If you give a kid a cookie . . .

This year, we've instituted a weekly "Girls Night".  Just about every Friday evening, my two local daughters have come over to the home to play cards, or we've gone out to restaurants (rarely, because they know that's not my usual style), or we've gone to plays or such on campus.

The boys at first pretended to be jealous of this, so I offered them a "Boys Night" every Tuesday with me (the night their dad works late at his office 81 miles away), and that satisfied them -- although in practice, they've usually totally ignored me so they could go play with their own friends or their own cell-phone games.  (Alone time for me!!  YeSS!!!)   But I kept Tuesday nights listed as "Boys Night" in my calendar, and so one week in February when J-son actually suggested an activity we ought to do together, I had the time already set aside and ready to share. 

He said, "We ought to make Jolly Rancher Cookies!".  I think he totally expected me to say "no", because, well, c'mon:  Sugar.  Commercially bought candy.  And it's candy wrapped in Trash, at that.  Definitely not a standard Miser Mom activity. 

But people are more important than things, and since this was the first real date night that either of the boys had asked for, I floored J-son by saying "yes".

Hence, we did cooking that began with pulling trash off of commercially-bought sugar candy, followed by exuberant use of a mallet.  Shouldn't all cooking begin with whacking the heck out of something?

We used (of course) canning rings as our cookie cutters, and then we used an apple corer to cut the holes in the dough where the crushed candy would go.

The effect in the end was almost Easter-Eggy.  If I'd had more time earlier this April, I totally would have done this again to add Easter-Egg Cookies to the kid's baskets.

The boys were entranced, delighted, proud.  They took photographs of their own.

We even made a special cookie just for the master chef whose idea this was -- J-son himself.

And when it was all done, they said, "We should do this again!".

But I guess it's enough to know they can have me if they want me; that's all that really mattered.  Since then, video games and friends seem to have a stronger pull once again.  So I get my Alone Time back, mixed together with some really sweet memories.  

a small thing to love: a toothbrush

A toothbrush, because t's a minor marvel. 

A toothbrush, because it's so nice to scrub the teeth in the morning and make your whole mouth feel clean.

A toothbrush, because if you use a toothbrush and floss regularly, you don't need toothpaste (or at least *I* don't, according to my dentist).

A toothbrush, because when you re-purpose it, can become a kitchen brush, great for cleaning anything with small crevices and cracks:  the rim of the sink, the threads of a dirty jar, the space between the buttons on the coffee maker.  And another repurposed toothbrush works great in the bathroom.

(Really, using a toothbrush to get into those little spaces often makes a mostly clean thing really sparkle around the edges).

A toothbrush, because what could be better for cleaning those canines?

That's all.  I'm glad for toothbrushes.

Easter can-[ning jars]-dy

How to do Easter baskets on the cheap?  How to minimize trash and plastic?  Canning jars, natch!

This year continues to whomp my butt with work and a few other exciting family events, so I didn't get around to dyeing eggs.  But I made it to Market as usual for my weekly milk and yogurt, and while I was there I picked up two quart-sized jars worth of candy (jelly beans and Wilbur Buds); no trash.  I transferred the candy to my cutest little 8 oz canning jars, and used those in lieu of plastic eggs.  There were no complaints.  

Other contents of the baskets:  packets of seeds, some colorful pencils, and chocolate rabbits purchased by an older child who decided her younger brothers should get bunnies.  Instead of making name tags for the baskets, I just topped each one with the child's napkin and napkin ring (already labeled with their names).   Not uber elegant, I admit.  But uber elegant wouldn't have happened in a swamped year like this one anyway, even if I'd felt like commercializing this most sacred of days by turning it into a Gimme Fest.

Werewolves show their wolf-y form during a full moon; my next door neighbor is more of a where-bunny.  After church, we came home to discover that my children were not doomed to a truly plastic-egg-deprived Easter, after all.  We had our yearly hunt through the back yard . . . a challenging hunt indeed, because our particular Easter Bunny climbs trees (in her bathrobe, even!) to hide her loot.  And the squirrels always steal some of the eggs for themselves.

J-son hunts for eggs in the tree house.

Post-hunt, the kids sock away their loot, and I collect the plastic eggs and return them to our Bunny (so she can hide them where she will next year). Then, the happy hunters always head next door with chalk in hand to write thank you notes.

N-son writes "THANK YOU" in his favorite block letters.

Our neighbor's driveway becomes almost as colorful as the baskets on our dining room table.

If you look carefully, you might have noticed an addition or two to the group in the driveway.  And this is how Y makes her entrance into the Miser Mom blog (although she's actually been in our home since December.  I might have mentioned a time or two that it's been a busy year!)

Welcome, Y, to our family traditions!

Update (downdate?): Ten bikes, One car

Last October, my husband and the boys went on a weekend road trip to visit a far-away daughter.  This little road trip ended up tipping us over the brink toward saving a bit more money on transportation.

For a year or two now, my husband and I had been toying with the idea of selling off one of our two cars.  For one thing, ever since I fell in love with the bike that I'd named the SPDM, we've been sort of grokking to a lifestyle that is increasingly bike-centric.   But even more, the boys are nearly old enough to get their learner's permits, and I will totally admit I've been biting my nails over the idea of seeing these ADHD, energetic, impulsive boys in charge of a massive machine-O-death.  Ditching one car would give us an excuse to delay their initiation into the world of motor-vehicle-operation.

So almost a year ago, my sons and I had had this little conversation:

Me: J-son, when you turn 16 in September, your dad and I are going to buy you your very own vehicle!
J-son: You're going to buy me a car? Wow! What kind?!
N-son: J-son, she's not buying you a car! Our mom is too fruuuuuugal!
Me: That's right, darling; I'm buying you your very own bike!
J-son: Awwwwww.

So, September rolled around, and with it, J-son's 16th birthday.  We got him a fab bike -- and for good measure, we soon got N-son his own bike, too. So now our family is decked out with an abundance of 10 bikes.

And a month later, on their way back home from their October road trip, my husband's old car died.  Kaput.  We used our AAA membership to tow it the rest of the way home, clean it out, and donate what was left of it to a local charity. We'd made the transition to a one-car family.

And y'know, the transition has been really okay.  In fact, it's actually been sort of nice.  Here are some of the things made cutting back so easy for us:

• Living close to work.  I'm a 10-minute walk from my office.
• Public transportation.  My husband's commute is more like 81 miles each way, but there's an Amtrak train station 2 miles from our home; my boy's school is 7 miles away, but they can usually take a school bus.  The train and the school bus are actually nicer than taking a car most of the time.
• Bikes!  I buy groceries on my bike.  My husband and the boys bike to and from school on many of the days they have after-school events.  Especially during the summer, we go to social events by bike, which has the added advantage that we can arrive and leave at different times.
• Calendars.  My husband and I have long had a habit of what we call "planner meetings" where we discuss upcoming events.  Now we add the car into that discussion.
• Sharing.  J-son's recent Lacrosse practice means staying late at school, which means no bus; so we're grateful for car pooling.  And twice when my husband was out of town with the car for an Army weekend, a good friend let me borrow her car so I could go see K-daughter.  I filled the car up with gas as a thank you.  
• Rental.  When I give math talks, the university that invites me pays all my travel expenses, and it's actually cheaper for them to pay for a rental than to reimburse mileage for my own car.  Go figure!  So I feel good about saving my host a bit of money on my trip, at no expense to myself, by renting a car for out-of-town travel.  

Mostly, though, I think the transition was easier because we'd been planning it out in our head for a while before we actually got to the break-down point.  So we had our plans lined up (not to mention, our bikes hung up), ready to go.

Enjoying my cold

Earlier this week, my husband and N-son got the flu.  Yuckkers.

Thursday night, I started coming down with a cold.  It's the kind of cold that most people would describe by saying,  "I'm coming down with a bad cold".   But because it doesn't look like it's going to become a flu, I decided that I'm going to experience it as "a good cold".

I'm coming home from work and just curling up in bed.  Mmmmm.  I'm surrounding myself with piles of rags, and I'm letting glorious (or gloriously icky) things come out of my head into those rags.   Totally fascinating.  I'm telling people, "you don't want to see me; I have a cold," -- and all of a sudden, they don't want to see me.  My busy schedule has developed a bit of wiggle room.  It's not so bad.

Here's the only real disadvantage, the only cool thing I haven't gotten to do because of my cold -- to meet my granddaughter, Baby A, born earlier this week.  We're both being turtles in different ways right now.

Baby A: my granddaughter.  We're both enjoying our naps this weekend!

Memo to my other kids:   I just want to point out how INCREDIBLY convenient it is that my first grandchild is "Baby A".  I strongly recommend that my next child who has a baby name that kid "Barbara" or "Bobby" or "Bronwyn" or "Buzz";  after that we can move on to "Charisma" or "Carlos" or "Corrinne", and so on.  The daughter who wants to name her eventual child "Zixila", I'll just say that you better get your sisters popping out kids soon if you want to keep your child in alphabetical order! 

Teenage Transformer

It was only five years ago we met J-son for the first time.  Here he is below, the kid in yellow. What a pip-squeak!

Now, lo these five years later, a lot has happened.  He got some orthodontic work, some food, a heck of a lot of discipline, even more food . . . and what's happened?  He's like one of those toys that you fold and fold and it changes from a taxi into a giant robot.  Yes, it's Teenage Transformer!

And when he's not wearing his super-hero Lacrosse outfit, he dresses a lot like a grown up!

Amazing how that happens, isn't it?

The nocturnal cell phone garden

As I start writing this post, it is 8:30 in the evening.  We are getting close to the time when we plant our nightly cell phone garden.

The cell phone garden is a little tradition I started way back when, in the days when I purchased my sons their very first cell phones.  Perhaps you have a similar tradition in your own home.  When I bought those phones, little knowing what I was getting into, at least I knew that it was important that phones came with Cell Phone Rules.

We had Financial Rules; most of those have changed to keep up with changing cell phone plans.  We had Politeness Rules and Safety Rules, and those have been fairly easy to enforce -- a few sheepdog barks here and there have been needed on occasion to herd the boys back into the corral, but for the most part, the larger culture has aided and abetted us in teaching our boys general cell phone etiquette.  Cool.

But by far my favorite rule is the 9 p.m. Rule.  That's the time that the boys turn off their phones, hand them over to their parents, and relinquish electronic devices for the night.

In the early years, the nightly confiscation was our early warning system to detect whether one or the other of the boys had, yet again, either lost or smashed their phones.  The boys were not kind to those early phones, were they?   No, they were not.  They've used cell phones for about 30 months now, and my two sons have probably gone through about 10 different phones.  (They've done a lot of chores and allowance withholding in order to earn their new phones).

The 9 p.m. rule also marked the transition from electronic to other entertainment (ice cream, reading, wrestling, etc) and then bed; this is a transition of course that my e-ddicted sons really need each night.  It means they're not texting friends, and they're not under temptation not to text, either.  It means that they really do get a chance to sleep.

Similarly, mornings are free of e-distractions.  The boys don't get their phones until they've cleaned themselves and the kitchen up, have their backpacks packed, and are ready to head out the door.  The phones have become a reward for preparedness.  That's a nice perk I hadn't expected.

And, of course, by planting our cellphones along the twining vine of cables and chargers in our bedroom, we ensure that our boys get their phones fully charged up overnight, so there is no excuse about dying cell phones if we need to call them during the day.

Mostly, though, I like how the cell phone garden has become ritual.  It's getting close to bedtime, so you hand over phones, get snacks, brush teeth.  You make it a part of the routine, a habit, almost a ceremony.

And now, it's 9:01.  Time to call the boys down and collect the devices.  Computer off.