this woman’s work

Whining to my mother (a digressive tale)

Jun 3, 2009 Parenting

I don’t like to whine to my mom, I really don’t. I like to be a sturdy person — a self sufficient person. I like to keep my whining private — you know, between me and Brett. But sometimes I really yearn to whine to my mother because … well, because she’s my mom.

I have cried more to my mom this past year than I have for a long, long time.

So I feel better now. Moms are good stuff (at least my mom is good stuff).

One of the things I whined about is that I’m tired of things not coming easily to me. I want things to come easily. I want to stop having to work so hard because frankly, the thrill of accomplishment isn’t making up for the agony of defeat. I want some reward without any struggle. I want good things to drop into my lap just because I asked for them. (Remember, this was whining — full-out tearful venting.)

My mom, god love her, said, “Well, you’re the girl who sat under the shadowbox and got a cannonball dropped on her head. What do you expect?”

This is true. Shadowboxes are a thing in my family and we all have one (they’re all printers’ drawers like this one in the top picture). Mine doesn’t happen to be up right now because I never did put it up after we moved, which I should rectify like tomorrow now that I think of it. Anyway. My parents had an old Civil War cannonball up in theirs. At least I think it was a cannonball because it was too big to be a musket ball and it looked a lot like this and the measurements sound almost right (I want to say that ours is a little bit smaller but not a whole lot smaller).

My seat at the dinner table was under the shadowbox as I recall and one day as I was sitting there (maybe in the banana chair, which was what we called the old yellow high chair once we grew out of the tray part of it and for a long time I didn’t realize the banana chair was a high chair without the tray and it only became obvious to me when I saw one at a garage sale) when the cannonball tipped out of the shadowbox and landed on my head. (What it was doing in the shadowbox, I have no idea because it was too big to be there.)

Actually, I think it was long after the banana chair but then what do I know? I was hit in the head with a Civil War cannonball as a child and my memory is faulty.

The point my mom was making is that it’s ok to be unhappy when good things don’t drop in your lap and instead cannonballs drop on your head but for some of us, life is just a little bit harder. What’s funny about the way these things work is as soon as my mother says, “Oh honey, sometimes life is harder” I immediately began blinking away my tears and started thinking about all the ways life is easier and in many ways good. I don’t know why this is but when people tell me to be grateful, I just feel worse and when people are all sympathetic (especially when they are my mother or my old therapist who reminded me of my mother), it makes me feel better and not so entrenched in my misery.

Let this be a lesson to everyone who is afraid to offer compassionate sympathy in case it might make people soft! It is my belief that compassionate sympathy actually toughens people up.

Back to my mother. She also told me that my kids aren’t being ruined and stuff, which I don’t really worry about except when I do. I just keep thinking that I didn’t want to homeschool the kids so they could sit around and watch me work even though they’re actually playing and laughing and reading and dancing to Hairspray and running around outside and stuff. Because when I feel bad, I just feel bad not logical.

It also helps that Noah got his Hebrew/Religious school report card with lots of teacher gushing about his kindness and leadership abilities and general smarts, which proves I haven’t broken him (yet). (As an aside, when I met his teacher at some event or other, he asked me where Noah went to school and I said he was homeschooled and the teacher was surprised but then said, “I thought he might be in some kind of gifted program because he’s so bright but homeschooled! Really! Well, that’s wonderful! It’s certainly working for him!” Let me indulge this bragging because lord knows I’ve taken homeschool heat on this blog and I didn’t brag when it happened but today I’m feeling moody and self-indulgent.)

So the kids. They don’t seem to be suffering by having a mother who lives in the basement and only comes up to make banana muffins and force them to vacuum and say, yes, you can play Pandora on my iPod but put it back and other motherly things. I guess I don’t remember my mom being all that, you know, present for me either. I mean, she was always comfortingly there but she wasn’t full of games and tricks and activities so I guess I will cut myself some slack. Only with homeschooling you theoretically are supposed to do stuff with them like build catapults and fingerpaint. Of course Noah never wanted any of that, preferring to play alone without me bothering him (and ask his Hebrew teacher, he’s fine, right?) but it seems like Madison would be more amenable or even enthusiastic about lots more hovering so I wish I could do more hovering.

Talking to my mom made me think that actually what I ought to do is ask Noah to break out the science kits with her because she’d love it and he wouldn’t mind if I don’t make him do it all the time (he is wonderfully easy-going about doing stuff as long as we’re reasonable and even sometimes when we’re not).

You know, sometimes I forget that my kids get a different perspective. So even while I’m hamstrung with guilt over here, it might be that Noah is growing up feeling important and needed. It might be that one reason he doesn’t bitch about picking up the living room or making lunch for Madison or sitting on the front porch with his book so he can keep an eye on her scootering is that he knows I really need him to do these things and I really appreciate it. Perhaps it’s even — dare I think? — a good thing that I can’t do the mothering I want to do. Maybe it sucks for me but isn’t so lousy for the kids after all.

Or maybe I’m just justifying the reality of our lives right now.

(sigh)

In any case, my parents glued the cannonball into the shadowbox with superglue after it fell on my head and I do believe my dad got it in the divorce. (I’m pretty sure he got the other civil war bullets so he likely got that one, too. My mom got the pregnant girl figure from WWII that says “Kilroy was here” so I think she got the better deal.) In any case, it hasn’t dropped on anyone else’s noggin so at least my suffering saved another person from a headache. I can take some comfort in that anyway.

(Madison is going to love the shadowbox. Now I just need to figure out where to put it and where in the hell I put all the little tiny things I had in it. Hmmmm.)

Tags: Homeschooling, my mom, working

My grocery bill

Mar 24, 2009 The Story of My Life

(Inspired by AmFam)

Our food bill for the week averages out to about $125 (including eating out). Sometimes more, very often less. I can feed us for a week on $75 without difficulty and have been able to do it for fifty when the budget was tight last summer. I spent $175 last Sunday and that will get us to this next Saturday and the only reason it was that high to begin with is that we had dog food ($14), laundry detergent and dishwasher detergent and toothpaste and hairbands, otherwise it’d have been closer to $150 or less. I also bought a dozen loaves of bread and snacks at the Pepperidge Farm discount store so that was an extra $30 (we also got goldfish crackers and Mint Milanos).

Here’s how I do this:

• I menu plan. I don’t understand how anyone grocery shops without a menu plan. I plan seven to eight meals, a general idea of lunch menus and one or two things I plan to bake for breakfasts or snacks.
• I am flexible but firm when planning. I look ahead to my week so I know how much time I expect to have in the kitchen. If work/homeschool is looking busy, I need to take that into account. For example, Thursdays are crazy around here. I know we’ll be leaving in the morning and that when we get back will be unpredictable. Either that will be a pizza or Chipotle night or I need to do the crockpot. If  I’m going to do the crockpot, then I need to soak my beans on Tuesday or Wednesday. I rarely buy canned beans because I can get more for less if I soak and cook my own. I freeze the leftovers and there’s another dinner ready and waiting.
• I can also meal plan on the fly at the store. If I show up and there’s something unexpected on sale, I have enough recipes memorized that I can set aside one of my planned meals and shop for a different one. (When I shop I have a list and on the side I also have a list of the meals/snacks I’m going to be making so I can keep track of what ingredients go with what.)
• I add up the cost as I go through the store so I know how much we have to splurge on, say, string cheese or granola bars. There’s always room for splurging because what would life be like without that??
• We don’t eat red meat. We do eat fish and poultry.
• I keep a supply of staples on-hand that can let me create meals or snacks quickly and without much bother. This staple includes baking supplies, lentils, rice, oatmeal, maple syrup, eggs, cheese, pasta, onions, garlic, potatoes, canned tomatoes and frozen veggies. Stuff like that. So i can pretty much always make a batch of oatmeal cookies for a playdate or a fruit crumble for the pears no one is eating and are getting too soft. Also popcorn is a cheap, high-fiber snack that’s easy to make and pretty much everyone likes it (so it’s good for playdates, too). My mom recently bought us a Whirly-Pop and man, we use that thing ALL THE TIME. We love plain old popcorn but we also love caramel corn, which is a cinch to make on your stovetop.
• We don’t eat organic (because we can’t afford it, obviously) but this budget includes some organics like when Madison wants YoBaby and the really good turkey sausage we all like. I would much rather be able to afford eating fully organic and think it’s worth the extra money but it’s not in our life right now so I wince and buy conventional.
• I have learned to make something out of nothing. Our budget is low in part because I don’t always have time to shop. I try to shop Sundays (before I had a job it used to be Tuesdays). If I miss it, I don’t always know when I’ll get back out — it depends on work and homeschooling. So I’ve learned how to pull those staples out and make a good, nutritious meal. Meals like: Roasted potatoes with onions and garlic, Scrambled eggs with some cheddar and the left-over salsa; Pasta with butter and parmesan and frozen veggies; Rice with soysauce and frozen veggies,  Lentils with sauteed onions and garlic; French toast with the stale bread in the freezer. And then you can, as Julia says, bitch these things up. Like the left-over cream cheese? Put it between slices of bread for your french toast. Add some frozen blueberries for the kids who like it. That breakfast sausage your kid refused might be good with the roasted potatoes. True frugality means you use everything so look around and see what might be tucked away and ready to use.
• I use my left-overs. I make meals in part to turn left-overs into lunches. For example, the meal I’m making tonight I’m making so that I have something to take in my lunch tomorrow. I also use the left-overs from recipes so if I’m buying chicken broth for one recipe then I make sure I’m going to have another recipe that uses the rest of the broth. I don’t let things go to waste. Heck, even left-over yogurt can be used in a muffin recipe. (It’s what I sometimes do with the kids’ half-eaten yogurts. Yes –it’s gross but then I only serve ‘em to the kids who left the half-eaten container in the ‘fridge anyway. Left-over yogurt also makes good homemade popsicles in the summer. And if the child is like Madison and prone to leaving many containers with just a few bites left, you can make them stripe-y and the child in question will happily eat the stuff she was refusing in its thawed state.)
• I am not hard core about buying stuff on sale the way the true frugal hosuewives are but there are certain things I won’t buy unless they cost X. Brett will budge from this but I won’t. (I won’t pay more than two bucks a box for cereal, for example.)
• I rely heavily on frozen veggies and frozen fruit. It doesn’t go bad, it can be used in a myriad of ways and it’s nutritious. (I especially love frozen fruit because the kids eat it alone as a snack, we can use it in smoothies if we’re running late and need a quick breakfast, I can use it baking and if I’m rushing dinner out to the table I can stir it into plain yogurt, add a little cinnamon and call it dessert.)
• I weigh my time against my budget and make allowances. There’s a lot I make homemade because it’s easy and I like to do it. There are other things I know I could make but don’t think it’s worth the bother (pasta, crackers, and lately I haven’t wanted to roast a whole chicken so I’ve been buying broth).
• The Pepperidge Farm store is my friend. I’m picky about bread (and again, here, I used to bake our bread every week but that’s not in the cards for me these days) and I buy whole wheat without high-fructose corn syrup or transfats and that stuff’s expensive. I can get stale-ish bread at Pepperidge Farm that’s just fine for PB&J and turkey sandwiches for much less than at the store. I can also buy goldfish crackers for about 1/3 of the grocery store price. I buy lots of boxes and dump ‘em out into big glass jars on our counter so the kids can scoop their own.

It takes a lot of planning but the planning has become second-nature. I keep an eye on our diet for the whole day so if the kids have, say, pancakes in the morning (just about every Wednesday I make pancakes or waffles because it’s Noah’s paper route day and it’s my way of sending him out into the wide, wide world well prepared) then I’m not going to make them pasta that night. Or if they have Mac & Cheese for lunch (as an aside, I do make boxed Mac & Cheese but I’ll buy extra macaroni pasta and add it to the box to double the pasta and make left-overs for the next day’s lunch) I’m going to fix something for dinner with more protein.

Sometimes I can stretch a  meal plan beyond it’s limit by sending Brett out for a mini grocery shopping. I’ll give him a list and a $25 budget and he’ll come back with stuff to get us to when I have time to do a major shopping. There’s a lot you can do with eggs, milk and a chunk of cheese if you have the right staples in your cupboard.

I didn’t realize how hard this was to do out of the gate until our grocery bill shot up while Brett was in charge. I grew into cooking for our family but early on in our marriage with children, I knew that one of my jobs if I was home with our kids was to make money by saving money. I took it seriously and read a lot about it. I have had to be flexible about my limits — both monetarily and time-wise. For awhile I kept blowing our budget because I wanted to pretend we would never get take-out and that I’d always make everything — even crackers — from scratch. It wasn’t realistic. (However those homemade crackers were delicious!)

Now this is all second nature to me. The routine is easy and I’m teaching it to the kids. Noah usually votes to skip out on shopping these days but I’m training Madison like I trained Noah. They help me menu plan, weigh in on what sounds good, check the cupboards for what we’re missing and they help shop. I teach them how to read shelf tags, explain when the sale isn’t really a deal and we read labels. I explain when cheaper isn’t better and when it is and they are learning to pick out decent produce. Noah’s become really good at shopping and I imagine Madison will, too.

I talk to them the whole time I’m shopping about what I’m doing. I think out loud while I’m there so they know why I’m scrapping the eggplant dish (no good eggplants) and how I’m going to replace it. They also help scan at the self checkout and then unload the groceries. My kids? They have a lot of ownership about feeding the family because they participate in it. They don’t always want to eat what I cook (the big one is the picky one) but the saving money part is a game they want to win.

Further, they know how to wrap up their sandwiches for a snack later and Madison has learned how to scrape her left-0ver yogurt into a popsicle mold. Madison — like Noah before her — helps make the pancakes, waffles, muffins, etc. (As an aside? Left-over waffles on Wednesdays are Noah’s favorite afternoon snack.)

Probably they will grow up and want to eat out every single night and never, ever enter a grocery store or making any darn thing from scratch but at least they’ll be able to feed their families decently and within budget if they have to.

Tags: baking, budget, Erica, homeschool, Homeschooling, Julia, Madison, money, my mom, Noah, Recipes

What the mail brought today

Mar 6, 2009 Book work, Writing

There it is! I really like what Rebecca said about my piece in the front, too (naming me with another Columbus writer and now maybe I have an excuse to introduce myself to her!):

Paula Penn-Nabrit and Dawn Friedman say that whether exhausting or heartbreaking, the decisions we make should benefit our families not just today or tomorrow, but two, three or even six decades from now.

Also, while I haven’t read Ms. Penn-Nabrit’s essay yet (seeing as how I did just get the book two seconds ago) I did read her book, which is about homescooling as an African American family so I especially like being listed with her in the intro. And I am so freaking excited to be in a book that Z.Z. Packer is in because her short stories BLOW ME AWAY.

Tags: Columbus, essay, Homeschooling, rebecca walker