The Cookie Peace Treaty—aka Forced Disarmament and Some Granny-Style Distractions

As the temperature crept past 100 yesterday, I knew we were in trouble. I tried to get the heathens outside with me to weed the garden, but after fifteen minutes, even I was whimpering in defeat. 100 degrees with 90% humidity drove us back inside, and I think we all had tempers that were noticeably shorter.

Unfortunately, the more bored my children got, the more inclined they were to pick on each other for sheer entertainment. Pretty soon, all-out war erupted, and one bloody nose and some severe punishments later, I knew I needed some methods of distraction…or rather a Plan JJ, since I had already exhausted Plans A through II.

When my mom was my age, our family moved to Los Angeles as a result of my stepdad’s job. This big move was quite the adventure, but it also took my small town Louisiana mother far away from her friends and family, and plopped her into a strange and frightening world. Her driving skills were the first major casualty of the move, as she realized that the freeway was actually an insane asylum moving at 70 miles an hour. To this day, my mom still drives like Andretti, even though we are back in Louisiana… it really is frightening. The second, and more lasting effect of the move was that my mom was often lonely and homesick, and treated this condition in the best way a Southern Lady knows…she cooked, she baked and then she cooked some more. My mom used cooking as the ultimate distraction and Band-Aid for her homesickness. It’s amazing that we did not turn into Weebles, but we did have a gaggle of neighborhood kids who turned up conspicuously around dinner time. My mom rocked, especially when she was a little obsessive around the kitchen.

I am nothing, if not my mother’s daughter. When WWIII erupted yesterday, my first instinct was to drag the heathens into the kitchen and turn on the oven. Cookies are a great distraction for the kids, because they take a while, and the recipes have enough steps to divide up between the two kids, thus keeping them distracted for an hour of blessed peace. Yesterday, we made Cowboy cookies. The original recipe calls for pecans, but I had to leave those out to avoid a picky-eater freak-out. We started with the basics:

And in traditional cookie fashion, creamed the butter and sugars:

While the mixer was accomplishing creamy bliss, we did a quick mix-up of the dry ingredients:

We added the eggs and vanilla to our butter mixture:

 

After mixing in the dry ingredients, we added the oats and the chocolate chips. I like adding the oats because it stretches the recipe, makes the cookies more filling and makes me feel about 0.01% better about feeding my kids a pile of cookies instead of something healthy.

 

After baking them up, we had a lovely pile of cookies:

But more importantly, we bought ourselves a little peace, and the boys were distracted from their driving need to annoy each other to death.

Want some peace of your own?

Here it is:

Cowboy Cookies

1 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1 cup packed brown sugar

2 large eggs

1 tsp. vanilla extract

2 cups flour

1 tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. salt

½ tsp. baking powder

2 cups oats

1 (12-ounce) pkg. chocolate chips

½ cup chopped pecans (optional)

1. Cream butter, sugar and brown sugar. Add eggs and vanilla, beating until fluffy.

2. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt and baking powder. Gradually add this to the butter mixture, mixing well after each addition. Stir in oats, chocolate chips and pecans.

3. Drop dough onto a baking sheet in large tablespoon size amounts (use parchment paper if you are smart…easy clean-up). Bake at 350 degrees for 12 minutes, or until cookies are pretty-pretty.

Serve them up and enjoy the blissful silence, at least until the ceasefire ends and they are back to their shenanigans.

Things Every Mother of Boys Should Have

1. A carpet steam cleaner. Otherwise your carpet will gross you out after a very short time.

2. Walls painted with latex enamel paint…so you can clean off all those things that end up on the walls, while you remind yourself not to even ask what they are.

3. Crates of Band-Aids and buckets of Neosporin. And maybe some stock in both companies…

4. Gallons of Lysol.

5. An inside source for sales on boys’ shoes, because they go through sneakers faster than Speedy Gonzales.

6. A sense of humor…because you have to laugh sometimes, or cry your eyes out…and laughing won’t mess up your mascara…if you actually managed to get mascara on between breaking up fight number 782 and 783.

7. A cast iron stomach.

8. Batteries…oh the batteries.

9. A relatively high tolerance for potty humor, continuous nerf gun strikes, obnoxiousness, toilet seat battles, bugs and dirt.

10. A plunger, a pipe snake and full knowledge where your outside clean-out is.

11. Eyes in the back of your head, and an awareness of where the closest ER is located.

12. A steady supply of wine, margaritas, beer or other restorative cocktails.

13. Full knowledge of all Star Wars characters, the color of their light sabers and why knowing this is important.

14. The ability to bellow “because I said so” in such a manner that it could be heard in the middle of a hurricane.

15. The patience of a saint, because once the little boogers can walk and talk, they have no limits to the havoc they can wreak, even if they look adorable while doing it.

Hotter than Hades, and How Not To Be a Classless Floozy

It’s freaking hot around here. Miserably hot. Fry an egg on the sidewalk hot.

Me and heat are not the best of pals. Heat itself is one thing. I spent many a year in southern California, so I can do heat.

But in Louisiana, the heat is married to the blasted humidity, and that makes some summer days unbearably oppressive. When Dante was writing his Divine Comedy, I think Louisiana was probably the fifth circle of hell.

When the heat is particularly bad, I do whatever I can to avoid turning on my oven or stove, because doing so is like throwing gasoline onto a bonfire. My air conditioner begins to whimper when it is trying to battle both inside and outside heat, and I refuse to abuse my air conditioner. My sanity rests on the good terms of our relationship, and a pissed-off air conditioner is more frightening than the Exorcist.

In my quest to avoid heating appliances on hot days, I try to come up with meals that are the perfect antidote to the 100 degree assault going on outside my door. These meals usually involve some kind of cold sandwich or salad. I admit that my husband is not too thrilled with these meals, because he really wants hot, manly food at the end of a long work day. However, Husband also respects the air conditioner, and the fact that heat turns me into a rabid hyena, so he usually accepts these meals with good grace…or at least without too much grumbling.

Chicken salad is always a good hot-weather meal, and I usually make it just like Granny: chopped cooked chicken, some diced celery, Hellmann’s mayo and some salt and pepper. (Granny swears that Hellmann’s mayo is the only mayo a southern lady may use. If you go for the cheap stuff, then you are obviously a classless floozy. And dear Lord, don’t ever mention the words Miracle Whip in her presence. The military learned the concept of Shock and Awe from Granny.)

While Granny’s chicken salad is usually my standard, I sometimes like to shake things up a bit. I found another recipe in Southern Living, and I like this chicken salad recipe for a couple of reasons. First, it contains honey, and that gives me a good excuse to incorporate some local honey into our diets, as I hear it may help with our allergies. Second, this recipe is kind of girly, and living in a house full of males, I have to take my girl moments when I can get them.

Despite the pretty picture from Southern Living, I serve this recipe on wheat hoagie rolls. Otherwise it would be too girly, and civil disobedience would ensue.

Honey-Chicken Salad

Ingredients

4 cups chopped cooked chicken

3 celery ribs, diced (about 1 1/2 cups)

1 cup sweetened dried cranberries

1/2 cup chopped pecans, toasted

1 1/2 cups mayonnaise

1/3 cup honey

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

Garnish: chopped toasted pecans

Preparation

1. Combine first 4 ingredients.

2. Whisk together mayonnaise and next 3 ingredients. Add to chicken mixture, stirring gently until combined. Garnish, if desired.

 

When You Know You Will Have a Nervous Breakdown If You Have to Pick Up One More Dirty Sock

Being at Stay-at-Home-Mom is often the best job in the world. Most days, I make my own schedule (whether to fold that laundry now or later), and I have the freedom of many choices, because I really only answer to myself and my family. Unless the kids are sick, or you have enrolled them in 20-too-many activities, you get to be the ultimate boss of what you are doing and when. Don’t get me wrong…I still have to clean my house and feed my family, but if I am having a horrifically bad day, I have the ability to let some things slide. I also get to spend my days with these two clowns:

 

And watch every moment of their high-jinks as they grow from my beautiful babies into rambunctious little boys.

Though I am usually very accepting and Zen-like about my life as a SAHM, even I have days when it gets to me. These days don’t come often, but when they do, they result in a severe funk. They are the days when I wake up, and I think I will have a nervous breakdown if I have to pick up one more dirty sock. They are the days when, despite all my efforts of cleaning and cooking the day before, I still wake up to the SAME clothes on the floor, the SAME dishes in the sink, the SAME dirty floors, and I feel like a hamster spinning on my wheel. These are the days when Mom snaps, and tells everyone she is not their bleepity-bleeping maid, while sounding like a shrill, fed-up harpy.

As you know, I live 30 miles away from major civilization, and as a one-income, one-car family, I do not have the ability to go anywhere during the day. This probably exacerbates those days when I get slightly mental. Add isolation to the never-ending repetition of life as a housewife, and you would probably have one of those days too.

Luckily, when these days come, I still keep some conscious bucket of sanity tucked away in the back of my psyche that tells me I am being unreasonable and ungrateful. This small measure of sanity also prods me to be proactive about removing myself from the funk, by any means necessary.

Over the years, I have developed some solid strategies for dealing with these occasional funks. I’ve accepted that those days will come, but I have to put on my big-girl britches and work to get past them. No wallowing allowed, because wallowers become unhappy, bitchy screaming banshees…

 

And we can’t have that.

So, here are some test-driven methods to counteract the impending dirty-sock-nervous-breakdown:

1) Get some validation and inspiration. There are plenty of books that can give you a little inspiration, and communities like Happy Housewives that can give you some commiseration and support. The key, however, is to find material that will uplift you, not contribute to the problem by feeding into your huffiness and self-righteous tantrums. I have several books that I go to, from home-keeping books to motherhood books, and they help remind me why I love this job. As far as online communities go, you have to be careful to find some that are positive and will help you get going again, not groups who like to affirm to one another that they have the right to be miserable harpies.

2) Break the mold. I will try anything to change things up a bit. Maybe I will try some ridiculous new recipe, even though I know my husband and kids will hate it. I do it because I’ve wanted too. I will skip the standard housework, and focus on some special project that has been bugging me for a while, like re-doing a closet, or scrubbing down the cabinets. Yeah, it is still housework, but it breaks me out of the frustration of monotony. I will grab a book and go read in the backyard for 30 minutes. Basically, I will try anything that breaks up the routine, and distracts me from my boiling need to throw the dirty laundry on everyone’s beds and tell them to do it themselves.

3) Know when it is time to call in the big guns. Every once in a while, I go out alone after my husband gets home, for a couple of hours away. I usually catch a movie, or maybe hit the bookstore. My husband is really great about knowing when these times come. Sometimes, we just need alone time away from our homes. Can you imagine how life would be if you never left your office? Well, that is how a SAHM can feel sometimes. You may be relaxing on the couch in the evening, but your mind is still reminding you that you have 16 things you could or should be doing. Removing yourself from the house is often the only way to get some true downtime.

I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned about the occasional SAHM funk is that I have to acknowledge it when it comes, recognize that it is often unreasonable and take proactive steps to get through it. Super-Mom Awesomeness will return in time.

The Zoo—aka My Kids’ Natural Habitat

This weekend, Husband and I packed it up for a little impromptu road trip. After too much time trapped in the house, the kids and I were getting restless, and starting to foam at the mouth a bit. Even the most creative mom and the most patient kid can get a little loopy after too much time in the same 1200 square feet. My husband is a smart man. He recognized the signs of the impending meltdown, and took prompt action.

Luckily for us, we live a little over an hour away from a really neat, albeit small, zoo. The zoo in question has one big selling point: it is super-affordable. Five bucks a ticket in fact. It was cheaper than a movie. And it required lots of walking…which wore the heathens out. Ahhhhh…good times are good, cheap-kid-exhausting times are better.

We saw all kinds of beautiful animals, like this one. Youngest saw about 300 turtles, which pleased him to no end. He could care less about the lions, tigers, giraffes or elephants. Oh no, it was the turtles that this kid wanted. Even this episode of feeding the birds could not compare to his turtle obsession:

Oldest liked everything but the penguins. He said they were too smelly. Having lived in a house with three males and one bathroom, I think I was immune to the smelliness. Oldest did spend a lot of time obsessing over the zoo map. He needed to know where we were at all times, and eventually turned into our Magellan/Tour Guide.

The zoo reminded me a lot of my home. It is full of adorable animals, which are constantly hungry, high maintenance, need frequent bathing and require special boundaries, less injurious mayhem will ensue. My kids must have felt the similarities, because they had a fun day communing with their long lost brothers.

And mom got to come home with kids that looked a little something like this:

Don’t worry though. That peace lasted all of 10 minutes. They were back to their Tasmanian devil ways in no time.

Some Thumbs Up, Some Thumbs Down, and Some “Don’t Waste Your Money”

As a one-income family, we usually have to make our dollars stretch farther than a yoga master. This often makes me a very picky purchaser, and I confess that I spend way too much time on Amazon.com reading product reviews. I want to know whether my potential purchases will deliver on their promise, or doom me for disappointment. Buyer’s remorse takes on a whole new level when your lemon of a product ate up a sizeable chunk of your meager expendable income.

Here is some inside scoop on some products I’ve tried this month:

 

I got this new workout game for the Wii:

And I like it. If you have been following my challenge to get fit, then you know my Wii has been my Yoda, and I am always looking for a new way to use it. This game is great for fitness beginners, and as someone who is so uncoordinated that she almost crippled herself trying to do Tae Bo, I love any exercise program that I can actually do with harming myself or others. I have used this daily for two weeks, on the medium intensity setting. Personally, I’ve gotten a great lower body workout, but I may need to purchase a stronger resistance band, because the upper body work is not very challenging. Overall, it was worth the money to me.

Moving on to skin care, I decided to buy this:

To shake up my skincare routine. Well, the little pads do not foam, and you really don’t feel like any cleanser is coming out of them. It is awkward to use on the contours of your face (like around your nose), and overall, I was severely unimpressed. My face did not feel very clean after using this, and with a $15 price tag, I have to give this a thumbs’ down.

This next product is one of our best buys of the decade:

This rechargeable battery system has been a lifesaver. With a Wii and three males with a love of all toys electronic, we were going through enough batteries to pollute a small country, not to mention the purse-crippling expense. This thing charges the batteries in 15 minutes flat, which is brilliant when you have impatient children clamoring for more Mario Kart. We use this thing almost every day.

And last but not least:

Please do not waste your money on this toy. The pen does not work, only holds like 10 balls at a time, and was supremely frustrating for both me and the boys. Very rarely do I buy a product that was a total waste of money, but this one sure was. Pixos failed to deliver on every level, and only resulted in agitated kids and one aggravated mom.

Have you tried something great, or been bitterly disappointed? Share it with me, because we all need to be smart with our money these days…diet coke ain’t getting any cheaper.

The Dressing Room Happy Dance

This week is perhaps the best dang week I’ve had in years.

Me and my scale are new best friends, because it told me I’ve lost 30 pounds since the new year. Husband still has bruises where I accidently landed on him while doing my victory jump-dance on the bed.

To celebrate this super-awesome event, I went shopping for new shirts. All mine either had holes, or were looking kind of blah.

I am not a big fan of shopping. Like many women, I have a hate-hate relationship with dressing room mirrors. I can think of about 67 other things I would rather do than try on clothes. Like go to the dentist…or clean the bathroom.

But with -30 pounds of courage, I took off for an afternoon of shopping, dressing room be damned.

After trying on several shirts, I could not figure out why they all looked so funky. It took me 10 solid minutes to realize that maybe, just maybe, I was trying on the wrong size. After rounding up a batch of smaller size prospects, I stepped back in the dressing room, prepared to be disappointed.

But holy guacamole, they fit! For the first time in 8 years, I put on a size medium shirt, and it fit for real. Not that kind of “you are so deluding yourself” fit; these shirts really fit, even if I bend over, raise my arms, or wrestle my heathens into submission.

Needless to say, I did the dressing room happy dance, then proceeded to try on about 20 different tops, just because I could.

Nothing like some sweet, sweet victory to make for a good week.

Germ Warfare and Italian Food

School is out my friends, which of course means my kids are sick. Don’t ask me how they managed to catch a cold exactly 2 seconds after school was over, but they did. Between them coughing all night, and acting like yahoos all day, this week hasn’t exactly been the best start to summer vacation. I am pretty tired, more than a little loopy, and I am out of kids’ cough medicine. And did I mention that I woke up today with their cold? Yippy bleeping skippy.

However, I did get to try out a new recipe from Southern Living, which Husband loved. And you should really try it too…Because it was yummy, easier than it looks, and I definitely racked up some Mom points for cranking this out on a weeknight with two sick kids.

             

Chicken Cannelloni with Roasted Red Bell Pepper Sauce
                        —–Pasta:—–
   1                    (8-ounce) package cannelloni or manicotti shells
   4      cups          finely chopped cooked chicken
   2                    (8-ounce) containers chive-and-onion cream cheese
   1                    (10-ounce) package frozen chopped spinach,
                        — thawed and well drained
   1      cup           (8 ounces) shredded mozzarella cheese
   1/2  cup           Italian-seasoned breadcrumbs
   3/4  tsp           garlic salt
   1      tsp           seasoned pepper
                        —–Sauce:—–
   2                    (7-ounce) jars roasted red bell peppers, drained
   1                    (16-ounce) jar creamy Alfredo sauce
   1                    (3-ounce) package shredded Parmesan cheese

1. Cook pasta according to package directions; drain.

2. Stir together chicken and next 6 ingredients.

3. Cut pasta shells lengthwise through the other side. Spoon about 1/2 cup
chicken mixture into each shell, gently pressing cut sides together. Place,
cut sides down, in 2 lightly greased 11- x 7-inch baking dishes.

4. To make Roasted Red Pepper sauce, combine Alfredo sauce, roasted red
peppers and Parmesan cheese in a food processor. Pulse until smooth.

5. Pour Roasted Red Bell Pepper Sauce evenly over shells.

6. Bake, covered, at 350° for 25 to 30 minutes or until thoroughly heated.
Garnish, if desired

 

Even the kids ate it. Wonder of wonders….

The Crayon Apocalypse

No fun Sunday here folks.

Not when I failed to realize that my kids had crayons in their pockets until about 2 seconds after I opened the dryer.

My poor laundry looks like a Crayola factory exploded all over it. Not only do my husband’s clothes look like this:

but this shirt is actually the best looking of the mess. The rest are a multi-colored blood bath of non-toxic colored wax. Oh, the HORROR!!!

I have laundry piled up everywhere:

Despite my super-mom-awesomeness, I have never run across a laundry disaster of such epic proportions. We are past neat tricks with irons, wax paper or goo-gone. There are not enough hours in the day to spend scrubbing each of the 100,000 color spots in that laundry pile.

So, I’ve constructed Plan A, which looks a little something like this:

I got inspired after frantic Google searches, and this is the first wave of my assault against the color explosion. Detergent, vinegar and Oxyclean. After that, Shout for leftover stains, and repeat the detergent, vinegar, Oxyclean attempt. We’ll see how it goes, but I can assure you that I may have to become the pocket-checking drill sergeant after this fiasco.

Jeez-um.

Is it too early to mix up a cocktail?

I think not.

Outnumbered and Outgunned

 

My husband raises our kids like they are going to be candidates for Survivor.

He claims he is trying to teach us all to survive in the jungle…because we all know that the danger of stumbling into an Amazonian-type jungle in the middle of farm country Louisiana is clearly imminent.

He hides and jumps out to scare us, to test our reflexes, he says. He hides the kids’ snacks when their backs are turned, then laughs as they hysterically try to find the oreos.

When the kids get foam swords or light sabers, we must get some too, so the entire family can engage in epic battles and build defensive sword skills…because of course we can carry swords around…*sigh*

I’ve learned to play Guitar Hero, Diablo II and I know all the Star Wars characters and the color of their light sabers.

And don’t even get me started on the Nerf dart guns. There are not enough expletives to describe just how much fun it is to be the only girl in the house when a Nerf gun war erupts.

Having boys had definitely brought out the boy in my husband. He plays with their toys, watches their cartoons and finds their humor hilarious.

I think his biggest challenge has been trying to keep a straight face when he is punishing them for something that was technically wrong, but really dang funny.

But, in all the boyishness, I can’t help but wonder what my husband will do if we ever have a girl…other than watch her like bomb that could go off unexpectedly. Just imagining the look on his face when she demands he play barbies is enough to make me giggle.

But, for now, I am stuck refereeing battles, dodging darts, acting as a human shield and watching Phineas and Ferb marathons.

Send chocolate and margaritas, because we women have to stick together.