New Spring Line (March 31, 2011)

It's Spring! (This is hardly headline news, I realize. Even if you haven't checked today's date or your neighbor's gardens, you knew Spring was here, right? After all, the designers revealed the Spring Fashions in November, and the department stores displayed swimwear on December 26.)

The new Spring fashion line is as unpredictable as ever. Why not pair sun hats with respirators? Stilettos with bee keeper's hat? Bikinis with bug zappers?

In truth, the getup above was born out of necessity rather than the result of my reaching blind-folded for whatever was in front of me. You see, the backyard weeds are growing faster than Charlie Sheen's ego. While I can convince myself for a while that they are native plants, at some points the weeds reach a level I can't stand a minute longer. I reached this point last week, and so I dug out the weed-whacker and went crazy on the back yard. Good arm workout. Instant results. Immediate allergy attack.

When the front yard weeds could not be ignored a second longer, I decided to dress for (weeding) success and donned my sun hat as well as a respirator. Bingo! No allergy attack.

And really, it's kind of a cute look. (My neighbors must think so since they were looking at me as I struck fashionable poses while chopping weeds.) Kind of Lady GaGa-ish, I think!

Trunk Show (March 17,2011)

Here is the humorous tale of the junk in my car. This is a true story and no part of it has been exaggerated so as to enhance the story.

If you are obsessive about keeping your car’s interior tidy, stop reading right now. You may not be able to handle this.

But if, like me, you are a parent of young kids, you may get a laugh from this complete list of what was in my car yesterday. I love to amuse people, so I’m opening my life (and the back of my car) to you, all in the name of a shared laugh.

At 6pm yesterday I removed most of what was in the back of my car and took these photos. The first two photos show what was in the car, and the last shows my kitchen after I cleaned up the mess (the mess looked daunting but actually only took about 20 minutes to tidy). I am not eager to live among drifts of clutter, but I’ve accepted it as part of having young kids. This whole thing is a good reminder that we must laugh at what drives us crazy. Here’s what was in my Storage Facility on wheels:

· 1 umbrella stroller
· 1 double stroller
· 1 single stroller
· 1 backpack for carrying baby
· 1 Baby Bjorn, a front-carrying gizmo
· My purse
· My son’s backpack
· My son’s lunchbox
· My son’s jacket
· 1 wrist brace
· 1 plastic spoon
· 1 baby bottle
· 2 sippy cups
· 3 water bottles
· Empty cups
· Sand from beach
· 59 shells from beach
· 1 pair of my son’s socks
· 5 mismatched socks
· 4 pairs of kids’ shoes
· 1 sun visor
· 1 knit hat
· I wide-brimmed sun hat
· 1 diaper bag
· 9 clean diapers
· 2 reusable grocery bags
· Extra kids’ clothes
· 1 large empty canister with lid
· 5 pinecones
· 1 tree pod
· 1 Thomas the Train playing card
· 1 fridge magnet
· Approximately 200 discarded Cheerios
· Wrapped candy left over from Valentines’ Day
· 7 preschool work sheets
· 8 ballpoint pens
· 1 baby toy
· 1 maxi-pad still in its wrapper
· 1 almost-empty bottle of sunscreen
· Back-up bottle of sunscreen (also nearly empty)
· Gum wrappers
· Tupperware
· 1 jar lid
· 1 kids’ electric toothbrush
· 1 bib
· 2 baby blankets
· 1 bag of pretzels
· 1 unopened bag of dehydrated fruit snacks
· 1 emergency kit
· Other miscellaneous stuff, not worth cataloguing

If you have spent more than one hour with small children, you know that they need gear. Now I may have overdone it, having 9 extra diapers in the car, but here’s the thing: I sometimes throw in 2 or 3 extra, because (believe me), you do not want to be caught empty-handed when you need a diaper, and if you’re too busy to count how many are already in the car, tossing in 2 or 3 extras makes sense!

In my defense, the car was merely cluttered, not unsanitary! A friend once vomited after being in his girlfriend’s car, because it was so filled with stuff (probably stuff that smelled). I’m nowhere near that league! There are no dead animals or moldy food specimens in my ride. Simply a lot of stuff.

Usually I have just one stroller in the back, a folding umbrella-style. But yesterday we were away from home for hours and I included the larger stroller because it holds more. Also, we picked up a double stroller someone was selling on Craigslist, so the 3 strollers in one day thing is not my norm. But it is funny! All the other multiple things are really just my attempt to be prepared, responsible mom. Gotta have protection from the sun, in the form of hats as well as sunscreen. Gotta feed and hydrate the kids. Gotta have them brush their teeth on the way to school. Am trying to be earth-friendly with my reusable grocery bags. Stuff like pinecones are not so much in the “gotta have” category but I live with a young collector and we were at the park yesterday, so the 5 pinecones were souvenirs. Same for shells and sand.

Ever so occasionally, I drag out the vacuum and attack the sand, dirt, cheerios and crumbs in the car. But really, what’s the point? Kids have magic powers when it comes to messifying a place you’ve just cleaned. Someday I won’t be schlepping diapers and strollers but by then I’ll probably be painting more again, and if you think moms carry around a lot of stuff in the back of their cars, you should see painters’ cars!