Last week’s post:
1. Puzzles
2. Thinning out the list
3. Valerian root
4. Smoothies

This week’s post:

5. Lavender stuff (photo from BathAndBodyWorks.com). This is similar to the superfoods thing: I have FAITH IN THE RELAXING POWERS OF LAVENDER, and so even if it’s NOT working, it works because it makes me feel like I’m DOING something, I’m FIXING it. Plus, anything that instructs me to inhale deeply is going to help.

6. Doing each thing in the right time frame (photo from Amazon.com). If I write when there are kids around, it takes me about five times as long to do the same amount of work as if I write when there are no kids around—and as I’m taking five times as long, I’m also snapping and resenting and feeling awful.
Read the rest of this entry

Things are stressful right now. (Work/too-much-to-do kind of way, rather than personal/family-distress.) I feel like I’ve heard meditation and exercise and bubble baths and yoga advice mentioned a million, billion times; here are some of the other things I do (some of which may also have been mentioned a million, billion times):

1. Puzzles (photo from Amazon.com). I’m working on KenKen now; I’ve also done Sudoku. I find puzzles soothing and distracting: they take my mind off things, but also make my mind feel tidied up. They’re a good thing to work on in a waiting room, or if I have a few minutes between tasks. I like the feeling of a small accomplishment.

2. Thinning out—not necessary in order of priority. Sometimes when I am feeling very, very stressed, the issue is that I’m feeling all the many things I need to do buzzing around me in a cloud. And sometimes when that’s the case, there is a percentage of things that are low-priority but could be done in a short amount of time.

If I write down the twenty things I need to do, including even the small things like changing the battery in the bathroom clock or responding “Okay, I’ll do that!” to an email, not only does that let me stop rehearsing the list mentally, but also I can often do, say, five of the things in five minutes. Getting the list down from twenty items to fifteen makes a huge difference in how stressed I am—whereas if I’d done the things in strict priority order, I’d still be on the first item and still feeling the other nineteen looming.
Read the rest of this entry

My eldest child has outgrown Halloween. Or, more likely, he’s between the stage of trick-or-treating/dressing-up and the stage of re-discovering it in crowds of teenagers who make everyone clench their teeth as they go to door gathering free candy dressed in a garbage bag.

The other four kids are still interested. We have a loose costume policy, which is basically this: I vastly prefer they choose a costume from the bins of clearance costumes I’ve acquired over the years. But if a child earnestly and fervently wants a different and particular costume, I am willing to consider it.

What we usually do is start with the Thinking About It stage, which is where we are now: the children are considering what they might want to be, and I’m looking up costumes and going “THIRTY DOLLARS PLUS SHIPPING? For something you’ll wear ONCE??” I wish it were easier to know THE YEAR BEFORE what costume the child would want to wear the following year. I KNOW I saw Star Wars costumes on practically-giving-them-away clearances last year, but last year none of them were into Star Wars.

William would like to be Luke Skywalker (image from Amazon.com). Unfortunately, William is 5′4″, so he will probably need the adult-size costume, which is even more expensive than the kid one. Also, when he saw the image I just posted, he said, “If possible, I want to be the black costume, when he’s a Jedi.” At first I was dismayed, as we scrolled through page after page of Jedi costumes and all of them were “No, that’s Anakin.” But then we did an image search to see what LUKE’S Jedi outfit looks like…and it’s black clothes. It’s really just black clothes, plus a light saber. And William thinks he can make the wrist thing out of cardboard and tin foil. So that’s manageable: I can buy the light saber and make sure he has a black shirt and that’s it.
Read the rest of this entry

I recently bought some bird earrings, and in the comments section we started talking about how I have also been questing for owl earrings. The owl trend continues (my mom and me, while shopping: “It’s it REMARKABLE how stores are SUDDENLY CARRYING the VERY THING we SUDDENLY WANT? What a REMARKABLE COINCIDENCE!”), but I find owls a difficult thing to choose The Right One of: some are too scowly, some overly or insufficiently whimsical. So although a need for owl earrings has been created in me, my ears stay un-owled and the quest continues.

ZAD Vintage Silver/Crystal Owl Earrings (photo from Amazon.com). These are close to what I’m looking for. Good nostalgia quotient (my mom collected owls the last time the trend came around, and these are the type of owl eyes I remember), good owl feet, good basic idea. I wish there was a photo that gave me a better idea of how big they’d look on someone’s actual ears.

Sterling Silver Owl Earrings (photo from Amazon.com). I like that these have designed backs as well as fronts. But the eyes are a little too blank/ball-like.
Read the rest of this entry

The problem is, every year I think it’s too early to write holiday posts—and it IS too early, but I only write here once a week, so if I wait until after Thanksgiving it’s only four posts until Christmas, and one or two of those don’t allow enough time for shipping. Since this is a PRODUCTS AND GIFT IDEAS blog, that’s not going to work.

Plus, it’s more financially comfortable if I start buying things early and setting them aside. And the whole season is less frantic for me if I think about it early, even though I know for some people that makes it MORE frantic. So. I know it’s September, is what I’m saying. I know it hasn’t even been Halloween yet. I don’t want to PUSH you. There’s still A QUARTER OF A YEAR left. Plenty of time! You can just skip this post now, and come back to it in early December when you need it!

Would it feel better if we didn’t even mention The Holidays? I could just say this is a post of books my kids want, and incidentally I plan to acquire some of them for…a later event. Yes. That’s better. And happens to be true.

Mostly what we do when a kid mentions a book he or she is interested in is see if we can get it from the library. But right around the start of the school year, when book fairs get them thinking about books as something to beg for, I start putting the books they mention (or other books I find that seem like good candidates) in the saved-items area of my Amazon cart, because I like to put a book or two in each Christmas stocking. Our family has a kid celebration in the afternoon, and the grown-ups celebrate after kid bedtime—so it is very nice to tuck the children in with a new book to keep them busy and quiet until the sugar crash lets them sleep.

Here’s what I have in the cart so far:

Vordak the Incomprehensible: How to Grow Up and Rule the World (photo from Amazon.com).
Read the rest of this entry

This Saturday will be the first day of autumn. This puts me in the mood for hot drinks, and for down-filled blankets it’s still not cold enough to use, and for LEAF COLORS.

Le Creuset salt and pepper shakers in Flame (photo from Amazon.com).

Reversible Damask/Polkadot Lumbar Pillow (photo from Amazon.com). The price seems high for a single pillow, but it is a very pretty pillow.
Read the rest of this entry

My nephew recently turned one, which is hard for me to believe but the evidence sits before me. Recently there were requests for gift ideas for a one-year-old, so I took notes at his birthday party.

Pewi YBike Walking Buddy and Riding Toy (photo from Amazon.com). This is a very stylish looking riding toy. And if the child stands facing it, it’s also a sturdy walker.

Read the rest of this entry

My teenager was invited to a birthday party last week. This was new ground. It was the first party without a paper invitation, the first party where I’ve wondered if there would be chaperones and whether I might like to call the parents to see if our philosophies match on topics such as liquor and supervision.

The gift was its own problem. Littler kids like a lot of things, and there are a lot of other things they’d enjoy trying even if they didn’t end up liking them. If I’m in doubt, I feel like I can always fall back on a Melissa and Doug coloring/sticker bundle and fancy coloring implements.

The older kids at my house are definitely harder to buy for, and SOMEONE ELSE’S older kid seems almost impossible. And what if presents aren’t really COOL anymore, or the wrapping paper is stupid, or the gift is embarrassingly too young (”Here, sonny, I got you this jigsaw puzzle of puppies!”). *fret fret fret* But eventually I thought I would just try to do what I would do for my own 13-year-old and not worry too much about it—and if I made some sort of Grievous Error, Rob could just roll his eyes and say “MOTHERS!” and the other boys would make scoffy noises and say “I know, right?”

Prismacolor Manga Colored Pencil Set (photo from Amazon.com).
Read the rest of this entry

We have an atomic clock at our house that has been the cause of a certain level of DISPUTE. The problem is that about once per month, it checks in with its radar thingie and comes back with an utterly wrong time/date. I consider that a reasonable frequency for errors. I glance at the clock in the morning, I immediately grasp that 11:27 PM FEB 2004 is not correct, and I change it to the right time. I go on with life, unscarred by the experience.

Paul, though. Paul feels this clock is in violation of the sacred oath of time-keepers. A clock that is EVER WRONG must be THROWN AWAY. An atomic clock, because it has access to the correct information but chooses not to use it, must be publicly shamed and THEN thrown out.

I have fished the clock out of the trash twice. Perhaps it is time to research a replacement.

Before I get to the severely limited options, here’s a picture of almost exactly the clock we have: it’s a Sharp atomic clock (photo from Amazon.com) that shows time, day, date, and temperature. The one I’m linking to shows indoor and outdoor temperature; ours only shows indoor. I don’t need the outdoor temperature (in fact, I’d prefer NOT to have it; we’ve gone through a dozen such devices, so I don’t want a notoriously glitchy feature on a clock), but I do like having day and date and indoor temperature.

Read the rest of this entry

Paul has started a new annual tradition of taking the two older kids on a road trip each summer. Here are some of the supplies I bought for them this year, when they were ages 11 and 13:

The Hunger Games trilogy (photo from Amazon.com). Both kids read the first book, but we’ve spent the rest of the summer on the library waiting list for the second one. This was the perfect moment to finally give in and buy the set. And there was no fighting over it, because one kid wanted to re-read the first book before reading the second one, and the other kid didn’t.

Brain Quest for the Car (photo from Amazon.com). We’ve loved these Brain Quest cards for littler kids; I hadn’t realized they had sets for older kids. I first considered the set for 7th graders (one child is going into 6th, the other into 8th), but this car-trip set seemed more fun. I worried it might be too young for them (it’s marked ages 7-12), and probably would have gotten the America set (ages 9 and up) if it hadn’t had a predicted shipping delay.
Read the rest of this entry