The Place to Be!

It's my 33rd birthday. And my 200th blog post.

Now, there are milestone birthdays, e.g. 30, 40, 50, etc. And there are birthdays that grant you special privileges, although there's a pretty big gap between those because it's pretty much "legal drinking age" and then "eligible for senior discount." Anyway, 33 is neither a milestone birthday nor a birthday that grants you a special privilege, so I felt the need to distinguish it somehow by giving it a theme.

I came up with "33: The Place to Be!"

Truthfully, I think every age I have ever been is the place to be. I hope I never get to an age where I'm unhappy about my age and/or ashamed to admit how old I am. I think everybody knows that getting older beats the alternative, so on my birthday I always acknowledge how lucky I am to be alive.

Here is a picture of me on my 33rd birthday. Okay actually it was the day before my birthday, but this is my "birthday picture," you know like how you take your kid to take a picture on his birthday at Picture People and they put him on a block that says how old he is? This is a slightly lower-budget version:

For my birthday a grew another chin. Also that shirt actually says 'Old Navy,' but it seems appropriate that the only part showing says 'OLD.'

Obviously I'm holding up the double-threes because I'm 33, but it kind of reminds me of Nixon, who apparently held up the "V" sign in a lot of pictures, presumably because he was perpetually turning 22.

Nothing says 'Happy Birthday' like Nixon.

So, my birthday plans include: writing this blog post, going to Target to buy diapers (he's only wearing them at night, I swear!), getting my one-cent cookware using the stickers from the grocery store, taking my kid to McDonald's so he can burn off energy at the playland while I read a book, dinner/cake, and then play rehearsal. I think we're going out to dinner this weekend, too.

I made my own cake this year. Before you think this sounds all martyr-ish, the real reason I made it was that I like to make cakes and this seemed like a good excuse to make one. It's red velvet:


Here's the finished product:

We'll be enjoying it with cookie dough ice cream.

Well, I'm off to begin my day of eating crap. And to start enjoying my new life in The Place to Be!

Virtual Coffee

So, recently I found this blog, Lucky Number 13, written by a woman named Amy who I don't know IRL. Every Tuesday, Amy hosts a blogging carnival called Virtual Coffee. The idea behind Virtual Coffee is that you write an unplanned blog post about random topics, the kinds of topics you might discuss over coffee with a friend. And then you link up to Amy's blog, and everybody reads each other's posts, and it's like we're having coffee together.

I thought this would be a perfect carnival for me. I like to drink coffee and write random, unplanned blog posts! So, here goes, my very first Virtual Coffee!

First off, a story about coffee! So, you might recall that on Saturday I suggested that caffeine was making me too jittery, and that maybe I should cut back. Okay, I should have considered cutting back, but instead I decided on Sunday to just completely go cold turkey. I don't know what on earth made me think I could quit caffeine altogether, other than the pure hubris that led me to believe that I wasn't one of those people who is totally dependent on caffeine.

Stop laughing.

Anyway, so I started the day with a big mug of peppermint tea, and a strong urge to punch somebody. I worked out at the gym (natural high!) and then took my kid to the mall. On the way we ended up at Wendy's on a bathroom stop, and so I decided we would just eat lunch there. I was jonesing for a Diet Coke about then, and was about to have one, until I discovered that an entirely new world of fast-food drink options had been opened up to me in the form of this awesome new drink machine at Wendy's. It has 106 drink choices! One hundred six. And the touch-screen guides you through a couple of menus, one to choose your basic drink, and one to choose your flavoring. It's like a giant iPad that serves soda! Anyway, I ended up with Strawberry Sprite Zero. It was kind of gross.

So, by 12:30 we were at the mall and I was on NO CAFFEINE, and watching my kid ride the little Thomas train and considering snuggling up with the little bears at the nearby Hallmark store for a nap. Fortunately the mall has a Starbucks kiosk ... and that was where my no-caffeine attempts ended.

So, I'm back on coffee. But I have started adding milk to it. That's the big news with me.

Actually, the really big news with me, or with my relatives at least, is that one of the upcoming babies growing in one of my sisters-in-law is a girl! You recall yesterday that I told you that both of my brothers' wives are pregnant with their firsts, and that I predicted that both would be boys. Well, I'm happy to say that I've already been proven wrong by ultrasonic technology! When I got the text about the sex of the baby, I was in a mall, and it was all I could do not to just leave my child in the inflatable playground and book it to the Baby Gap to buy out their entire selection of pink frilly stuff.

And if you were paying close attention, you would realize that I was at the mall two days in a row. But in my defense, it was two different malls. And I didn't intend to go to the mall yesterday. I intended to take my kid to this educational and enriching childrens' museum, but like every other children's facility it is closed on Mondays, so I turned to the nearby mall for his indoor energy-burning entertainment. Because it's January and we're all trapped indoors and the irony is that this weather makes adults sleepier and yet somehow gives children more energy.

Does anybody else feel like January is like being tossed around in a clothes dryer? Not because of the dry, blazing heat that's blasted in all indoor areas, but because it just feels like we're trapped and spinning around and around and around doing the same things over and over. And you know there's no way out, and you're just trying to make it through the day.

But thankfully, I do have a bit of an outlet in the form of the show I'll be doing next week! For those who may be just joining us, let me bring you up to speed. Although I have no performing arts experience whatsoever (at least in my adult life), I decided to try out for my local community theater show, Salute to Tony Winners. I am the emcee/joke-teller person! And I got to write the script. So, yesterday I went to watch the singers and dancers rehearse. The majority of the participants in this play are in about fifth grade, and each one of them has about the combined energy of a room full of three-year-old boys. But there are some adults in the show who are also pretty talented. (Although even the "older" performers are about college-age, and last night I was talking to one of the guys about how the guy from Benson had replaced Michael Crawford as the male lead in Phantom of the Opera, and then I had to explain to the guy what Benson was, and how it came on after Webster, and blah blah blah I'm from the 80s.)

Speaking of the 80s, have you checked out Claire's accessories lately? Obviously I have, because I was in a mall for the last two days. Everything they have is from the 80s, which is actually a good thing because I'm doing a bit in the show where I need some garish 80s clothing. But anyway, I was browsing through the racks of earrings there, because even though I'm a fully grown Midwest suburban housewife schlub, I'm still attracted to little earrings shaped like dinosaurs and fast food. I tried to be a little bit more understated in my purchases (for my real-life, not for the show), and I thought maybe wearing earrings of hamburgers and milkshakes might make people think wow, no wonder she's fat. But I did get an assortment of earrings that look like gummi bears! They're posts, not dangling ones, so I hope they won't be too obnoxious.

But I was gonna say that half the stuff they sell at Claire's is exact replicas of the stuff I had in the 80s and threw out. Damn, if only I could be a bit more of a hoarder.

On that note, I have to get going. I have to drop off my kid at preschool, and then I have my trainer at the gym, and then I'm getting a pedicure because tomorrow is my BIRTHDAY! Thanks for having coffee with me.

Mom Blog

So, I read this other, better-known blog, Jonniker, which I presume is written by somebody named Jonna. This week Jonna announced that she is pregnant with her second child. Which honestly I saw coming a mile-and-a-half away, which is why it would be hard to have a well-known blog and try to keep a pregnancy a secret. Yet another reason to toil in relative obscurity.

NOT THAT I have a pregnancy secret to keep or anything. I think it goes without saying that I'm not having another kid. I don't always think I'm doing that great of a job with the one I have.

Which is a segue to what I want to talk about today. See, during the pregnancy announcement post, Jonna said, "The only thing I do know is that I love being a mom more than anything I’ve ever done, ever."

I'm not sure that's something I know to be true for myself.

Now, whenever somebody writes an "I'm ambivalent about motherhood" post like this, she always has to stop and acknowledge that, of course, she loves her child(ren) more than anything in the world. And so let me say, I love Nathan more than anything in the world. Having Nathan has introduced me to a love I never experienced before. And like most mothers, the all-consuming fear of danger to my child keeps me up at night sometimes. He is a gigantically huge part of my world, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

But. Do I love being a mom more than anything I've ever done? It's hard to draw comparisons between motherhood and other endeavors. Like, when I ask if motherhood is the best thing I've ever done, am I comparing motherhood to my various unfulfilling careers? Obviously I love my child more than I love, say, editing math textbooks, but it also doesn't seem like a fair comparison. Editing math textbooks was a job, the kind of thing that you do for 8 hours a day and get paid for it. Being a mother is a 24/7, unrelenting emotional endeavor.

Which makes it exhausting. Which makes me wonder if I love it more than anything I've ever done. Part of me keeps coming back to the idea that if I loved this so much, I'd be making more children.

But the thing is, I think I could have 10 children and question whether or not motherhood was the best thing I'd ever done. That is, if I had time to think about these things while raising my 10 children. Well, I probably would actually, because I'd have a lot of time to think in the asylum.

So although I'd like to think that most of my posts are well-reasoned and thought-out, this time I'm left without a reasonable answer. Is motherhood the best thing I've ever done? On the one hand I have a child who I couldn't imagine life without, and a lifestyle I enjoy more than my pre-kid lifestyle. On the other hand, I have a 24/7 all-consuming emotional responsibility that I usually feel like a failure at.

Is motherhood the best thing I've ever done? I have no answer. It's not something I would un-do, but it's also not something I would necessarily want to do over again, either.

I have no answer. I think having a child is something that you can't explain to anybody, and that goes for both the good and the bad.

I would like to end this complete downer of a post with some happy news about some people I know who are pregnant. Did you know both of my brothers' wives are pregnant with their first? I am so excited for nieces and/or nephews. I'm calling it right now: both boys. This is largely due to the fact that, in the history of the world, I have never known a single person who has had a girl. (Okay, slight exaggeration: there's my mom.) Anyway, I think we find out the sex of Baby #1 in the very near future, and the parents of Baby #2 want to wait and be surprised at the birth. I'm not gonna lie, I would like nieces. I always pictured myself having two girls (hahahaha), and now I have one boy who I wouldn't trade for any girl in the world. BUT, in the spoiling aunt role, it would be fun to have a niece. Have you seen those puffy little tutu-like skirts they are selling everywhere for girls? The ones you put over the little leggings? (And I do have one niece on Bill's side, but she's a little past tutu age.)

Anyway, so I'm excited for my sisters-in-law. And should they one day find themselves ambivalent about motherhood, I hope they know they can always come to me to talk.

Slow Cooking With Shannon

Yesterday I said that the ultimate compliment on my cooking would be for somebody to say that I should have my own Food Network show. So I thought it might be fun to do a post in the style of a cooking show, based on what I made for dinner yesterday. The recipe is at the bottom.

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Hi everyone, and welcome to Slow Cooking With Shannon. Today we'll be preparing one of my mom's Crock Pot recipes, Slow Cooker Chicken Barbecue!

As I enter my television studio, I discover that it's a giant mess! I swear the housekeeping staff had it spotless last night, but unfortunately I share the studio with a couple of other people who aren't all that neat.


[Cut to really long commercial break.]

Okay, we're back! I got the kitchen cleaned!


Unfortunately it took 25 minutes, and since this is a 30-minute show, I only have 5 minutes left to make my recipe. I can do it! Let's go!

You start with boneless, skinless chicken breasts. I like to use breasts that have a "sell by" date of yesterday. You know, just to add a little more adventure!


Next you spend forever looking for Worcestershire sauce. And are you guys wondering how I got my own cooking show when I can't actually pronounce the word "Worcestershire"?

Oh, and I'm being interrupted by my small co-host, who is begging incessantly for water! Focus groups have had mixed feelings about him.

Also, where is the cumin? I once had my spices organized alphabetically, but now my spice cupboard looks like this:


You also add water and vinegar. So, to recap: that's chicken breasts, water, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, and cumin.

You put it all in the Crock Pot for 6 hours on LOW, or 3-4 hours on HIGH. Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook says the formula is 1 hour on HIGH equals 2-2.5 hours on LOW. When figuring out how much time you need, bear in mind that there is another hour of cooking required beyond this initial time.

So, I set my slow cooker to HIGH for 4 hours.


Also, how low-budget is my cooking show? Was the best we could do a stained Crock Pot with the knob broken off the lid?

So, you have four hours. During those four hours, you could clean the rest of your house, wash cat vomit off your comforter, swim 2,000 yards, and go to Target intending to buy a few things but walking out with $150 worth of stuff.

However, since this is only a half-hour show, we're going to pull out another batch that we already cooked for four hours. This is known in the business as a "swap-out."

We also drained the juices out of the pot, shredded the chicken breasts using two forks, and stirred in barbecue sauce.


Now you need to cook it for an additional hour on LOW. During this time, you can prepare fancy gourmet side dishes, like this:



Or this:


And look! Our chicken is ready! Serve it on toasted hamburger buns.

Mmm, delicious! Thanks for watching, and join us again next time for another episode of Slow Cooking With Shannon!


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Slow Cooker Chicken Barbecue

Note: For the preparation above, I cut this recipe in half. The original recipe below makes a lot of chicken.

4 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts
3/4 cup water
3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
3 tablespoons vinegar (any kind)
1 teaspoon cumin
28 ounces barbecue sauce

Put everything except the barbecue sauce in the slow cooker for 6 hours on LOW or 3-4 hours on HIGH. Drain juices and shred chicken using two forks. Pour in barbecue sauce, stir, and cook on LOW for 1 hour. Serve on buns.

Yesterday

Yesterday I woke up at 8 a.m. Is that not the best? The fam and I are a little bit off, time-wise, since getting back from California a week ago. Yes, somehow after a week we can't recover from a two-hour time difference. I'm thinking international travel isn't in our future.

At 9 a.m. I had the trainer at the gym. You guys, she is so nice and fair and reasonable. There's nothing to blog about. Normally I can tap an exercise experience for some pretty good blog fodder, because I am out of shape and OMG they're trying to kill me. But Trainer Jill is so sweet and encouraging, and she makes me do exercises that are challenging but not impossible. You might say they are exercises that are personally tailored to me.

After the trainer, I attempted to do the treadmill, as part of my new plan to double up on my various exercise activities. I was all, "I will go for 45 minutes!" Then I quickly amended that to 30 minutes. And then 5. There is only so long you can be in the fitness room at the gym. It smells like rubber and sweat.

When I got home from the gym, my first order of business needed to be cleaning up the kitchen! And then laundry! And dishes! But instead I made a new iPod playlist. Since you asked, here it is:

I guess you have to click on it to actually read it.

Anyway, yes, I did buy the new Taylor Swift song. I'm as surprised as you are. In general I don't dislike Taylor, it's just that I figure I get enough of her catchy songs on the radio. But her new one kind of has a little bit more of a pretty, lilting tone that distinguishes it slightly from all her other songs.

Armed with my playlist, I went in my kitchen to prepare dinner. Hellz yeah, it was only like 11:30 a.m., but that's how awesome I am. And oh yeah, it was a two Crock Pot dinner. Chili in one Crock Pot, baked potatoes in the other. Chili potatoes!

See, the thing is, my husband is a little bit of a picky eater. Those of you who know me IRL know that picky eater is an understatement when it comes to my husband. And I'm a very insecure cook, so picky eaters can be my undoing, cooking-wise. I need people to eat my food and be like ohmygosh, Shannon, this is the best thing I've ever eaten, you should totally have your own Food Network show! Not, oh okay, I will swirl it around my plate for awhile until she gets distracted, at which point I will dump it in the trash.

So sometimes when I'm feeling particularly insecure about my cooking, I go for an ace in the hole. My husband loves chili potatoes, because apparently when he was in high school every Friday was the baked potato bar, except he will tell you that they never had enough chili to cover the whole potato, and ... oh well, I guess his complaining isn't just specific to my cooking. Although I'd hate to think that my cooking might be equated to that of a high school cafeteria.

To go with the potatoes, I put together a cinnamon swirl bread for the bread maker. My new blog friend Leigh Ann recently talked about how baking is an inexpensive form of therapy, and I agree. As I wrote in this post from November 2009:

"I like to bake because it distracts me from all of my other petty problems. I can't tell you how many times I have been mired in a bout of depression or anxiety, subsequently decided to bake something, and then realized a short while into measuring flour and sugar that I'm surprisingly calm. I think just the feel of flour and sugar is calming."

Okay, so I sort of screwed up the cinnamon swirl bread, because I added the cinnamon-sugar too early, and so it got all pulverized and mixed in with the dough, rather than being a pretty little swirl of cinnamon in the middle. Oh well, cinnamon in bread always tastes good, even if it doesn't look as pretty as it could.

Here is what I did after making the bread:

I sat.

All afternoon.

It was awesome.

Well, I mean, you know, I got interrupted in my sitting a lot, but mostly I sat. And I surfed the Internet. I probably should have broken down and read a legitimate book. Why is it that sitting down to read a book in the middle of the day seems so slovenly, but I can surf the Internet all afternoon with much less guilt?

Oh, I forgot to tell you guys the best thing! While I was cooking, I got an e-mail from the director of the Tonys show, and she said my script was everything she wanted and more! Oh I am so happy!

Okay, so anyway, the reason I was Crock Potting it was that Nathan had his first ice skating lesson right during the time I would normally be making dinner. Look how cute:


Except that's the only shot I have of him actually on the ice, because most of the time he was hanging onto the wall, like this:


I can't blame the boy, though, because when I tried to take ice skating lessons last year, I dropped out after two sessions, so terrified was I of falling.

So we had ice skating, and then we went home and ate chili potatoes, and then the evening routine and blah, blah, blah, blahbitty blah.

The other fun fact is, yesterday I only consumed about 8 oz. total of coffee. I think it might have been better for me. I felt a little less wired than, say, I do now after having had more coffee than that while writing this blog post. I'm wondering if I should try to cut back on the caffeine. DAMMIT. It's always something.

Aww, you guys

Although I am not officially doing NaBloPoMo for January, I thought I might do a post based on today's prompt. And then I looked at the prompt:

Write a post using the following words: oregano, football field, blackbird, hurricane, and loop.

Here goes:
A post using the words oregano, football field, blackbird, hurricane, and loop would be a post that nobody would want to read.

The end.

But actually, I went to the NaBloPoMo site because the January blogging theme is "Friends." I've been thinking a lot about friends lately, and I was looking for a prompt that might focus my thoughts beyond the warm-fuzzy-gushy-sentimental-teary mass of emotions I feel when I think about my friends.

(What the hell oregano, football fields, blackbirds, hurricanes, and loops have to do with friends, I don't know.)

I said it yesterday, and I'll say it again: You are all my friends. I know that sounds cheesy, but let me explain. In the past I have had a pretty narrow definition of friendship. I would have said that I had only a very few friends, and that many of the people I hung out with were more like acquaintances that I liked. It's not like I had something against most of my acquaintances, it's just that I didn't think we knew each other well enough to call ourselves friends. In order for a person to qualify as a friend, that person and I had to share our deepest emotions with one another.

Which is why you guys qualify as my friends. I share my feelings on this blog with you all the time, and you guys share yours back in the comments or via e-mail. And every time I get a comment or an e-mail, I get that warm-fuzzy feeling I mentioned earlier, and my whole body is buzzing with this sort of gratified energy that honestly prevents me from sleeping sometimes. And I just know I did the right thing by being honest about my feelings and encouraging others to do the same. It is only by being open and honest that we realize we are not alone in our feelings. And whether you are depressed, anxious, sad, tired, stressed, or overwhelmed, you always feel better knowing you're not the only one who feels that way.

So, thank you again for being my friends. Thank you for your comments. Just know you have made my life so, so much better.

Sending myself flowers

Roses I bought at Costco yesterday

So. I finished the first draft of my script for the Salute to Tony Winners show. I tried to make it a nice mix of goofiness, interesting facts, sarcasm, and just general introductory information. One thing I realized, after researching a lot of musicals, is that a common theme in these shows is Nazis. Also, the Great Depression. And cross-dressing. Overall, most of the shows have a message of being true to yourself. Which is a good thing. Unless you're a Nazi.

I feel a little bit better having gotten that script done. I was stressed out about that. The next nagging task in my life is getting my house under control. I hate clutter. Like, hate it to the point that the presence of clutter makes me truly unhappy. And right now my house has a combination of post-trip and post-holiday stuff that just needs to get put away. And all around that stuff is the usual stuff like laundry and dishes. And I just feel like I get an area cleared out, only to come back 15 minutes later to find that area all cluttered up again.

So with the script done, I embarked on a clutter-cleaning mission, but I got overwhelmed after about an hour and had to stop. I popped in a movie for Nathan and went upstairs to lie down for a little bit. It felt like my head was spinning, more figuratively than literally. I just wanted all the sounds in the world to stop, including those in my own head. (No, I don't hear voices. I'm just talking about the cacophony of thoughts that swirl around in my brain.)

And then I thought, I need to give myself a break. So often I beat myself up for getting stressed out by my simple life of one kid and no job. I say, I don't have a right to feel overwhelmed. But this morning it occurred to me that I have a lot going on. Most of the stuff I have going on is stuff I voluntarily choose to do, like performing in a show or taking Nathan to ice skating. Those activities are good for me, and enjoyable, but nonetheless they are time- and energy-consuming. Sometimes I can't do everything.

I also need to give myself a break because this is a tough time of year for me. It's a tough time of year for most people, because it's cold and dark and we're all stuck indoors. Also, and there's no way to talk about this without ragging on my husband a little, early January is pretty tough because it's when my husband camps out in the house for weeks while grading last semester's finals. I think most of my friends would agree that marriage works better when husband and wife aren't together 24/7. I have my daily routines, and sometimes I feel like he gets in my way a little bit. I feel like Nathan and I have to get out of the house as much as possible, and that's tiring, too.

I get stressed feeling like I have to be chipper and happy when I'm around people. Nobody likes a big downer. But sometimes I want to say, "Look, I'm exhausted. I'm overwhelmed. I have questionable mental health. I just want to sit here quietly and not talk, or maybe I do want to talk, but not about things that make me more stressed out."

I developed a mental health scale awhile back, which goes from -10 to 10. If you're at -10, you want to kill yourself, and you better get yourself some help now. I have never been as low as -10 (knock on wood). I'd say at my very worst, I was maybe at -8. If you get all the way to +10, it is like the happiest day of your life. Like, you're at Disneyland, and you're actually enjoying Disneyland, and not all I'm at Disneyland I should be happier but OMG these lines and WTF do you mean it's $8.50 for popcorn?

The thing is, if you choose to take antidepressant medication, as I have, the goal of medication shouldn't be to get you to +10. It should be to get you to 0. Zero. Normal. The sad things make you sad and the happy things make you happy. And you have an appropriate level of happy or sad, given the external stimuli. So, for example, you are not all, Oh shoot, I have that yoga class next week, I must find my yoga mat, oh crap why is life so hard all the time? (Hypothetical example, of course.)

Right now, I'd say I'm operating at maybe a -2. Which is pretty good, considering I was at about -5 two days ago. I'm not making any promises like I'll be fine by the weekend or anything like that, because life doesn't work like that, and those kinds of goals just stress me out worse.

Instead of setting goals, I'm just gonna give myself a break today. I feels selfish and overly-indulgent to actually be telling myself to be kinder and gentler to myself. But this is one of those "sometimes it takes being smacked to the very core of your existence to realize you need to make some changes in your life" situations. If all I do is beat myself up all the time, and the result is being depressed, then beating myself up all the time may not be working for me. (Shocking, I know.)

I just want to close by saying that I love you guys. I love you for reading and commenting and making me feel better about myself. I hope I'm returning the favor sometimes. I'm glad you're my friends, even those of you I've never met.