Ch-ch-ch-changes

  
  I totally skipped November.

  The leaves changed, the weather changed, my life changed.

  My father, bless his heart, passed away. The last thing he ever said to me was, "Where are you living now?" because he couldn't remember and quite possibly, couldn't remember me. It's a very strange thing, losing a parent. You think about it occasionally but until it becomes a reality, you never really know how you will react.

  Some days you will be fine--other days you will be a wreck. Some days I can think of my dad and smile, others I will think about him in his garden, picking string beans with my son, and I will fall apart. I was Christmas shopping the other day and thought, "What am I going to get Dad?" It was always my yearly dilemma, what to buy my father, an Archie Bunker-ish sort who was never overly excited about gifts unless you really got lucky and hit the nail on the head. One year I bought him a large, hardbound copy of a World War II book and he was truly touched, more so than I'd ever seen him Christmas morning. I felt pangs of guilt, as I had seen the book marked down, knew my dad liked war movies, and thought, "I can't think of anything else. Maybe he'll like this."

  As I looked at the racks of merchandise in the stores the other day, decorations and holiday music all around me, I thought how lucky I was to even have a dad, much less a dad for 44 years. Some people don't get to have a dad for even 1 day. Some people live their lives thinking their dads are out there but don't care about them and they never see them. This Christmas will be the first Christmas of my life that I don't have my big, strong dad out there in the world, sitting in his favorite recliner, watching college football and complaining about how commercial and expensive Christmas is.

  The world--and my life--is emptier without him.

Country Mouse & City Mouse

 So I have a thing for the city, any city, probably because I don't live there. I used to live in a city and was less than impressed, maybe because I was a young mother with no money, no family nearby, and few friends. I was too busy working a crappy job for $7 an hour, paying for gas with dimes and nickels, and shuttling my baby back and forth to daycare, to enjoy anything about the city. Back then, it was just scary.

 I live in the country now, a move which was probably a knee-jerk reaction to being fed up with the city way back when. I was so sick of the traffic, the endless circling around the parking lot just looking for a spot so I could run in for a gallon of milk, and the lack of human connection. After several years (8 to be exact) of being out here in the middle of nowhere though, I have realized that the whole "lack of connection" isn't a city thing, it's just a ME thing. I suck at making friends and honestly, I just don't like many people. Now dogs...I have plenty of dog friends. I am very popular with the doggie set.

 The pendulum has swung the other way and I miss the city again. I miss delivery and food options, concerts and independent films. I miss the excitement of being somewhere with a collective energy. I escape to the city whenever I can convince my long-suffering husband to take me and then I fantasize about moving there to some fantastic city-view apartment (which never has cockroaches), eating at famous restaurants (with some magical money that spits out of the corner ATM) and commuting to my dream job, where I help thousands of people each day live spectacular lives (never mind that I can't even get an interview with my non-profit of choice.) The realities of living there never really enter the picture.

 Maybe I'm not just bad at making friends, I'm just bad at reality. Huh. There's a theory.

A Day in the Plush Life

7 a.m.: Hubby leaves for work after rattling the dog leashes, rustling his lunch bag I left for him in the fridge and clomping around in the noisiest Sketcher shoes known to mankind. They have rubber soles! How can they be so loud?

8 a.m.: The phone rings and I stumble out of bed, rousing the sleeping dogs. James' tail wags so hard he knocks over my nighttime glass of water, sending a wave onto the floor. In my haze, I think, "Answer the phone? Clean the water off the floor?" and manage to make it to the phone in time to hear the caller slam the phone down in my ear. I grab paper towels and head for the carpet.

8:12 a.m.: The dogs whine at me as I attempt to put my sneakers on the correct feet and follow me around as I pull on a dirty polo shirt and finger comb my hair back into a ponytail. Huge sunglasses are my savior in the morning.

8:45 a.m.: James sees his archenemy, a 12 pound Toto-looking terrier named Mutt, on our walk and attempts to "retrieve" him for me. I neither want nor need a limp, crushed terrier at my feet, so I do my one-arm workout which I call "The James Maneuver"--pull like hell and hope the collar doesn't break.

9 a.m.: Back at home to feed and water all animals (dogs, lizard, and wild critters...presumably birds, but the fattest chipmunks in the county eat everything I put out, leaving the birds to starve and/or point out what fatasses the chipmunks are.)

9:15 a.m.: Coffee and Facebook time, which reminds me how unexciting my life is compared to everyone elses.

10 a.m.: Clean the house. Periodic time outs for email and wallowing in self pity.

Noon: Make lentil soup in pathetic attempt to erase the memory of the 3 doughnuts I ate yesterday and the pile of pizza I scarfed down during "The Walking Dead" premiere.

1 p.m.: Taste soup. Needs something. More doughnuts, maybe.

2 p.m:. James is again whining to go out. His sister, Jessie, gives him the stink eye because she is comfortable on her giant green pillow which resembles a lily pad. She reluctantly gets up and stands by the door.

2:08 p.m.: James sees several chipmunks dart across the road in front of him and contemplates taking them out with one chomp. He sees how fat they are and reconsiders, obviously not wanting to take advantage of the situation. That would just be showing off.

3 p.m.: I make cookies to surprise my boys. I check them at the 8 minute mark--raw. I check them at the 10 minute mark--barely beige. I check them at the 12 minute mark--incinerated. Pinche oven!

4 p.m.: Call Mom. We talk about the family, the weather, and how she only has 1 Oreo left in the package. I convince her to try Halloween Oreos (the best) and then silently wonder, "How can anyone leave just 1 Oreo in the package? Wouldn't you plow through the bag, see there was only 1 left and then just eat it?" Clearly my mother's sense of self control did not get passed down to me.

5 p.m.: James again flips out, whining like I am a negligent mother who has NEVER taken him out before. I can't decide if he has the bladder the size of a nickel or is just a crotchety old dog who enjoys dragging me around the block for sport.

6 p.m.: Dinnertime. God, lentils are boring.

7:30 p.m.:  "Wheel of Fortune"! Time to feel smart again after feeling like the dumbest pile of crap during "Jeopardy".

8 p.m.: The dogs are asleep after jockeying for position on the couch. James claimed shotgun and velcroed himself to my side. After Jessie gave him sad puppy eyes for about 5 minutes and made this weird whining/growl hybrid noise which I took to mean, "You dragged me outside 3 times today when I was comfortable," James moved to the other side of the couch and Jessie stole my blanket and curled up next to my very warm hip.

Tomorrow will surely be more of the same.

My Bar

 I have always thought that a home should have a proper bar.

 I am a gin girl. I love it. A gin and tonic is probably the most perfect drink ever created. Whenever I go out and someone offers me a glass of wine, I always think to myself that wine is for people who don't know how to make a proper cocktail.

 I have everything here that I need, including my beloved vintage bar ware--the crazy tray, my 1930's swizzle sticks, my husband's old embarrassing drunk hound dog lamp....it gives me immense pleasure to open my little bar doors.

Swiffer? I hardly know her!

 Okay. I am obsessed with my Swiffer Wet Jet.

 I don't know what happened but this former non-mopper is now a hardcore Swiffering fool (and yes, I just made a verb: to swiffer.) I admit, I had an uneasy set-up introduction to this no-assembly-required item. I mean, "no assembly required" pretty much suggests that you can just take this puppy out of the box, slap a disposable cleaning pad on the end of it, and get mopping. I guess I'm at the lower end of the gene pool, because I was surprised that there was a compartment for batteries (4 AA), a compartment for Swiffer cleaner fluid that was like some weird Land of the Lost crystal matrix table, and a telescoping handle. Once I let my nightly cocktail wear off and scraped up enough IQ points to assemble everything correctly (i.e. insert the batteries correctly behind the fluid compartment and latching its door so that they didn't fly out and take out an eye), I got to work.

 The Swiffer Wet Jet is like my favorite new toy. It zips around corners with its swivel head, has a little scrubber pad to get rid of stubborn goop, and never needs to go near a bucket. It just sprays the cleaner on your floor and you mop. Throw out the dirty pad. Voila! I feel a little guilty about those disposable mop pads, so sometimes I use a washable chamois-type cloth and then throw that in the laundry. This would be a good cost-cutting measure as well as an eco-friendly one, since these disposables are an expense (about $7 for 12.) I'm also not 100% in love with all the scents of the Swiffer Wet Jet fluid, one of which was "Open Window"--open window where? at the Coty eau de toilette factory?--but they are mostly pleasant and are available for wood floors or in multi purpose formula for other flooring.

 I can't even tell you how addictive this thing is, though. You will crave the meditative pleasures of spraying and cleaning your floor and seeing all the junk that gets stuck to the pad. It's lightweight, not drippy or messy and gets the job done. It has changed my cleaning routine, which isn't saying much, since I didn't really have a cleaning routine, but hey...everyone needs that new backpack to get excited about school...or a new haircut to help feel great about a new job...or in my case, a new nifty mop that makes me excited about turning over a new leaf in a new home.

The Half-Assed Housekeeper

 It's possible that I'm the worst housekeeper in the country, except maybe those people on Hoarders. My family kept things neat and somewhat tidy, but no one was frantically scrubbing floors or bleaching every surface. In fact, when we'd walk home from school and find my mom vacuuming or dusting the living room, we'd ask, "Are we having company?" She'd give us all a dirty look and shoo us away while she finished her cleaning.

 When I first lived on my own, I had a bad habit of letting dishes pile up and I'd vacuum every new moon or so when I wasn't busy living my working single girl life. When I was older and got married, my housekeeping skills never really improved. Sure, I owned a mop by then, but I still wasn't obsessing about whether or not I could see my own reflection in the linoleum or whether my glasses had water spots. It wasn't until I had moved on to Husband #2 that I started to wonder if there was something wrong with me. My husband went to visit his mother and she said he needed his shirt ironed. He said I had already done it and she called me--called me!--and told me in so many words that I had done a crappy job and that I didn't know what I was doing. After that, I noticed I didn't measure up in many ways: my laundry didn't smell as good as hers, my floors weren't as clean as hers, my kitchen wasn't spotless like hers.

 Still, the cleanest my subsequent homes got were when I was moving out and needed my security deposit back. It wasn't until very recently, when we moved out of our old house and into this one, that I realized I had a condition my family calls House Blindness--we just don't see mess. We're so used to seeing the ignored stack of mail on the dining table that it seems normal. We only look around at eye level, so we don't notice the colony of spiderwebs in the corner. I just don't care that my fitted sheets are sort of wadded up into blobs in the linen closet instead of folded like American flags.

 So I am trying something new in this house: I am actually trying to keep it as clean as possible...well, at least for me. It's sort of my dirty little secret that I'm a dirty little housekeeper. Now I try to make sure I run the dishwasher while I Swiffer the floor each night and I try to actually pick things up to clean under them. I throw out the mail instead of thinking I'm actually going to read it some day. I still have a problem with ironing, but really, who irons nowadays? I'll also never have Martha Stewart-esque folded sheets in my linen closet, but as long as my mother-in-law doesn't look in there, I think I'm okay.

Homemade Stromboli

 Honestly, I can't think of anything that isn't improved by wrapping it in some sort of dough--I mean, pot pies, calzones, turnovers? Come on! Heaven!

 So I was baking a chocolate oatmeal cake the other day, enjoying the breath of cool Fall air, and I thought, "The oven is on anyway....what else can I bake?" I looked in the fridge and had a few leftovers lurking about: a quarter of a package of veggie meat crumbles, a half can of diced tomatoes, an end of mozzarella, a handful of sweet peppers that were on their way out. Seemed like dinner had made itself.

 Stromboli really couldn't be easier, as it just requires a batch of pizza dough (pre-made or homemade) and whatever you want to use as your filling. Everyone I know buys their dough (I hear Trader Joe's makes a fine dough) but I'm cheap and make my own. I use whole wheat flour and follow the recipe from The Tightwad Gazette (recipe found below), which uses a food processor instead of kneading. I don't have a food processor and I quite enjoy the meditative process of kneading dough, so I just do it by hand and call it a day. After the dough has risen, I divide the dough into pieces (4-6, depending of how many teenage boys you have coming to dinner), roll into balls and pat them out into circles. Put in your cooked filling of choice on one side of the dough, fold over and crimp the edges, then bake for 15-20 min. in a 425 degree oven until golden brown.

 Accept the inevitable compliments graciously.

Easy Pizza Dough:
1 T. yeast
1 tsp. sugar
1/4 c. warm water
 Dissolve yeast and sugar in the water water and let sit for 5 minutes until bubbly.

 Mix 2 c. of flour, a 1/2 tsp. of salt, and a T. of oil in large bowl or food processor. Add yeast mixture and mix, adding enough warm water (up to about a 1/2 c.) to form a dough. In the food processor, turn the dough about 25 times--by hand, knead for 2-3 minutes. Put in greased bowl, cover and set in a warm place to let rise for at least 10 minutes before using in your recipe.