Category Archives: musing

January 4, 2016 · 9:51 am

Be it so resolved

Hello 2016! I am sure you are full of all the promise and potential that anyone could possibly hope for, and you and I will get to all of that, pinky swear. (I confess, sitting here on the first Monday back to work after a whole boatload of holiday fun and frolic, you are fairly well disguised as a big fat bummer right now. But I know, it’s me – not you. We will get over the hump.)

I have to say, as we all start into a new year, whether with a spark or a sputter, one trend this year has me super unimpressed.

What is with the backlash against resolutions this year?

When did setting goals at time of year so traditional for new beginnings become so downright terrible? The blogosphere is overloaded with messages about how failure is certain and change won’t happen. Or worse, that choosing to set goals (especially, it seems, at this time of year,) somehow equals a lack of self-acceptance.

Nope.

Here’s the thing about goal setting – OF COURSE it can happen any time. But January 1st (or 4th,) is just as good a time as any to start. ANDPLUSALSO – you may find that you have to start again, maybe even several times. Doing so down the road isn’t failure, it’s forward motion.

Don’t want to set goals/resolutions this year (or ever?) Fantastic, then don’t. No shame in that game, for sure.

But the seeming campaign against those who do choose to? It is weird as hell to me.

I do tend to reassess and determine if there are changes I would like to be making around the beginning of the year, and then again around my birthday which happens to be in June. It makes for a nice 6 month cycle, and I find both a great opportunity for self-reflection.

Additionally, I have a record of big and small successes under my belt in the “resolution” department, so I don’t buy into the whole “you can’t change over night,” or “setting yourself up to fail” arguments. The truth is, you can do whatever the hell you want, and you can succeed – eventually – if you get started.

If January 1 is the day you start, then wild applause to you!!

Last year I did indeed successfully lose the weight I had been carrying around since Jr was born. Started on January 1st. Didn’t fail.  The year before that I set a really specific financial goal that was put into motion on January 1st. By mid June that goal was accomplished. Didn’t fail.  Years ago, January 1st saw my first day on a nicotine patch after MANY years of smoking. Guess what? Didn’t fail.  10 years ago, I was one of the people that long-standing gym members complain about who chose January 1st as day 1 of her shiny new gym membership. I loved going to the gym 3-5 times a week for the next 5 years, until prego Keri decided she liked working out at home better. Didn’t. Fail.

Honestly, I bet if I sat and thought, I HAVE failed/not continued goals that I set around the start of New Years in the past.   It isn’t anything I am dwelling on, because I fail at things on the regular. You can’t get up to all the nutty new ideas I have and not fail at things. But the successes are what stick in my mind, and in my self-esteem bank, especially this time of year.

I confess that this year, my goal may seem less lofty than some – but it is extremely intentional based on what this next year will bring.

In this year of Jr going from preschooler to kindergartner, and my parents setting their sights on retirement adventures near and far, and The Mr and I so seriously reassessing what we want our family’s future to look like – this year my goal is to “make it work.” Whatever comes, whatever shapes up, pans out, and comes at us. Make. It. Work.

Furthermore, make it work well. Accept, adapt, and drive on. This is a HUGE opportunity for growth on my part, as I have been known to worry, micromanage, and panic… Fret is a skill I have too finely honed.

Do I feel doomed to failure because I dare to call this a resolution and put a plan of action into place at the start of a fresh new year?

Of course not.

Neither should you.

Happy 2016!

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December 31, 2015 · 10:50 am

HOORAY for 2015

2015.  What a ride it has been. Join me in a walk down memory lane in some of my favorite and most popular posts, linked throughout the post.

I started the year with bacon and nostalgic weeping over Fisher Price Little People and tiny underpants, and we are indeed, now in the land of big boy beds and button up jammies, and coloring in the lines (he is better than me at this point.)   BUT, 2015 has been so much more than just that.

It was the year I got trapped in a car wash, the year my hair grew a mind of its own, and the year I got slightly less nostalgic about our former life in The Treehouse.

It was the final au revoir to a touchstone of my younger years, and the year I discovered that some hurt leaves holes in the heart that no amount of roast chicken can ever fill.

2015 gave me my most treasured and proudly worn laugh line.

 

For Jr it ushered in The Age of the Questionable Decision, and gave him ample opportunity to shake his preschooler head at his nutty mom’s behavior, (and occasionally pay her back for it. Just Sayin’.)

 

For The Mr, it was a year of deep, important questions…

Questions like “How’d she end up sick?” and “What the hell is that giant pear for, anyway?”

 

It was the year I mortified the barbecue man.  (Seriously though dude, you have LOTS of company in that, I promise.)

2015 was the year that I clarified my stance on the all-important and extremely divisive issue of leggings usage. (Not Pants. NOT.)

 

It has been a great year, and fantastic to share the ups and downs, ins and outs, and highs and lows with all of you!

I appreciate you taking the time to read – I look forward to trying some new things here on Reluctantly Suburban in 2016, and I hope that each of you will join in with me.

Happy new year!

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December 11, 2015 · 2:23 pm

The Shop

I am officially no longer the plumbing princess of the Northern Suburbs.
I didn’t bestow that title on myself, it was actually a (clearly misguided) guidance counselor in our youth that called Dr Sissy and myself that, once upon a time.
I digress.
This morning, after 20 years of business ownership, my parents signed the papers selling their plumbing and HVAC company to a new owner and officially started the retired portion of their life together. I am so proud of them, and SO EXCITED for them – they have worked so hard and deserve this next phase so richly.
(Here comes Keri’s big ol’ but)
BUT…
But, it is bittersweet. I was at “the shop” (how we have always referred to the building the business is in) two days ago helping pull personal files off of computers and phones, and the new manager came in with his wife and 2 year old daughter. She was an adorable ball of energy running all over checking everything out. Then mom and daughter drove off in their car and the new manager drove off in one of the company vans. I was overwhelmed with memories. That was us. They were the new us.
You see, for 19 years before buying the business, my dad worked his way up to from entry level to Master Plumber with full HVAC certification and foreman/manager/VP. My mom would bring my sister and I to the old location of “the shop,” and it was us who would run around checking everything out, bugging the guys for gum and sitting with my dad while he ate his lunch out of a cooler and drank coffee from his old metal thermos. It had always been us growing up in those spaces. I stood there, watching them all drive out from behind the fence, and I breathed in the familiar smell of oil and earth and sheet metal that equals the shop in my mind. I remembered everything.
I remember standing in our bedroom window, waving goodbye to dad every morning when we were little as he drove off to work in the company van each day, and being so excited when he came home at night. Sometimes it was so late we wouldn’t see him before we went to bed, other times he would be home very early in the afternoon and he would challenge us to long jump contests in the back yard. When we got older I would learn that those early days actually meant that there wasn’t enough work for everyone that day, but my parents never let it show back then.
I’d hear the van start in the middle of a cold snowy night, and peer outside my window to see my dad putting chains on the tires to go fix a furnace or frozen pipe. In the morning he would be home again and up at 5 to go open the shop and get the guys out for the day.
There were company picnics that we got to attend as children, as well as Christmas parties that meant Tamera the cool babysitter would come and stay with us while my dad (who ran in just in time to change out of his work shirt and steel-toes) and mom went off to celebrate.
As we grew older there was the year that we took the sides off the old dump truck and used it to carry the first prize homecoming float around the track surrounding the field during halftime. What was our float you ask? Why, a giant toilet with a replica of our opponents’ mascot swirling down the bowl, of course. (If you put the plumber’s daughters in charge, you get a chicken wire toilet covered in white napkins. Duh.)
It was in that same dump truck, borrowed from the shop, that my dad would tell me that him and mom were buying the business at the end of our senior year in HS. We were transporting a garage sale sofa that I wanted for my freshman college apartment and had my dear friend Matt in the truck with us. I screamed so loud in excitement, I probably caused the poor kid hearing loss or emotional trauma or something.
In between educational endeavors, (re: after dropping out of college the first time, or culinary school, or something,) I joined my mom in the office answering phones and entering invoices into the system. Actually, I joined my mom in the office and proceeded to fall asleep on the keyboard and enter pages of “hhhhhhhhhhh” where my nose rested on the key board every day, and soon we would discover that it was M.S. robbing me of my energy, making me dizzy and weak. I would drag myself from the doctor’s office where I had my steroid treatments back to the shop where I would eat a ginormous bag of some sort of fast food (look out, steroid Keri will rip your arm off for a Big Mac. Two would be better.) Then I would fall asleep in a heap on the floor of my dad’s office, exhausted and angry and not wanting to go back to my apartment in the city alone.
As the fog of M.S. started to lift and I found my strength again, I knew a bad day could always be cured with a drop in at the family business. It was a touchstone, a safety net, a resource, a homebase from which I could reach out into the world.
When Potter was a brand new member of my newly formed “just married” little family, he would spend days there because I was still (finally) finishing my degree and he was too barky to stay in our first little condo alone. Later when we moved back to the old hometown it would be Jr who would spend days at the shop, teetering around his playpen and hanging out with my mom and her sister as they ran the day-to-day in the office. (Aunt Carol is a MUCH less snoozy 2nd chair than I ever was!)
My dad and his guys have gone from seeing our friends running around playing barbies or ball in the basement while the family water heater was being fixed, to fixing the water heaters of those former kids while their own children run around like crazy.
It feels engrained in my soul. It is the heart of our family, and that heart has shown in the way that they have done business all of these years.
You can take the plumber’s daughter out of the shop, but I don’t think you can ever take the shop out of the plumber’s daughter. I am very proud of that part of myself – as I am very proud of it in both of my parents.
Congratulations, Maude and Daddy. You raised two (pretty damn awesome,) kids, as well as a business to be proud of. Dr Sissy and I have been proud to be the owners’ daughters and share the story of our “family business” with those we know.
We love you – and we can’t wait to see what you do next.

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October 28, 2015 · 1:38 pm

FIELD TRIP!!!

Yesterday was Jr’s first official school field trip. Like with permission slips and busses and “completely disposable packed lunch required.” Like for REAL field trip.
Also, with chaperones. EXCEPT, since it was the first field trip, half the kiddos’ in his kindy-prep class had parents who wanted to chaperone, and the teacher didn’t want to deny any of the parents the opportunity to witness this momentous occasion, so she let everyone who volunteered join.
I was one of those parents. And I lived to drink tell about it.
At 9:00 a.m. sharp under cloudy skies, 28 little energy-balls loaded on to two tiny busses, and off they bumped down the road with a line of carpooling parents convoying behind. 20 minutes later the whole kit-and-caboodle rolled up at a pumpkin patch located on the edge of the suburbs where sprawl gives way to wide open farms. What kind of hilarity/insanity ensued on those busses I will never know – Jr was tight-lipped about his first bus rides. I guess the Preschool code deems that what happens on the bus stays on the bus, yo.
With the abundance of parents, I had kind of pictured in my mind a paparazzi-style pack of us following the class around snapping pictures and looking conspicuous. But OH NO NO – if we were going to go, we were climbing in to the trenches with the teachers!! We each got two kids, our own and one other. I referred to them as my “accountabilabuddies,” amusing myself (and exactly not one other person,) to no end with the South Park reference.
Jr was so pumped – even in the chilly wind of a Colorado plains Autumn morning, he was way too excited to notice the cold. Accountabilabuddy numero dos was less impressed and talked mainly about when lunch would be, even as we lumbered through the field on a wagon pulled by a tractor and Jr squee’ed and squirmed with glee on the other side of him. (Honestly, it was pretty dang cold until the sun finally poked through, but come on dude, FIELD TRIP!!)
Each “friend” (as they call kids in preschool world,) got to pick out his or her own pumpkin with only one rule: it had to be small enough that the child could carry it without help. 15 minutes later a pack of empty-handed kids loaded back on to the wagon with 14 parents carrying an armload of kid-selected pumpkins, because four year olds? Not so much with the listening.
At lunch my formerly hungry accountabilabuddy suddenly swore off solid food, pounding his Capri Sun while side-eyeing the rest of his bag’s contents. Jr snubbed the Lunchable that was his special treat, opting instead for my pumpkin seeds and prosciutto and leaving me with slightly gummy crackers and ham. (He was happy to take the cookie off my hands though.)
Then there was goat feeding (no shit,) followed by handwashing and me pouring an amazing amount of hand sanitizer on to both of my accountabilabuddies up to their elbows (because seriously guys, do you even know your hands can go places that AREN’T on your face!?)
Which brings us to the pinnacle of the pre-k pumpkin-patch-apolooza. The one thing that every kid probably told their parents about when asked about the whole deal; AND the one thing that made accountabilabuddy number two grin and giggle and shout.
The “mine car ride.”
As it turns out, the mine car ride is actually a train of mini hay-ride-style wagons pulled by a tractor out into the fields and around a course designed to make Keri cry. (No? Well that is my story and I am sticking to it.)
It was FAST – way faster than I thought it would be – and I swear I heard the lady driving the tractor cackling maniacally she snaked us over built-up bumps and around crazy sharp corners. I froze my smile in place, reaching behind wooping accountabilabuddy B to clutch Jr’s arm because in my addled mind CLEARLY one of those kids was going to be thrown from that contraption, and dangit if it was going to be mine. Thankfully the cackling driver returned us to our place of origin (the barn, NOT the throne of Our Father, though I really thought it was going to go down that way for a minute,) and we disembarked.
The majority of Jr’s class is still firmly ensconced in the ritual of the afternoon nap, so some pretty significant cracks were starting to show in the behavioral foundation of the group as a whole. There was a fair amount of whining, dragging, hanging, and shouted refusals at this point. Must be group picture time! The parents tried in vain to position worn-out kids on and around an old-timey pickup truck and get everyone to hold still(ish) for a pic. It was like telling a nest full of hornets to smile and say “cheese.” ( I can’t wait to see if any of the parents there actually got a good shot – mine are a hilarious stop-motion series of the chaos.)
One more potty break, and back to the busses/cars for the return trip to school.
An hour later I was daydrinking chardonnay with a plateful of not-diet-approved chicken wings, because that ill conceived dare mine car ride left me with an acute sense of YOLO that could only be quieted with cheat food.
So we survived the first field trip.
Pretty sure I have a conference call the day of the next one… whenever that might be.

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September 16, 2015 · 4:36 pm

Easy there, Cheer Bear.

I have a confession to make.

It dawned on me some time in August, but I haven’t even allowed myself to get all the way through the full thought of it, LET ALONE actually speak it out loud and bring the being of it forth into concrete reality.

I am happy here.

Deliriously, disgustingly, and freakishly so – if not really totally and completely so. (Did that sound like the Lollipop Guild should be singing it? Because I went right to “Lollipop Guild” in my head. Which sort of fits perfectly.  Quelle horreur.)

Just BAM!  There I am, in whatever store or restaurant or brewery or WHEREVER, walking around, greeting everyone and catching up and smiling and waving  and whistling the theme to the Andy Griffith show and shit. (Just kidding, I can’t whistle.  But when I see myself in my head acting like I find myself acting, I totally see me whistling that, so I am going with it.)  If I saw me on the street, I would probably want to trip me, to be honest – at this point my “rah rah hometownieness” is kind of gross.

A few weeks ago while looking through some old things with my parents’ in there basement, I stumbled on this:
image

My sister and I each got one the year the city celebrated their silver anniversary.

My family has a brick in the library sidewalk with the date we moved here and our name engraved into the face. BUT we still call it “the new library,” since some of my fondest memories are of trips to the children’s library in the basement of the little building over in the back of the Garden Center in the old heart of the city.

The American flag we fly outside our home is one that was used in a local memorial to honor the victims of the attacks on 9/11/2001 – my parents got one for each of us.

I have a history here, and I see it connecting to my present.

This weekend is the big annual festival, and I am comically excited to go, and to take Jr and enjoy seeing friendly faces, from past and present, and watch the parade and see the local vendors (and drink some local beers,) and just take it all in with him.  It was always a highlight for me growing up here, and now it will be for him too.  I can’t wait.  Andplusalso –  the event that I feel actually flipped the switch and started me down this road to embarrassing levels of love for my current situation is actually coming up again at the end of the month. When my editor asked if I would like to go again, there was BEYOND zero hesitation; I could not get the “hell yes!” response email sent fast enough.  MAKE ROOM IN THE MINIVAN, fellow mega-subdivision ladies, we goin’ OUT!!  WOOP WOOP!! (Whoa no.)

Yup.

If you see a unicorn pooing out a rainbow traveling north west away from the Valley Highway, it is probably headed over to siphon some of the happiness overload off of me to recharge.  (Seriously, if you know me at all by now, you know I am cringing at my own damn self, so you can join in – I totally get it.)

Maybe they spike the water out here with something.

Not sure – and can’t stop to lament now – it’s food truck night in the ‘hood, and I wouldn’t want to miss seeing everyone and joining in.  Gah – I am so gross.

GO BROOMFIELD!!

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