The Wednesday Baker: Boule Bread

A few months ago I bought all of the necessary equipment and ingredients for bread, according to the book "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day."

Bread and I have a long history. According to local legend, I used to take naps in a laundry basket on the floor of the bakery, Baba A Louis, where my mom worked. Bread is a weakness. It's a blessing. It's something I seek and destroy when in the mood.

Except I've never really been that great at baking it. I manage hockey pucks. The occasional door stop. But never fantastic, earthy bread.

So when I bought this book in the Spring, we were weeks away from moving into Anchorage and I never really got to turn loose in the book. Until now. Until today. The day I deemed Wednesdays as "baking days."

The concept of the book is that artisan bread is actually possible without having an advanced degree in chemistry or fancy equipment. No back-breaking kneading. No nonsense. You mix your ingredients. You let them set overnight. You bake your bread. You eat your bread. Bada-boom...bada-bing.

The Master Recipe makes four 1-pound loaves, so I always halve it.

3 cups lukewarm water
1.5 tablespoons granulated yeast (2 packets)
1.5 tablespoons kosher or coarse salt
6 cups unsifted all purpose flour.

The book goes on to have you mix the water, the yeast and the salt. Add the flour. Mix very loosely until there's not dry spots. And then...well, that's it. Put it in a container. Leave it in the fridge. Let the yeast work its magic. In the morning, you knead it very lightly. Let it rest. Bake your bread (with the help of a "steam bath") for 30 minutes. And you're done.

The book is amazing and highly recommended...eventually you can work yourself up to making cinnamon rolls and other super fantastic-ness. But for now. The bread.

It had the bakery-guaranteed"skin" that crackled and broke when you tear into it. It's chewy. It's yeasty. It's perfect for a rainy Wednesday in Alaska.

The authors have a site here. Just so happens today they blogged about baking in Tuscany without their normal equipment. Nice, right?

Happy Wednesday!

The Joy of 32

I've had about a week now to walk around with my new identity and it's about as anti-climactic as any birthday has been.

It just sorta is. The day came. And it sorta went. (But not without some FANTASTIC birthday love from my facebook family out there. THANK YOU!)

(I'm pretty sure the most exciting birthday so far has been 25...the year I was allowed to rent a car! 21 doesn't really count...because, honestly, who hadn't been drinking since the day they arrived on their college campus? But rental cars...well, there was one place you couldn't cheat.)

My husband had flowers for me. Boo had an Elmo balloon that he shared with me, and there were two cakes and lots of princess-themed partyware. I love my husband, have I mentioned that lately?

It was low-key and when it came time to figure out the birthday gift, the practical nature of 32 became very apparent when I asked my husband not to buy me a fancy espresso machine and to let me purchase a new vacuum instead. (The horror!!)

A fu*&ing vacuum, you say?

Yes, dear reader. Our floor was nasty, what can I say? (It sorta reminded me of that Mother's Day back in 1986 when I had my dad buy an iron for my mom so I could sign the card. She laughed then and I didn't get it. Oh, but I get it now...)

Clean floors aside, 32 seems like a magic number to me. It seems to be the nice, well-rounded age I've earned after a few long years of struggle. Fighting against myself, against an ex, against jobs that went nowhere, against rash behavior just because I could. Fight fight fight, strife strife strife. No longer. This is a well-earned age where my phsycial and mental scars tell the story of me becoming me.

32 seems to be the year when I am no longer my own worst enemy, where I have built an incredible foundation around me with friends and family who want the best for me and are no longer afraid to speak up when I'm wrong (though I rarely am, so watch yourself.)

This past week has been like many others in my life. Some good news, some bad. Some drama. Some worries. But here's the thing, at 32 (and beyond, right?) you bend the problem to your solution. At 22, you bend yourself to the problem and try to claw your way out of a hole. That's my take anyway.

At 32 I've become a master at triaging my life. Sure, the electric bill might be late, but the car insurance and the gas is paid, so two outta three ain't bad. Yeah, I might get short with P if we're both lacking sleep...but have you seen Houswives of New Jersey lately? We seem pretty damn normal compared to those fools, and that's a fantastic place to start.

So happy belated 32nd to me...the first of many, many more. I hope, anyway...

The return of something great

Thomas the Tank Engine has returned to our lives this summer. Some of the tracks and most of the engines that Boy Wonder collected between ages 2 and 5 survived the move to Anchorage only to be saved from obscurity in the garage by Boo himself.

Though we don't quite have the language down (he screams "NO!" and hands you a piece of broken track when he wants you to fix it. A sad consequence from the afternoon we spent playing together...I'd build the track, he'd destroy it. I'd tell him "No!" over and over again and repair it. Somehow screaming "NO!!" at his dad with two pieces of tracks is supposed to mean "Hello, Father. Can you please fix this for me? Thank you."

We're working on it.

I missed Thomas and his friends. Boy Wonder and I used to watch those DVDs on endless loops and it was such a treat when we found the more rare episodes that George Carlin narrated. Yes!

He's also discovered plain old blocks. The kid loves them. It's a magic age where the bling-bling lights of battery-operated toys hold no interest to him (nor does the television) and all the kid wants to do is build piles and knock them down. It's a grand summer.

And MEEMAWS. I can't forget "meemaws."

Meemaws are magical creatures. Maybe it's because mama might have a bit of that Texas twang when she says "pillow" but meemaws seem to be any plush or comfy item in our living room that Boo wants to claim for his own and snuggle on top of. If you find yourself over at our house in the near future, beware. He might spot the pillow you're sitting near and come by and snatch it, yelling "My meemaw!" You've been warned.

Toddlers are magical, tiring creatures. How could I have forgotten this so quickly?

In other blackbird news, the fight is off. I know, I know, you're heartbroken, right? Haha. Didn't think so. The stars didn't align for this one and it seems that I am a much different person at 32 than I was at 27. But that's the whole point, right? (And thank goodnes...I'm not sure I was much to shake a stick at in my 20s...I was kind self-absorbed and pushy. Just sayin'.)

Oh, and I rescue Boy Wonder August 12. I bet you're just as excited as I am. :)

MMA and the meaning of life

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SharkBaby and the Night of the Living Dead

No, seriously.

Last night poor Boo and I went to war against an unseen enemy and the casualty? Sleep. It didn't have a chance in hell.

Currently, our 16-month old sweet baby is cutting tooth #4,765. That officially classifies him as a shark, right?

I swear the kid has five rows of teeth popping through. And we've felt every single one of those nasties from inception all the way through the raw, gum ravaging end. I think Boo just has to think about teeth (or a mouth, or sleep) and he starts to drool and the hacking cough returns.

The night went something like this:

11 p.m.: Ahhhhh. Mom takes a Melatonin and starts to feel fantastic. And sleepy. And....*#$%$...was that just the baby I heard? Get up. Resettle the baby. Administer pain relief. Administer Baby Vicks for the hellacious cough. Return to bed.

11:23 p.m.: Again? What now? Give baby back the bottle. Tuck him in. Night night, Boobear.

Midnight: No, seriously. Go to sleep kid. Here's your bottle. Sleepy sleepy, k?

1 a.m.: This isn't funny Boo. You better have a gaping chest wound in there. No? Here's your bottle. Go to bed.

1: 34 a.m.: No, no, no, no! Resettle baby. Tuck him in. Promise him his brother's toys if he'll just stay asleep. He can have his bed if it would do the trick...

2 a.m.: I. Hate. My. Life. I love this baby, but I hate my life right now. Take the damn bottle, kid. Hell, take my car keys and drive yourself around the neighborhood at this point, if you'll just let me close my eyes for more than 27 minutes at time.

2:17 a.m.: C'mon... I just laid back down...this baby is doing it on purpose, I swear. He hears me sigh in sweet relief and jumps back up to see if my reaction time is still on point. He's got a stopwatch hiding underneath the blanket and he's charting my progress...

2: 39 a.m.: Dear God, I'll go to church every Sunday if you'll just...

3:07 a.m.: Fragal;alkjda;sldfkjeowelkafna;lsdkjfakl;gj;l....

3:30 a.m.: By this point, I'm in tears and playing possum, lying as still as I can, while he fusses in the next room, hoping in vain that either he'll give up or I'll just fall asleep and it won't matter anyway. P is sympathetic to my over-the-top pity party and gets up, resettles him and the kid sleeps until 9 a.m. (WTF?!?!?)

I quit.

No, I mean it.

Boo and I can be friends again once all his teeth come in, but until then, I'm holding a grudge.

That's a lie. I got up this morning to the world's sweetest baby, complete with a pirate hat and a big toothy grin. It's nature's way of ensuring the survival of these little buggers, isn't it? So damn cute...

I don't remember what Boy Wonder's story was when he was breaking teeth--but I guarantee it is nothing compared to what Boo goes through, as I will never, ever, ever forget this experience (or the other 4,000 teeth pains).

I'm also going to store this in the memory bank for future guilt-inducing uses when the kid is old enough to fall for it. Just watch me...

Like a stranger in a familiar town

Somedays, when I feel like being really cruel to myself, I browse photos of tropical islands. I look at my pictures from Vegas and the California beaches I visited a few years ago. I look at pictures from my best friend's Facebook profile and dream of finally getting to Italy to visit her and my "nephews." I crack open the Barcelona travel guide I bought for a book I was writing last summer. I paste pictures of Scottish castles as my background on my desktop.

I dream about vacations. I ponder what I'd do with two weeks off and a bank account that didn't threaten mutiny every freakin' three weeks. (Seriously, it's getting old, Alaska USA.)

I mope. I shrug. Whatever, right?

Well, here's a little story about how my husband and Boo opened my eyes this weekend.

Anchorage was beyond beautiful. It was cloudless, sunny days that hovered in the 70s. We'd do our normal morning routine, and when Boo would wake up from nap #1, we'd go. Go go go. Grocery store, Gracie Barra, didn't matter.

On Sunday, we ended up at the Downtown Market. It was empty, compared to the shoulder-to-shoulder nonesense you normally deal with. Everybody was fishing. Everybody was camping. Everybody was, in short, not at the market.

We tried to find Boo one of those bucket hats popular with sunworshippers, but the kid has a man-sized head that hovers between child and grown up. The only toddler sized hats were pink, and we love our child too much to subject him to that sort of treatement.

We love fair food. Love love love it. And althought it's not a fair, per se, the market has that "food row" that smacks of being at a summer fair. Unlike my patient husband, I am unable to walk down one side and up the other before making my selection. I was ready to drop all my money on the grilled corn guy (and his neighbor, Mr. Funnel Cake), but ultimately held out for three more stalls and bought up a plate of fried catfish and hush puppies, complete with Frank's Hot Sauce. Ooohhhhheeeeeee. It was fantastic. (Boo loved Catfish! Boo loved Catfish!)

P got some corn fritters and honey butter and if I thought it might have worked, I would have shoved him off the bench and eaten his lunch, too. 'Cept he's bigger and stronger and better at jiu-jitsu than me. Just sayin'.

When we'd seen all that we could see at the market, I wasn't ready to pile back in to the car yet, so we hoofed around downtown Anchorage. A cruise ship has started docking in Anchorage once or twice a month for the first time in nine years, so there were plenty of middle-aged, fanny-pack and matching T-shirt wearing couples on the streets. Oh, and bums, too. I had to give a holler to my old bus-riding homies in case they wanted to forget the crazy, coffee-wielding chick from the 102 Express. Hi, guys!

Crossing the street, P found a trillion dollar bill. Yes, you heard correctly, One Trillion Dollars (forget that it was some relgious mumbo-jumbo..it was a TRILLION, baby!). I will no longer be reporting to work at 8 a.m. every morning. You can forward all mail to the Bahamas. Thankeeverramuch.

We found the Alaska Cake Studio as we randomly passed by. Hello. Cupcakes in the window? I am so there.

P got a peanut butter brownie. I got a lemon-lavendar cupcake. (Have you ever heard of one of those before? Me either. It was amazing.)

Boo liked both. I think he liked my frosting best of all, 'cause we sure fought over the yellow, delicious stuff.

So while we sat there in the little bakery, with tourists milling in and out with salted caramels and margarita cupcakes, it struck me. The three of us had just spent the last two hours as Anchorage tourists. We saw downtown through their eyes. We explored new stores. We ate obnoxious fair food and paid way too much for it and we were happy to do it!

Spending less than $35, I got an afternoon with my husband (and one son!) that I'll smile about for months to come.

Sitting there with P and with Boo in his little man stroller, it hit me. I don't have to go far to feel like I'm getting away from it all. I just need the right frame of mind, a little adventure in the spirit, and the right company.

Consider me schooled, World.

It's time we say so long, for now...

Can you believe that Boy Wonder’s kindergarten adventure is over ?

It seems like last week when we were dropping him off at school and sending him into the wide, unknown world of school. My "baby" left for Texas last weekend, so I’m starting to feel a little like Demeter, who had to send her child into the bowels of hell once a year. (No, seriously, I can relate.)

So in honor of one adventure ending, and his annual adventure beginning, I’d like to share

“Kindergarten: A Scrap-blog.”

First day.
As much as I wished he’d cry and beg me not to go, he actually looked a little embarrassed that I was hanging out in the hallway with all the other parents. He knew two kids in his class from church and the local playground, so as far as he was concerned, he had a lunch and he had some friends—he was good to go. I was bummed out on the ride into work that day, thinking this was the beginning of the end. My little boy was a “real boy” now in that Pinnochio sort of way…the strings would be harder to pull as he became his own little person.

Taking the Show on the Road

My fears that he didn’t need me anymore were for nothing. I met him and his class at the fine arts center downtown and he couldn’t wait to introduce me to everyone he saw. (It’s sort of his thing. He likes to make connections between people and he wants his enthusiasm to be YOUR enthusiasm). We sat in the darkened theater with about a million other kids from across the school district and I decided right then and there that I really loved elementary school and that I should never have been so impatient to leave.

Watch this, Kobe!
Can you believe I coached kiddie basketball? Me? The girl who can’t hit the rim to save her life? Lisa Leslie I am not, but I still managed to get six kids through 18 games with minimal tears and hurt feelings. We even got a few baskets, and though we weren’t officially scoring, I’m pretty sure we won most of our matches. Just sayin’. Dominic wasn’t much of a shooter. Or a dribbler. But the man could rebound like the scrappiest alley cat and he lived for snack breaks and Capri Suns. He was the one who came up with our team name “The Rhinos” (along with his little buddies). They learned sportsmanship, teamwork, and how to have fun. I learned that I’m not the biggest fan of most other parents in the sports world. True story. P had to teach Boy Wonder what to do when people crowded your space. My suggestion to poke their eyes out obviously wasn’t going to work…

Trick or Treatin'.
No, it wasn’t his first Halloween, but it was his first Halloween CARNIVAL at his official school. We packed up the family, dressed the kids as a shadow ninja and a lion and hit the town. Boy Wonder and P braved the haunted maze and came out with relatively few wounds to show for it. Maybe a couple of fake webs stuck to them, but no worse for the wear.

Winning the school art contest
Did you know our little man could draw? Sure enough. In the fall, his school held a contest for all the students to design a bookmark for the city library. And our man Boy Wonder beat out the ENTIRE school. He got a T-shirt with his design on it, a chance to bask in the spotlight at the front of a school assembly and one proud mama in the audience. He also won first place in the food art sculpture contest with a huge clay chocolate chip cookie that we cut a big bite out of. We skipped the science fair out of sheer protest—I was annoyed that fizzy volcanoes had to include some sort of hypothesis to test. I’ve got one for you: Fizzy volcanoes are COOL. Test that one…

Yellow Days are Sad Days
As the year got rolling, Boy Wonder began to learn about consequences. His teacher had a rating system for their days and every afternoon, he’d have a colored stamp on his folder letting us know how it went. Green was good, Blue was fantastic. Yellow was not so good. Red was principal’s office-material. We did our best to let the first few yellows slide, but when they started showing up a little more frequently, he started seeing his after-school cartoon watching disappear. I hate being the bad guy with him, because honestly, he’s probably one of the sweetest humans on the planet (he and his brother are), but that’s the whole parent thing in a nutshell, isn’t it? It was a crash course in actions and consequences for the child and his parents alike.

“Can Sam come over and play?”
He started (somewhat) talking to his friends on the phone this year. It was mostly “Dude….dude….DUDE! Wanna come to my house, dude? Awesome!” But still, there he was, asking to call his buddy Sam. With it came the failed attempt at a sleep over I wrote about a few months back, but mostly it was afternoons at a buddy’s house (or ours) with snacks, the WII, and a mountain of legos.

I Double-Dog Dare You
It wouldn’t be a complete scrap-blog without mentioning the ol’ Flick incident, would it? Inspired by the 24 hours of “A Christmas Story” on TBS, Boy Wonder stuck his tongue to a pole on the frozen playground and hilarity ensued. I saw a mom at the last field trip and somehow that came up. She said her kindergartner came home and told the family all about it. Boy Wonder is famous!

Kindergarten winds down
This past month has been a whirlwind of moving across town (way way way across town), field trips to the zoo with Team Wolverine, Field Day to celebrate the end of school, and preparing for the long journey to Texas. As Boy Wonder said his good byes on that last day, he was mobbed by his classmates and I was quick-thinking enough to keep my camera handy. I can’t explain the genuineness of this age—they really are that sad to see a buddy go. Boy Wonder posed with his teacher and it hit me. As bummed as I was that he’d grown up enough to enter kindergarten, I was having trouble fighting back the tears now that he’d OUTGROWN it and was leaving it behind.

But that’s how it goes isn’t it? I sat back and watched Boy Wonder win his sack race and remembered the day my best friend in 4th grade and I won the three-legged race at our own field day. I remember the epic catch I made in sixth grade to win our class the kickball game. Time is our biggest enemy and our greatest ally. Without it, I’d never get the chance to be the proud mama bear of one Boy Wonder and I’d forever be stuck in that awkward, bony-kneed, mullet-wearing phase I was so fond of in the late 80s. (I’ve still never forgiven you for those god-awful haircuts the first 11 years of my life, Mom. Just so you know!)

So now it’s time for Boy Wonder to go and soak up some summer sun. He’ll come back a little taller, a little tanner and his mama’s very own first grader.

Team Wolverine and the Alaska Zoo

(Note: I have acutal, real, live pictures of "Team Wolverine" and our adventures and will upload them tonight. Promise!)

This week I had the privilege to trek through the Alaska zoo with a crew of five kindergarten boys. Yes, that’s right, FIVE of them.

Talk about ants-in-the-pants, HEY YOU STOP RUNNINGANDGETOFFATHATFENCE nonstop action. It was a trip. And a treasure.

Boy Wonder was so proud that I was chaperoning, that he had to introduce me to every single kindergartner he could see. And some of the first graders, too. Not to mention, he tried to introduce me to some kids that didn’t even go to his school. Talk about a social kid. (I wonder if he’s going to be that excited when P and I show up to chaperone his first middle school dance? Hahahaha!)

There was no way in Hades I was going to be able to bark out commands to each antsy, fidgety boy in my group fast enough to keep them from being eaten by the grizzly bears or pecked to death by the horned owl, so before we set out, I named them “Team Penguin”—only to have the lame group next to us call themselves penguins. Lame! We ran through a list that included Team Duck, Team Dinosaur, Team Lemon (seriously, who’s kid was that??), and even Team Elephant, which I flatly REFUSED to entertain for one MOMENT, and finally “Team Wolverine.” (There was also a Team Polar Bear and the copycats, Team Penguin. A couple groups of girls didn’t get into the naming thing, and preferred to be the Princess Squad. Ha!)

Our first area was the “rescue” area, full of ravens (yay!) and owls (yay! yay!) some eagles (golden and red), a raccoon, some foxes (arctic and red) and finally a skunk. (Really? A skunk?) I was provided with an information sheet for each animal, and the only thing the kids wanted to know was where the animals were born. Which mostly wasn’t provided (except for the raccoon, who was born in El Paso, Texas. Same as Boy Wonder. Who thinks they might have been born at the same hospital, and now wants me to look and see if, in fact, they were both born at Las Palmas.) I doubt it , Boy Wonder, but I can look into it if it’s that important to you.

We wandered down to the tiger enclosure and found the tiger brothers both asleep. Same with the grizzly bears. One boy, Caleb, thought they looked “hung over.” I asked how he’d know what that looks like and he told me he heard it on Cartoon Network once. (I hate you, Cartoon Network.)

We heard an incessant yapping and I thought maybe the old neighbor lady’s dog had followed me somehow to Anchorage, but finally saw the coyote being a real whiner in the center of his cage. Boy Wonder’s best buddy, Sam, told me that it was “probably just pissed off.”
“He’s what?” I asked, needing clarification. That wasn’t what I thought it was, was it?
“Pissed off, Megan. He’s pissed off.”

“Oh, right Sam. Might not want to offer that explanation to Mrs. Ives, though. Could land you a yellow day, buddy.”

By the tenth animal cage we passed, we decided that Tuesdays were really “Nap Day” at the Alaska Zoo. Even the Dall Sheep were sleeping, and those things never sleep. Sleeping river otters, sleeping moose, sleeping caribou, sleeping camels, sleeping Tibetan yaks. My wolverines were getting impatient.

To keep Team Wolverine awake, we tromped across the bridge as loud as we could to scare up the troll from the “Three Billy Goats Gruff” (a story they’d read the week before and we’d just seen sleeping “Billy Goats”). I got dirty looks from the other chaperones, but I aimed my troll gun at them and pulled the trigger—the universal “Scarface” warning to “mind yer own biziness, eh?”

Our tromping then turned into “Troll Hunting” with a few snipers, some gunners in the rear, and a team scout. (Not to worry, I rotated our leader/scout after each animal exhibit, so the whole troop got to lead the men to troll battle.)

The big hit was the “water” exhibits. We saw seals peeing in the water (true, and gross, story), otters sleeping (surprise, surprise!) and Polar Bears chewing on tires and a white bucket. The water exhibits had upstairs and downstairs (underwater) views and by the time I got through lifting five boys multiple times from each vantage point, I felt buff like Jillian Michaels.

Hidden in the back, behind the polar bears and beside the sleeping lynx, was our buddy, the Wolverine. Not only was our namesake awake, he was OCD. That little animal ran the same lap circuit around his cage the entire 20 minutes we stood there admiring him. Every once in a while, he’d change his course and run next to the bars in front of us to give us a better view, but the guy never quit running. It was impressive, almost as impressive as the boys’ favorite wolverine fact: an adult wolverine is strong enough (and mean enough!) to take down a full-grown moose.

Was the moose placed across the trail from the wolverine on purpose, then? Is that sort of like sticking a mirror in front of a fighting fish’s bowl and letting it charge itself?

The finale was worth the 2+ hours of pulling boys off exhibits and out of trash cans. The wolf exhibit had a sibling set of six wolves (three brothers and three sisters) that romped and “wrassled” in front of us. As we were turning to leave, the pack gathered about four feet from Team Wolverine and began howling as loud as they could. I’ve never seen something so amazing in my life and I doubt I ever will again. It gave me chills. To show solidarity, my own wolverine pack joined in the chorus and I snapped away with my camera like a fiend. Moments like that don’t repeat themselves and I’ll carry the image of “my” boys singing with the wolf brothers as long as I live.

So there it is. Kindergarten comes to a close in a few weeks and I got to top it off with the “trip” of a lifetime. Here’s hoping you find your own “wolfsong” moment this week.

The Little Apartment that Could (But Can't Anymore)

Believe it or not, I get really nervous about change.

Oh, sure, I can dye my hair bright red at the drop of a hat or add $500 worth of tattoo ink to my skin, but when it’s time to dive into something that shakes up everything about the way we live, I get sentimental.

We’re moving next week. And, lordy, I am so so happy. But before this house became a nightmare, before the crazy lady upstairs and before the landlords let it slip into slum-dom, this house was something special to me at a point when I really needed.

I feel like reminisching a bit as we begin pulling pictures off the walls and taping up boxes.

Adventures on Young Drive:

A little more than three years ago this month, I was lost. I was on my own for the first time in a long, long time and I was scared. I had a crummy job that paid peanuts, but I had my son and I had my freedom. And you had a vacancy. Amazing how things work out like that.

When I shuttled the first box of dishes through thefront door, and rounded the kitchen wall, I was in awe. My very first kitchen with my very own dishes that I didn’t have to defend or “put up with.” I could put saints all over your wall just because I wanted to. There was no dishwasher, but I was happy to do our dishes by hand because they were, in fact, just ours. Me and the Boy Wonder. For the first time in a long, long time (maybe ever?) I was driving the ship and responsible for every single moving part--every bill, every dollar...everything. My responsiblity. And man, did it feel good. (Ok, so since then, I've come to realize it's not ALWAYS so fantastic to be responsible for everything, but at that point, I thought it was pretty freaking cool.)

I bought new furniture because I had none. In the divorce, I gave up everything just to keep the one thing I wanted—me. I remember the day the movers showed up five hours late with my new couches and the new bunkbed with a slide for Boy Wonder. Those guys took another three hours, at least, trying to build that stupid bed and on the first trip down the slide, Boy Wonder (he was three years old at the time) crashed when his feet got stuck on the metal, sending him flying into the wall. He called it a “bad bed!” and avoided that slide for about a month. He stayed with his father every other week for a while there, and when it was just me alone in that house, I felt at peace. I had my space. I had my freedom. And while I didn’t have my son for 7 days at a time, I knew he’d be back soon enough.

For the first year and a half, I didn’t own much by way of a cable or entertainment. I had an old-fashioned TV that had a VCR deck in it, and when I moved in, the previous tenant had somehow left two VHS tapes behind—“Phenomena” and “The Sound of Music.” At that time, I’d just found out about my brain aneurysm a few weeks before, so I had absolutely NO desire to watch “Phenomena,” despite how great of a movie it was.

So each night I’d lie on the world’s most uncomfortable futon (Boy Wonder got the new bed, not me), with boxes upon boxes of unpacked knickknacks, and eat dinner with Julie Andrews. Every night. For weeks at a time. I’d never seen the movie before and now it’s one of my favorites. For a while there, I felt just how Frauline Maria felt—in between two worlds, trying to find her place.
My landlords were my close friends. I was extremely close with the other residents and getting out and exploring the wild Eagle River nightlife (I’m kidding here), helped move me forward at a time when I just wanted to hide away for a few months’ longer.

Times changed. They always do and they always should. Neighbors moved on. The landlords sold the place off.

At the same time, P (and eventually Boo) filled that void that missing in our lives. And this perfect-fitting, insulating home that I’d loved now was overcrowded and costing us both a lot of money with the long commute. We had more laundry than we could keep up with and always running out of quarters. We inherited a neighbor who makes us crazy. Dogs that charged us whenever we stepped outside.

Our lives are moving in a direction where we need to be closer to Anchorage. Our friends are there. Our jobs our there. Education is there. Life is there.

We’d lost hope for finding a decent, safe place that we could make a home in the city until some good friends of ours came to our rescue. Funny how that happens, isn’t it? In 2007, I was just about out of hope that I’d ever find a place for Boy Wonder and myself that I could afford that would make us happy when the housing fairy waved her magic wand at us. Happened again in 2010. A beautiful place with three bedrooms, a washer, a dryer, a dishwasher. A place to start up new and make a home.

I couldn’t be happier, and in a way, I owe a big part of it to that little apartment on Young Drive that gave me that second chance to start over.

Farewell, little abode… and hello, Anchorage!

Balance and organization: And other lies we once believed

You know what?

Parenthood is tough.

You know what else?

Anyone who attempts it in addition to any other sort of activity is crazy with a capital CR. Just sayin'.

I’ve been chasing this dream of the perfect, balanced life for years since Boy Wonder was born. It was tough enough when it was just him and I, but add in the missing, crucial elements of P and Boo to our life? A couple careers and a full-time education? Kindergarten? Enriching activities? The desire to do some enriching activities of our own?

Ohmigod, I think P and I are headed for a loony bin.

Lemme add some horror to this fantasy fiction: we don’t own a dishwasher. Or a washer/dryer. We fight the beast of chaos four quarters at a time and with stank-ass drying towels taking up our counters at all times.

But fear not. Our lives are not in peril and I’ve yet to have the school call to complain that Boy Wonder smelled funny.

Along the way, I think we’ve developed a method to make the best of what we’ve got—and I’m pretty sure we’ve given up perfection. I think I tossed that out with some dirty diapers about ten months ago.

1. We embrace the beast. Her name is Gigantor and she consists of mismatched socks, stained bibs, mama’s work pants, and P’s jiu-jitsu shirts. Some days we can beat Gigantor into submission, only to find her cousin, Huge-appatamus (consisting of stacks of folded clean clothes) waiting for us on our bed at 10 p.m., just as we’re trying to pass out. Huge-appatamus gets moved to the floor (temporarily, of course!) and within a day, dirty underwear gets mixed in and we can’t tell what’s clean and it all gets transferred to the dirty stack, where Gigantor is waiting with open dirty-towel arms. We know the cruel cycle and we embrace it now.

2. Our baby looks like a million bucks when he leaves the house. His older brother will look straight GQ. There’s a good chance, however, that their parents might look like vagrants. Boo will have matching socks, a coordinated hoodie to match his Polo jeans, and gel in his hair. His nose will be wiped and there will be no remnants of lunch left on his face. Dominic will have on a Hurley shirt and brand new Nikes. He’ll even get a spritz of Guess cologne and a stick of mint gum to make sure he’s “so fresh and so clean, clean.” P, however, will still be wearing yesterday’s sweat pants. His new, clean shirt will have a piece of peanut butter bagel stuck to it from Boo’s breakfast. I will have crusties in my eyes and last night’s make up on. I will wipe the bottom of the mascara from beneath my eye and hope it passes for smudged, smoky eyeliner. It usually won’t.

3. If we are busy, or if we just don’t feel like it, we will ignore the dishes until there are no spoons left. Then we will panic and steal one of the baby’s safety spoons to eat our ice cream with until one of us caves and tackles the dishes with a nasty scowl on our face.

4. We will have a long list of things we want done each day, only to pass out, face down, on this list and drool on it. Sorry, list. You were conceived with the best of intentions, but you’ll likely get tossed in the over-full trashcan. Right next to the electric bill we didn’t notice. It’ll be ok. The disconnect notice usually gives you a 24-hour grace period, right?

5. When we are going somewhere fun, the last five minutes before we leave will probably be panic-filled and one parent will likely not be speaking to the other one. The conversation will go down something like this: He: “Did you pack the diaper bag?” She: “Exactly when was I supposed to do that? I was getting them dressed. Did you pack the diaper bag?” He: “Yeah, right in between feeding the dog, putting the dishes away, and finding the lost blanket.” She: “Yeah, well I was busy finding the left shoe and pulling the baby’s hands out of the toilet again because SOMEBODY left the damn door open…” Silence ensues for the first six miles down the road. Luckily, all is soon forgotten once Boo overturns his bag of cheerios on the floor of Mommy’s beloved truck. Scraping up crushed cereal products together has a real bonding effect on a married couple. True story.

6. We forgo fighting for sleep. Truly. I’m sure there are times P would like to get to the bottom of why I can never screw caps back on the milk or OJ. I’d love to know why he can’t toss his clothes into the dirty clothes right before he gets into bed. But you know what? We haven’t had eight straight hours of sleep in 14 months and we’re not gonna jeopardize the precious few minutes we do get sorting out the gory details.

7. We acknowledge the fact that sometimes our kids don't get the memo. There are days when P needs to study. I work on deadlines. And sometimes, more often that we'd like, our kids just don't give a damn. There are owwies to kiss and Wii games to load and babies to squish. Our priorties don't always match up and P and I have learned to sometimes throw in the towel for a minute or two. We can blame them later in life for our unrealized dreams if we need to. :)

7. Bottom line: “good enough” really is good enough at this point. Despite the fact that I’d like to take a lit match to our unorganized house much of the time, we manage to keep our priorities straight enough on a daily basis not to waste our blessings. At the end of the day, we know our kids won’t be young for very long, so we tiptoe around the roadside Lego bombs, we use broken laundry baskets as impromptu baby gates, we leave peanut butter and jelly smears on the counter for a couple hours, and we get down on the floor and we play with our kids. We drive them 45 miles for a swim lesson. We pack too many toys in their diaper bags and bring the damn Nintendo DS with us wherever we go, despite how loud Boy Wonder likes to play it. We swallow our pride and ask the boss for the morning off to go see “Stone Soup” with the kindergarten class. We’re mildly surprised when we get it with a blessing to boot.

We think the universe conspires, once in a while, to remind us how great everything really is.

Life is good, my friends, life is good.