My Other Job(s)

When I was a kid, my mom was a stay-at-home mom, or SAHM, as they are now called.  Wow.  I wish I could be so lucky. 

My mom didn't just sit around the house, though.  She was the superintendent of the Sunday School at our church, a member of the Ladies' Aid and also volunteered in the art room at my school.  She sang in the choir.  She went to Art School.  For fun she went bowling every Thursday night with "the girls".  And she always made our clothes - I don't think I had any store-bought clothing until after my dad died and she had to go back to work.

Maybe this recession has been a good thing, in a sense.  People are learning to do with less, and many families are making it work on one income again.  More people I know are making things at home, like clothing, gifts and even meals - go figure! 

Now with one parent at home while the other is working, there might be something better than fast food on the table for dinner.  And all of the family members can eat together, since no one can afford to send their teenagers out for dates at the movies.

This even means that parents might get a chance to meet their kids' friends.  And even more surprising yet, their kids' boyfriends and girlfriends may even eat dinner with them - meaning they might get to know what their kids are doing and who they are hanging out with.

Of course in this day and age, most of the parents who are staying at home now are the men, rather than the women.  At least that's what is the norm with the people I know.  Most of the men I know who were laid off were working either in the construction trades or trucking.  When no one is buying new homes, no one is building them, either.

It's been nice, in some respects, having my husband home during the day.  My three teenage sons don't get away with much.  In fact, most of the time they don't even bother trying anymore since they know it's not worth it to make trouble.  Hubby's the mastermind at out house when it comes to devising repercussions for misbehavior.

Obviously, he's also way better than I am at lifting the heavy stuff, which means that the couch gets moved when the vacuuming is done.  The heavy totes of seasonal stuff like summer clothes and beach gear get packed into the shed right away, and the winter sweaters and coats are brought in.

I can't help but feeling a little left out, though.  When I get home from work, I usually end up cooking dinner (trust me - this is for the best, in our house.  The guys all cook, but I like to eat before 9pm).  While I cook, everyone else watches TV in the living room, because "their work is done for the day."  I don't think "mom's chores" are ever done.   It seems like I'm left with the chores I don't necessarily like, to boot.  Not that I don't like working, but why do I need to be the one who's always running?  As a friend of mine from highschool, Amy, said on her FaceBook status one day (and this should be known for all time as one of the greatest quotes, EVER):  "Not only do I have to bring home the bacon, but I have to cook it, too."

We working moms still seem to get stuck with more work than our fathers did when they were the ones bringing home the bacon.  I still do a lot of the stuff my mom did: the volunteering, the cooking, the coupon-shopping and the sewing.  Only now I've got a full-time, sometimes 40+ hour-per-week job to fit in as well.  I've also decided that I need to go back to school to finish my degree.  By the time I get my BS in Business Administration that I started about 6 years ago, I will have three kids in college, if they haven't already beaten me to the graduation finish line.

In order to supplement the amount needed to cover books for school and other miscellaneous items, I've started an online store at Etsy, Rock Prairie Designs.  I blog about how that's going at my other blog, Rock Prairie Designs.  Trust me, I don't whine as much there as I might here or on my other blogs.  It's just not professional :)

At least the work I do for my store is something I like.  It's fun.  Even if it ends up someday as yardsale fodder, as long as it helps me out now, cool.  Stop by and check it out, and spread the word, if you like what you see.  I can use all the help I can get!

I can't say I hold anything against my husband for being at home, either.  He gave me an "art studio" - one day I came home and he had an area put together for my work space:
 


It's cozy, but just perfect. The light above the table is great.

Here's a pic of my most recent creation, finished in My New Art Studio :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

My birthday is this Saturday. Not to give away my "real" age, let's just say I've been celebrating the 28th anniversary of my birth for several years now. But that's alright, because if age is a state of mind, not body, then I guess I could say I really am going to be 28 on Saturday.  Again.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/ / CC BY 2.0

Photo by D. Sharon Pruitt

A co-worker brought in chocolate cupcakes today, since we all have Thursday and Friday off in honor of the Thanksgiving holiday. So even better than just getting chocolate, today's also my Friday - whoohoo! All of that almost makes up for the fact that all of the songs I grew up with can now be heard on the "oldies" radio station I often listen to at work. Not just the songs from my early childhood, but even the ones that came out when I was in highschool and college.

And I don't even have to cook the big meal for everyone tomorrow, since we will be at my sister-in-law's house for Thanksgiving. We're bringing the veggies and dip, another way I'm sliding this year. Nothing to bring that requires any effort whatsoever.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dolenga/ / CC BY 2.0

When I was growing up, Thanksgiving was a travelling event. Some years it was spent at various relatives' homes, some years it was celebrated at our house. If we hosted the event at our house, Mom took out the good silver the day before and I polished it. Mom's silver was not the cheap electroplate stuff you buy now. It was heavy, solid Sterling. It seemed to me like it took all day to make it shine. My mom would make a huge meal with all the trimmings. My sister Suzy and I helped. Suzy usually mashed the potatoes and I set the table, with Mom's good china and crystal that was kept in the antique mahogany china cabinet in the living room. We all got dressed up in our good clothes and spent the day eating and visiting with relatives. After dinner our family did the stereotypical turkey day thing: the men watched football on TV and the women cleaned up the mess and chatted over coffee and the newspaper ads for the Black Friday sales. My Uncle Stan usually had a bad turkey joke or two - generally aimed at me since my birthday was so close to the holiday. My Aunt Irene always brought a card for me, or mailed it if we didn't see each other that day. She's the only person in my family who still sends me a card on my birthday. This year's card just arrived on Monday. Good thing, too - I almost forgot!

Of course there was always pie for dessert - my mother's tradition was to buy pies at Poppin' Fresh (now known as Baker's Square). Grandma Dorothy had to have her favorite, French Silk; that was always on the menu, along with the pumpkin and the apple pies that were the other favorites. Now that I have my own family, we've assimilated some of the traditions from both my husband's side of the family and my own into what are now our family traditions.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40389150@N06/ / CC BY 2.0

One kind of dessert that we absolutely have to have now is banana cream pie. It's my husband's favorite kind of pie and always disappears first. Since no one's claimed French Silk as their favorite, we just don't do it since my Grandma passed away several years ago. I like it, and am reminded of her every time I get it, but my personal favorite is pecan. So that is another one we have at our Thanksgiving dinners. Of course we have to have pumpkin, since that's the American tradition. Even if you don't care for pumpkin, it just doesn't seem right to skip it at Thanksgiving. Maybe it's just the smell of the pumpkin pie spices that make it so well loved: cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice and cloves. It always makes a house smell warm and inviting, especially when those smells are mingled with the roasted turkey and freshly-baked dinner rolls.

Now that the "kids" on my husband's side of the family are grown and in some cases, grandparents already, our celebrations have grown beyond the confines of our small house, so we usually go to one of the sibling's houses that have enough room to fit everyone comfortably. Of course that means I don't have to cook. Some insane part of me rather misses that, though. I guess if my future grandchildren someday are going to have Thanksgiving at Grandma's house, I will have to get a bigger house!

Happy Thanksgiving!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zedzap/ / CC BY 2.0

Church Ladies

The winter clothes are officially out of storage, all our summer shorts and tee shirts are hidden away until the next heat wave begins. In Minnesota, that could be anytime between May to July. While unburying all of the winter stuff, I was rather happy to find some old but well-loved sweaters in a box that I couldn't find last year. I even have a couple that my mother gave to me several Christmases ago. Do sweaters ever really go out of style? I don't think so. At least as long as they don't have shoulder pads.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31733144@N04/ / CC BY 2.0

I used to laugh because my mother seemed to dress so frumpy. Polyester pants with turtlenecks were her typical winter wardrobe. I hated her plaid wool skirts, worn over heavy knit opaque tights when the temperature dropped near freezing. I swore I would never go that route. I would wear denim until I was well into my eighties, and party like a rock star even if I needed a wheelchair or a walker to get around.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/playingwithpsp/ / CC BY 2.0

I think that started to change once my job required me to awaken at 5:30 am. Once you start going to bed each night around 9:30, the partying boat has all but sailed. My friends who still go to the bar don't even arrive there until then. I'm lucky if I can make it through the 9 o'clock news, which in my book is probably the best thing since sliced bread - stay up for the 10 o'clock news? no way!

As I go over my mental checklist of action items for tonight's Ladies Aid meeting at church, I realize that I am turning into my mother.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hadesigns/ / CC BY 2.0

Not just a little, I mean the good, the bad and the ugly. There are a few exceptions, but they seem to grow smaller over time. The Ladies Aid is part of it, I find myself rather looking forward to going to our monthly meetings, just like my mother always did.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10413717@N08/ / CC BY 2.0

Although tonight I really wanted to stay at home to finish crocheting the turtleneck sweater I started a few weeks ago. It will really go well with my polyester dress pants. Well, maybe they're acrylic. Whatever. They are much more comfortable than my jeans.

Speaking of Ladies Aid, that reminds me. I happen to like this website, http://www.biblegateway.com/. I've found it so helpful - anytime I need to know where a verse is, if I can't remember where to find it, this is where I go. On their homepage today, there was a little snippet that mentioned they had taken a poll:

"If you were given the chance to have dinner with someone from the Old Testament
who would you choose and why?"

I thought that was a good question. Pay them a visit if you'd like to read some of the answers, some of them were pretty good!

So who would you choose, and why?

Ice Cream For Dinner? Anyone?

ice cream / gelado
Originally uploaded by lilivanili

Toasted marshmallows just don’t taste like they used to. Maybe I’m getting old. It doesn’t take forever to get them the perfect shade of brown without lighting the whole sticky mess on fire like it used to, and they seem way too sweet, now. When I was a kid I could eat the entire bag, even if it meant staying up past bedtime to get each one toasted.

I could never figure some things out, when I was a child. Like why the adults preferred sitting in the shade rather than playing in the sun on a hot summer day. Or why they didn’t find getting splashed by others while swimming at the lake or the pool as fun as I did.

Why can’t I have ice cream for dinner? I still haven’t figured that one out. Maybe I’m not so grown up, after all.

P.S. to the Last Post...

Did I mention that I can smell my sister's sandalwood and patchouli incense burning when I listen to this playlist? She burned it so our mom wouldn't know what else was burning in our basement. I can even smell that incense while I'm at work - odd. I guess ghosts tend to live on in the music they listened to.

I Love Widgets!

I found a really cool widget at www.playlist.com. If you want one for your blog, mine's at the bottom of my blog - go ahead & set one up. I've found it's way better than plugging in my headphones to my radio at work and hearing commercials, and of course I never remember to bring my iPod with me when I leave the house (even though it's as portable as it can get). Otherwise, just check it out. My song for this morning is 'Summertime' (Live), perfomed by Janis Joplin. Suits my mood today.

Turns out I will be going back to school - again! Even though I've got 4+ years of college under my belt and have studied all sorts of odd things: business, art, history and interior design, to name a few, I still have yet to acquire a degree in any of those subjects. I will still keep posting, although my post my be shorter, to the relief of some, I'm sure. My posts may also be a bit more sporadic, but I love to write so I know I won't give up blogging altogether.

Great-Grandma Hilda & Charlie, 1993

Great-Grandma Hilda & Charlie, 1993
Originally uploaded by suzukiQ

My Grandma Hilda was my dad's mom. She always loved children, and she babysat for a lot of people. I am glad she was around long enough to see my kids.

My husband found some old photo negatives in our storage unit, so I brought them to Target and had a CD made. I'm really glad he found those, since Grandma passed away several years ago and we never took as many photos as we should have.

If you take lots of photos, you will remember things that you may have forgotten if you didn't see them often. Don't shy away from the camera - even if you don't think you photograph well. And don't give up on those people who run from the camera! If you are the one shooting, just think of it as a challenge. You will be glad you caught them on film :)