mamajoan

A couple of weekends ago we painted our car. We used tempera paint (also known as poster paint), which washes off easily with water, so as soon as we get a decent rainstorm, the car will be back to normal (i.e., boring) again. In the meantime, we've been having a lot of fun with it.

I'm not sure exactly where the idea came from. It just hit me one afternoon out of the blue, and became a bit of an obsession. I googled extensively over the next few days. When I started out, I felt sure that one of two things would happen: either a) I would find out that painting the car was not feasible for some reason (illegal, maybe, or damaging to the car, or???) or b) I would find a whole bunch of blog posts from mommy-bloggers who had done it and would offer tips, tricks, suggestions, and of course pictures.

To my surprise, though, neither of those happened. I found precisely one mommy-blogger post, and in that case it was a nonfunctional car that the family had decided to junk, and the mom let the kids paint it before they called the junkyard. But other than that, nothing. I was surprised. I kept googling for a while longer, sure that I would find something to explain why no one had apparently ever thought of this before. Meanwhile, I googled tempera paint and read all about how safe it is (quite literally safe enough to eat, in fact, although of course I don't recommend that and did not mention it to my kids).

At last, satisfied that it seemed legal and safe, I decided to do it. Still I said nothing to the kids, though. I snuck off to the local arts and crafts store (Michael's) one Saturday afternoon when I had an hour of kid-free time, and I bought big 16-ounce bottles of tempera paint in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and white. I also bought lots of different paintbrushes of all sizes and types. That evening, I suggested to the kids that we take the car through a car-wash. They love that, so of course they were excited. We got the car washed and I still said nothing about painting it. That night after they were asleep, I snuck outside and painted a small "J" in blue on the side of the car, as a test. The next morning I splashed some water on the J and rubbed it with my fingers; it came right off, and most importantly, there was obviously no damage to the car's paint underneath. It was then that I knew we were Go! :)

I put the kids in the car and headed for my mom's house, because she lives on a quiet cul-de-sac where we could walk around the car and feel safe, unlike our street which is quite busy. On the way over, I told the kids that we were going to paint the car. At first they were disbelieving, but excitement began to grow, especially in Ruthie, who loves to draw and paint. I handed her the package of assorted-size paintbrushes that I had bought, and she examined them carefully, already choosing which she would use for what.

We got to grandma's house, parked the car, poured paint into small plastic cups, put on oversize t-shirts as smocks, and laid down some basic ground rules. No painting on the windows (the kids were quick to understand why this would be unsafe). No painting yourself or your sibling. No paint on the license plate or headlights. And then...I set them loose! :)

Well, when I say "them," I mean us, of course. My mom and I participated too and we all had a blast. At first, each of us claimed one door for our own, but soon we were branching out to the other parts of the car and "helping" each other with the other areas. It was a nice sunny crisp day, and we had a great time. We used the red and white paint to mix up a little bit of pink, and the kids had fun experimenting with different proportions to make brown. By the time we were done, some of the paint was already starting to flake off, but the car looked fantastic overall. We drove off to the monthly SMC meeting, and I told the kids to watch the faces of the pedestrians we passed. We got a lot of amusing and amused looks! The kids were excited by the thought of driving to school the next morning. :)

So, it has been over a week now, and the reaction has been great. At the kids' school, all of their friends have ogled the car, along with a lot of kids we don't know (and more than one mom asked me more than one question about it!). At the grocery store and other random places we go, people stop us to comment on it. When we drive down the street we can see people doing double-takes. :) It has rained a few times, but only lightly, so the paint is smudging and such but still largely intact. Of course, it's March in New England, so surely it can't last...but we're really enjoying it as long as it does!

( Some pictures behind the cut... )

In conclusion: this is a great activity for a weekend afternoon, preferably when the weather is forecast to be dry for several days afterward. It's quite economical too; the paint was only $2 per bottle and we have a LOT left; the paintbrushes were about $10 total, but I did buy way too many -- you could easily do it with half that, and of course, we can and will reuse the brushes as well.

I also have some Deep Thoughts(tm) about why it seems like no one ever does this. Perhaps I shall manage to get those down in a post at some point.

(In which I attempt to get back into LJ by posting shorter snippets rather than try to do comprehensive updates)

I bought a new (used) car a couple weeks ago. It's a 2006 Subaru, black. I really like it so far. I still have some lingering residual guilty feelings about abandoning Team Stick Shift and going over to the automatic-transmission dark side ;) but I'll probably get over it. ;) My left foot has already become resigned to being, as they say in the corporate world, "made redundant." ;)

I bought the car from this guy called Ernie the Subaru Guru, the same guy from whom my mom bought her car last year. He basically goes to auctions and buys used Subarus, fixes them up, and resells them. He has an encylopedic knowledge of every year's models and what changed from one year to the next, etc., and he's very entertaining to listen to. When I drove up in my old 1997 Subaru, before he even showed me the car I was thinking of buying, he first popped the hood on my old car to check out the innards. Then he scolded me for not keeping the fluids topped up, and went into his garage for his equipment, and topped off the coolant and oil. LOL.

Oh, and the car I bought from him? It was originally sold in Bennington, Vermont, so on the rear of the car, in that space on the left where it shows the name of the dealership, it said "Bennington Subaru." Well Ernie removed the "nn" and the "ton" so now it says "Be ing Subaru." :)

Then I sold my old car to a chick on craigslist, which turned into a whole drama, but that's a story for another post.

Wow, has it really been ten days since I last posted? And my auto-twitter-reposts are broken again? That's unfortunate, because I've been tweeting up a storm. Um, so to speak.

Anyway, I haven't been posting because, um, stuff? has been happening? you know? like, life? I dunno.

Did I post that I was in a minor car accident the Friday before last? It was totally annoying. I have spoken to the insurance company, who took down my version of events and said they will let me know whether I'm found at fault. If I am, you bet your ass I'll be appealing that shit. I can't believe that the jerk who hit me even bothered to call the insurance. I can't possibly imagine that his car sustained more than the deductible's worth of damage. But what-the-fuck-ever.

Then my car got dinged again today, in the SAME SPOT, by a guy at Isaac's afterschool! He was backing up their van, and it was dark and rainy, and I was standing on the sidewalk thinking "well, he's going to stop...he's going to...AUGH STOP!" and he, well, didn't. Not in time. It was just a little dent in the fender so I was like WHATEVER I JUST WANT TO GO THE HELL HOME and he was like "I'm going to talk to my boss" and I fled.

Apparently, while I was helplessly watching him back into my car, I yelled "Don't bash my car!" because Ruthie said about a thousand times on the way home "he bashed your car!" Oy.

Thanksgiving! I didn't post about it. Um, it was what it usually is. Family, food. Kids misbehaving and not eating barely anything. I think Ruthie had three bowls of ice cream. Over the weekend we had a playdate and went to the zoo and saw "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs." It was cute.

The kids play together so much lately. It is awesome. Except for when it makes us all late to bed because I can't manage to untangle them long enough to get pajama'd and so forth.

That'll have to be enough for now because I'm beat.

This past weekend the kids and I, and my mom and sandykidd, went out to our family's summer cottage. It was the first time this year for me and the kids. They, of course, had a blast.

It all started with a flat-tire episode, which was highly annoying, especially given the timing (i.e. I was already stressed out over how long it had taken us to get ready, and then we finally got everything and everyone into the car and pulled away from the curb all ready to set out for cottage, and...that horrible grinding noise/sensation. Ugh!! Plus I ended up having to go to the shady fixit place that I don't trust, because the one I do trust was closed. So it cost me $100 for a new tire from the shady place, replacing a tire that I just bought a few months ago. I don't even want to think about it. Sigh. But at least it got fixed quickly and once we did actually hit the road, it was smooth sailing.)

Ruthie spent at least the previous 24 hours telling me repeatedly that "I'm not going to go in [the water]" to which I repeatedly replied, "that's okay, you don't have to," while thinking inside my head, "fat chance." Needless to say, within approximately thirty seconds of our arrival at the cottage, she was in the lake up to her neck. ;) And indeed she spent the lion's share of the weekend in the water, most of the time naked. Even when her lips were literally blue with cold, she still refused all my entreaties to put on at least a bathing suit. ("I'm not bathing! I'm just lying in the water!" *facepalm*) She had a great time.

Isaac had fun too although we definitely need to start getting some of his friends out there to play with him. (I had tried, but I need to try harder.) Even with three adults on hand he just couldn't get enough of baseball (not that we have a lot of patience for pitching to him) and anyway we were trying to clean up and stuff. Isaac was a pretty big help with the cleaning too, though. On Sunday my mom's friend Grace came out to help with the weeding and trimming of the vegetation, and Isaac helped a lot with that. He enjoyed raking and bagging leaves, and cutting away branches from the bushes, and so forth.

Mom recently bought a new bunk bed (from IKEA) for the cottage, and the kids loved it. Isaac was very excited to sleep on the top bunk. It brought back fond memories of the time metafrantic fell off the top bunk there, and he and mom concocted a story involving a bear attack and a rescue from He-Man. Good times! ;) But these newfangled bunk beds they sell nowadays have railings, so falling off would be practically impossible.

We also had an interesting experience with Animal Control. There was a dog that appeared around noon on Sunday and hung around our property for a while. He wasn't terribly interested in us but also wasn't too concerned when we yelled at him to go away. When we got a little closer it became apparent that he had some kind of injury or rash or sores on his face and neck, and he wasn't walking well either. We put down some water in a bucket and he drank it like crazy, despite the fact that he was just a few feet away from a whole lake. After calling around to the neighbors who were around in their yards and finding that no one recognized the dog, we decided to call the police and ask for animal control. It turned out that the neighbors a few houses over had done the same. Eventually the animal-control guy showed up and put the dog in his truck. It was not particularly similar to the "Animal Cops" shows on Animal Planet, of which I have watched quite a few. For one thing, the officers on those shows drive official-type cars with police insignia and specially built-in cages. This guy had a beat-up rusting pickup truck. For another thing, the officers on the shows usually wear neat, tidy uniforms that make them look like cops ... they don't tend to wear ratty shorts and stained "wife-beater" style tank tops, and have a beer in one hand while on the job. ;) Still, the guy seemed to know what he was about, dog-wise, and said that he felt sure the dog was someone's pet and would be claimed, based on its friendly behavior.

So that was exciting. Other than that it was a pretty nice, restful weekend at the cottage with nice weather, and it was kind of a letdown to get home, as usual. Oh well.

And now I have to swing into hyper-party-prep mode, because Isaac's birthday party is Saturday and I have SO MUCH TO DO ZOMG.

So, my grandmother died on Monday. This was not unexpected. She had Alzheimer's and had been "gone" mentally for quite a few years. Over the past month or two, her physical condition deteriorated pretty fast. My mom flew out to LA (where grandma lived with my uncle) last week, and she and her brother mutually decided to stop trying to treat grandma, just give her morphine to keep her out of discomfort. That was Friday. She hung on till Monday morning, which I'm sure was probably among the longest three days of my mom's life.

Anyway, so grandma is gone now and I think the main emotion we all feel is relief. She was 94 and her time had come. Not that we aren't sad, of course, but it's for the best.

Meanwhile my poor mom is totally stressed and trying to help her brother deal with all the administrivia of death and so forth. It sucks that she had only been back from her vacation for a week before all this happened. She's planning to come back the end of this week, but who knows how long it'll take her to recover from the emotional stuff, not to mention the effects of barely sleeping while holding vigil over grandma -- and let's not even talk about the jetlag!

In other sucktastic news, yesterday my car started making a horrible grinding noise, and long story short, it needs $1500 of repairs. I am sunk in the pit of despair. If you read my friends-locked update from the other day, you know the whole story. Otherwise, just suffice it to say that in no way can I afford this right now. :(

Whew! Where to begin??

Isaac's party went very well. We lucked out with the weather: several days of way-too-hot, then several days of chilly and rainy, but in between that we had one day of absolutely perfect glorious weather, and that so happened to be the day of the party. So, a big thanks going out to the weather deities for that one.

Thanks are also due to anotherjen and dimers for coming over on short notice to help me clean in advance of the party; and to my mom and non-LJ-enabled Maria for help with pre-party prep, during-party food wrangling, and post-party cleanup!

Note to self: seven pizzas are WAY too much for a dozen 5-year-olds and approx. equal number of adults. oops.
Note to self 2: when planning a party with munchies AND pizza AND cake AND cupcakes, don't buy ice cream! Especially don't buy more than one container of ice cream! ESPECIALLY don't buy THREE different containers of ice cream! And ESPECIALLY don't buy two more pints when you've already bought a half-gallon!! augh!

Note to all readers of this LJ who live in the greater Boston area: PLEASE come over to my house some evening in the near future and have a bowl of ice cream. I am serious. Help me out here. Bring the kids! Bring the spouse! Bring the roommate! Bring the dog!...actually, not the dog, really. But bring everyone else!

Ahem, but anyway, the party was good and fun was had by all and there were only a few bumps and bruises. And Isaac got some really great gifts. And afterward we were all sooooooooooo wiped, we napped liek whoa.

We did have way too much pizza, but fortunately everyone was glad to take some with. Same goes for the cupcakes (we did decorate-your-own-cupcake as a party activity, which the kids LOVED, but the number of cupcakes I asked mom to make was way too many (sorry mom!!) and some kids wanted to decorate more than they wanted to eat) except that I couldn't convince most people to take more than one or two with them. So we have tons of cupcakes left. I may bring some to the office just so that we don't end up eating them all. ;) It's just too bad that I can't bring the ice cream to the office; it wouldn't survive the commute. alas.

Yesterday we sat around the house all day like lumps. We played with a bunch of Isaac's new toys, and I baked bread, and we watched some Top Chef (I am like five episodes behind so PLEASE do not spoil me!). I also made a yummy green curry and this sentence shall serve as my reminder to post about that sometime.

Then this morning we went to get into our car to go to school and work, and lo, there was a totally flat tire. *facepalm* So we ended up taking a series of buses. First we walked up to the corner and took a bus to Ruthie's daycare. But it was the Clarendon 89 instead of the Davis 89 so then we had to walk about four blocks, which took a while. (Did I mention I was carrying my work stuff, including a fairly heavy lunch bag, plus the kids' lunchboxes, plus the kids' bedding for school, plus a full bag of diapers for Ruthie? Yeah, so that was my workout for today. I am Packhorse Mama, hear me roar. Or groan, more like.) Then Isaac and I took another bus back to his school. Then I took another bus back to Davis to get on the subway to come to work. I didn't get here till 10:30. *sigh* It's kind of crazy to take such a circuitous route, but it's just a little too far to walk from our house to Isaac's preschool.

And now I'll have to leave work a little early to go home and call Triple-A and deal with the tire. ugh. oh well, it could be worse.

Still can't believe my little boy is five. FIVE!!! zomg.

more later....

A post on freecycle this morning offered "kids' placemats" which I initially mis-read as "kids' placentas." WTF, subconscious? LOL.

Ruthie's red sleeper (footed pajama item) had been in the laundry pile for quite a while and she had been wearing her blue one instead. I finally unearthed and washed the red one, and she is so excited to have it back. The past two mornings upon waking up, almost the first thing she said was "red seeboo on!" oh to be so easily pleased ;)

Also this morning Ruthie got a pot lid out of the cabinet and discovered what a great noise it makes when you bang it against things. *groan* She was walking around going "pot top! pot top!" and I said "Ruthie's a pot top!" and she went "noooo! Ruthie's a ruthie!" :)

Then she attempted to bang the pot lid on her brother, so we put it back in the cabinet.

Isaac told me the other day that his preschool is "boring." I think this was about 1/3 a case of "I just learned this word boring and will use it a lot so that I can figure out what it means," and 1/3 the fact that his Wednesdays with grandma are more fun than school, and 1/3 actual dissatisfaction with his school. It's true that he's starting to outgrow preschool, especially now that they have had an influx of new, younger kids (just barely turning 3). Also the winter has been very hard. The preschool director is, I must say, not all that good at finding ways for the kids to work off their natural energy when they're confined inside due to bad weather. And particularly on days when the weather does permit going outside, but the playground isn't usable due to leftover snow and ice; typically they just take a walk around the neighborhood. Which counts as outdoor time, but since they all have to walk together holding a rope (thus everyone is constrained to the pace of the slowest walker), it doesn't really help with the expending of energy. This is one of the big downsides of using this particular preschool, whose facilities amount to basically one large room. There aren't many options for exercise in that setting. With the weather starting to improve, hopefully this will get better, but I do think it's going to be a long six months, in some ways.

Of course, in kindergarten the kids only get half an hour for lunch-and-recess combined!! But at least they have actual space for running around and such, plus they have gym once a week....

D'oh, this was supposed to be a "what I did yesterday" update but it turned into a "misc kid stuff" update. oops. Well, I can do the rest later, but I'll just mention that I did get my car back and all seems to be well now, $335 later, sigh. Ah well. It could be worse. I was fearing a clutch job that would have cost me a grand. That still could be in my fairly near future, but I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.

Augh!! I have had quite enough of these car-breakdown adventures thankyouverymuch!!

( The short version is that they said it was fixed but it isn't. Longer version behind the cut. )

Anyway, to sum it all up, I still have no car. Argh. I am annoyed.

Also I am very sad to be missing tonight's chorus rehearsal which is an "audition" for a new music director. I really wanted to be there for it. But apparently the universe (god, fate, Loki, etc.) had other ideas.

Now I better go whip up some mac-n-cheese as promised.

Day started out promisingly enough. We went shoe shopping, my daughter picked shoes with fire trucks on them and my son picked shoes with hearts. (However it turned out that the heart shoes cost $45 whereas the ones with deep-pink stars were $25 so I managed to talk him into stars instead.)

Then we went to head out, newly shod, for our next adventure, and...the car wouldn't start. *facepalm*

Insert several hours of related annoyance here. Sigh.

Oh well. On the plus side, glad I decided to do the shoe shopping first. How much worse would it have been to break down in the parking lot of Market Basket with a trunk full of groceries? Don't answer that. And hey! At least I get to wait till Monday to find out how much this latest car thing is going to cost me. groan!

In less whiny news, I forgot to post yesterday that I uploaded a new video of the kids to YouTube. I'm too tired to dig up the embed link right now so I'm gonna make you work for it. click here to watch Isaac and Ruthie sing a duet.

Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta scrape something up for dinner on account of we didn't get to the aforementioned grocery shopping.

Oh, and btw? is it just me, or are they making Cadbury Creme Eggs smaller than they used to? anyone?

Just a day late, let me start off with belated happy-wedding-anniversary wishes to metafrantic and sandykidd, and belated happy-adoption-anniversary wishes to orbitalmechanic and Violet. yay.

We did go to the school open-house last night, and I was pleasantly surprised by how well both the kids did with it. They both had a lot of fun with the provided childcare (which consisted of a bunch of 6th graders in a classroom with some crayons) and ate huge piles of fruit from the provided snack trays. The info session itself was fairly interesting as well. I was a little disappointed that it didn't include any opportunities for one-on-one chat with current parents from the school, but it was still good to hear some parents, students, and teachers talk about the school. I'm almost completely decided to put this one down as my first choice. (As we were leaving, Isaac asked if we could come back tomorrow. :) )

We didn't get home until almost 9 so were quite late getting to bed. And then both kids were up early this morning. *facepalm* Hopefully we'll get a bit more rest over the weekend.

Ruthie insisted on bringing her lunchbox along to the open house last night. She noticed it as we were heading out the door, and I guess she's now indoctrinated that we need to bring it when we leave the house, LOL, so she grabbed it. And when I was getting her out of the car at the school, she got mad that I tried to take it away. So I just let her bring it in with us. And yeah, you saw this coming -- we ended up forgetting about it and leaving it there. *facepalm* I shall have to call on Monday and find out whether they found it or it's lost forever. It does have her name on it, so hopefully we shall retrieve it at some point. Luckily I have another one (long story) which I sent with her to daycare today.

Today I had lunch with "the girls" at work. Our marketing director has initiated these every-so-often lunch outings with the female contingent of the company. Currently there are ten of us, although two are temporary contractors (head-hunters). Anyway, it's fun to go out with "the girls" and it's nice because the company pays for it and we go to nice restaurants with $15 lunch entrees. ;) I had a spinach salad with blue cheese, clementines, and walnuts that was SOOOO good. I also had a "frittata" (fancy omelette) with spinach and cheddar, which was okay, except that I should have predicted that the cheese would make it really REALLY greasy. So I couldn't finish it, but that's okay too. I passed the rest of it to our HR lady who had been eyeing it covetously. lol. I should have just ordered two or three of that great salad.

That reminds me, my latest recipe -- am I up to #10? -- ( breakfast wrap with eggs, cheese, and potatoes ) Yum!

In unrelated news a post on the davis_square community has just reminded me that my emissions inspection sticker expired yesterday. Oops. I guess I know what I'll be running out to do tomorrow. And now I'm crossing my fingers that I won't get a ticket between now and then.

We'll be spinning our wheels all weekend with no grandma and no plans -- any locals want to hang? pekmez? ima_omi? ww1614? Bueller?