Things That Bug Me

In no particular order:

*Some of you may recall how I feel about Parents Magazine (of which I am still receiving issues despite my having not renewed the subscription).  Tonight I found this little gem in the latest issue:

"She stays fit chasing after her 1-year-old son, Jake."

I never really know how to feel after reading things like this--after all, I've had three kids and never once was I able to "stay fit" just by chasing after them, and I start to wonder, is her kid running 10 miles a day at 10 miles per hour? Or is my kid just really lazy?  I have to conclude however, that chasing after a toddler is not really an effective form of exercise, and I just want people to call a spade a spade:

"My metabolism is unnaturally high, and I'm able to stay thin just by sitting around and watching my 1-year-old son, Jake play with his blocks."

At least then we would be spared the intellectual insult.

*Phone Solicitors.  16 out of the last 30 phone calls our house received were solicitors.  Which essentially means that I am paying about 15 dollars a month for people I don't know to call and send me into a panic-induced chase to the phone while my poopy-bottomed son wriggles around smearing poop on his changing table just to find out that I'm not getting a phone call from a long lost friend, but someone who swears that they can lower our mortgage payment.  Now I know you all mean well, but please don't give me the "Just opt out" speech, because I've opted out about a million times, and I've listened to the full recorded message only to find out that there is no option to press a button and be removed from the calling list.  It just isn't happening, they just aren't going away.  So instead I'm thinking heavily of discontinuing my land line and just using the cell phone I pay an arm and a leg for anyway.  Unfortunately for the people who will be getting my old phone number, I will continue to give it out when asked by retailers what my phone number is.  Sorry future phone number possessors, but otherwise the purpose would be defeated.

*People who can't read our family names.  My youngest son's first name is Axel.  Nothing special, just Axe with an L sound at the end--you know like a certain guitarist from a certain 80's hair band (not his namesake by the way).  And for illustration purposes, let's pretend that his surname is Fellstrod (and by the way it is surprisingly difficult to make up a fake name that is similar syllable wise to your real name).  Tonight at the pharmacy while I was filling a prescription of his, the pharmacist called out "Alex Failstord."  I'm assuming she knows how to read because it takes a fair amount of schooling to become a pharmacist, but that is really only an assumption.  After 8 years of similar situations however, I start to wonder if the human brain can only handle a certain amount of letters before it shuts down it's ability to sight read.  In Axel's case, that would be only one letter--A.  Apparently if your name is anything more unique than Bob Smith--people just can't handle.  Another reason this bothers me is that it's as if people are operating under the scenario that I have obviously misspelled my own son's name and that I must have meant Alex instead of Axel.  It's a good thing that I didn't go with the original spelling of his name that I wanted: Axl.  I think people would have had an aneurism trying to read that (my parents are going to have a heyday with this).

*Allergies.  I always thought that it would totally suck to have a kid with allergies, and now I know definitively that it does indeed suck to have a kid with allergies.

*Everything-- at a particular time of the month.

Bathing Suits--or is it Swimming Suits?

I love Bathing Suits and Swimming suits of most kinds-- the decorative, the utilitarian, the racing, the rash guards, and the board shorts, but I really don't care for stringy bikinis. I think I've always loved bathing suits, but it really gained speed in high school when I joined the swim team. Being on the swim team has forever cured me of a fear of wearing a bathing suit. I became very comfortable in them. Now and since then, I usually have upwards of about 20 bathing suits in my closet and multiple other accessories like rash guards and board shorts. Lately though, it seems that I usually only end up wearing the utilitarian type in the swimming pool or to the beach. This is because when I spend nearly 100$ on a new bathing suit, the idea of soaking it in chlorine (Gasp!) or salt water and sand (double Gasp!) makes me want to cry. This leaves me with one option: wearing it to lounge around the pool while I read and sip on cold drinks. Unfortunately, I have kids and lounging (hahaa... let me gather myself) isn't really an option which means if I want to lounge around a pool with a book and a drink, I'd need a tropical vacation without the kids, and you can guess just about how often those happen for me.

Some of the bathing suits that I really love lately are the retro-inspired type. These remind me of Rose Marie Reid, one of my favorite designers who designed bathing suits in the 1950's for hollywood glamour types (and incidentally she is a mormon). And here is where I post the appropriate pictures of some of my favorite bathing suits:

This is a beautiful Rosa Cha suit found on Anthropologie.com but the chances of me spending 250$ on a suit are slim to none (although it's tempting). And I just love the name Rosa Cha.

This one is from Down East Basics--love the ruffled collar

This is a Juicy Couture Suit that I bought last year in navy blue. I'm a sucker for ruffles and shirring. I think I'm making up for lost time, because when I was a kid I hated ruffles and shirring on my suits. And now that I'm seeing it in silver, I really want a silver one...

Maybe what I should do is follow the immortal advice of Rose Marie Reid herself:

"What you really need is a new suit for sunning, last year's for swimming and an extra one just for fun. A wardrobe of three or four suits isn't at all unusual any more... and some women buy 12 or 13 at a time."

- Rose Marie Reid

Another Blog

Ok, those of you who know me know I don't love to cook dinner, but my Dad discovered and purchased a 30 year-old company called Shirley J with some friends and his brother, and they have some seriously amazing products that make cooking dinner oh-so-easy.

Because of this, I've decided to start another blog, this one dedicated to cooking. This blog will help me become better at making dinner, and hopefully give some of you some dinner ideas if you are into easy dinners like I am. I will be using the Shirley J products (which are many) as well as other things in my cooking, hopefully you'll find something you'll like to try!

Here it is, come and take a look!

See Ali Cook

Let's Just Get Them All Out of the Way, Shall We?

The Rock Obama

Barack of Ages

Barack Steady

Barack and Roll

Barack Garden

Fraggle Barack

Between Barack and a hard place

Barack Band

Barack of Gibraltar

30 Barack

Hard Rock Obama

Barack Climbing

Barack the boat

Barack the vote

Baracket Science

Dumber than Barack

As nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of Baracking Chairs

Off his Baracker

Solid as Barack/Barack Solid

Get out from under your Barack

Barack around the clock

Barack Salt

Barack the Casbah

Baracking Chair

Barack a bye Baby

Big Barack Candy Mountain

Hit Barack Bottom

We will Barack you

You can't get blood from Barack

Pushing Barack Uphill

Volcanic Barack

Plymouth Barack

The Hand that Baracks the cradle

Classic Barack

Atomic Obama

Ticking Time Obama

Loves me like Barack

I vote we elect someone with a much less Punny name next term

I HATE CALLING BABYSITTERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

just thought I'd get that off my chest.

And here's why:

inevitably there is a hugely important event on a particular Friday night for which all three of my regular babysitters are busy (damned birthday parties), and for which it has taken me the better part of the week to determine this.

So now the scene is Thursday.....night, and I STILL don't have a babysitter for said hugely important event which leaves me calling the parents of every able bodied adolescent girl in a three city radius trying desperately to not sound like a moron who has left the babysitter finding to the last minute--begging for mercy.

I feel stupid, I look stupid, and the whole experience leaves me feeling agitated and shaky.

Is it any wonder that I am counting down the *years* until my oldest will be old enough to babysit?

5.  5 long and painful last-minute-phone-calling years to go.

Bread, Baby!

Bread. The most intimidating of all baking. Difficult to master, and requiring of loads of patience and work. You must knead, and rise, knead, and rise, and knead, and rise. And then, after all of that, you must bake, all the while on the edge of your seat wondering: Will it be too dense? Will it be too hard? Will it be crumbly? Will my family eat it? Will I be able to use it as a doorstop if they don't?

Well, my friends, wonder and worry no more. You may have noticed the Shirly J button on the right (you did? What observant and smart readers I have!), and thanks to this glorious company, everyone can bake bread like a pro on the first try. How? With a mix. That's right, you read that right, a bread mix. I know, I was skeptical at first too, I am after all, generally anti-mix. They never taste right, and really, who would have thought that something so difficult as bread would work in mix form and be so easy to make? Certainly not I.

But I tried it. I got this little bread mix from Shirly J and I measured out 2 Tbs. of yeast and added it to 2 1/4 warm water. Then I measured out 6 c. of the mix, and kneaded it for about five minutes in my machine. Then I divided it and let it rise and threw it in the oven for 20 mins. And viola:

It tastes wonderful too, and you can't tell in the picture, but the crust is soft which is very important to me, because I was raised on bread-maker bread and we had to use a buzz-saw to get through the crust. Not very practical. If I'm going to make bread, I want to be able to do it for everyday use, and have it work well for sandwiches. This mix does just that.

I used the Honey Wheat, but they also have a Honey White, and I believe a Sourdough is coming soon...

Anyway, click on the button to the right and visit their website, and try it out for yourself!

Also, they are having an open house at the main office in Orem, UT this week and next so you can go visit, get a balloon for your kids and eat their products. It's good clean fun. (click on the button for address)

The Best of Men's Fashion--a comprehensive list

Every so often in the world of men's fashion, genius appears. Here are a few of those moments:

The Three Piece Suit
(with or without tommy gun):

The Kilt
(if you ever want to start a heated debate with yours truly, just call this a skirt to my face)

WWII Officer's Uniform
(note the hat-- pure genius. And that reminds me...)

Hats

The Fedora
(and we might as well add the trench coat--Bogey style)

The Newsboy

Men: go forth and wear.

Saturday is a Special Day

It's the day I do absolutely nothing to get ready for Sunday.

Why is it that Sunday surprises me every week?  You'd think that I'd be used to it by now, and actually do something to plan ahead.  Here's a typical Sunday for us:

**Wake up leisurely (read: try to pretend to sleep in while the kids kill each other downstairs) and then have a nice big time wasting breakfast, because Church starts at 11, so we have plenty of time.

**Finish breakfast and look at the clock.  I have an hour and a half to shower and shave and change and get everything ready.  No problem, that's plenty of time! (can you see a pattern here?)

**I hop in the shower, Jon gets the kids ready.

**1 hour later (yes it really does take me that long to shower and shave) I hop out of the shower and realize I have a half hour left.  No problem, I know exactly what I want to wear.

**I get my outfit out, my skirt doesn't fit like I thought it would, there are a number of unexplained stains on my top (why am I hanging up dirty clothes? I ask myself), so I begin to look for something that fits well and is clean.  I end up going through about 3-4 different outfits all the while wondering why I can't bother to dry clean, or iron, or steam, or try on a single thing during the week..  

**Finally I'm able to pull something together (which isn't nearly as cute as what I had planned), Jon reminds me that we have 15 mins before church starts, and since I prefer to be on time, this means we should already be in the car.  This also means that I must go another week without putting on makeup (and thank goodness my hair is already hopeless--there isn't anything I could do to make it better even if I had all the time in the world), so I tell myself that I'm still young enough to pull it off and I grab some shoes.

**Jon and I then scramble to get everything together, the kids, the diaper bag, the bottle, the snacks, the church-appropriate books and activities- and then we all pile into the car.  We're going to make it!  I think naively.  

**We begin to hurriedly (but reverently) file into the back door of the Church when I notice my kids for the first time:  Gabe's pants are too short because his legs have long since outgrown his waist size (and continue to grow).  That's ok, I tell myself, everyone understands that.  Then I notice his hair, besides being more than a few weeks overdue for a haircut, it's a total mess.  Then I notice Greta is having the same hair problem.  "Didn't you bathe the kids??" I ask Jon--he didn't.  So I rush them to the bathroom while He gets a seat.  

**I frantically try to wet and finger comb my kids hair into something resembling combed hair when I notice that Greta is wearing the same dress for the third Sunday in a row despite the scads of cute dresses she has in her closet that continually go unworn.  I make a note to myself: Must remember to lay out Greta's dress early next week.  Then I notice her shoes are ALL WRONG despite the fact that she has scads of cute shoes in her closet that would match this dress.  And her shoes I add.

**We hurriedly (but reverently) walk down the hall to the Chapel, all the while I am making solemn promises to myself to NEVER let this happen again.  Must plan on Saturday! I berate myself.  Suddenly that annoying primary song has validity.