dancing our days away

My family digs dancing. Weddings are our favorite events because we get to dance. We're not so sure that's a good thing.

Every wedding (or event with DJ and dance floor) must have the Pennsylvania Polka, Hang on Sloopy (O-H-I-O!), and YMCA.

For that matter, my parents' house has a Pennsylvania Polka played by GranmmaNora pretty much every time we have a family get-together.

.3 looks like he learned to dance from Grover on Sesame Street. The arms go side to side, the steps go side to side.

.4 does a mean touchdown dance (although, he and his nose learned that socks and hard wood floors don't mix during a good touchdown dance).

My husband's happy dance is done anywhere, wearing anything (usually underpants). It involves a wide stance, index fingers pointing up, and a little head bob.

My middle brother and I have broken lamps, lost shoes, and showed off underwear while swing dancing.

Life doesn't get any better than a good dance.

eat pee floss

I resent flossing. When I started asking my various care providers (dentisi' hygienist, optometrist) that we were trying to have a baby, they told me what I had to do to keep my teeth/gums/eyes healthy during pregnancy. For teeth and gums, the most important thing was "floss...every day.". So when I found out I was pregnant I flossed every day. I dragged my pregnant, tired butt out of bed on nights that I forgot - those who know how I am about naptime and bed time know that this is no small thing. Skipping a day, which I am wont to do when I'm not pregnant, was not an option.

So today when I went for my semi-annual cleaning, I had to decide where to draw the line when my hygienist got on my case MULTIPLE times about not flossing enough. Do I tell her I resent flossing? Do I tell her that I resent flossing because, despite the fact that I flossed every day, I still lost my baby (twice)? Ultimately, I decided not to share that particular reason with the hygienist. I just promised to floss more regularly and made an appointment for 6 months from today.

GrammaNora provided some good advice in response: Eat, pee, floss. Just because things went badly (twice) doesn't mean I can stop taking care of myself.

I need a tent ... right now.

The majority of people who have heard this story have responded by saying, "yeah, when you have kids you won't be able to do that anymore." Well, you negative nellies, we won't need to because we'll already have everything we need when we finally make the baby thing work!

Here's the story:
My husband and I have been grousing pretty much all summer about how we don't go camping. "I used to go camping all the time when I was a kid," he says. "Why don't we ever go camping?"

I'm with him. The idea of camping and being outdoorsy sounds really good to me, especially because when we have kids, we won't be able to do that anymore (at least that's what my friends tell me). We even went as far as purchasing two new mummy sleeping bags a few weeks ago. We are now ready to sleep outside in temperatures as low as 20 degrees F.

So last night, I am online trying to decide what I should use the amazing power of the internet for when it dawns on me ... we can't control the fact that we don't have children yet, and we can't control the fact that our jobs are crazy, but we can friggin' go camping! So, I go to the state website and start looking for good campsites in a part of the state that puts us close to the airport so we can pick up my parents when they come up for Labor Day weekend. I hope they don't mind riding in the car next to happy, stinky campers.

We spent a good amount of time deciding what campsite would be best considering the location and other sites, and we finally had reservations for Thursday and Friday night. Now all we needed was a tent - that's right, we made campsite reservations for a "tent-only" site and we don't even have a tent.

The good news is, we live within 30 minutes of a 24-hour supplier of goods such as tents. So last night at 9:21, we climbed into our cars (story about dropping off my car at the mechanic isn't really a good story), dropped my car off at the mechanic, then headed to the store. Man that was a good time!

We found the tent we wanted on the grass outside the store and climbed in and actually tried it out. It's fantastic. Roomy. If we ever do make the kid thing work, the kid will fit in the tent! I would say that this particular tent purchase means we CAN do this when we have kids (you negative nellies!). It was great. We were even able to find other items we needed AND be home before midnight.

Crazy, you say? Well, who's crazier, the people who go to the store to buy a tent late at night, or the store that's open so people can go buy a tent late at night? (that said, man, do I ever love that store!)

fusion cuisine a la GrammaNora (courtesy of .3)

My brother reminded me this weekend of a common occurrence in our household as we were growing up ... our mom's fusion cuisine.

wisegeek.com says

Fusion cuisine blends the culinary traditions of two or more nations to create innovative and sometimes quite interesting dishes. It tends to be more common in culturally diverse and metropolitan areas, where there is a wider audience for such food.

I can tell you two things about GrammaNora's version of fusion cuisine(then and now): it definitely blends something, and there probably isn't an audience in any metropolitan area (culturally diverse or not) for this food. The dinner table wasn't really ever an accepting audience, anyway.

The problem with the "blending" was usually that it was "of anything in the refrigerator." For those of you thinking that this was a busy mom with no time to get to the grocery store - a melding of leftovers is a trick for lots of moms -- you have never seen GrammaNora read a cookbook. Not consult . . . read.

She analyzes them. She looks at how they enhance her knowledge so that she can use them to do something with the knowledge she already has. As an example: "Ah yes, cacciatori. I know the taste of cacciatori, and I know the flavor of pasta, which is the recommended bed for the cacciatori. Those are two delicious flavors. I see here that chicken cacciatori is the commonest form of cacciatori, but what about this. Instead of chicken, what about SALMON?!"

It's intelligent. It's inspired. It's usually NOT delicious.

you can talk to family

We were just talking the other day about how my husband has had a little bit of trouble fully integrating into the Grapes family. It took my sister-in-law awhile, but we eventually pulled her in, and now everything is fine. My husband just isn't there yet.

Like this evening. We had met up with some friends for dinner, and after dinner, we decided to go to Cold Stone Creamery for dessert. There were two cars involved in the excursion because we were leaving to go home after dessert, and everyone else was going somewhere different. By way of coordinating, this was the conversation from our car (ok, there may be a little revisionist history here, but this is how it felt):

Me: Could you please ask my sister-in-law if she is going to feed m-A here or if she is going to wait until we get to ice cream.
Husband: Sure {rolls down window} um, excuse me, um, Kate, your sister-in-law, who happens to be sitting here next to me ... in the car ... um ... was wondering if uh ... ok, this question is from her ... just to be clear, she asked the question ... under normal circumstances, I would NOT be asking you this question, in fact, the status of your ... uh ... and ... uh ... Kate wanted to know if your plan is to ... uh ... m-A ... uh ... I ... uh ... Kate.
Me: Husband, are you hyperventilating.
Husband: Oh, so, they've put her in her car seat, so obviously, they're just going to go straight there.
Me {leaning across Husband}: Sister-in-law, you're not going to feed her now, are you?
Sister-in-law: No. We're heading over right now.

How hard was that?

donuts in a pizza box

I wish I could say that it is not my fault that we have two dozen donuts at home. Two dozen donuts divided among 1 pastry bag (2 donuts), 1 pastry box (7 donuts), and 1 pizza box (15 donuts). Alas, I cannot.

Actually, two dozen donuts "at home" is inaccurate. One donut was shared between .3 and .4 immediately upon purchase while we waited for m-A to eat. One donut was shared among the two suckers who got stuck in the way back during a 20-minute drive (ha! we got to eat a donut, who are the suckers now?!). Five donuts were devoured upon our arrival home - and when I say devoured, I mean four people stood around the various boxes and bag and cut little pieces out of 5 different donuts until all 5 donuts were gone. The overall scene could be compared to a piranha attack, but at one moment during the attack, I walked into the kitchen to see three backs huddled over donuts. When I said something, three sugar-crazed faces turned to look at me, pieces of donut poised at varying stages of being eaten. I backed slowly out of the kitchen and answered the phone.

I cannot judge, here. The final donut was eaten piece by piece over the course of an hour as I did homework: Read a section, get up, walk to kitchen, eat small piece of donut, return to table, repeat.

So the correct number is 16. Sixteen delicious donuts - 1 in 1 pastry bag, 3 in 1 pastry box, and 12 in 1 pizza box - for breakfast tomorrow ... and dessert tonight ... and probably dinner-prep snack. Who am I kidding - those donuts are never going to see sunrise.

mmmmmmm...2 dozen donuts.

Sorry, family.

Or maybe, you're welcome.