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Spring Break -Afthead style

On By aftheadIn Uncategorized2 Comments

A few pictures of this weekend’s Afthead spring break in St. Paul, Minnesota.  (Because, you know, nothing says “Spring Break” like Minnesota in March.)

Saturday afternoon the Afthead family enjoyed watching their favorite hockey team, the DU Pioneers, beat Boston University.  Our seats were amazing and my kiddo was brave enough to reach her hand out and high five all the big college kids as they went on and off the ice.  Her growing bravery makes this momma’s heart proud.

 

 Sunday morning the little Afthead enjoyed a small hotel room Easter egg hunt, followed by a bonus egg hunt at our brunch restaurant.  Since she was the only kid in the entire restaurant she rocked that extra egg hunt!

 Next, the wee Afthead made friends with Linus and Sally, who had much larger aftheads than she.

 Off to the Science museum, which is a must visit if you are in St. Paul.  Here the kiddo Afthead controls a T-Rex forehead.  Chomp!

Then another forehead adventure as each of us had our faces displayed on the face mask of a three story tall astronaut. That’s one small step for Aftheads, and one giant leap for museum attendees!
 Finally another hockey game and another win for DU!  They are off to the NCAA Frozen Four.  Hopefully they’ll do okay in the next round without Afthead high fives.


Monday we enjoyed a trip to see Lake Harriet and the memorial bench my husband’s family bought for his aunt when she passed away six years ago.  She was one of my best friends, so the visit was sad, but I was glad for the opportunity to remember her with my daughter.

Happy Spring Break to those of you who get to enjoy such weeks!

AAA Battery Emergency – Adult Version

On By aftheadIn Fiction, Uncategorized4 Comments

Cynthia dropped her purse on the floor shedding her date clothes from one end of the apartment to the other, heading to the bathroom to wash off her makeup.  The care she had taken to look her best was just embarrassing now.  It was the third date, and she’d even put on an itchy lacy thong and matching itchy push up bra thinking tonight she and Sebastian were going to take things to the next level.  Well, she wasn’t wrong about that, but when the check came and Sebastian didn’t pick up the tab alarms started to go off, and built to a crescendo when he started the tired, “It’s not you, it’s me” let-her-down-easy soliloquy.

The worst was that she didn’t even like him, but she was lonely and was looking forward to feeling pretty and satisfied for a night.  In her secret heart she had even looked forward to ending it herself after a few nights together, but spiky haired Sebastian had beat her to the punch.

Reaching for a hand towel to pat dry her clean face Cynthia knocked a small box out of the linen closet.  She reached down to pick up the object and saw that it was the lipstick sized vibrator that she’d been given at a bachelorette party last summer.  She’d been so embarrassed by it that she’d shoved it behind the towels, but not before rolling her eyes at the “perfect for travel” splashed across the front of the package.  All she could imagine was some blue shirted TSA inspector finding it and turning it on in front of a pack of disheveled travelers.

Cynthia paused before putting the small box back in the linen closet.  She was lonely, and had been hoping for some…attention…tonight.  Maybe this was better than the Sebastian solution.  She couldn’t cuddle, but she could be satisfied.  With a flick of anticipation in her stomach she turned the lipstick base, and nothing happened.  She looked for a switch, or some other way to turn the device on, but nothing happened.  Suddenly the vibrator broke into two pieces and a single AAA battery fell to the floor.

Cynthia leaned over to pick up the battery, but the process of straightening back up reminded her that she had to get out of the damn thong.  She dressed in her favorite yoga pants and a soft well-loved tank top and turned on the TV.  A late night commercial blasted from the speakers.

AAA BATTERIES DELIVERED AND INSTALLED! NEED BATTERY HELP RIGHT NOW? CALL 1-800-555-5AAA!

Less than fifteen minutes later there was a strong knock at the door. Cynthia slipped her lipstick sized toy into the small pocket on her tank top and looked up to find Adonis on her doorstep. His thick dark hair curled around his ears and was just a little too long for a man, ending right above his name tag: which read “Adonis.”  His aquiline nose split two ice blue eyes and his full lips stretched into a smile revealing perfect white teeth. “AAA Battery Delivery and Installation at your service ma’am. May I come in?” His breath had an intoxicating minty cinnamon scent. Cynthia stood aside, speechless, and motioned him in. She glanced outside and saw his truck, proving that this man was from AAA Batteries.

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His perfect butt was somehow highlighted by his jumpsuit and a pair of what looked like gun belts crossed his hips. Instead of bullets his belt held rows of AAA batteries. Cynthia couldn’t stop staring as he slowly turned and asked, “Now, how can I help you?”

“I…I need an AAA battery.” Cynthia stammered.

Adonis said in a satiny voice, “AAA Batteries, Delivered and Installed is our motto, ma’am. I can’t just give you a battery, I’ve got to install it for you too.”

Cynthia flushed and reached into the pocket of her tank top, both afraid of this god-like man’s reaction and longing for him to respond to her needs. She held out the small device and he took it from her and professionally installed a single new AAA battery from his belt. When he was done he stared into her eyes and gently twisted the lipstick base and a quiet humming filled the air. He stepped toward her and asked, “Now, is there anything else I can do for you tonight?”

Cynthia said nothing but softly moaned….

 

The second, and more adult version of my AAA Battery Emergency series.  I’m vaguely obsessed with all the potential AAA Battery Emergencies, but when the idea of the gunslinger-like delivery man popped into my head I couldn’t help but write the story.  I leave it to your imagination how the evening ends.  Did the battery belts stay on, or come off?

 

 

AAA Battery Emergency

On By aftheadIn Tickles my afthead, Uncategorized33 Comments


Normally when I see these trucks I am driving and can’t snap a good picture – they have all turned out so blurry, especially on the highway – but today, gasp one parked!  I love the idea of emergencies that need AAA Batteries Delivered and Installed.

  • Help!  I’ve got friends and family over to watch the big game and we can’t get the volume to turn up using my remote control!
  • The incessant beeping of the smoke detector is driving me insane.  I thought all of these things took a 9-volt!
  • The ridiculously tiny flashlight I keep in my  medicine cabinet to look at sore throats is so dim, I can’t tell if we should go to the doctor!
  • The cats are destroying my furniture ever since the laser pointer stopped making the super-duper-fun red dot!
  • It’s Christmas morning, and guess what we forgot to buy?  None of the new toys work!

It makes me feel secure knowing that my AAA Battery emergencies can be solved with a simple phone call.  I’m so glad I’m a member.

Does this translate at all to international readers?  As this is my second hysterical battery post I worry that I am alienating all those readers from across the pond that use some other battery nomenclature.

 

The Death of a Matriarch

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In honor of what would have been my grandmother-in-law’s 97th birthday, I remember her again in this space, and thank her again for encouraging me to try my hand at writing. Emily, you are missed. Thank you for your wonderful stories and your open heart.

afthead's avatarAfthead

I was looking through my closet tonight trying to decide what I’m going to wear to the funeral this weekend. l have a hard and fast rule that I only wear things to a funeral that I am willing to never wear again on the off-chance that it becomes “the dress/pants/sweater I wore to Emily’s funeral”.

Funerals make me sad, and that’s hard as part of my husband’s family.  They are quiet-solemn sad people.  I am a blubbering red-swollen-face sad person who blows her nose, a lot, and they tend to avoid me at funerals.  I do acknowledge that in this situation, my awkward fear of sobbing in front of them is nothing compared to their pain.  Emily was their matriarch:  mother of four, grandmother to seven, great-grandmother to my daughter and three others with three more great-grandchildren on the way.  Her 95 years on this planet were full of learning, creativity and love.

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Is pole-dancing or writing a more embarrassing hobby?

On By aftheadIn Uncategorized18 Comments

The answer might surprise you.


Today my daughter, who wanted to be a doctor when she was three, announced that now she wanted to be a singer or an artist when she grew up: the singer part is new.  When she was out of earshot I asked my husband, “At what age do I tell her that under no circumstances will she be a singer or an artist?”

“When she’s a junior in high school and she still says that’s what she wants to be,” he replied.

I am a hypocrite.  I aspire to be a writer, but do not want my daughter to want to be an artist.  Somehow it’s okay that I want to be a writer in my spare time because I have a real job.  Since writing is just a hobby, it’s okay…except even then it’s not really.  When I was at a work meeting recently with 60 people we all had to go around the room and tell our “secret talent.”  One woman said she used to have a food blog with over 100,000 views.  One woman can herd goats.  A man explained his art – oil on hammered metal – and when my turn came I said, “I am a knitter.”  Others went on to reveal things like a competitive pole dancing talent and I wondered why I couldn’t bring myself to say that I am a writer or that I recently finished my first novel.  Why is writing more embarrassing than pole dancing or knitting?

One of my issues is that in all areas of life I am in a rut.  My real job isn’t going well and inevitably the place I spend 40 (+ or – 20) hours a week impacts the rest of my life.  When work goes down the toilet so does my general outlook on life, and as a result  work starts going even worse and the spiral continues downward.  Eventually I don’t want to work, parent, write or knit or do much of anything but sit in the parking lot at work and dread my day.

I’m bad at my job which means my whole outlook on me is a mess.  I’m obviously a crappy writer and mother and wife and child and knitter: you should see the mess I just made out of the blanket I am working on.  When things get like this nothing will convince me that I don’t suck and I’ll find endless examples to support my theory.  (My husband will tell you I am a joy to live with when I get in this place.) If I’m getting consistent external feedback that supports my crappiness vision then things go from bad to worse, and I’m getting that right now in vast quantities.  Ergo, I am not in a good place.

Then today I read this amazing article in the Washington Post that promises to fix my “negative self talk” problem.  I am supposed to write three things I liked about myself everyday before I go to bed and read the ever growing list when I wake up each morning.  I emailed the Washington Post article author to commit to the project, because I think accountability is important for me to stick with this.

So here I am at the end of the first rotten day and I need to start my list.  As much as I want to rant about my shortcomings I’ll do the assignment, mostly because I need a deadline to stop being miserable.  If things are not better in 30 days, either due to this exercise or some other reason, I can assess bigger changes.

My first list:

1. I like people even more for their quirkiness: for example my daughter’s friend who only eats ~6 foods.  It makes her parents crazy, but I just adore that uniqueness about her.

2. I said hello to my friend’s stepdaughter when I saw her at the garden store, even thought she was with her mom. It was a little awkward explaining the relationship to her mom, but worth it to see the joy in the girl’s eyes at being recognized by a grown up in an unexpected place.  I like that I think kids are people too.

3.  I asked a friend to recommend a recipe so I can make a dinner for a family friend whose dad died.  She is a very healthy eater, so my normal comfort food options are no good.  I like that when I comfort friends I try to do it in a way that is thoughtful.

Now I need to transcribe these into my notebook and read them tomorrow morning.  Hopefully in 30 days I’ll have a perspective that helps me realize my dreams, gets me out of my own way, and let’s me confidently claim my unique talents.

 

The hippest new blogging event

On By aftheadIn Uncategorized2 Comments

Hello all my blogging buddies!  Here is your formal invitation to join me at the hippest new blogging event in town.  Marquessa is hosting the 5 à 7 Blogging Event next Wednesday (March 16th, 2016) and all the cool cats will be there.

Wait, what is a  5 à 7 you ask?  I had no idea either, but I learned that it’s how they say “happy hour” in Montreal.  Never again will I settle for a lame American happy hour, once I learn how to pronounce 5 à 7.  (Can you hear it in your head with a bit of Fonzie American twang “five aay seven”?)

Go check out the event, then prepare yourself.  You’ll have two hours to:

  • Visit Marquessas’s amazing blog, Simply Marquessa, at the appointed time (5:00 – 7:00 EST)
  • Introduce yourself and your blog
  • Leave a link to your best, favorite, most amazing blog post in the comments, mentioning if your link contains MATURE/18+ content
  • shamelessly tell the other party-goers what is awesome about the post
  • Visit three other links that pique your interest to keep the party going, and comment shamelessly about how amazing they are

All the details are on Simply Marquessa, so make sure you read the whole invite so you don’t accidentally wear the wrong thing.  (Wait, is cocktail attire required?)  Myself, I’m going to buy some new shoes tomorrow and find a frock to wear, even if Marquessa says only grannies wear frocks.  Pshaw.

Oh, and if you want to add this event to your calendar, use the button below.  It will only work for a Google calendar, but really, you should have a Google calendar…all the cool kids do.

Can’t wait to mix and mingle with you all!

 

Help me pick my yarn

On By aftheadIn Uncategorized19 Comments

I’ve started a new knitting project and I am looking to the blogosphere to help me choose my yarn. The pattern is the Purl Soho stitch block cowl.  It’s a gorgeous cowl with three blocks of knitting:  one neutral section; one neutral and solid section; and one neutral, solid and variegated section.  the below image is from Purl Soho’s site.  Isn’t it beautiful?  The knitting is filled with techniques I’ve never used and amazing color, so there is so much fun to be had; I love this project.

stitch-block-cowl-600-10

The neutral block is on the needles, and that color is a done deal, but I’m torn about the solid (equivalent of the yellow in the Purl Soho picture) and the variegated (the equivalent of the gold/maize in the Purl Soho picture).  I’ve got three choices and would love to hear your thoughts about the relative beauty or not-beauty of each one.  I love them all, but they are so different, and I really don’t want to make three cowls (because I’d have to buy six more skeins of the neutral color and that would be a lot of money and time and cowls.)

Option 1 – The Hobbit Cowl – Earthy and dark, reminiscent of little underground homes.

Color 1: Purl Soho’s Worsted9832 Twist in Sea Salt

Color 2: Madelinetosh Tosh Merino in Shire

Color 3: Purl Soho’s Worsted Twist in Moody Green

Option 2 – The Sunset Cowl – White puffy clouds set afire by the setting sun

Color 1: Purl Soho’s Worsted Twist in Sea Salt

Color 2: Madelinetosh Tosh Merino in Spicewood

Color 3: Purl Soho’s Worsted Twist in Clementine Orange

Option 3: The Scottish Cowl – The variety of Highland greens enjoyed with a cup of tea.

Color 1: Purl Soho’s Worsted Twist in Sea Salt

Color 2: Madelinetosh Tosh Vintage in Earl Grey

Color 3: Purl Soho’s Worsted Twist in Cardamom Green

Which option calls to you, my blogging friends?  Leave your thoughts in the comments.  I’ve probably got a week until I need the other solid, so vote soon, and vote often.  Thanks for your help!

The troll mirror 

On By aftheadIn Uncategorized2 Comments

Remember the magic mirror at work?  The one that makes this aging wrinkling expanding lady feel a little bit pretty?  Well, I found its evil cousin this week.

Prior to the beginning of my two-day meeting I used the public restroom at the Residence Inn hosting us.  After washing my hands I went to check that my dress wasn’t tucked into my tights.  There before me was a fat squat version of myself.  I gasped and checked to see if I had an evil ugly twin sister standing behind me, but no, this reflected troll was me!  I raced out in horror, but did check to see if my troll underware was showing before I fled.

It was a scarring experience, but I am brave so immediately told a friend, “I am either a hideous troll person or the mirror in that bathroom is horrible.”  She is brave too and went to investigate.  Thankfully she also reflected a squat version of herself.  (Well, I was thankful anyway.  I don’t think she was.)

For two days I warned all the women at the meeting with whom I had even a passing relationship.  Why?  Because this was one of those dress-up meetings.  A meeting where you try on your outfits at home before you pack, and bring coordinated accessories.  A meeting where you check a bag because you want your full sized products.  It wasn’t a beauty pageant or a meeting about how we looked, but it was a business meeting with posturing and politics and one of our female weapons is looking good. Nothing can diminish that power like the fear that our carefully prepared shell is ugly.  No one else deserved the self-esteem hit I took.

Something magical happened with the sharing.  The mirror became a joke, “the troll mirror.”  A joke shared only between the women of the group.  The men heard about the horror, but claimed they had no portal to the bizarro world in their bathroom.  We would laugh with each other in the restroom as our features gently expanded, stretched and shrunk if we moved in front of the mirror.  We all celebrated that we didn’t really look like that.

In the sharing of our secret worries about how we look and our insecurities we grew closer. The inside joke will make us evaluate mirrors at future meetings.  The experience made me bolder at the meeting: more willing to ask hard questions and risk embarrassment.  The troll mirror had a different kind of magic then my office mirror.

In the end, it made me really brave.  Brave enough to take a troll picture of myself and post it on my blog.  In my hipster troll outfit of jeans and my winter coat the effect is diminished, but not entirely.  I am not this squat.

Oh, and the sunglasses I have on?  Those are my rose colored glasses.  So while I might look hideous, the colors were bright and beautiful to my eyes.  Tomorrow I’ve got to get a picture of myself in the work magic mirror in the magic sunglasses to heal my self image.

My parenting mantra?  Sit on your hands.

On By aftheadIn Uncategorized16 Comments

If you could hear inside my head you would hear the mantra repeated over and over.

Sit on your hands.  She’s doing fine.

Sit on your hands.  You already know how to sew.

Sit on your hands.  She is feeding herself and who cares if there is applesauce in her eyebrows?

It takes literal physical restraint for me to let my daughter do it herself sometimes. I see her struggling and I just want to reach out and help her, to get her past the hard part, to do it for her, but I don’t.  My hands start to move from my side toward her and I stop them.  It is the hardest, most important parenting lesson I teach myself over and over: she will only learn to do it for herself if I stay out of her way.


Friday night she decided she wanted to learn how to knit, again.  This will be the third time I have taught her.  Each time I have knit to show her, then sat behind her and knit with her hands over mine, then sat on my hands and let her knit, and by knit I mean drop stitches, make stitches with an accidental yarn over, created twisted stitches, knit the same stitch twice and finally give up in frustration.  So we put the knitting away for another time.

This time we started the same way, but at the end of the night when she had eight stitches, instead of the twelve I cast on, and a couple of large holes in her work, she didn’t get frustrated.  She just said, “That’s okay.  This one is just practice.”

Then she put her work down, kissed it, and said “I’ll see you in the morning knitting!”

I didn’t pick it up for her.  I did not go back and fix the mistakes.  I walked past the five rows on her needles and saw what I might be able to teach her to make her work better but I did not do it for her.  I sat on my hands, because I already know how to knit.

Saturday she picked it up again.  Now she has three holes and fifteen stitches, but five inches of something that looks like knitting.  She’s so proud.  She wants to take it to our friend’s house today, because that mom is a knitter too, and she wants to show off.


We hauled out my first knitting project, a lovely burnt orange…thing, and looked at my holes and my wonky first attempts next to hers and talked about why they were different and how they were the same.  As she watches me finish my first adult size sweater she understands that I started, twelve years ago, with something that looks just like what she’s making now.

“Mom, you’ve only been knitting for twelve years.  If I start now, imagine how good I’ll be when I’m your age!”

It’s true, but she’ll only get that good if she does it for herself and I keep sitting on my hands.