Why aren't secondhand gifts acceptable?

I want to have a birthday party for Emmy. I want people to buy her gifts. This is because gifts make her happy, and because giving gifts to a crazy, happy four-year-old makes my friends happy. I'm not going to be one of those people who puts, "No gifts please!" on an invitation, making everyone waffle between the two awkward choices. Either you will obey the invitation, arrive, and find that everyone else brought a gift, or you will disregard the invitation, arrive, and find that no one else bought a gift and look like the show-off. It is lose-lose. Maybe not with an adult's birthday party, since no gifts is pretty standard. But definitely with a kid's party. I hate "No gifts please!" It looks generous, but it just creates too much awkwardness. I have enough awkwardness of my own making, so I don't need anyone to pack it in an envelope and mail it to my house for me.

I want to start a movement of secondhand gift-giving. Why is this not acceptable? Really. Think about it. How stupid is it that everything must be new? Especially for children. They outgrow, destroy, or just plain aren't interested in so many things. Why spend $30 on that plastic, obnoxiously green toy that is also available for $5 at the consignment store because some other kid got it for her birthday and never played with it? Am I just cheap, or does this seem insane to anyone else?

As for me, I have a pretty slim budget for gifts. We're not broke, but I will be uptight about spending until we get rid of The Unsellable House (whose furnace just broke, Merry Christmas to us!). I can buy one decent toy new on my budget, or I can buy a really cool toy/many toys in like-new condition. Do you see how everybody wins, givers and recipients alike?

I also think it's fun to look for things in thrift and consignment stores. Granted, I have the luxury of time that many other people don't, but it really satisfies my hunting and gathering instinct. I hate sifting through clothes at these places, but finding other cool stuff almost makes me giddy. Sometimes, when I come home, I hoist my find in the air and shriek excitedly. Unless it's heavy or fragile. Then I put it down as soon as possible.

So where did this expectation to buy only brand new gifts come from? It makes no sense. If the item is in good condition and isn't the sort of thing that is automatically befouled by its having been pre-owned (underwear, socks, toast), then what? Why? Everyone is poorer (well, except for Target, which does employ many, many people) when we feel compelled to buy things new for no other reason than social convention.

In conclusion! If you are my friend in real life, am I starting a new thing. If you buy me or my kid a gift, feel free to buy it secondhand. I will be very happy with you. More money for you, more stuff for me, let's have cake.

Wine

No, I didn't misspell "whine," although I'm sure that's what you were thinking because it is, after all, what I do best.

I'm actually talking about wine.

I've never really been into wine. Before we moved out here, I didn't really have any friends that drank it, and the whole thing was just intimidating to me. And then I met Lindsay. She and her husband go to our church, and we hit it off. A little over a year ago, I started going over to her house once a week to do a little workout. At first it was just a fun thing, but it has now become almost sacred to me. We have even named it. Winercise. Because there's always a couple glasses of wine afterwards. It is literally the highlight of my week (not because of the wine, though that doesn't exactly hurt).

So, I've suddenly started drinking wine. Lots of different kinds of wine, and it's really fun. They no longer all taste the same to me. I recognize certain brands, and I have a good feel for what I like. It's kind of odd. I move to a state with insanely weird alcohol laws and become MORE interested in wine.

I still don't (and probably never will) know what all the words mean. Things like "fruity" are obvious, but "flamboyant"? What? Does my wine wear boas and dance across the kitchen counter? I don't understand.

So I think there's a real need here. Someone to review cheap wine (actually inexpensive, not "cheap," as in, "I accidentally spent all my cash on diamonds and cocaine, so all I have left is this $50 bill that I dug out of my limo cushion."). Someone who is unafraid to sound like a rube. Someone like me!

Every time I find a wine I really like or hate, I think I will post it here. Why? Because it's fun. Because decent wine isn't necessarily expensive. Because wine makes the heart glad.

When I pick out a bottle of wine, I look for two things. First, the price. I have my old standbys that are always under $10, even regular price. But I also keep an eye out for ones that are on clearance for under $10. Once I narrow it down to a handful, I look at the label. That's my second thing to look for. A fun label. Because nothing else on the label actually means anything to me. But if you take the time and care to create an interesting or beautiful label, I figure you have some kind of good taste.

My most recent favorite is 14 Hands Cabernet Sauvignon. I don't know what year. I'm sure it makes a difference, but all I know is I got this bottle of wine on clearance for $7, and it had horses on it, and it was delicious. Overall, cabernet is probably my favorite kind of wine. I don't like super dry wine, and I don't like most sweet wines. 14 Hands hits the sweet spot exactly. It's not sweet, but it is perfectly smooth. It's not flavorless, either. I have no idea what all those flavors are, but I can taste them, and they are interesting and good. Maybe someday I will be able to tell you if they are flamboyant or not.

Also, it has horses on the label. Enough said.

Now I'm kind of looking forward to finding a wine that's really disgusting. It's only happened a couple of times, but some wines are just so tongue-meltingly awful that I can't even wait to describe them.

Food

There aren't a lot of foods I dislike, the but the ones that I do dislike, I really, really hate. I'm weird about meats, but if it grows out of the ground (naturally, and not on top of something unsavory and/or radioactive), I will probably give it a fair chance.

I want to find a food blog someday titled, "Cooking Good Food on a Budget without Anything from the Squash Family." Squash is horrible. Squash is the worst. Squash is in every healthy budget recipe collection ever. I find a recipe site or blog that looks like it might be fun, and then as I read, every other recipe contains squash. What's wrong with diversity? Come on. Branch out. You're a food blog. Not a squash blog.

Spaghetti squash. I am looking at you. If I crushed up a pane of glass really fine and sprinkled it on my scones (if I made scones), would you look at me like I was a genius, or like I was trying to murder you? Slapping marinara sauce on something that is birthed from its rind looking vaguely pasta-ish does not give you the right to call that "spaghetti squash." I tried spaghetti squash once. I made a good-faith effort. I took a lot of time and care finding out how to prepare it so it doesn't taste like feet and my armpit. What did it taste like? Raw onions, feet, and my armpit.

Zucchini. You are almost as bad. I can tolerate you in very thin slices, or shredded up and baked into a delicious bread. But you are not a substitute for lasagna noodles. You taste like raw onions, feet, and what I think wet octopuses probably feel like when you try to chew them.

All other squashes. If you put brown sugar and butter all over a high school boy's gym sock, and then presented it fresh from the oven, do you think anyone would eat it? No. So do not tell me I have just not had it properly prepared. That is true of a lot of things, but it is not true of squash. Maybe I have a genetic defect which makes me incapable of tasting what squash really tastes like. Or maybe I have a genetic superpower which makes me the only person in the world who can see it for what it really is. But stop slathering random ingredients on it and telling me I will like it this way, for real this time.

I have changed my mind about some foods. Mushrooms. I couldn't even look at them four years ago, but then I got pregnant with Emmy, and I began to constantly crave the Papa Murphy's Veggie DeLite pizza (it's covered in mushrooms) that my brother and sister-and-law had brought us nine months earlier when Grace was born. One of those intense, weirdly specific cravings. If Jeremy had brought it home for me with tomato sauce instead of cream sauce, he would have been sent back to Papa Murphy's without his face. Ever since, I have loved mushrooms.

Cauliflower. It freaks me out because it looks like brains when it's whole, but I am now able to eat it if it's not recognizable as a brain or a mini-brain. I still have to try not to think about it. All I can see is Krang if I let myself go there. I know he's pink, but it doesn't matter.

Asparagus. No. I still hate this.

Rar

Winter is coming, and I am not a Stark.

In a totally unsurprising turn of events, I managed to get the flu a week and a half before I was planning on getting the shot. Well, I'm pretty sure it was the flu. Fever, sore EVERYTHING, coughing, coughing, and then some more coughing. I'm still coughing, even though I'm basically all better. Cold, dry air makes these things so much worse.

I have been so low on energy and willpower these last couple weeks that mealtime has been whatever is non-toxic and lying still. Between that and all the doing of absolutely nothing, I was really afraid to get on the scale yesterday. But I had to know the damage.

I gained just under a pound. A pound! Hah! I love being neurotic.

I had my first workout in two weeks today. It was about as expected. I ran for five minutes and gave up, but lifting was okay. In fact, all the coughing seems to have improved my core muscles. Yay for silver linings.

---

Both children are in preschool. Emmy can kind of color in the lines now, and she has learned a couple of letters. By this age, I think Grace was drawing recognizable pictures and knew most of the letters. I love the differences between them. Emmy is a very smart kid; her brain just works so differently. She will be the creative, insane one. Grace will be the anal retentive engineer.

So, with both children in school for two and a half hours every other day, I can go out in the day by myself and... do things. Sometimes I run outside. Sometimes I go grocery shopping in under an hour. Sometimes I get a day's worth of housework done. Sometimes I just sit in the living room with a cup of coffee and do nothing. It feels weird and wonderful at the same time. I think I will miss them when they're in school full time, but this is perfect.

The bad part is that they will now bring home a whole new variety of diseases, other than the ones we get from the gym and church and all the found objects Emmy licks. I think that, "But at least it's good for the old immune system!" is just a chant that people recite when they're tired of cold and flu season. When I'm 80 and never get sick, I'll be happy that my kids brought home all these science projects, but for now it just makes me grouchy.

Catching up

Our yard still looks like that. It's cool, though. We just hang out in the front yard (except on days the bees are stinging for no known reason). There's no grass and a ton of pine needles, but it smells nice, and nothing draws blood. The girls are kind of making friends from the front yard, too, so it works out. I say "kind of" because it mostly goes like this.

Grace: HI!
Emmy: HI!
Girls Across the Street (GAS): Hi!
Grace: HI!
GAS: ...Hi.
Emmy: HI!
GAS: hi
Grace: HI! HI! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? HI! IS THAT YOUR BIKE? MY YOUR TIRE SWING LOOKS MIGHTY FUN. WHAT ARE YOU EATING?
Emmy: Hi!
GAS: Do you want to come play?
Grace and Emmy: Yes!

I wouldn't really call that "making friends" so much as "hinting desperately until someone caves," but whatever. She doesn't hide behind me and scream when we go in public anymore, so I don't care.

Also, we have spiders. So many spiders. The Pit of Despair (our "basement," which is like calling a torture dungeon a "cellar") back in Wisconsin had spiders like this, too, but I didn't know Utah had spiders like this, unless you were out in the desert and maybe also already bitten by a rattlesnake. All different kinds of spiders, too, so it's not just one nest hidden somewhere clever.

No, we have the round fat-bodied spiders and the flat, quick-legged spiders and everything terrifying in between. It's become a sort of dreadful joke around here. My old physics book is my weapon of choice (they GATHER in the girls' bathroom, probably waiting for fat child's toes to bite; this is not some kind, furry spider catching flies in a corner somewhere). Three days in a row last week, Jeremy came home and had to clean off the book and the tub/floor. I check under desks and tables before I sit down. I shake out anything I pick up off the floor. I'm hallucinating spiders in my sleep again. I'm hallucinating spiders when I'm NOT asleep. It's been fun.

The last couple of months have been very busy. For me, I mean. For a normal person not completely overwhelmed by anything outside strict routine, it would only be moderately busy. But I'm learning to accept my limitations.

First, my parents came to visit. It was good. Except for the afternoon the power went out, which was also the day I'd invited a friend over for dinner, and we ended up carting everything to her house. After that we came home, and the power was STILL out, and it was eighty-seven thousand degrees in the house until 11:30pm. Other than that, it was good. The girls still call the guest room "Grandma and Grandpa's room," which is both sweet and a little heartbreaking.

Then we all went out to the Black Hills and spent another week in the same cabin with my parents. And get this: no one killed anyone else. Truthfully, I would have killed US if I were my parents, but I guess when you get really old you grow patience.

And then we got back, and now that I have friends who live nearby I feel like I'm always doing things all the time. Don't misunderstand; it's good for me, and I love it, and I never want to give this up, but my tiny robot brain doesn't do well with disruptions to the norm, and I end up flaking out or double-booking, or forgetting things at home like, oh, thawing food for dinner. Idiot. Sometimes I feel like a high-functioning ADD person. Or maybe a high-functioning comatose person.

And finally, I got strep. Which was the worst I've ever had it, and this makes the third time in less than two years. The doctor suggested that someone in the family might be a carrier, and my money is on Emmy because she's just into everything all the time and probably picked it up by accidentally falling in a trash can. She falls a lot. In church on Sunday, she fell out of her chair into the aisle. Just from sitting. I don't know what happened. It happens at least once a day (and the other day she ran nose-first into one of our dining room chairs, and I honestly thought she'd broken it for a minute). She is a mess of accidents, and it's completely hilarious (once she's done crying).

Grace, as usual, is the opposite. She rarely falls and rarely runs into anything (but when she does, she doesn't know how to handle it and completely loses it). If she weren't destined by genetics to be so tall, I think she would make a fantastic ballerina. She is also teaching herself to read. We can no longer spell things in front of her.

Me: Hon, we should get the girls some I-C-E-C-R-E-A-M tonight.
Grace: What are you saying?
Me: Spinach.
Grace: Haha, Mom. You said "ice cream."

I was hoping to postpone this inconvenient milestone for a while longer by confusing her and telling her that everything spells "spinach," but it's not working anymore.

So that's our life right now. Despite all the spiders, I love our new house. It is practically perfect for us. Life has been very good this summer.

Landscaping for Cheap Dummies

Our yard pretty much looks like this:



There aren't any heads impaled in our yard. That was just for effect. The sticker weeds might as well be capable of impaling heads in the yard, for all they render it useless. You go out there with shoes on, and it's fine, but then they come in on your clothes and shoes, and work their way into the carpet and washing machine.

I went out and sprayed some weed killer on them a few days ago, and it worked. They're all dead. But of course they can't get up and walk themselves out of the yard (despite being able to breed inside the house), so there they sit. I even mowed, hoping at least some of them would get sucked into the mower, and this is what that was like:



And our yard still looks like this:



Except with less green.

I am not so thrilled with the idea of a grass lawn. Hoping for a green grass lawn is a fantasy in Utah unless you have a lot of shade trees and/or a lot of money to water it. I know some of you people are into nice lawns, so please don't be offended when I say that I think it's a waste. Our front yard is shaded very nicely (by pine trees, which kill the grass), but the back yard just bakes in the sun all day long. Keeping grass alive back there would be like throwing snowballs at a house fire.

So I'm looking into low-maintenance, less resource-intensive alternatives to grass, and I've come up with clover. Only problem is, it looks like it's an ordeal to plant. It's ideally done in spring, you have to mix the seed evenly in a wheelbarrow with dirt, and spread it. Then you have to cover the seed with another thin layer of dirt. I enjoy yard work, but that would take days of work. My children would not rise up and call me blessed after ignoring them for that long, and they're no good at helping because they have weak arms and spirits.

That means (I think that means) that we're stuck with our head-impaling yard until next spring.

I would also like to do something with our front yard, which I really love. The pine trees keep anything from growing, but they're really nice shade, and the sound they make in the wind is so relaxing. But the house looks like a tenement. I don't even know where to start. I would like to make a little patio outside the front door and put something underneath the trees so that we at least look like we take care of the place.

Is there a *cheap way to make a little patio? How do you level the ground? Do you need expensive things, or can something like that be done with a shovel? What do you put under a pine tree that looks pretty but doesn't need regular pruning and lovingkindness and an ability to garden with any kind of skill? Don't say rocks because they are way more expensive that you might think, even the ones people are selling online that they dug up out of their back field.

*When I say "cheap," I mean, "really, really cheap." Not "Oh, this mulch only cost me $100!" No. Not an option. I have basically unlimited time (in chunks, of course). I do not have $100 to spend on mulch.

We moved!

I'm so excited to have a shorter address. Our first street name was Robin Hills Drive, with an apartment number on the end. Then it was something nice and short. And then it was North Park Trail Way, with an apartment number again. I am certain that whoever comes up with these names is a person who has never had to fill out a form himself in his entire life. I especially enjoy it in the grocery checkout, when I sign up for a frequent shopper card. The people behind me burst into flames of anger because it takes so long to fill out a form.

Now it's 4653 E. 2315 South. I could make it even shorter by writing "S." instead. The power!

*These are not our exact street names, since I like to throw at least a few anti-stalker tokens out once in a while, even though I'm certain that will never happen anyway. But they're the same length, approximately, and it's completely absurd.

---

So, we moved. I am also excited about several other things:

1. My sister (Or whoever! Just let me know ahead of time! If you just show up, I might call the cops!) can visit, and the 86 young children in an apartment won't create a rip in the space-time continuum.

2. We have a yard. A fenced-in yard.

3. My oven is self-cleaning. In fact, it is self-cleaning RIGHT NOW. It smells like Mordor up there, but I don't care.

4. We can walk to and from church. And "we" includes the children, who are still small enough that they still have spontaneous leg failure on occasion.

5. The kids have their own rooms. THEIR OWN ROOMS. Do you know how much sleep has happened in the last week? Hours. Hours and hours and hours. And hours! Everyone is getting along better. The first two days were rough because they had many eruptions of rampant whining. But then they got used to it here, and we kind of like each other again.

Things I am not excited about:

1. Our yard. It is filled with sand burrs and tiny pieces of glass. The kids have gotten a little tougher in the last week, but I still think it's unsafe. We will have to shop vac the entire yard. Yes, I will be the neighbor who vacuums her yard.

That's actually about it. Everything else is fantastic. I haven't even seen a single spider.