Why do I Ever Make Plans?

Cyrus and I arrived in Denver yesterday for another month so that I can work 30 hours a week for my uncle.  Jason took Friday off to facilitate the laundry/packing process.  As I often do when I have a lot to accomplish, I had a basic schedule laid out in my  head of how Friday should go:

6:00am  Wake up, play downstairs, eat breakfast
8:00am  Go for a walk with Cyrus and Jager
9:00am  Get home, start laundry
11:30am In and Out for Lunch (what, I've been having a craving!)
12:00pm Home, Cyrus down for a nap, pack while he sleeps
2:30pm   Cyrus wakes up, we go do something fun, like go swimming or go to the park
5:00pm   Get home and make dinner, which we then eat together as a family
7:00pm  Cyrus to bed, Jason and I spend the rest of the evening relaxing
10:00pm  Go to bed

I should know by now that when I make plans, God laughs.  Here's how my day actually went:

Moving Makes my Head Hurt

Ok, NaBloPoMo is kicking my butt.  Or maybe its moving or this cold.  Who knows.  But, I will not back down!  I will finish this thing!

So, at the moment, we are staying with my brother-in-law and his wife while we slowly move stuff from our storage unit and my brother-in-law's garage into our new place.  The goal is to have our beds over there by Wednesday night, and everything else by Saturday. Jason's crazy work schedule, the limited hours at the storage unit, and that sweet little holiday called Thanksgiving are turning this move into a week-long adventure.

Moving, in general, makes my head hurt.  I hate it.  I hate packing, I hate unpacking.  I actually quite like going to a new place, but I hate leaving the old place.  I hate the mess and finding new places for things that used to have places.  There are some things about this move in particular that are doing my head in.

Utilities.  Specifically, phone, internet and cable.  I've spent probably 4 hours pouring over information on line and talking to various representatives on the phone, trying to sort out the best options for us.  There are almost too many options, because I can't just look at monthly bill - I have to consider how that monthly bill will change in 3 months, 6 months or a  year, depending on the specials.  I have to weigh different channel options and DVR capabilities, plus start up costs.  Ack!

Our storage unit.  Yuck.  First of all, I haven't seen any of this stuff for almost 5 months.  Some of it is stuff that we used for the previous year and a bit, and then some of it has been in storage since we left New York because it didn't fit into our weird kitchen/living setup.  We have a bizarre accumulation of furniture from various well-meaning family members, much of which is very useful.  But we seem to have three tables and no chairs, four tvs, several nightstands and end tables, but no desk, and none of living room furniture matches (the wall couch found a new home with my brother when we left Portland).  There is unmistakably too much crap!  And yet, we still don't quite have we need.  Which means that we will probably have to (get to) make a trip to Ikea, to purchase yet more stuff, and then find a place for or get rid of the stuff we already have.  My head hurts thinking about it.

Moving/unpacking with a 16 month old.  Seriously, how do you parents of more than one small child do it?  Working around meals and nap times is one thing, but then there's the in-the-way factor when moving heavy boxes and furniture, and the fact that Cy suddenly requires that he be held indefinitely at the most inopportune times.

OK, back to the madness.  Here's hoping I can muster the motivation for another post tomorrow!

Counting down the days...

Ugh.  Cyrus and I leave for Phoenix in 13 days, and suddenly, things that I've been tolerating for the past four months have become completely intolerable.  For some reason, the last two weeks of any experience are always the hardest for me.   In elementary school, the last two weeks before vacation made me restless and antsy.  Anytime I've been away from home for an extended period of time, I hardly miss my family until I'm about ready to go home, and then it becomes almost unbearable.

Now that the end is in sight, being without my husband and being the sole parent for Cyrus is driving me a little nuts.  Not to mention that fact that we've been living in someone else's house, albeit my parent's house, for the past four months.  I lost my patience and yelled at Cyrus three times today.  And it wasn't that he was being unusually naughty - I just couldn't keep my cool.  He has recently started throwing a massive fit every time I change his diaper.  Usually, I try to find something to distract him, or I sing him a song, but today, I suddenly felt overwhelmed and frustrated at being the only parent, and instead of trying to help him out, I yelled.  Loudly.  And I might have cursed.  Now, don't get me wrong, my parents have been incredibly helpful, but it's just not the same thing as having Jason around to jump in when I just can't do it any more.  It probably doesn't help that Cyrus woke up at 4:30am today for the second day in a row (stupid daylight savings time).

I've been trying to remind myself all day long that I just need to make it a little while longer and then our little family can be together again, in our own house. Now, if Cyrus could maybe sleep in past 5am tomorrow, I might just make it!

My Beef with Children's Clothing Manufacturers

I'm sure that this will come as no surprise to parents of boys, but there is some serious inequality in the availability of clothing for baby boys versus baby girls (and I expect that this trend continues somewhat as children get older).  Go into any baby department in any store, and you'll notice pretty quickly that the girl's section is about three times as large as the boy's section.  I'll be honest - most of the time, I kind of like this disparity.  For one, I'm a terrible decision maker, so having limited choices is really better for me.  For another, baby/toddler girl clothes are kind of hard to resist - even Jason can't contain his oohs and awes when we happen to wander into the girl's section.  If I had a little girl, I'd be way too tempted to spend money on things we don't really need.

However. There are times when limited choices are a major challenge.  The difference in availability of clothes seems to be even more pronounced when it comes to dressy outfits.  And herein lies the heart of my beef with clothing manufacturers.  It would seem that, unless it is Christmas or Easter, baby boys only want, no, only need,  to wear play clothes or clothes that make them look like tiny versions of some very hip male adult (who is most likely, not a father).  They do not ever need to attend weddings, funerals, or even church.  Unless of course their parents want to spend half a paycheck at some high end children's clothing store.

Flashback Friday: The Great Christmas Baking Fiasco

I've been doing a lot of holiday baking so far this year.  Well, really, I've baked one particular dessert several different times, and I'm not done yet.  That dessert is cheesecake.  I have a recipe that my mom developed over several years of testing and trying, and I happen to think it is one of the tastiest things I have ever eaten.  It has become my holiday staple, and I pretty much make it for any holiday gathering occurring between Thanksgiving and New Years.  This year, I made one for Thanksgiving, one for Cy's Blessing celebration, and one for Jason's office holiday party.  I am making four for this Tuesday's Relief Society Enrichment Meeting, and I am making at least one for Christmas Eve dinner.  All of this cheesecake baking reminds me of the first time I made this recipe all by myself.

It was the year 2005 and it marked Jason's first Christmas in New York.  We were engaged and sharing an apartment in the Bronx.  We were unable to fly home for Christmas because we had to fly home in January to plan our wedding in April.  It was admitedly depressing to not be with any other family, so I wanted to bring some of my family's traditions to our little Bronx Christmas.  There are two things that make me think Christmas - homemade cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning and cheesecake for Christmas Dinner.  So, never having made either before, I set to make them both on Christmas Eve.

I began with the Cinnamon rolls at about 1:00pm in the afternoon.  I mixed all of the ingredients, rolled them up, put them in the pan and left them to rise.  And left them.  And left them.  They didn't seem to be rising the way I thought they should, but I baked them anyway.  They came out small and hard, and they smelled oddly of play-dough.  I took one out and took a bite and was disgusted to discover that they tasted of play-dough as well!  After examining the flour bag, I realized that, not being a regular baker, I was using extremely old flour! I think it had expired like 6 months prior or something.  So, I started all over.  I don't remember exactly how long the cinnamon rolls take to rise and bake, but it is quite some time.  It was at least evening by this point.

I then began my cheesecake.  After several phone calls to my mom, I had it all mixed and ready to go. The way her recipe works is that, after making the graham cracker crust, you then make the rich, cream cheese filling.  You bake that for about 30 minutes, let it cool for 10 minutes, then put on the sour cream topping and bake for another 10 minutes.  I guess with eating dinner and what not, the process took quite some time.  When I pulled it out of the oven the first time, I was extremely pleased with the results.  Beleive me when I tell you that it was perfect.  There was not one single crack, it was smooth, and the perfect consistency.  I mixed the sour cream topping, and put it back in the oven.  While it baked I took a shower, as I had been baking all day and was tired and dirty.

It was about 1:30am Christmas morning when I went to pull the cheesecake out of the oven for the final time. Oh man, it's hard to talk about even now, four years late.  I pulled the cheesecake out, and as I did, the bottom of my spring form pan popped out of the ring, rose into the air (with the cheesecake on top, of course), turned over and landed with a splat on the floor.  I believe my response went something like this:

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I then ran into the bedroom and flung myself on the bed in a fit of tears.  I had been baking for 12 hours and all I had to show for it was one lousy batch of cinamon rolls!  Jason ran in from the living room to see what was wrong, sure I had burnt myself or cut off a limb or something.  When he saw the disaster, being the thoughtful guy that he is, he immediately grabbed a camera and snapped a picture.

Yes, my friends, that is what happens when hot cheesecake, which has not yet had time to set, is thrust to the ground by gravity. It really did flip exactly upside down in the air.  Kind of amazing, really.

That is the splatter effect up the dishwasher.  What you can't see, is that it also splattered clear under the dishwasher.

A close up.

To his credit, Jason sent me to bed and cleaned up the whole mess, after getting photographic evidence, of course.  The worst part was that I was going to miss out on my Christmas Cheesecake!  Fortunately, our good friend Jean was also unable to go home for Christmas and was planning to join us for ours.  I called her first thing Christmas morning and asked if there was anywhere in her neighborhood that was open on Christmas day that might sell cream cheese and sour cream.

Lucky for us, there was, and so I made my second ever cheesecake fewer than 24 hours after making (and killing) the first.  Though not quite as perfect as the first, it was still mighty tasty!

Cheesecake #2

Fortunately, I have yet to have a repeat of that disaster; however, I have been permanently scarred.  While I am fine to remove the cheesecake from the over after it's first baking, I am so terrified of a repeat performance that I insist that Jason remove it after it's second baking, just to be on the safe side.

Step gone bad

Do you ever just feel old?  Last night, I felt old. And out of shape. And uncoordinated.  And kind of foolish.  Last night, I went to a step aerobic class at the community center. (You know the kind, where you have that cool plastic step and you do all kinds of fancy moves over, around and next to the step). Believe it or not, this was not my first step class.  Not that I'm a seasoned veteran or anything, but I actually attended a class on Saturday.  By some stroke of luck, the instructor on Saturday was a sub, and since she didn't know what kinds of steps the class knew, she kept it simple.  It was perfect for me.  I was able to pick up on most of the steps on the first try, and if not on the first try, then very shortly thereafter.  I got a great workout and it was pretty fun. Based on that experience, I decided to go again last night.

Last night was different.  The instructor was not a sub and he did not keep it simple.  The steps were incredibly complex, and had specific names.  And they were set to very fast music.  So he would call out a step, or a series of steps as he did them very quickly and I tried to keep track of where his feet went and how.  Of course, half of the routines he did had us turning around, so I would start the routine and be doing all right, but then would turn around and wouldn't know what I was doing anymore! As if that wasn't bad enough, apparently each step has an advanced variation that you can do should you be able to do the basic without tripping over yourself.  (By the way, I will likely never be coordinated enough to master the advance variations.)  Well, the instructor almost always did the advanced variation without explaining that there was a simpler way to do it.  I only realized the simpler way when I saw some others in the class doing it, and this was after I nearly killed myself trying to do the advanced step.

There were several points throughout the class when I just stood still, with a bewildered expression on my face. At some moments I found this comical.  I think I even laughed out loud, and may have uttered the phrase "Are you kidding me?"  At other moments I felt disheartened and frustrated, and came close to tears at least twice.  With the range of emotions I felt in just a short hour, you'd think I was pregnant! (I'm not, by the way.)  By the end of the class, I had kind of figured out some of the step routines, but by then I was so tired that my brain and body did not always want to cooperate.

I still got a great workout, and I will probably go back again on Wednesday.  But the more I think about the class, the more annoyed I am, and here's why.  The instructor could very clearly see that I was struggling - it was pretty obvious, after all.  Why didn't he stop and take just one minute to show me the steps?  Now, this may seem unreasonable to some, particularly any of you who are in the advanced step category (are there any you out there?)  But there are three conditions that I think make this quite a reasonable request.

First of all, there were only 7 total people in the class, and I was the only one struggling.  It t not have detracted from the rest of the class, and in fact, probably would have helped them as they wouldn't have been distracted by me fumbling and bumbling about.  If the class had been 20 or so, and I was the only one struggling, then I could understand just letting me figure it out on my own.

Second of all, there is no beginner's class.  The community center only offers two step classes, and both are in the same category.  Does that mean that since I haven't done step before, I shouldn't be able to go?  I don't think so.  If they don't offer a beginners class, then, in my opinion, the instructors should be more helpful to those of us who are, clearly, beginners.

Finally, this is, after all, a community center - not some fancy, schmancy, high-end gym or athletic club.  The community center clearly tries to be acessible to everyone, so by extension, I think that their fitness classes should also be accessible to everyone, particularly if they have only one level, as mentioned above.

I hope that, on Wednesday, I can pick up the steps a little bit better.  I may also just outright ask the instructor to help me out - I do have some agency in this whole process.  What do you think? Am I being unreasonable?  Should I have expected some help, or not?  Or, should I have not even gone to the class in the first place since I couldn't keep up?

Self-esteem rising...only to fall again

I'm going to go out on a limb here and generalize that those who blog do so with the anticipation and hope that others will read their writing. I will go even further to say that those of us who leave our blogs open hope that strangers may also read and find interesting the things that we write. Even if this isn't true for other bloggers, it is for me, even if I wasn't willing to admit it right away. Blogger has two easy ways for me to know if others are reading my blog: the follower gadget and comments at the end of posts. So far I have three followers (one of which is my mom) and I appreciate them all. And, I think around 8 or 9 people have commented on my blog overall. Not bad, considering that this blog has really only been active for a month.

Now, I will admit that I've decided that I will feel somewhat successful as a blogger when I have a stranger either comment on my blog or become a follower. So, imagine my delight when I opened my e-mail a few days ago and saw a comment from a person I did not know! My confidence sky-rocketed and I felt ever so slightly proud of myself. It was on my post about jogging strollers, which I did think was a pretty interesting post, if I do say so myself. And then I opened the e-mail to read the comment and saw this:

"Thanks for sharing that! Nice post. I just glanced through it. "

It was followed by a link to buy strollers.

So. Not only did my one stranger commenter only "glance" through my post, but he then used the comment section to advertise! Not exactly what I had in mind...

Oh well, I guess I haven't quite reached stranger-commenting-worthy status yet, after all. It's a good thing that I don't really base my self-esteem on the comments on my blog or that could have been a real doozy!

Procrastination, Halloween style

So Jason and I decided to get all festive and dress up for Halloween this year, since we had a couple of parties this weekend. After my bout with costume perfectionism, we finally came up with a couple of decent, if not original, costume ideas. Since Cyrus already had a monkey costume, courtesy of one of his grandmothers, we decided that Jason would be a zoo keeper and I would be the Wicked Witch of the East (or is it West, I can never remember). You know, the one from the Wizard of Oz. Yes, I realize that it's a bit cheesy to coordinate our costumes with our child's but this way he could serve as an accessory to both of us - and really, isn't that what children are for, to accessorize their parents? Anyway, we figured when Jason held him he'd just be a regular monkey, and when I held him he could be a flying monkey. (Unfortunately, people at both of our parties mistook his costume for a bear...)

After deciding on our costumes, we then needed to procure the appropriate attire for a reasonable cost. Unfortunately, we didn't choose our costume ideas until Wednesday. Finally, on Friday, Jason stopped by a Value Village on the way home from work and found himself a safari shirt and a hat that would kind of pass as a safari hat. He found me a witch's hat, though it was a child's hat and looked a bit stupid. We still wanted some green face paint and maybe a witch's cloak for me, and maybe a better safari hat for Jason, so when he got home we head out to find said items. We tried a couple of Fred Meyers and even a dollar store, and then finally happened upon a Party City. We walked in, all hopeful in our naivete, only to find that they were practically wiped out! The shelves were literally bear, the hat selection was sparse, and when I tried to find a witch's costume, all they had were "sexy witches" - you know, really short skirts, tight shirts, fishnet stalkings - not really an Amber-style costume. Plus, they wanted $35 for it! The accessory section was all cleaned out too - a few child-sized hats, no adult hats, and no green face paint.

I looked at Jason and said "Well, I guess this is what we get for waiting until the day before Halloween!" It was kind of depressing, really. I mean, granted, Halloween stuff has been out since the beginning of September, but I guess I just didn't think that stores would be that wiped out.

In the end, we bought a little witch's broom, and I pieced together a few random items of black clothing and plopped my child's witch's hat on my head. Not the type of costume a perfectionist prefers, but I suppose it got the job done. And, as Jason pointed out, it's a good thing we started trying to dress up when Cy is still too young to care, because we can consider this year a trial run. Next year, maybe we'll put some real thought and effort it, and maybe we'll start planning more than two days in advance...maybe.

Cyrus as a zoo monkey with the zoo keeper...

Cyrus as a Flying Monkey with the Wicked Witch...

Cyrus worn out after too much Halloween...

In Pursuit of a Jogging Stroller

When Jason and I were preparing for Cyrus's arrival, I did copious amounts of research on all items baby-related. I spent hours pouring over my Baby Bargains book (absolutely indespensible if you are preparing for a baby, in my humble opinion) and spent days and days reading reviews on the Babies R Us website before completing my registry. One of the items that I found most overwhelming was the stroller. There were just so many choices, and such a huge range of prices. Jason and I spent one evening at Babies R US trying out strollers, and by the end, I was exhausted and confused. I decided to take the advice of the Baby Bargains book and just buy a snap-on frame for our carseat for a mere $60. It seemed to be a cheap, short-term solution that would get me through the first several months until I figured out what I wanted and needed.

I have to say, I'm glad I took this route. As it turns out, what I want is a jogging stroller, and I definitley didn't anticipate that all those months ago. While I used to be an avid runner (that's a story for another time), I haven't run consistently for the past two or three years. And, while I figured that I would probably take up running again at some point, I didn't figure that that time would come shortly after giving birth. However, seeing as how the baby weight has been taking it's sweet time to depart from my body, and the time and money for a gym membership isn't really in the cards for me at the moment, I have started going on daily walks with Cyrus through our neighborhood. It is a rather old neighborhood with very few sidewalks, lots of gravel roads, many, many hills and a little park with a 1/4 mile walking path. The hills have provided some good cardio workouts, but, I guess "once a runner always a runner", because that 1/4 mile walking path was just begging for me to start running it. And I have been. For the past five weeks or so I have gone on a 40 minute speed-walk 4-5 days a week, and have built up to running about a 1/2 mile within that walk.

I've realized pretty quickly that my little snap-on frame stroller just isn't cutting it. It's probably not the safest thing to be jogging with, or even speed-walking over gravelly roads with, and I'm pretty sure I'm giving it undue wear and tear in the process. Well, as luck would have it, right about the time that I started walking daily, a friend invited me to a Baby Boot Camp class (stroller fitness) and let me borrow her jogging stroller. It was one of these:

That's a Bob Revolution. It's pretty much top of the line. I fell in love. Then I saw the price...$399! Yikes. Remember how I can't really afford a gym membership? Well, then I really can't afford nearly $400 for a stroller! So I started shopping around, both used and new, and found that I could get a decent used jogging stroller for around $45, and a decent new one for about $150 or so. (I could even buy a used Bob Sport Utility, which sells for $300 new, for around $100.) However, most of these strollers had fixed front wheels - good for jogging, bad for everything else.

In the meantime, I realized a couple of things. First of all, I'm kind of a cheapskate. I knew at some point that I was going to have to buy a second stroller, and I knew that it would probably cost around $150-$200. But that was just for one stroller. I never planned to buy more than one additional stroller (after all, I have one already). So to buy one stroller that can only be used for jogging and then buy another stroller for everything else seems both unaffordable and impractical, especially since I'm not planning to train for any major running event anytime soon. Second of all, we plan to have more children, and probably at least one of those will arrive while Cy is still using a stroller, which means that at some point, I'll need a double stroller. And, if I keep jogging, I'll need a double jogging stroller too. So even if I could afford a Bob stroller, I just can't bear the thought of spending that much money when I'm going to have to buy another one in a few years.

So, with all that in mind, I had two choices: I could either buy a jogging stroller that can function in every day life as well, or I can forgo the jogging stroller and just buy an all-purpose stroller. I opted for choice #1. I realized that I would need a jogging stroller that has front wheel that can both swivel for maneuverability, and lock in place for more stable jogging. (By the way, that would have been the Bob Revolution, but again - money!) After doing some research, I found this stroller:

This is an Instep Safari, and it costs about $170 new. While not the top of the line, it's rated pretty well overall, and is far more affordable. However, still looking for a deal, I figured I'd try to find it used before I shelled out all that hard-earned cash. In fact, I have been scanning craigslist every day for the past month looking for this stroller. It is nowhere to be found. Perhaps it is too new, or perhaps it is just that good, but no one is selling. So then I went on Amazon.com, and found it for $135. Sweet! However, since I had never seen this stroller in person, or used it, and since I knew I'd be comparing it to my Bob experience, I figured I should give it a test run in person. So I went to Instep's website and found several places listed that supposedly sell this model. Easy enough, right? Wrong. No store seems to stock this stroller in the actual store - you can only buy it online! The one exception was Fred Meyer, but there it was all boxed up and not available to test run. I've probably been to half a dozen stores, and called at least a dozen more, and it just doesn't seem to exist in real life.

So here I sit. I desperately want my new jogging stroller, preferably before I destroy my current stroller. But I am nervous about purchasing it online in case I don't like it and it is a hassle to return. So in the meantime, I will keep searching for this stroller and keep praying that my stroller lasts just a little longer.

One of Those Days

The day started out all right. Cy slept till 8:00am, went down fairly easily for a nap at 10:00am, and then slept for 2 full hours, which doesn't always happen. Upon waking up he was all cuddly for a few minutes, until he pooped a huge poop, the magnitude of which I did not realize until I went to change his diaper. As I changed it, I realized that it had exploded up his back and all over his onesie. Of course, I realized this after poop got all over the changing pad cover to the point that it began spreading from the changing pad cover all over his arms and legs. Then, as I attempted to remove said onesie from his body, I further spread poop all over his back and head. Admitting defeat, I wrapped him in a blanket and gave him a quick bath, then removed the changing pad cover, all one-handed.

Then it was time for nap #2, which I falsely assumed would go as well as nap #1. Instead, he woke up screaming after 45 minutes and did not stop screaming, even while I held and rocked him until I fed him (though I'm sure he wasn't hungry). I tried putting him down for another nap, at which point he continued to scream until I picked him up and held him.

Of course, today was a day when I had lots of tasks planned - unpacking from our trip, giving the house a good cleaning that it desperately needed, installing Peachtree Accounting software so that I can do accounting for my dad's business, etc. I manged to get that last one done, but none of the others. As I sat at my desk holding Cy so that he wouldn't scream, I was feeling pretty proud of myself for getting at least one thing accomplished. Then I backed up my chair and heard a crunch. I turned around and saw this:

I wonder if killing the CD counteracts the fact that I accomplished something on my list...

Just Sit Back and Relax, Already!

Call me naive, but generally speaking, I beleive that all people are good at heart  I really do.  But there is something about airplanes that seems to bring out the worst in people, and I just don't get it.  Let me share some examples.

On several occasions I  have been on flights where, upon landing, the captain or flight attendant mentions that some people on the flight have close connections in this city and asks everyone on the plane to please let these folks off of the airplane first.  On at least one occasion, I was one of these people, and because of whether delays I had literally 20 minutes from the moment my first flight landed to the moment my next flight took off - we're not talking got to the gate here, we're talking touched down.  And of course, I happened to be at the very back of the plane.  The captain made his announcement, but, as I've seen on every other similar flight, no one listened.  Everyone rushed for the aisle and took their time getting their bags, while I sweated that I might not make my connecting flight.  As if this wasn't stressful enough already, it happened to be Christmas Eve.  If this were the only time I had experienced this, I might be able to chalk it up to  excitement/stress/anxiety over getting home for the Holidays - but it has happened on other far more mundane days.

I was actually talking to Jason about this very thing as he drove Cy and I to the airport yesterday.  And as if to confirm my assertion that airplane travel makes people rude, I encountered several more examples of unpleasant behavior on our flight.  To fully appreciate these examples, you should know that our flight was 100% full.  Ok, here they are:

1. A woman gets on the flight toward the end of boarding and she is carrying a large, round, hard case.  As she looks around at the overhead bins, searching for somewhere to put her case, the guy sitting across the aisle from me says very loudly  and with attitude, "Ship it next time".  As she continues looking for a place for her case, he says, again loud enough for her to hear, "Come on Lady, just sit down already."

2.  Another woman gets on with a small rolling suitcase and tries to put it in the overhead bin above her seat. There is a laptop case that is clearly small enough to fit under a seat but is making it impossibly for her to fit in her suitcase.  She asks around to find out to whom is belongs and when a guy pipes up, she asks kindly if he can please put it under his seat, where there is nothing being stored.  He replies "There is no room."  They go back and forth about why he can't put it there and the woman ultimately has to check her bag while the man has nothing under the seat in front of him.  Incidentally, she ended up sitting next to him, which I'm sure made for an uncomfortrable flight.

3.  There is a woman sitting behind me with a small child in her lap as well.  Before the flight takes off, both her child and Cyrus are being very good, but are making little babay noises.  The guy sitting across from her says "Wow, I guess we're not going to get any peace on this flight" loudly enough, obviously, that I can hear him.  As if those of us with babies aren't already overly concious of the fact that our babies could be loud and disruptive during a flight, someone has to point it out to us.

Now I suppose it is possible that all three of these people in the above examples are just rude anyway.  However, I don't think it's possible that several airplanes-full of people are rude in their every day life.  And I like to think that those three people sitting near me are also kind at some point in their lives.  So if that is the case, then what is it about airplanes that makes people say and/or do things that make others' lives more difficult or make others feel bad.  Is it the anxiety of flying?  Is it the fact that you are likley to never see these people again?  And, does a full flight lead to more anxiety and thus to more abandoning of basic human decency?  I don't know the answer.  But I do know that I now make a concious effort to smile to parents when their kids are being loud or taking a long time, to only put large items in the overhead compartment and wait to put my jacket in until the end, and to allow those folks with connecting flights to get off first.  Above all else, I try to keep my comments to myself so that, at the very least, I don't make someone feel bad.

Has anyone else noticed this airplane phenomenon?  Does anyone have any insight into what might make it so? 

Flashback Friday: The Subletter from Hell

All right, I'm not sure what the blogger protocol is for starting a post series and then interrupting it...but I'm going to do it anyway. It is, after all, Friday, and it's time for a Flashback!

The summer after Jason and I got married we both planned to work at the camp I ran in New Jersey, and therefor would be leaving our apartment empty for the summer. Now, I don't know how common the practice is in other parts of the country, but if you're a New Yorker and you plan to vacate your apartment for even a short time, let alone three months, you better believe you're going to try to capitalize on that and sublet it! So, that is what we set out to do. We posted on craigslist and even offered to pay utilities if the potential subletter was willing to keep our cat for the summer and take care of her (we took our dog with us to camp, but couldn't accommodate the cat).

New York is a pretty hot spot for subletters, and although the Bronx is slightly (or more than slightly) less appealing than most of the other boroughs (except Staten Island...no one wants to live there), we did get a fair number of responses. We showed the place to a few people, but it was a pretty long commute to Manhattan, so no one was interested so far. Then we met Kerry*. She was a law student with an internship in upstate New York and so our Bronx apartment was perfect for her. She came to take a look and immediately wanted the place. We were less sure about her. I couldn't put my finger on it, but there was just something about her that didn't sit right - she seemed a little awkward in kind of a hostile sort of way. Oh, if only I had heeded my gut instinct. But, it was very close to summer and we desperately needed a subletter, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt and we decided to go ahead and sublet to her. I mean, she was law student, after all, how bad could she be?

Despite our hesitation, our good nature and assumption that others are also of good nature took over, and we didn't even write up a contract. We did ask for a security deposit, equal to one month's rent, and then asked for each of the three month's rent to be paid on the first of the month. We packed up our clothes and some of our more valuable items and left them with a friend, scrubbed the heck out of the apartment, and then left our cat and moved to New Jersey for the summer.

Fast forward to August 15th and we haven't received August's rent yet. I called her and e-mailed her several times, but got no response. By sometime around the 25th of August the kids had left camp, but I was staying for another week to close things up, and I still hadn't heard from her. I feared the worst. I had visions of scenes worthy of Law and Order running through my head, and at the very least I was worried about my cat. So I grabbed a friend and drove the 2 hours back to the city. I remember distinctly sitting in the car outside of my apartment, feeling nervous. What would I find? Would she be alive? Dead? Tied up? What other solution could there be to not getting rent and not hearing back from her? Or would I find my apartment emptied of all of my possessions?

Well, I still had a set of keys, so we went up to the door, knocked several times, and finally entered with my key. I cannot describe the scene before my eyes. I literally pushed the door open against a pile of clothes and shoes and the pile continued all the way down the long hallway to the bedroom. The living room was also a disaster. And then I saw my cat. My poor, street-rescued cat had more than doubled in size! She was so fat her head almost disappeared! Before I walk into the kitchen to further inspect the damage, Kerry popped her head out from the bedroom, clearly only half-dressed. And this was the weird part - she didn't say "Hang on a minute let me put some pants on" or "I'm just in the middle of getting dressed, give me a minute" she just proceeded to have a conversation with me while she poked her torso out of the bedroom. I told her I hadn't received rent and that I had been worried because I hadn't heard from her and all she said was, I sent a check, sorry. I was so taken aback by the state of the apartment and by her oddness, that my only response was "I'm taking the cat and going back to camp." My friend still laughs at that statement. It had a ring similar to "I'm taking my toys and going home!"

I went into the kitchen to grab the cat's food and discovered why my poor animal was so obese - there was container after container of cat food sitting on the counter. It was like an all-you-can-eat buffet, 24/7. Now some cats might know when to say when, but not rescue kitty - oh no, she always ate in survival mode. If it was there, she consumed it just in case it wasn't there the next day. So she had been gorging herself on cat food for who knows how long! Then, we left and drove back to camp.

A week later, on Labor Day, Jason and I returned to our apartment for good at about 8:30pm, not sure what we would find. On first glance, it didn't seem to be too bad. But as we looked closer, we saw just how disgusting this law student was. Oh friends, it was ugly. Let's just say we cleaned for three hours before I felt Ok going to bed, and then spent the entire next day trying to get our apartment back. Words are good, but pictures are better. Below, please observe the grossness...

The Kitchen floor, before we even had a chance to sweep up the rest of the stuff on the floor. (No, that's not a real tomato, it's a timer, but still)

Our bed, with a mysterious, scary stain on my Egyptian Cotton mattress pad. That stain went through the mattress pad, the foam egg crate and the mattress! We threw the top two out and got a new mattress a few months later.

The buildup of cat hair on the area rug in the living room.

Where the cat box usually sat. It looked as though it had not been cleaned out once. Then we picked it up and saw this beneath it. Clearly, the cat litter that went over the edge of the box had not been swept up. It took me over thirty minutes to clean this 2 square feet of tile!

I wish this was all. There was pot ash on the coffee table, strange stains on the wood floor that took off a few layers of finish, she had taken our laundry basket and our bathmat, had gotten bleach on one of towels, left an air conditioning unit on a windowsill and turned it pink with water damage, and had left various sundry clothing items, books and jewelry. And it didn't stop there. We continued to find evidence of her damage and presence long after she left. Part of the deal was that we paid utilities. When we got the electric bill for the month of August, it was $200 more than it had ever been, due to the running of the air conditioning unit 24/7. When we got our cable bill, she had ordered pornos on our TV.

Now for the worst part. Remember that last month's rent that I never received? Well, I never received it...ever. I e-mailed and e-mailed and called. Her number had been discontinued and she never responded to my e-mails. We had her security deposit, but there's no way she would have gotten that back after the damage she left, and we still ended up losing money because of the things we had to replace. She also hadn't returned our keys, which started to freak me out. I finally got kind of urgent in my e-mails regarding the keys. A few days later, the keys showed up in several layers of envelope, with no return address.

Some of my friends and family wanted us to pursue her, try to get her to pay her last month's rent. But honestly, I was just so sick of the whole thing and was so glad to be done with it that I just wanted to close that chapter and forget about her. Annoyingly, we continued to get mail for her for several months, and even found an old package addressed to her when we were packing up to leave, nearly three years later! She just would not be forgotten...

We had all kinds of ideas about what we would do differently the following summer - collecting the whole summer's rent up front, drawing up a contract, having a friend in the city just drop by every now and again, trust our gut instinct, etc. However, Jason ended up getting a job he couldn't and didn't want to leave for the summer, so we never had to deal with that again. Which is good, because I'm not sure I would have had the stomach for it anyway!

* Name has been changed to protect the guilty.