Laundromat Barbie

Odd things happen when your kids get ready to leave home.

You might be experiencing just the tiniest bit of emotional fragility, but there is too much going on to be reflective. Your house is getting turned upside down by kids who are main-lining frenetic energy as they pack and sort stuff scattered in every room of the house.

In some ways, it's almost like reverting back fifteen years to when they were toddlers and you would get sick and want to lay down but couldn't, because in the twenty minutes of nap-time you desperately needed, they would find the shampoo or the yogurt or honey and use it all like art supplies. It would only take about five minutes but they could ruin your house in just that short of amount of time. I remember.

You'd like the universe to slow down as everyone lurches toward this new season of life but it isn't happening. Instead, you are deep in conversations about all the stuff, new and old; what to buy, keep, sell or toss. There are questions about budgets and the year ahead. Everyone is trying hard to be mature and deferring but it's tiring so when things are a little too tense or teary, thankfully you're still a crazy family and comedy relief is around the corner.

In September we had a garage sale. We spent the better part of the summer preparing for it, going through old stuff. We started cleaning the garage and a lot of stuff from the house had somehow made it out there including a Rubbermaid chest of drawers we'd used to hold toys. The chest was covered in dust and inside were mostly Lincoln Logs, action figures and Barbies (Yes, Barbies, all you judgmental pre-parents. They're insidious. Just wait and see).

We decided to sort all the toys, so we drug the chest into the basement and got to work. Upon opening the bottom drawer, we all shrieked and groaned in unison; a truly distinct and familiar odor wafted out. Somehow a random, rangy cat had wiggled into our garage, found the bottom drawer of Barbies and confidently whizzed a few dozen times on all the dolls and their outfits. It was positively, stupendously filled with cat pee, a giant litter box lined with tiny sequined prom dresses.

This created some emotion and a discussion. Do we go ahead and try to save the Barbies? Just chuck them all? Save only a few?? We delicately poked around the drawer, trying to decide. We finally settled on the fact that a few needed to be saved for posterity so a plan was formed.  We threw everything into the washing machine: Barbies, bleach, detergent, more bleach, hot water, all the ridiculously tiny Barbie shoes and some random rags for cushion. Then we just stood there, staring in.  

The whole scene seemed ridiculous in a way only Americans can appreciate with our boxes and drawers of excess stuff. But I wasn't really in the mood for consumerism angst; I was saving memories.

In the process of getting everything into the washer, I noticed we had a Ken doll.  Up until that moment, I had no idea we had a Ken doll. I held him up, sort of surprised he'd snuck into the line-up a decade or so ago.

I also had no idea he liked pink pajamas. It appeared someone in our house, in the last ten years, had decided the Barbie storyline needed some variety, had brought in a Ken doll, then decorated him with a nice jammie outfit.  Oh, how my day was improving!

So Fem-Ken of the orange skin and rippled abs joined the Barbies for what could only be some version of a very happy dream for a male doll.  (Insert whatever Barbie/Ken, baby-making-washer joke you have in your head right now, enjoy that for a minute and now we can continue.)

As the washer chugged away, I stood staring at the only toy in the drawer that didn't stink or need to be washed, which, in an odd twist, was a cat.

It had kind of a prissy/hissy expression, all mean-girls like. Cats as a species had pretty much fallen out of my good graces, so I just threw it away, out of spite.

Bad cat. 

It took four washings but the Barbies and Ken were finally rid of all cat-pee. They came out smelling assaultingly clean, as in, I would be suspicious if I bought a doll at a garage sale with that range of clean odors. It is sort of a tell, that maybe there was a reason for the lack of even basic smells, like the doll had been drug around the house by a toddler and doused with shampoo, yogurt and honey, then a cat peed on it.

Regardless, we kept the few the kids wanted and put the rest in the garage sale.  Mission accomplished.

The kids are now in school, clean Barbies are tucked away and things have finally slowed down. I don't know what's next, but for today, I have a cold, which means I'm going to take a nap, with both eyes closed, for a very long time. Because I can.

Weekend Update: Cooking, Ahoy!

I'm not sure how, when or where the imparting of food knowledge is traditionally supposed to transpire between a mother and daughter.  In our family, having the oldest child move into an apartment was a nice trigger event for everyone and why not Aisle 7 at Fred Meyers for the location?

I decided a long time ago I wasn't particularly concerned that our daughters weren't that interested in cooking. I did all I could to avoid it as a kid and started sharing cooking duties with my husband out of necessity. I figured if I could learn in my 20's, so could they.

We definitely did our fair share of cooking together as a family; cookies, scrambled eggs, pancakes, burritos, salads, etc. (The youngest daughter actually cooks quite a bit and makes killer grilled cheese and crepes.) Mostly these were basic staples that you could live on for months but without much excitement or variation. It appeared E. wanted to get serious about veggies, meat and crock pots so off to the store we went.

Watching her get serious about cooking made me reflect back on what is it about this part of domestic life that is so interesting and often freighted in some way.  For women, it can be a loaded topic if you are married or sharing domestic life with someone. Is this a shared responsibility or something that just comes along with being a woman? What do you do if neither of you like to cook? Shop? Do dishes? Especially for a daily chore that takes so much time, expectations abound but hard to define.

I also grew up reading all of the books in the Little House on the Prairie series.  I read the parts about their Thanksgiving and harvest dinners over and over and over.  It seemed like Gilligan's Island to me, with the impossible exoticness of how they made food and where the ingredients came from. How could they have made bread, cakes and cookies without electric stoves? Did they really use a butter churn to make butter? What could possibly replace a fridge? And who makes egg-nog mid-summer with their own eggs and winter ice kept cold in the barn?

In addition to pressure from the 19^th century Ingalls and Wilder families, I also grew up in a family with amazing cooks who made everything from scratch: my mom, grandmothers, aunts and later my mother-in-law. Our holiday dinners contained a quality and variety of dishes I realize now was a reflection of their collective talent.

Regardless of my historical or existential baggage, the bottom-line is there has always been something about cooking that forces me to slow down more than I prefer and takes way, way too many steps for an outcome that can be gone in minutes.  Case in point:

How to Make a Meal! Analyze what food you have in your kitchen, make lists, go to the store, buy food, take it home and put it all away. (If you garden, do about 100 other mysterious soil and seed-related tasks.) A few days later, take some of that food back out again (or go to your amazing garden where things never turn brown or die), organize it, start making it, set the table, and finally, eat. About ten minutes later, clear the table, compost the scraps, put leftovers away, and have a small argument about who does dishes. Repeat in four hours.

Most of my friends that find cooking relaxing enjoy some of the steps besides the eating part.  They love looking through cook books and they like grocery shopping. Many of them also just like the process of cooking; they find it relaxing, with or without wine to sip along the way. Gardening literally makes some people I know radiate with excitement, especially going through seed catalogs in February.

I would say over the years, the positive experiences I associate with food and cooking has warmed my heart to this daily chore.  I experience food-love on occasion in grocery stores, still try new recipes and exotic imports. I've found my own style, what I like to cook and eat, and stopped comparing myself. The biggest draw of it all for me is I love eating good food and I like doing it around a table with friends and family. Cooking for a family, while full of challenges, is a wonderfully gratifying experience. There is nothing quite like that and often, those moments make it all worthwhile.

Truth be told, however, what would help the most with my attitude toward cooking was if I cooked about once a week. If I cooked only once a week, I could get very, very excited about cooking.

So back to the task at hand: Here we are with only a moderately prepared 21-year old about to move into an apartment. As a result of having a child now out on her own, I decided it was time for some brief tips. Since they were going to be brief tips, it didn't make much sense to waste time writing them down before we left for the store. Aisle 7 seemed quite appropriate:

• Buy healthy, simple ingredients and until you get your own stocked kitchen, supplement spices with packets and sauces
• Get a crock pot and throw stuff in
• Canned soup and grilled cheese
• Always have eggs around
• Cook meat in volume then freeze in Ziplocs for later
• Chocolate
• Buy organic when possible

That's it! That's all I could think of. We were so thrilled with all we accomplished. The two of us zipped around with younger sister K who was dorm-room shopping, bumping into other families who appeared to be doing the same thing with their college-age children. In fact, it would have been interesting to stop a few families and get a sampling of all the cooking tips and suggestions that were being thrown out as kids moved into apartments for the first time. 

In the end, it was a choppy, slightly inelegant way to transfer a bit of experience to a younger child. That is how much of our family has been however so it seemed comfortable and familiar. I know E ended up with several dinners and a decent supply of breakfast and lunch food. I took an interesting trip down memory lane and was happy to eat dinner out on the way back home.  Hurray for cooking, for the fun times and work that goes into it too. 

Home Care Update: Sinks & Drains

If by chance you decide to make refried beans and you put dried pinto beans in a pot to soak overnight, then forget them - because you work and your kids are leaving for college and you're having a huge garage sale- and you forget them for maybe like, five days, and then you notice your kitchen stinks and you remember the beans and you're like "Ohmygosh! I have rotting beans in my kitchen!" and in a flurry of non-thinking, you decide to try and grind them up in your disposal, you need to know that in all cases, in all homes, in all states of the Union - and here comes the salient tip - this will not work.

Why do I know this? I know this because when after five days of home plumbing repair attempts, I called Mike from Freedom Plumbing and he said, "Refried beans and rice, that's sort of out of my league and something for the drain experts."

A few modest observations:
#1 I had no idea there was a difference between a plumber and a drain expert. 

#2 It's true that you cannot grind up refried beans in your disposal but it's a great way to do several other things, like practice your sink unclogging skills, ponder if you're comfortable using a bathroom plunger in the kitchen, track down your entire set of plumbing tools which consists of a roll of strange white tape and a special wrench, clean out under your sink and ultimately, and you knew this was coming, spend $80 with a drain unclogging expert. 

So the week unfolds sort of like this. You realize as you are grinding your stinky beans that this is a horrible idea as you listen to your disposal change tones with each wad of beans you push down. Facing your stupidity, you watch both your sinks fill and stay filled with brown, grainy bean-water.  After several days of various home plumbing experiments with your moderately good-tempered spouse, trips to the hardware store and enough Draino to toxify the entire Spokane River watershed, you finally decide to face your ineptitude and call the plumber.  His magnet is on your fridge from the last time he came to fix whatever large object you pushed down a tiny drain pipe, and so you call him and this is the part where he mentions in a roundabout way that I'm now in a special Stupid Customer category and he's busy for a few years so try this other guy. With your remaining shred of adult self-esteem, you contact the drain guy, the expert, and you wait.

Donny the Drain Expert comes and somewhat anticlimactically, uses a fairly giant machine to unclog your drain. It is loud and there is quite a bit of vibrating and it's a bit more energy than the kitchen is used to seeing. It's very mechanical. There is a small bit of drama at the end ("How did it go, Donny? Well....") that involved a 90-degree pipe turn that was tricky but in the end, he was reassured that all was well.

As these things go, you write your check while Donny knowingly reminds you - in a way only people with real skills and uniforms can - of the basic facts most people are ignorant of regarding proper drain care: You really shouldn't ever actually use your disposal ("Your pipes are rusting from the inside out so that food, you know, it just grabs onto those pipes and sticks), you should never use real tools on your pipes ("These plastic pipes, they'll snap, just snap, if you use a wrench on them"), a general age prediction regarding your pipes ("These here are about 47, maybe 48 years old, solid W9221 galvanized steel... blah blah more incomprehensible metal and pipe facts") and finally, an earnest request not touch or mess with your pipes again as most Americans misplaced their handy-person skills somewhere in the vicinity of the iPhone charger.

So really, you can go ahead and give this a whirl if your weekend seems sort of sparse, if you need a burst of handy-man and handy-woman activity. For me, I am quite happy with a clean, pleasant smelling kitchen and my can of Western Family Refried Beans.