Curiosity Got the Kids

It started with a rabid looking raccoon.  He had been spotted at homes around the neighborhood during Easter weekend.  First, I found him in my trashcan (yes, I screamed at the top of my lungs and slammed the lid shut).  Then, my neighbor found him sleeping on her front doorstep.  This raccoon was slow to move and frankly, acted like he was intoxicated.  When another neighbor saw him crossing her lawn in broad daylight after school, she got a good enough look to suspect rabies and called animal control.  They told her it would be awhile before the only officer on their team who was equipped to “handle the situation” would be out.  We were to track the raccoon in the meantime. 

Imagine trying to quarantine five boys and four girls under such exciting circumstances.  My neighbor and I tried everything – the real explanation (it’s a sick raccoon and could make you sick if you don’t go inside right now), bribes (you can order a movie from Apple TV), threats (you will lose playtime tomorrow).  Nothing would deter the boys from the scene.  Every time we turned around, they’d come sneaking back with binoculars in tow.  Finally we let them join us but formed a barricade they could not cross.  This soon attracted the girls who missed their brothers.  Thankfully, the raccoon made his way into my neighbor’s backyard which was obstructed from our view. 

When the officer arrived on the scene, he was surprised by the posse that had formed.  As he got out his rifle and walked around back, the boys begged to follow him.  We told them no way.  “But I’m with the FBI,” my son’s friend protested, ripping open his jacket to reveal a t-shirt that read, “FBI Agent.” “Sorry, but a trip to the Spy Museum in Washington D.C. does not make you an agent,” I told him.  The boys whined until the shots started.  It sounded like a firework display, which preoccupied them with counting the shots.  There were 10 in total.  I guess the officer had to ensure the raccoon wouldn’t struggle when he picked him up.

After a tour of the crime scene and autographs from the officer, the boys were satisfied enough to head home for the night.  At bathtime, my son asked if he had to wash the hand that had been autographed by the officer. “That’s disgusting.  Of course you have to wash your hand,” my daughter said, adding, “It’s not like he’s a celebrity.”

“Nope,” my son replied, “He’s a hero.” 

 The autograph session

The raccoon giving me the stare-down after he escaped from the trash can

Love At First White

I remember the first time I fell in love with a white kitchen.  It was in a movie theater and Jack Nicholson was standing in his boxers being threatened by Diane Keaton in a glorious white kitchen.  Despite the drama unfolding onscreen, I could focus on nothing but the simple white cabinets, the rows of white tiles, and the flowy white curtains.  This was followed by a pang of envy.  If I could have cheated on my kitchen (yellow at the time, French Country in appearance and quite lovely itself) I most certainly would have.  I vowed then and there that someday I would have a white kitchen of my own.  It only took me seven years and dozens of visits to web sites like http://www.hookedonhouses.net/ and http://www.traditionalhome.com/ for inspiration.  I have been the contented owner of a white kitchen for nine months now, and I enjoy it every day.

Cooking, bill paying and homework helping seem like lighter tasks in my brighter kitchen.  On a dismal rainy day, I love to put on some background music and forget about what is going on outside.  And though I’m no whiz in the kitchen, it’s easy to pretend I’m the Barefoot Contessa when I’m copying a recipe.  (She has the second white kitchen I fell in love with.)

Contrary to what it may seem, white is not my favorite color.  I just happen to think it frames things beautifully.  I recently visited a friend who completed her white kitchen a few months after mine.  It is stunning and is highlighted with sunlight streaming in from a massive bay window she had installed at the sink so she can watch her kids play in the backyard.  She had bought handsome brown leather counter stools, and since I was in the market for some, I asked her where she got them – Target.  I couldn’t believe it.  I would have thought Grandin Road, Lillian August, Ethan Allen.  Nope, they were $130/pair at Target.  She let me borrow one to try in my kitchen but it wasn’t the right size.  It did, however, show me that anything would look like a million bucks in my white kitchen.

The first day I cooked in my newly renovated kitchen, the dry cleaning deliveryman walked in the front door and said, “Wow, Mrs. Stickel, something smells delicious.”  I knew that my white kitchen, which had inspired the chicken roasting in the oven with lemon and thyme, had paid off.

Things (in my opinion) that make a white kitchen better:

• Music, like the soundtracks of Something’s Gotta Give or Julie & Julia, French music, jazz
• Sponges dish rags, paper towels and soapy water for sticky finger prints
• Cutting boards (I buy either clear or white – I have marble counter tops and learned the hard way that they easily show marks)
• Barefoot Contessa cookbooks
• Colorful accents, especially fresh fruit and vegetables in bowls
• Cabinets with glass doors
• A deep sink to hide dirty dishes if you are dashing your kids off to school before you get to them
• Fun lights
• Dark wood floors (I hope to stain mine dark someday!)

The Lazy Person’s Guide to Recycling

The town I live in is moving to single stream recycling in July.  This is good news for lazy people like me who can never seem to properly dispose of mixed paper, cardboard and other items that couldn’t go into the blue bin for curbside pick-up.  Now, someone else will have the burden of sorting through all my household recyclables.

This month, I brushed up on my recycling ABC’s by offering to help with a second grade environmental education program in the schools (clearly they don’t screen presenters, though they did pair me up with a seasoned co-presenter).   I learned along with the second graders as I read from the script.  At the end of one presentation, a student came up to me and confided that her mom only recycles bottles and never uses reusable grocery bags.  I thought maybe if people, like her mom, knew a few easy tips for recycling, they’d be inclined to do more.  Here are a few tips from the script – some I knew and some I didn’t:

Buy glass.  Glass is made from a plentiful natural resource, sand, and can be melted down and reused many, many times.  When there is a choice, purchase glass containers.  Just remind yourself that plastic is made from oil.  This alone makes me think twice about buying food products in it.

Rinse it out, but don’t worry about the label.  Cleaner recycling is better recycling.  Rinse out those pasta jars before putting them in the blue bin.  The good news is that you don’t need to worry about the paper labels.  They are burned off during the recycling process.

Make it part of your wardrobe.  My co-presenter toted groceries for our demonstration in a beautiful, large, light weight bag – much more chic than any of the reusable shopping bags I’ve seen.  I looked at the tag and saw it was made by Envirosax.  Once home, I found 5-packs of these fashionable bags on Overstock.com and Amazon.com.  I have no problem walking into Target or A&P with one of these around my arm.

Toss the caps.  Bottle caps are not made with clean materials that can be burned down and recycled.  Toss them out so they don’t contaminate a load.

Buy big.  Buy cereal in a bigger box.  Pick snacks in one large bag, instead of 12 individually wrapped snack packs.  Choices like these reduce the amount of waste there is to be tossed or recycled.  I have to confess that there are times when those individually packaged snacks come in handy, like this week, when I’m taking in chocolate pudding cups with gummy worms for my son’s class of 20 kids.

Reuse your plastics.  According to the script, plastic bottles can’t be melted down to make new plastic bottles, so try to reuse and not recycle plastic when you can.  One student raised her hand during our presentation to tell me about her new Bobble – a reusable water bottle, complete with a filter.  She said she’s even used it to purify lake water.  Though I bought a set of Bobbles for my kids to take to school and sports practice, the package didn’t say anything about purifying lake water.  But I’m happy to use it on our local tap water.

Get your priorities straight.  Though it’s important to recycle everything you can, some materials are more precious than others.  Bauxite (which is used to make aluminum) is a limited resource that is very difficult to extract from the Earth.  Since aluminum is easy to recycle again and again, remember to rinse off those metals and pop them in the blue bin!

Turn off your car during idle moments.  Apparently, a rule of thumb is that if your car is idling for more than 30 seconds, you should turn it off.  You’ll save more gas this way.  So, when you’re waiting in the pick-up line at school, turn off your car and pull out a library book.

Recycle your sneakers.  I’m good at saving my family’s old clothes and either giving them to friends and family or donating them to charity.  However, our sneakers never tend to have a second life left in them.  Nike collects old tennis shoes and turns them into new shoes or new sports fields.  If you can get your sneakers to a Nike store, it’s a good way for them to go.  Our town even has a tennis shoe collection day.

Get your kids involved.  With the busy-ness of everyday life with three kids and a husband who travels for work, I can use all the help I can get.  The more my kids know, the more they can help out (like drinking from the Bobble instead of a juice box).  One tip from the script was to take soda cans to a recycling center at the grocery store instead of putting them out with your recycling.  The cans get sliced at the recycling center and take up one tenth of the space of the cans that are picked up curbside.  Collecting cans to drop off at the A&P is not something I am motivated to do, but when my kids learned about the $.05 reward for each can, they were happy to fill up a garbage bag and accompany me to the store.  Once there, they helped me pick out snacks in a big bag, too.

                                   My youngest helps by wearing hand-me-downs from her big sister.

Kings, Queens & MashUps

When I agreed to take my daughter to the girls' national chess tournament this month, I wasn't quite sure what to expect.  Not being much of a chess player myself, I thought it might give me the opportunity to learn more about the game.  Surprisingly, very little of what I learned had to do with chess.  Instead I learned a great deal about my daughter, her friends and their generation. 

The Boom Bag Has Replaced the Boom Box

Our journey from New York to Chicago was a treacherous one thanks to bad weather in Chicago.  It included a flight cancellation and rebooking, a three and a half hour delay at the airport, and a bus ride in rush hour traffic to the hotel.  Luckily, one of my daughter’s chess mates had an “I’m Not a Boom Box” bag – a canvas briefcase with sewn-in speakers to which you can attach an Ipod or Itouch and then start your play list.  This boom bag provided hours of entertainment for the girls (and other passengers) throughout the trip as they sang and danced along to Britney, Taio and Lady Gaga.  I liked it so much that I found the link for it online and ordered one www.highfydelity.com.  

MashUps  Are Different From Mosh Pits (Thank Goodness)

I’ve always thought of myself as up-to-date on popular music.  I listen to the radio most mornings in the car, visit Itunes frequently and watch American Idol.  But when a 10 year old asked my 8 year old daughter and her friend if they wanted to have a MashUp on the bus ride to the hotel, visions of girls jumping onto one another went through my head.  Thankfully, I learned that a MashUp is not like a Mosh Pit.  It is making music by mixing two or more songs to create a new song.  In this case, it involved a Black Eyed Peas song from the Boom Bag and a Katy Perry song from an Itouch with speakers.  When I returned home from our trip, I Googled MashUp and a video of Invisible Gurls popped up on You Tube (a mix of Genesis and Katy Perry).  I really liked it, especially since it featured an old song from my school days and a new song from my daughter’s school days.

The Value of a Bad Word:  $20

At lunch one day, a father traveling with the team was discussing a story on the news when he said, “That (expletive meaning donkey) lacrosse player who killed his girlfriend…” Immediately his daughter’s hand shot across to the adult end of the table to collect $20.  They have a rule at their house that if a bad word is used, there is a monetary punishment.  My daughter suggested that we use the rule in our house since her brother had taught her baby sister the “sh” word.  I was quick to explain that the “sh” word was “shut up” and not any other “sh” words that might come to mind.  But, I liked the idea of the rule.  Coming up with a punishment that makes a big impact, whether in your wallet or in your mouth (like soap used years ago), will certainly motivate a change in bad habits.

Etiquette Counts for Something In Chess

At the tournament, I observed a lot of interesting behavior among the players.  During one match, my daughter’s opponent was harassing her, whispering, “Move!” “Go!” “Why are you taking so long?!”  Each player had 90 minutes to play, so they could seriously consider each move.  This little girl’s strategy was to pressure my daughter into a move that would jeopardize her position, and it worked.  My daughter came out of the match stressed out and dejected.  Her school’s instructor advised her to raise her hand the next time an opponent heckled her, which is against the rules.   Before the next match, I walked into the competition room with her and introduced myself to her opponent’s father.  For some reason, I thought this might help.  As he introduced me to his daughter, asking her whether she wanted to be called by her first or second name, she got up from the table and stomped on his foot.  I was speechless, first thinking a) I don’t know what I would do if I had a daughter who acted like that, and then thinking b) yes I do, I’d congratulate her opponent on winning and would withdraw her from the tournament.  My daughter won that match which I considered to be a victory for more than one reason.  At the end of the weekend, my daughter’s team was complimented for its etiquette in playing the game.  This made me prouder than if they ‘d taken home the first place trophy (they tied for third). 

Personal Memories Still Mean the Most

Four and a half hours were budgeted for each of the six matches in the chess tournament.  This gave my daughter and I some time in between to explore Chicago.  Part of the appeal of taking her to the chess tournament was the location.  I had lived in Chicago for several years before she was born.  We toured the John Hancock building, shopped in the Water Tower, visited the beach and Navy Pier.  We dined out at restaurants, eating at two of my favorites – P.J. Clarkes and Pot Belly’s (I love those heated subs!). When we had time to kill on Saturday afternoon, we walked by the Drake Hotel and I told her about the Saturday many years ago when my husband and I were married there.  She wanted to see the Gold Coast Room where the ceremony and reception had taken place.  To our delight, a wedding was being set up so we snuck into take a few photos.  The flowers displayed by the alter were in the same color scheme as mine.  Though I won’t soon forget the sheer joy on my daughter’s face when she won her first match, I overheard her tell my parents on the phone that her favorite part of the trip was visiting the Drake Hotel to see where I had gotten married.

Outside the Drake with cousin Amanda, who attended my wedding 

Right before she got heckled.

The Boom Bag