Goodbye to 2010!

Years ago, in a time known as the early 1990's I was an assistant to a woman who was Buddhist.  I asked her so many questions about her altar, her rituals, how often you changed the fruit in front of the Buddha, I'm sure she got tired of it pretty quickly, but she always gave the information I wanted to know about.

The ritual I liked a great deal, was the big cleaning binge at the beginning of the new year.  Everything was given a good scrubbing to make a new, clean, welcoming place for what was to come.

As much as I'd like to dedicate a week to only cleaning my house, it's not something I can make happen, especially with two kids under the age of 10.

But I do the best I can.  I clean the bathrooms, do a vinegar/baking soda/boiling water treatment in all drains, open the windows to change the air and make things smell as nice as I can.

It's the one time a year I find cleaning house to be a spiritual exercise, which appeals to my groovy, new-age, hippie part of myself.  Getting everything sparkling and fresh to greet the new year with optimism is an idea that I like.

Since I'm not into New Year's Resolutions, which I find to be a list of how a person will fail in the next twelve months, I make an effort to be happy and excited about what will be coming my way.

That will be my big, exciting time this last day of 2010 and the first day of 2011, cleaning!  I'm going to start off the new decade feeling like I have control of my life and that I'm good at taking care of my household.

Now, once more into the mop bucket!

Amanda's beauty tip of the day:  Don't drink and drive!  Banging one's head into the steering wheel will cause scarring on the face.   Hitting another car and killing someone will cause severe scarring to the soul.

Happy new year!

I remember and give thanks.

Geraldine Doyle died yesterday.  Who was Geraldine Doyle?

She was the inspiration for the We Can Do It! poster that has become known as Rosie the Riveter, a cultural icon and symbol of strength for many people, including me.

Geraldine was seventeen during World War II and working in a factory in Michigan as a metal presser when a wire photographer took her photograph.  That photo inspired the Westinghouse graphic artist, J. Howard Miller, to create the We Can Do It! poster.

After it was completed and printed, the poster was hung in factories around the country for two weeks, before it was replaced with another Westinghouse poster, meant as encouragement.  They were the equivalent of the posters corporate offices are fond of featuring the words Service, Excellence, Make It Happen, but the Westinghouse posters were changed out twice a month.

Geraldine was a cello player, the job made her concerned that she would hurt her hand so she quit her metal pressing job.

She went on to marry and did not know she was on the poster until she saw it in an old magazine in 1984.  Her image was put on a stamp in the 1990's and she appears on everything from bags and t-shirts to my left arm.

Geraldine's poster, her flexing her arm and staring right out at us, makes me think of a cheeky young woman who liked to laugh and dismissed the thought that there was anything she couldn't do.  Was she really like this?  I have no idea, I never met her, read an interview with her or seen anything about her personality.

But that's what I think of when I see her, that's why I put her picture not only with the other Goddesses on my dresser, but on my body permanently.

I thank her for being there that day and flexing her biceps for the camera.

Rest well Geraldine and know you are remembered.

Amanda's beauty tip of the day:  Put your hair up in a bandana, put on some lipstick and flex your biceps!

Has anyone else noticed?

We've had a lot of down time here at Casa de 'burbs for the last ten days.  We don't usually have a lot of down time.  I tend to make sure we're all busy.

But these last two weeks of the year?  We've been doing a lot of relaxing and sitting around.

Does anyone else have the experience that the more you relax and sit around, the harder it is to actually get up and do anything?  And when you do get up, you get tired really quickly?  But you get frustrated because you're tired and then sit back down?

Am I the only one this happens to?  Or is this normal?

I wonder because I've regularly assumed that I'm just lazy and get very unmotivated to do anything.  Housework? Laundry? Prepare food?  Nah, I'd rather play Farmville.   Besides, the other three people who live here will undo all my handiwork inside of fifteen minutes so why should I bother?

But my friend Amanda told me that she's had that same thing happen to her.  It must be the whole 'a body in motion stays in motion' thing.  Since my body has been at rest, it wants to stay at rest.  I must say it's a very good thing we don't have a couch with the recliners built in and the little fold down tables or I'd only move to pee.

Did you know there are big sectionals with a mini-fridge in them?  For the person who has decided that they are going to supervise the world via television.  What is it Drew Carey says?  "Have you lost all hope?  Try this!"  

I honestly wonder how it's going to work when school/work kicks back in, we've been sleeping in until outrageous hours, like, seven.  Zoe has to be up at 6, at the latest, to get ready for school.

Is there enough coffee in the world?  Welp, Monday, we're gonna see!

Amanda's beauty tip of the day:  As good at pale looks, be sure to get at least a little sun to avoid vitamin D deficiency.

My after Christmas ritual

I love shopping.  I do, I love it.  It's one of the reasons I miss my friend Stephanie so much, she loves to shop too.

We're both super-girly women who love to wander around cosmetics departments and try on shoes.  We're very honest with each other about how something looks or if it's an over-priced mistake.

Even if I'm looking for a six dollar lipstick, Steph is happy to come along to help me select the shade that will suit me best.  She's a whiz at picking out foundation and has a passion for shoes that makes mine look like a casual interest.

This shared enjoyment and an appreciation for valet parking are just two of the many things we have in common.

When the 27th of December comes and I'm getting ready to go out with my check from my grandfather and my gift cards from my parents and in-laws I miss her terribly.

I also love gift cards.  If it's for somewhere like Bath and Body Works, I have no choice but to get myself something horrifically impractical, body lotion, shower gel, bubble bath, a wonderful rose scented lip conditioner Stephanie swears by all go into my mesh bag.

This year, I went out with plastic permission fritter away some funds at JCPenny and Bath and Body Works.  I haven't been to JCPenny for myself in years although I like them for Zoe's school clothes.

Committing to a purchase via gift card is serious business, I like to really scour the clearance and sale sections so I can get more bang for my buck.  In this case, I spent a long time in the costume jewelry section looking at imitation pearls, black bracelets, pink bracelets and ugly rhinestone pins before I stumbled across a gorgeous ring featuring purple and green stones which looked vintage and fit me!  Sold!  I then lucked into a bath set with a rose scent.  Finding anything that smells like roses isn't easy, at least not for me.

I'll spare you the hour I spent in Bath and Body Works sniffing lotions, asking for clarification about the sales, picking things up, putting them back and finally skipping out with a bag full of smelly stuff.

I like how many products they carry featuring citrus, goes with my whole I'm from Orange, California and proud of it!, I even like to smell like oranges.   

I've been shopping the last week of December since I was fifteen and I start to look forward to it every year around Thanksgiving.

This year I enjoyed it just as much as I always have.  And I'll get to do it again in 7 months for my birthday!

Call me shallow, I'll accept it gladly with my smooth, orange scented hands.

Amanda's beauty tip of the day:  If perfume is a luxury, apply a very thin layer of petroleum jelly to your wrist before applying a small spritz, it will make your scent last longer.

The Hip Housewife crawls out from under the Christmas exhaustion

Christmas!  Wow!

It was just the four, well, six of us this year.  Scott, Zoe, Will, Zoe, Gibson, Peavey and me.

In the wee hours of Christmas morning, two of them threw up.  Will, about four and either Peavey or Gibson sometime between four and six.

Will came down into our bed about midnight, coughing and snuffling despite the Vick's I'd rubbed on his feet and covered with socks, the vaporizer chuffing out steam in his room and the dose of Benadryl he'd gotten before getting into bed.

I'd only gotten to bed 30 minutes earlier and sleep hadn't really overtaken me yet.

His coughing, Scott's snoring and the dogs edging me out of bed drove me upstairs to Will's bed, where I fell asleep and slept hard until two-thirty when Will came upstairs to show me one of the four Nerf shooters, aw hell he got four guns, from Santa.  I said he needed to take those back downstairs and come back up to lay down with me.

He completed the first task but not the second, I headed downstairs to see what he was doing.  He was looking at all the gifts Santa had left out for him and Zoe.  Nerf guns, Monster High dolls, a basket of cake mixes and patty-pans were on the tow big chairs in our living room.

I tried unsuccessfully to get him into bed, any bed, before I gave up 45 minutes later and dozed off on the couch.  I had the thought that if something Really Bad happened he'd scream, waking me up.  (Please don't report me to CPS, okay?)

He woke me up  to tell me he wanted to go lay down with his dad.  I took him into our room, where he went to sleep for an hour and fifteen minutes.  (Are you keeping track of how much sleep I got?  We're at four hours right now.)

He woke up at four a.m. saying his tummy was upset, he decided to go into the quarter bath off the living room and didn't make it.  Upon spilling the mess out of his tummy he went back into the master bathroom, expect his dad was peeing and while Will was waiting he whoopsed again.  Luckily, both time he hit the tile.  I'm not sure I've ever been so thankful for our lack of wall-to-wall carpeting as when a child tossed their cookies on my tile floor.

On the way out to clean up, I met up with dog barf on the rug  in the living room.

Merry Christmas!  *grump*

After cleaning up Will wasn't about to go back to bed, I let him stay up.  I got coffee made and let him play on the computer, dozing in our recliner until Zoe got up at six, at which point the kids were sent in to wake up their dad.

And the present ripping began!  The kids also received stuffed animals, clothes, books, DVDs, a toy tattoo kit, a box of card games and a bunch of jars of spices for Will.

Allow me to explain, Will likes to do "  'speriments".  He takes a glass of water and pours in various spices and mixes them up.  Usually, he offers me to drink it and I answer "Um, no thanks.".  He got really excited about his bottles of experiment supplies.

I made french toast and bacon.  (check out my new page I made to show off my cooking adventures http://whatthehiphousewifeate.blogspot.com/)  After we feasted, Scott went back to bed for a while.

I was swaying on my feet so I strong armed the kids into a nap and went back to bed myself.

And I slept for four hours.

After I woke up, we took the doggies to the dog park, came home to watch The Santa Clause and I made Potatoes Au Gratin with ham, being creative with the supplies we had.

The kids were put to bed early.  Scott and I indulged in our Christmas tradition of watching A Christmas Carol starring Patrick Stewart, our favorite version, while having stilton cheese and port.  This year, we had a bottle of port one of Scott's co-workers brought us from Portugal.  Oh, it was good!  Sweet, rich, smooth, just like it should be.

The night of the 25th, I got six hours uninterrupted sleep!  Possibly the best Christmas gift ever!

And now, we clean, well, *I* clean.

Amanda's beauty tip of the day:  When you clip your toenails, be sure to clip them straight across or you'll get an ingrown toenail, something you really don't want.

Merry Christmas!

I added a new page called Life and What I Ate, which will have photos and recipes and such. Blatantly stolen from 830,000 other pages doing the same thing? Yes. But I don't care.

I'll be updating more about our holiday week later today or tomorrow, but right now I'm operating on four hours sleep and coherent thoughts are becoming fewer and farther between.

Time to find a soft, horizontal surface, wish me luck.

The most wonderful time of the year got the best of me!

Despite our low-dey approach to the holidays I managed to hyper myself into a frenzy on Tuesday, hence, my lack of updates.

It started with me trying to print photos on my photo printer. I have a nice one that produced decent quality prints, not quite wedding album quality, but certainly good enough for photos for the family and to hang on the walls.

But, when it spat out the test print I did, it was crap. The colors were all off, my printer is out of four colors. At $20 a cartridge it'd be a lot less expensive to order the prints through a store like Wolf's Camera or Walgreens.

I have a bunch of pictures uploaded to Walgreens already, I started there. To have enough photos for grandparents, great-grandparents and the lone uncle I need a lot of prints. Walgreens told me I couldn't place my order and wouldn't give me an option to pick up on a different day. To get prints at Wolf's, I'd need to burn the photos onto a disc and take it to the storefront with me to get them the same day.

I could easily place order through Shutterfly or Walgreens and have the prints shipped right to the recipients, but I was trying to save some money by printing and then putting the photo books together myself.

The fact that I couldn't get the pictures done drove me nuts and that I had chosen to start this project 20 minutes before I had an appointment didn't help.

I was able to let it go and I'll be letting the relatives know that photo gifts are on the way but it will be after the first of the year before they arrive.

Then I started thinking about all the stuff I have to do, the kids rooms to clean out, the gifts to wrap, the cookies to bake for Santa and I had myself a little panic attack in the car after I left the house.

After many, many deep breaths I decided to do everything one task at a time. I mailed holiday cards, meaning I had to go to the post office, but it wasn't bad. I had a book and everyone was in pretty good spirits. I'm averaging that because the man walking in behind me was cussing under his breath that I'd gotten in the door before he did, then when I held the door for him he pulled it open so hard he banged it against the way. Upon spotting the line, he cursed again and left the building. Merry fucking Christmas!

I wouldn't have had to wait in line at all if the PO hadn't taken out the stamp vending machines that took cash.

Yesterday, I took each of the kids out separately to pick out a gift for their sibling. Zoe got Will a Spiderman shave kit complete with foam and a plastic razor. Will got Zoe a set of two ponies with brushes and stickers.

It was nice spending time with the Zeester. She and I don't get very much one on one time since she's started school full time, so we went to McDonald's afterwards and had a good chat about not much of anything.

Today, I'll get presents wrapped and dessert for tomorrow night created. Let's hope I can find everything I've stashed in the garage!

Amanda's beauty tip of the day: Even though it's winter, keep up with your sunscreen!