It’s simply not sustainable.

Sustainable perfection implies that the people achieving it are perfect. It assumes that those folks will always make wise choices, that they will always take into account and avoid the pitfalls (and clumsy spatulas) of life. It means they will never make mistakes, or at the least, they will always learn from their all-too-brief mistakes immediately and completely. Funny, I don’t see that person when I look in the mirror. I don’t know ANY people like that. In fact, the reality of those traits is pretty much universally disproved by the popularity of Wiley Coyote, don’t you think? Yeah, or at least by flying cheesy dogs.

Now, if you’ve never experienced your own cheesy dog epiphany, let me assure you that it’s coming. It’s a fact, and there is no fruit in denying it. The lesson learned from my own cheesy dog experience was that I can really shift my body a little to the left to block that whole flying off the pan thing, and this: Real life happens in the grit.

Thank God for the grit. It’s the stuff that lets us know we’re human just like everybody else, bound in a commonality of error. It’s the dust that reminds us of our own inherent needs, our own blessed short-comings. It’s the crunch that protects us from the trap of arrogant assumptions and exclusive palates. It’s the road-worthy flavor that ensures we are flexible and patient and willing to change and aware of the unexpected and able to embrace a surprising life.

Sure, plans are better made. They’re better laid with the best of intentions and wisdom and effort. They’re worth thinking about and following. But, from the poster child of plan Bs, let me just say that into every life a little cheesy dog must fall.

Blow it off and bon appetit!

The Perfect Cookie

A couple of weeks ago, I spent the evening making cookies for Little Drummer Boy’s preschool “tailgate party,” one of the perks of living in a college town. This particular Mississippi State Bulldog affair warranted some sweet combination of maroon and football. I decided round cookies would suffice since we don’t have dog bones or footballs in our cookie cutter collection. (I can’t believe those have escaped us somehow.) So, on Wednesday night, I baked the cookies without much fanfare. Yes, I used a cookie mix for my dry ingredients and the cutter-less prep meant that I could just drop them on the cookie sheet rather than rolling them out. Baking was accomplished in short order, and I saved the icing for the next night.

Faced with relatively round cookies and the need for some Bulldog spirit, I decided the best route was to ice them in maroon and pipe little football shapes on top. Ok. So, Thursday night was icing night. This time Little Drummer Boy was enthused to help every step of the way. He planted himself on his little chair right next to me with a “what are you doing now?” with each new activity. Icing footballs had won out over Miss Piggy, Lightning McQueen and even a few tractors and firetrucks. That’s tough competition for a half-homemade cookie.

He called it brown. It looked like the 80s favorite “dusty rose” to me–most definitely not maroon. They were not even close to the perfectly round, perfectly smooth, Bulldog-topped numbers you see at Kroger around these parts this time of year. The football shapes, piped with one of the only two remaining screw-on tips I could find, prompted a “what’s that” from LDB, and the gray “laces” were a little spider web-like. (To my credit, the gray was spot-on. I didn’t go to art school for nothing.) But, with my little enthusiast contributing, every explanation was met with a “those are cool” as he was pasted to my side during the whole process. The experience warranted more than one “these are for MY party” with all the joy of knowing Mommy was making something just for him. Fueled by a four-year-old’s staunch belief that Mommy can do anything, we pressed on. Two and a half dozen cookies later, Little Drummer Boy’s encouragement through the process was undaunted regarding what could very charitably be described as pink cookies with spider web-covered ovals on top. And then, the lure of helping to take out the garbage pulled him away.  We were done. Perfection in all its flawed glory.

The naysayer in me said “just go pick yourself up a clear plastic container from the nearly-fresh bakery section.” But, you know, my mother never bought decorated cookies. You couldn’t buy decorated cookies in those days — at least not at the Kwik Shop where we grocery shopped. I remember Mama’s cookies as being perfect. I’m sure in reality they were far from it, but the illusion in my mind isn’t tarnished with age–only more wisdom from my own motherhood. You see, even then, the perfection was in the moment, not the cookie. It was in how fun my Mom made it to get down the plastic cookie cutters, to add food coloring to the ready made icing. To toss the sprinkles or red hots or whatever confection she thought would give them that special touch. Even to do something else while I knew Mama was making cookies for my party was fun. The painstaking yellow triangular Jack-o-lantern eyes, the snowmen’s colorful scarves. The process created a perfectly sugared up, worn out, flour dusted, counter cluttered moment–and some pretty good cookies, too.

Perfection of the kind that produces NCAA regulation football shapes is highly over-rated. And more and more these days, I’m finding satisfaction in letting perfection slide. I want to spend my energy building the perfect moment, not the perfect product or the perfect person. The perfect moments of standing with Mommy at the counter, stirring the bowl, licking the spoon, proudly presenting the blue plastic platter filled with cookies to the class–the moments will be remembered far longer than the mauve-colored icing that should have been maroon. Perfection is in the process and the joy of effort, the imperfect outcome of moments spent on what matters. Yum.

The One About Hot Dogs

This past week was a busy one, made more complicated internally by changes to Quiver’s work situation and changes in our familiar routines. Over the weekend I had been feeling rather overwhelmed and generally behind in so many of the life plots (and attitudes) I need to be cultivating. It seems an odd time to be writing about hot dogs, but here we are.

Sometimes just a little change of plans, tossed with a pinch of spur-of-the-moment can create a much-needed shift in perspective. At some point during the middle of the afternoon (probably about the time I was reading and making mental notes for tomorrow’s final Geek episode of MeMyBook&Eye) I decided to ditch the leftover dinner plans and opt for more of a celebration mindset.

Celebration hasn’t really been at the forefront of our thoughts this week. We’ve been dealing with the emotional and physical ramifications of Quiver shutting down a business and beginning a new job. We’ve been busy with extra responsibilities beyond the normal routine. We’ve been challenged by some of the boy’s growing pains. We’ve been playing catch-up after new strides (quite literally) in Baby Girl’s growing independence. We’ve been cooking and cleaning and bathing and writing and laundering. We’ve been impatient with one another, with ourselves and with circumstances.

So, I decided an impromptu party was in order to lift our spirits and right our vision.

I realize that the word “party” conjurs up lots of different images. To adequately understand our version of a “party,” I’d better explain that we have family parties for just about anything. Usually the standard criteria for a party at the Montgomery house is a pretty sparse list: 1) something to laugh or jump up and down about; 2) something edible; 3) some form of decoration, be it new placemats, party paper plates, construction paper cut-outs hanging from the “chandelier”, table cloths, candlelight, etc. That about covers it.

Yes, I decided that tonight was an excellent time for our third “grill party” of the month–no time like the present. The plans made for extra excitement because we decided to have it in the BACK YARD where we could eat the whole meal OUTSIDE. Big fun. With catsup on top. The trappings of this party? Here’s the abridged version:

8 hot dogs + buns
1/4 bag charcoal + requisite lighter fluid
1 bag Cheetos
Sundry condiments
1 highly portable Pack-n-Play
1 blue checked tablecloth
2 $1 styrofoam airplanes
2 funky plastic things that spin and light up when you push the button
1 happy beagle
5 large marshmallows
1 coat hanger
1 bag mint chocolate cookies (in lieu of graham crackers and Hershey bars)
1 yellow lightning bug
4 “Lighting McQueen” party plates
Napkins (enough)
Giggles (uncounted)
2 tricycles
1 pink pair of pants (size 9mo)
2 porch lights
1 quick trip to the bathroom
The first “touch of Fall in the air” night this year
4 people I love (so much I can’t stand it)

Somewhere in between squirting mustard, fending off puppy paws, responding to the 637th “Mommy, watch this” and strategically planning my last bite to include part hot dog AND part bun–somewhere in there–I recognized again how much I have to be thankful for, how good I really have it.

Hot dogs with a side of renewed perspective. Who knew?