How to Cook a Turkey ... According to Noah

In case you had troubles tomorrow, Noah took the time to jot down how it should be done.  As he read it to us:

1. Shoot a turkey

2. Put it in the oven

3. Put a lot of butter on it

4. Salt, too

5. Check if it has a shark heart

6. Make it ride a broomstick

7. Put it in the oven again

8. Go on a swing while you wait

9. Eat it

10. Have dessert

11. The end

There you go, no need to call the Butterball Help Line.

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us!

Recycle Caps with Aveda

I'm going to take a break here to blog about a program I just learned about through my kids' school.  It's the Recycle Caps with Aveda program.

The boys' school has several green initiatives going on, but this one just came home in the newsletter.  As I mentioned before we are pretty avid recyclers.  Not only is it the right things to do, I have to admit, there is a bit of fun in the challenge of it for me.  Just how much can we recycle and how little trash can we put out each week?  However, it has always bothered me that we are instructed to remove milk caps, shampoo lids and laundry caps, etc. before putting them in the recycling bins.

Not anymore.  Aveda has this program though schools where you can collect caps and they will recycle them.  They are then recycled into new caps and containers.  Thanks, Aveda!

We now have a bag of plastic caps accumulating at our house that our school will collect in December.  Check it out and see if it's something you get get your school doing, too.

102.9

I had Book Club last night.  I love Book Club.  I love it for my one guaranteened girls' night a month.  I love it for the women who are in it.  I love it for the conversations we have -- about the books (yes, there is some talk of the books), about life, about kids, about who we are and who we aren't.  I love it because we are all flawed and imperfect and getting to ages where we are okay with that.  I love it because we've all lived a lot of life over our lives and over the past several year we have been a Book Club.  I love it because I get to see differing viewpoints about all kinds of things and think about them (even if I don't like them).  But again, I love it because, above all, it's my one night a month of guaranteed girl time, and that is a sanity boost.

So, again, I had Book Club last night.  And after a few months of a decent amount of stress and anxiety and broken major appliances and illnesses, it was just what the doctor was ordering.

It was a great Book Club.  I felt reconnected and rejuvenated at the end.  I adore my girlfriends.

And as I was leaving, I picked up my cell phone and I saw the following text from Brian:

"102.9.  How can you stand this crap?"  (and I immediately thought back to him, as we were mopping up sewage, saying "Why can't we get a break?!")

And my heart sank.  I had noticed that Eli was cutting some molars and worried that he might have another ear infection to go along with it.  And it appeared to be happening.  As I said goodbye to the last four girls, I was about to lose it.  I just had had enough.

As my friend Julie drove, I called Brian:

Me: Hey.  How's Eli? (read that with an appropriate deflated tone in your voice)

Brian: Um...fine?  Sleeping.  Why?

Me: Oh, isn't it him?

Brian: What are you talking about?

Me: Who has the fever?

Brian: What the hell are you talking about?

Me: Your text.  'One-oh-two-point nine..."

Julie: (pipes up) Oh my god, the radio station!

And we all start laughing hysterically.  You see we have a bit of a battle at our house.  I like to switch over to Christmas music, well, with the first radio station who will do it which was about this week.  And Brian?  He's a purist.  Not until after Thanksgiving.  But he had to drive my car last night and got in and the radio station (the one in town that has switched, 102.9) was on.  And he drove for 20 minutes and only heard commercials.  And he, the guy who only listens to public radio had evidently had enough.  And sent me the aforementioned text.

Nope, no fevers.  No bad karma.  Nothing.  Just commercial radio annoying him.

So we escaped Thursday unscathed.

But tonight.  Oh yeah, both big boys have pink eye.

Ah well, we tried.

"So did you get that whole sewer thing resolved?"

The short answer, "no."


The longer answer?  We're getting there.  But, as it goes with things in the sewer, it's not going to be pretty.


We had Roto Rooter come back the next day with the sewer camera.  Man nothing like a photographic tour of your sewer pipes to make you lose your appetite.


Our house is a new house.  We are the first owners.  This kind of stuff shouldn't happen, right?  But hey, it does.


So the guy goes on the photo tour of the pipes to find out that right before the main pipe exits our home, it seems to have an unwanted dip.  This dip, oh-so-nicely, takes place under the foundation of our home.  It was filled with standing, oh let's just call it, water.  Not a good sign.  That just means one too many showers or dishwasher loads or handwashings and we're on our way to another backup.

We have two options.  The first is to pull back the carpet and have them dig into the foundation of the house.  The would cut about a six-foot trench and replace the pipe that is there.  The hope, with this option, is that all of the problematic pipe is on the inside of the house.  Pricetag on that lovely project?  $2,000 (not including the carpet work).  However, there is a chance that the problem expands outside the perimeter of the house too.


If they got in there and found that was the case, they'd then have to bring in an excavator and dig down about 15 feet outside of the house to repair the pipe that extends outside.  Price to do that part?  $3,600+.

We're waiting on another estimate, but that's where things stand now.  So until then, every time someone flushes a toilet or uses a sink or shower, we run to the basement to make sure we aren't getting another volcano of sewage.

So Merry Christmas, Brian.  Here's to our new sewer system.

(Oh, and for now I am bagging on the public tracking of discretionary spending.  Evidently I angered the spending gods and they are now out to get me.)

Don't go getting all cocky

Tonight I was feeling mighty proud of us.  In the goal to strictly limit our discretionary spending, we were having a great day.  We both took our lunches.  There were no random Target runs.  I didn't even buy a Diet Coke with lunch.  I was kind of gloating about it, in fact.  

Brian was upstairs finishing the big boys' showers and I was gathering up laundry.  Just a regular night at the Snyder household.

The boys have 5 pages left in Harry Potter and were looking forward to reading it with Brian.  I had cleaned up the kitchen and just taken some empty beer bottles down to the laundry room that we'd keep for future home beer brewing.  Just a normal night at the Snyder household.

I headed back upstairs, said goodnight to the boys and gathered up the laundry.  Mere minutes had passed since my last trip to the laundry room.

I hauled my laundry bin down to the laundry room.  As I walked down the stairs, I noticed a bucket of rags that Brian had set there having used them when unplugging the kid's bathroom sink a few days ago.  He (at that point, not knowing what was coming) reported it was one of the worst clean up jobs he had ever done (note: make sure your kids don't split giant blobs of toothpaste into the sink, they build up and clog it something horrible).

I actually chuckled to myself as I walked by thinking, "When I come back up tonight, I am going to throw those rags away.  Life is too short for moldy cleaning rags."

I got to the laundry room and kicked the door open.  I stepped in without turning on the lights and felt a giant soppy mess soak into my sock and heard an even worse splash that accompanied it.

This has happened before.  Too many times, in fact.  I started yelling "BRIAN, RAW SEWAGE!!!" and he came running.  It was about a centimeter from hitting the carpet.

We both started throwing down rags and pulling stuff out of the room.  Within minutes I had three full garbage bags of things that were not supposed to be trash but now, given the mess on the floor and the smell it was producing, they were going to be.

And soon we were out of rags.  I ran back to grab the previously nasty rags that I had laughed at minutes ago and tossed them into the mix.

Roto Rooter was called and came within 45 minutes.

Two hours later, he is now leaving.  They have to come back tomorrow (as this is now the third time this has happened).

And I will now be throwing those rags away for sure.

But I do have to report that our spending for the day was:

Roto Rooter: $248

Oh, and they have to come back tomorrow with a sewer camera to really see what is going on.  So I am sure there is more to come.

You can tell a lot about a person by looking at their recycling...

Well sure, you could probably learn even more about someone by looking at their trash.  But 1) that is creepy, 2) that is dirty and 3) that is just not right.  But here in our neighborhood, Monday is recycling day. And so bright and early Monday morning, bags and bins of recycling line the streets waiting for the recycling guys to come and get them.

When I was home on maternity leave, I would walk the boys to their summer camp in the mornings and we'd walk past the recycling and I remember first thinking how much you could tell, or assume, or at least imagine about people just by what was sitting out on the curb.

As time has gone on, Brian and I have had funny in-passing conversations when a new neighbor moves in and we walk by their recycling.  They might go something like this:

Brian: Hey, these guys have Summit Beer bottles.  Good taste in beer...

Molly: Yup, and diaper boxes in size 4, must have a kid about Eli's age.

You know life is full of first impressions.  And while we work to manage (and sometimes suppress) them, they are there.  For instance, for the people who don't recycle around here (and yes it's free and yes it comes every Monday) I admit, it makes me roll my eyes and elevates my blood pressure just a bit.  And if I am in an already less than stellar mode, I might just assume they don't care as much as the next guy.

So, were you to walk by my recycling here is what you could learn about me.

We drink bottled beer.  But we keep the non-twist-off bottles to reuse when we brew our own.

I drink my fair share of Diet Coke but I always pull the tabs off and save them for Ronald McDonald House Charities.  All of my General Mills boxes have little rectangles missing, too.  Because, I also clip Box Tops for Education for the boys' school.

I buy a lot of stuff at ALDI.  Most of it, in fact.

Eli loves cereal bars.

We must have a little one, as we have both skim milk and whole milk.

We only get the weekend Star Tribune and I clip the coupons.

Our boys like canned green beans.

We like red wine.

I recycle everything I can.  And that includes bills and statements that get put out, shredded, once a month.

I am also a Target shopper and go about once a month without my own tote bags so I can get paper bags just to put my recycling in.

I am not brand loyal to any shampoo or hair conditioner.  But Brian is.

We get various optometric magazines, Real Simple, Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly, Time, Lucky (I have no idea why, I never subscribed, but it keeps showing up), Minnesota Monthly (and from that you can deduce that Brian is a MPR listener), National Geographic Kids and Boys Life.

And someone around here loves apple sauce (Caleb).

So there you have it.  Like I said, it's just interesting to think about the little wealth of information we all (or at least most of us around here) put out on the sidewalk every Monday morning.

"Cost Cutting" Haircuts

Our boys seem to have hair that grows like weeds.  Caleb, has the same fine, stick straight hair that Brian has that just grows out it seems.  Kind of like a baby duck.  Over his ears seems to grow the fastest, causing him to rapidly get, what we lovingly refer to as "Ben Franklins."  This term started in our family back when Caleb was a baby.  Each of our boys have been pretty bald as babies and the first place their hair really started to grow was over their ears.  It would stick out over the ears, well kind of like this.  But a whole lot cuter.

Anyhew.  So Caleb gets Ben Franklin hair.  And Noah, who has more of my curl and texture in his hair.  His (like mine) when it gets long, just gets bigger.

As we looked at our budget, Brian suggested that one small area that we might "trim" some dollars was on haircuts.  The boys were needing to go in about every 5 weeks to the tune of about $30 (total, for both of them) each time.  Not to mention, we didn't exactly think they were being given stellar cuts either.

So I headed to Target and found the "Conair 19-piece pro hair cutting" kit.  I figured, heck, even if we got one haircut out of it and hated it, we earned back our $14.99, right?

Since then (about three months ago) Brian has been cutting the boys' hair.  As he joked, when he dies, we can now put on his gravestone "Husband, father, optometrist, barber."

Last night was what I have fondly now termed "Time to shear the sheep" night at the Snyder household.

And so it goes:

Caleb hates it and relentlessly complains about the itchy hair all over him.  And Noah thinks it's all pretty funny.  Didn't get any shots of the end results, but fair to say this is one "cost cutting" measure we will stick with.

Also, for the latest discretionary spending update.  I didn't get a change to blog yesterday, but Brian spent:

Menards: $20 (supplies for the clinic)

That said, I was able to sell Caleb's old booster seat for $25 on Craigslist, so we ended the day up $5 :)

Today however is grocery day:

Target: $36.62

ALDI (91 grocery items and diapers): $147.22

The Boys Elfed Themselves

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

And I Elfed us (along with Greta and Tom)

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Discretionary Spending

Oooohhh-eee, we've had a doozie of a time lately at our house.  As I discussed a few weeks ago, with Brian cutting back on his salaried hours to, well, to work for free for the forseeable future, we have had to do some cutting back.


And then life throws you curve balls, doesn't it?  Let's see.  Had two "probable" cases of H1N1 hit the house along with an ear infection, just for fun.  All of that combined led to $40 in copays and $112 in prescription copays.  The week before that the ice maker went out and it was $300 to repair it.  Now yes, I know that many people survive without ice makers.  Heck, I was one for a long time.  But when you have one and it takes up two shelves of your freezer, the last thing you want to do is start using trays and give up a third shelf.

Then this Sunday, the water heater went out.  We discovered this as I was going to put Eli in the tub.  Thankfully, being the good mother I am, I checked the water temp before putting him in to what was an ICE COLD tub.  Nice.  He was crashing, so I put the dirty baby in clean clothes and put him to bed.  Brian and I talked about it and decided that neither of us were game for ice cold showers in the morning, so we packed up in 10 minutes and made a mad dash out of the house at 8:30 p.m.  Dirty kids and sleeping baby in tow, we drove over to my parent's house to crash.  We looked like we were either fleeing the feds or running as refugees in the night.  I am sure our neighbors wondered what was up.


After two visits by the plumber, both incurring the "minimum charge," even though each only took 16 and 14 minutes, respectively, we had a replacement part ordered and a working water heater.  And we also had $310 less in our bank account.


And then my car.  It has been shuddering every time I would use the brakes.  Didn't feel like that was probably a very good thing.  And then my turn signal/rear brake light went out.  So even though I tried to be a good driver and use those nerdy arm signals when turning left, inevitably, I would have someone honk at me and flick me off every day for not using my (very clearly burned out) turn signal.


So, yesterday, on my last mandatory stay at home day with Eli, we headed to Midas.  Two hours and 45 minutes later, I had a new tire rod (or something like that, as my wheel was evidently about to fall off), new brake clamps (or something like that) and a working tail light.  And about $500 less.

Ah good times, nothing like trying to find over $1,200.  Guessing my couch cushions aren't going to cough that up.


My point?  First off...there I purged all of that and I am done complaining.  I hope.


But I have decided I am going to do a month of looking at everything we spend that isn't a set cost. 


Mortgage, student loans, car payments, etc.  Can't do much about those.  But this will be a little experiment, kind of a Weight Watchers for our budget.  We'll write it all down day by day and see what we see and what we can learn.  Not all of it is really, discretionary.  I mean a bill is a bill.  But a combination of the non-budgeted things that crop up as well as the things we choose to spend money on.


So here goes:


Friday, November 13
$167.20 -- City of "Right of Way" Maintenance Assessment (sounds like something you get playing "Monopoly," doesn't it?  Geez.  The lesson here is evidently we need to get out more and enjoy our sidewalks and alleys.)
$120.58 -- Just got the bill for our portion of Caleb's surgery.  Yes the surgery that was in July.
$60.58 -- Three months of the Star Tribune.  Need to think about this one.  Have to admit that I mostly get it for the coupons as I read it online otherwise.  So this month I need to see if I am saving at least $25 with coupons to make it worth it.
$223.25 -- Tabs for Brian's car.  What a racket.
$33.22 -- Groceries.  Okay, admittedly these were groceries to make sushi for "stay at home date night" but they were edibles all the same.

So much for fun discretionary money today :)

"Tamiflu may cause hallucinations..."

A week ago, Caleb came down with flu like symptoms and was out of commission for about 5 days.  He returned to school on Wednesday.  I was thinking we may have dodged the inevitable of having it roll through our house and was actually saying just that over lunch on Thursday.  And then Eli spiked a fever and started a dry, hacking cough.

Given that he was a preemie and is asthmatic, I took him right on on Friday morning.  Not only did the doctor call him "probable for H1N1" but he also had a raging ear infection.  Poor guy.

So they started him on Tamiflu, steroids (per the recommendations of the state), and antibiotics for his ear.  Then, as Noah has also wheezed in the past, they started him on a precautionary dose of Tamiflu as well.  (And on a side note, me too.)

I was asking the pediatrician what to expect or watch for in terms of side effects.  She explained that the major one was an upset stomach.  She then added that it's rare, but they have seen cases of hallucinations on the medication.

We got everyone started on the meds that night.  Caleb had a sleepover at a friend's house, so Noah was by himself that night in their room.  He called out to me in the middle of the night, which he almost never does.  I went in to tuck him back into bed...

Noah: Mom, can you turn on the light?

Me: No, Noah, you won't sleep well if the light is on.  Do you want me to turn on some music instead?

Noah: Yes, that would be good.  Because then when the hands come out of the wall again, I won't have to think about them.  I'll just think about the music.

He was so matter of fact about it I knew then and there, yup, we have a hallucinator.

Expiration dates, expiration schmates

With Brian working late so many nights these days, I have found dinner to be a bit of a challenge.  I have a toddler with only six teeth, a picky 8-year-old and then one good old eater.  Not to mention the thought of making a big involved meal after working all day for just me and the kids sometimes seems a bit silly.

So I often make what Brian (I am sure lovingly) refers to as "classic Molly kid meals."  That means you take what is in the fridge and try to cobble together a meal based on food groups.  Black beans, fruit, chicken nuggets, cheese.  Check.  (No, not all mixed together.)

But tonight I was kind of excited.  I had discovered when putting groceries away in the basement freezer this weekend that we had a frozen Bertolli bag down there.  It was garlic shrimp alfredo or something like that.  Noah loves shrimp.  Caleb and Eli love pasta.  Bingo.

So I pulled it out tonight.  Noah was running around singing about how shrimp is his favorite seafood.  Caleb was fist-pumping about what a great meal it was.  Eli refused to eat it, but that happens from time to time.  Overall feeling pretty good about myself.  Well as good as you can feel about yourself for opening up a frozen bag of food, bringing it to a rapid boil and serving it.

And then I started to clean up the dinner.  And as I picked up the package to throw it away, I noticed this:

Hmmm, three years expired.  Is that a bad thing?  I mean it's been in the freezer the whole time.  How bad could it be?

So kids, if you are reading back on this someday and remember back to that early November 2009 when you had horrible food poisoning.  I am still very sorry.  But, we managed to avoid that unpleasant incident, I hope you will just think back to that amazing pasta dinner Mom once made on a cold night and we can pretend the rest never happened.

Swine Flu and the Female Species

We had a great Halloween, overall.  Unfortunately, it began with Caleb waking up with all the signs and symptoms of H1N1.  He was able to get the seasonal flu vaccine, but not the H1N1 one, so we're working on the assumption that is what we are dealing with.

However, Halloween was also the day the clinic was part of the neighborhood trick or treating during the day and we knew we could likely expect about 250 kids coming through the clinic.  So we packed up a pillow and blankets and a movie and quarantined Caleb in Brian's back office while we greeted kids and I took the other two boys to the other villages.

Just prior to the night, Caleb begged to go out, so we doped him up on Tylenol and let him go for a bit.

He has been pretty down and out with the flu since then.  We're in to our second day of missed school.  He does okay during the day but nights are another story.  But I am hoping he can get back tomorrow.

Just a few funny kid comments to close out this post.

Driving Eli to daycare yesterday we were on the lookout for pumpkins (or pump-pums, as Eli calls them).  We drove by some that had been smashed in the street and Caleb asked about them.  I started to explain that sometimes teenagers do stuff that isn't very cool.  That they are trying on different parts of their personalities to try to figure out who they want to be.  And that sometimes, they try on personalities and behaviors that aren't very cool.  So Caleb asked me what kinds of personalities I tried when I was in high school.  Which kind of stumped me.  I told him I tried serious, funny, quirky, different, and so on.

And he paused for a minute and then asked, "So what personality did you decide to go with for being an adult?  Serious?"

Hmmm, guess I need to work on upping the quirky a bit.

Second story, Noah got his report card yesterday (which was great.  Go Noah!) and with it was a pre-conference form to have us let them know what Noah was saying at home about his likes, dislikes, favorite subjects, etc.  The last question was "Does your child have any fears we should be aware of?"

Similar to Caleb awhile ago, Noah has been expressing that he really would prefer not to die someday.  So I figured I'd note that on there.  I did ask Noah the question and he paused, looked up from his homework and, as seriously as he could, said, "Well, I don't want to die and I do have some fears about breast cancer.  Well, I am not sure about that one.  Which species gets that more?  Men or women."

I told him it was more common in women.  He seemed relieved and told me, "Well then never mind."

So the moral of these stories is...Mom needs to up the quirky quotient and convince Noah that, even though I want him to flush the toilet, and wash his hands, and not pick his nose, I really am a member of the same species.