September 26, 2013 · 2:27 pm

Easy, Neighborhood Watch. Just Sayin’ .

If you see a person dressed for the office walking a dog down the street in the city around mid-day, it’s just a lunch hour poop n’ cruise.
Rover needs to go, NBD.

But a woman walking a dog around  the ‘burbs at high noon wearing a wrap dress and kicky shoties, (or anything other than full-blown coordinating workout wear, actually?)
Well, judging from the jaw-slacked stares, an ailen landing in the pocket park would be less shocking.

It isn’t that I’m overdressed for my workout walk.
He won’t make in his own lawn, people, but I have a 1pm face-to-face at the office.

I’m not casing the joint in my flipping Franco Sarto heels with my dog as “cover”, FFS.

Just Sayin’.

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September 23, 2013 · 8:41 pm

The M.U.V.

Frederico Escapé is a mess.
Let me qualify that statement, actually. The INSIDE of Frederico Escapé is a mess.
For realzies.
The depth of the disaster hit me full force recently when “Corporate-y me” found herself feverishly pitching Scholastic order forms, hordes of napkins, junk mail, bobby pins, paci-covers and gah-knows-what-else into the back seat so my colleague from the Boston office could get a lift. (lucky him, eh?)
He is one of my faves, and has witnessed the special horror that is my desk, so he was a-ok with the sitch, but seriously, yo, it’s getting pretty thick in there.
The thing is – 99.99999999999% of the time the Keri-mobile is transporting Jr. and Mommy. Nobody else.
My beloved U.U.V. (Urban Utility Vehicle) of my city-dwelling, self-centric days has given way to the unintentional, unavoidable metamorphosis of suburban parenting:
The M.U.V. (Mom Utility Vehicle.)
Deceptively clean and serene in outward appearance : blueish gray, shiny, windows free of grime.
But crack open one of those doors fitted with the extra sun screen to protect tiny eyes and ZOMG!
Who pulled the pin out of the mom-supply bomb!?
Wet wipes and tissues, blankies and pacis, tiny baseball caps and T-shirts…. All mixing together, ever-churning as the car stops and starts and turns and takes on new layers.
A suddenly-yellow light produces an almost-impossible-in-size forward wave of sippies and goldfish “cackers” and school newsletters from below the seats. It is surreal, even to me.
Don’t misunderstand me here – I am not going down without a fight. I have all kinds of equipment designed to keep everything I could ever need in my M.U.V. organized, tidy, and available with no digging below the seat required. There is the handy cargo bay organizer wedged next to Binky-the-wonder-dog’s collapsible crate in the “way back.” It houses extra coats/layers for the whole family, picnic blankies, balls, and other “outdoorsy” items any Colorado native feels somehow compelled to drive around with at all times. It is stuffed full. I never remember what the hell is in that thing. It does make a nice wedge to keep Jr’s City Mini stroller from sliding around when I stop fast with it back there. (Stopping fast seems to cause a lot of issues for me. Maybe I am not the stellar driver I think I am. Nah.)
In the seat pocket in front of Jr’s throne car seat, an industrial-sized container of wet wipes, a box of tissues, and a trash bag for keeping the used versions of those paper products contained. Mostly. (Again, see “stopping fast” references. Damnit!) Below his feet a bin for toys and pacis and cloth books (no paper when I can’t reach him – he is a paper eater, and the freeway is no time to attempt to break that habit.)
In theory I have everything in place I need for the M.U.V. to be as shiny on the inside as it is on the out.

Except Life.
Except when 2 nights of barfing makes it MANDITORY for me to cover every square inch of interior in the burp-cloth collection I am relieved to say I still have pack-ratted away in the basement just to drive the 5 minutes to the doctor’s office. (Which end up not being barfed on, and living wadded up on the floorboard for months, because that third arm I keep asking for seems to be on backorder.)
Except that a toddler with a snack trap full of cheerios is happy as a clam eating away and singing along to Veggie Tales until that moment when he isn’t – and the cheerios become some sort of anger confetti, whipped around the interior of the vehicle to express his unease. This never takes place on a side street when pulling over might be possible. Not offering snacks at all IS a possibility; however it may result in said toddler deciding that the carseat is, in fact, the portal to hell, and the firey flames are creeping up his backside as I attempt to pilot Frederico safely to our destination.
The Mr’s reaction to this, er, situation, ranges from a mild side eye when I rush after a minor crumb explosion in the garage (“ants, Keri… you will cause ants,”) to recoiling in horror at the idea of actually riding anywhere in my rolling preschool.
Whatever – I’d pit my M.U.V. against his Jeep that he treats like a Bentley in an end-of-times sitch any day.
Blankets, water, books and games – hell our family could eat like kings off that floor board for WEEKS and be fat and happy. (Kings eat ground up teddy grahams and goldfish, right?) Crisis AVERTED.
What do you suppose The Mr. would do in the same situation in his ride? Keep warm with that tiny little shammy he cleans his sunglasses with? Gnaw on a floor mat?
Mmm hmmm.
LONG LIVE THE M.U.V.!!!
(Seriously though – what’s that smell?)

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September 18, 2013 · 8:31 am

Come on, Shirt! Just Sayin’.

I don’t always put my shirt on backwards, but when I do, I stand at the SBux counter joking with the baristas and thinking “damn, I am EXTRA funny today, they can’t stop laughing!”

Then notice 2 hours later in bathroom mirror.

The ruffles go in front, yo.

Just Sayin’.

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September 14, 2013 · 3:01 pm

The Big One

The year I was born the Big Thompson River Valley experienced the deadliest flash flood in my beautiful home state’s recorded history.
Actually, it was during the celebration of Colorado’s bicentennial of statehood, and also the week that my parents brought my sister and I home – their newly adopted 6 week old twin girls.
It was a massive flash flood that sent a 30 ft wall of water through the canyon after 4 hours of heavy rain poured from a stalled out storm system; it decimated everything in its path and took 144 lives, incredibly fast and destructive.
That was “The Big One,” the one everyone in the north part of Colorado always talked about, the one I grew up hearing about as the worst.

The water that came this week was different. Slow, steady, unrelenting rain over days and days. It wasn’t one flash flood, coming down one canyon. It was waves of flash floods coming down a whole system of canyons, again and again and again.

I dropped Jr off for NeNe time at my parents’ house on Thursday morning, after checking to make sure that there was no water in the basement of The Casa so far, (this is the first real test we have had since we bought the place,) just in time to see the first news report of a road a mile away collapsing and the drivers of 3 cars (thankfully) being saved by swift water rescue teams.
The same road we took to swimming lessons when we were very young, out through the endless farmers’ fields and over the rolling hills that flow from where the foothills end to where the prairie begins. The road we all used to avoid the highway between our growing little hometowns and Boulder when we were in highschool. The road where the memorial for two of my highschool classmates sits, marking the spot where their car left the road the night they died. The road I traveled in the back seat of my parents’ Tahoe, for the less-than-five-minute drive from their house, in my last hours as a single girl, to the little farm-house where The Mr. and I were married. The road that leads to our favorite little old town area where you can find us at least once each week now, and still out to the back roads into Boulder that I am teaching The Mr. to know and navigate. Collapsed by the days of rain.

We watched the little reservoir attached to our pocket neighborhood rising, and the drainage creeks starting to rush instead of amble, I checked the basement, checked the windows, checked the roof – watched the TV coverage of Boulder, of the water rising and filling places I’ve loved past and present and worried about friends who’ve made their homes in the canyons, the foothills, and on the plains in the path of the endless, unstoppable water. Into the small, dark, lonely hours of the morning I checked, and I watched.
Jr. had a stomach virus, so I cuddled and rocked and comforted, grateful for the excuse to be that close to my toddler who usually can’t slow down for a squeeze from mom.
The rain fell, Boulder and the towns east of it being washed over by the strength of the flow from the canyons – towns to the west, above Boulder in the hills, cut off completely from anyone, overtaken almost completely by water.

All through Friday and into today, in skies that have a few times turned Colorado blue briefly before clouds built back in, air support flies back and forth overhead providing assistance to areas unreachable by any other means. On the ground skilled personnel work to reach those in need of help. Downstream, the small towns on the Eastern plains brace for the coming and continuing flooding as the rushing water takes its inevitable course.

Everyone watches the skies, listens for the rumble of thunder. Knows the forecast is for more rain.

This will be “The Big One” now. The one Jr will hear about as he grows up here. Mercifully, the loss of lives has been far lower. The destruction more substantial than I can force myself to comprehend.

My mind and my heart and my prayers today are with the people up that little washed out back road I hold so dear. Those affected in towns still underwater, those finding what is left as it begins to recede, and those watching the water still rising now.

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September 10, 2013 · 9:06 pm

That walk-in closet is turning on me.

One of my most over-used longest-running jokes about how I ended up out here is my line about selling my soul for a walk-in closet.

Anyone who has searched for a home in the central Denver ‘hoods I love so well can tell you that it isn’t much of a joke, sadly.
Finding good closet space in the city is wack, yo.

I won’t lie – I had a moment when I saw my current closet the first time. As Alyssa-the-wonder-realtor can attest, I had a moment in a few suburban closets when we were on the hunt for a place out here. The idea that NOT ONLY would we have enough closet space for our clothing, but we could BOTH house our things in the master bedroom? Downright nutty and intoxicating. Fess up city girls – how many have separate closets? Keep a shoe horde in the pantry? Hell I had one friend who kept sweaters in the OVEN (not a big cook, obviously.)

So my giant closet and I have been getting along famously, and Jr has his closet all to himself instead of not having one at all sharing with mommy

BE THAT AS IT MAY…

I had a wardrobe crisis of EPIC proportions on the way to happy hour tonight, and it reaffirmed that I just don’t know how to outfit myself (I almost said “how to outfit my rack” – but that situation is just a whole different therapist’s couch post, m’kay,) for AT LEAST half of the situations I come across in the burbs.

Here’s the thing. I am DOWN with getting dressed in the city. Be it drinks, or dinner, or a quick lap around the park with the stroller, or maybe dropping by a friend’s place for a visit, or the ever-popular impromptu shopping jaunt? Urban Me had an outfit (or 5) for that, No problemo.

The same sitch, in this fishbowl,  is a whole different ball of wax, people.

So tonight, while attempting to dress appropriately for a celebratory drinks and dinner incident at a casual but independent, adorable little place  in honor of a lovely couple’s anniversary, my giant closet and I went to war.  No prisoners were taken,  and I am still not sure if I can truly say there were any survivors.

Everything looked either too done, or too dumpy. There was no in between.
… And for land sakes – in a closet that size with a wardrobe that just keeps growing to fill it all up – the option anxiety was crippling. That which I love has betrayed me AGAIN; much like the time the discarded nacho container flipped up at me on the road and splattered liquid cheese all over Frederico Escapé.

Too much of a good thing while trying painstakingly hard to NOT stick out like a sore thumb.

A crisis of biblical proportions was waged in that closet tonight – oh the horror of the pile of shoes and skirts and scarves and tears… Oh the fashionable humanity.  Frogs rained from the vaulted ceiling.  My tears of frustration lasted 40 days and 40 nights while Potter-the-wonder-dog fashioned an arc from the hamper and marched my shoes in, two-by-two.  (ok – that may not be EXACTLY how it went down, but it was desperately close.)

I still can’t even really process the momentousness – there hasn’t been a melt-down like this since the great “pregnant and bloated but no one can know yet” wardrobe slaughter of Fall 2010. No sweater, clutch, or dress was left unscathed. It came from nowhere, was vicious and intensely damaging, and then blew right out, just like the crazy thunderstorms out here that come in late summer and early fall.

I can’t decide if it is time to hit up the Kohls and surrender, or rock every vintage EVERYTHING I could ever hope to find in the depths of that giant tomb of a closet and give the whole place a big old middle finger to end all birds.

Two steps forward – nine steps back, it seems.
But the question is – which shoes should I wear for the stepping?

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