4.08.2020
10.27.2016
Bring Back the Popcorn Balls!
Writer's Note: I wrote this article for LR Family for the October issue. Due to some miscommunication, it was not published there but I am posting it here because I love it with all its ridiculousness. I hope you enjoy it as well AND I will have an article in the November issue so - local friends - keep your eyes peeled for that!
There’s no doubt that Halloween is a bit more hopped up than it used to be. Mostly, as a Pinterest Parent (admittedly a hardcore fail of a Pinterest Parent) to small people, I find myself getting sucked further and further into the Halloween hoopla every year. In my neighborhood, Halloween tends to be a big party - we block off our street, our neighbors are out and about, and, one year, we even had a food truck and Halloween parade BEFORE officially trick or treating. I won’t discuss the hours of balloon tying I did that year - the children clearly needed a balloon arch at the start of their parade!
Tiger Kitty and Friend under the infamous Halloween balloon arch. |
We’ve come a long way from my own childhood when a slim selection of costumes purchased at the grocery or convenience store sufficed. You know the ones - a plastic smock that tied in the back, eerily circular cutout eye-holes that you couldn’t really see out, a suffocatingly tiny slit for breathing and those flimsy rubber bands to secure it around your head.
Occasionally, we had homemade costumes as well though they generally went one of three ways - a sheet-ghost, a hobo or a gypsy, which, let’s face it, was basically the more girly version of the hobo. If you wanted to get crazy, you could craft your own but parental involvement was scarce if you went this route. One year, I vividly remember painstakingly pressing masking tape onto a black t-shirt in order to create a spider web effect. How happy must my mom have been? Here’s some tape & a t-shirt. Viola! Costume! Her hardest job was eating my popcorn balls and scouring my candy for non-existent razorblades and the oh-so-dangerous-your-stomach-will-explode Pop Rocks!
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I am the tin foil crowned gypsy on the end. |
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Masking Tape Spider Web Costumes are all the rage. |
Now, if my kids need a costume, we have entire stores dedicated to Halloween apparel. My oldest child, who is 8, has never had much of an affinity for creative costuming. He is happy to keep it simple - a pirate, a soccer player, the ever-popular Harry Potter. My five year old daughter has more unusual requests ranging from a Rainbow Kitten to a Tiger Kitty to a Dancing Unicorn. In my heart, I’m hoping for a zombie version of one of her costume requests soon. We have a new baby in the house this year - perhaps a 3-month old Vampire? Clown? Tiny ax-murderer? Suggestions for my trio or terror welcome.
Overall, I try hard to keep hopped-up Halloween somewhere in the middle of then and now - a mixture of store bought costumes with homemade elements. I let them candy overload but try to reign in it in before a full on sugar coma. As they get older, I try to let them roam the neighborhood a little more freely and party with the neighbor kids until they crash. As my kids age, I’m sure I will be reevaluating the whole Halloween situation - Halloween with pre-teens and teenagers? Now THAT, my friends, is scary.
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katandkarl
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12:09 PM
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9.12.2016
10.16.2015
And then I cried.
Wednesday started off a little rough.
It went a little something like this:
5 a.m. Child climbs over me to get in my bed.
5:30 a.m. Same child makes a few OH I KNOW THOSE gagging noise, I throw said child back over me - none too gently - and rush to bathroom for minor vomit incident.
5:45 a.m. Scrub the teensy bit of minor vom from the floor on hands and knees. Sanatize some things. Start laundry.
6:30 a.m. Text boss explaining situation. (For the record, Karl and I generally try to trade off sick days; it was my turn.)
7:00 a.m. Prepare other people to leave the house. Tamp down jealousy. Feel slightly better when I realize I can stay in my pj pants.
9:00 a.m. Open work email, confirm scheduled communication and social media posts for a client. Continue checking and responding to email.
9:15 a.m. Continue working WHILST STILL REMAINING WITHIN ARMS REACH. Because Nate.
9:30 a.m. Email and links go out.
9:31 a.m. ALL CAPS EMAIL FROM CLIENT VERY ANGRY ABOUT TYPO IN FACEBOOK POST. Insert scathing words here. (For the total record, the spelling error was in the copy of the text pulled into a facebook post by a link so I didn't actually write it, but, regardless, the client was right. I should have checked it.)
9:32 a.m. Unexpected tears pop out of my experienced, old lady eyeballs. Unanswerable questions begin from 7 year old. (Q: What's wrong? Why are you crying? Is someone hurt?) (A: Mommy's upset because she made a mistake for her job and needs to fix it.) (Silent A: AND THIS GUY - who signed his email with just his initial - is not being very nice about it.)
So, like I said, a little rough. It's not like I have never cried about a client or a job before, but it's been a long time and this was something very minor and fixable. I think it caught me off guard on a morning where everything was out of routine and not the normal Order of Wednesday Mornings. I'm not immune to leaky eyeballs. I'm also not asking for sympathy; in fact, please don't - I'm over it. The client may have been having a really shitty Wednesday morning himself.
I guess, as we approach the weekend and get ready to go out to eat or go to work or play with our friends and family, I'm just hoping to approach it with more of a Be Kind kind of attitude. So, all in all, a good reminder for me : LIVE A NON CAPS LOCK KIND OF LIFE.
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katandkarl
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12:07 PM
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10.01.2015
Put This (Shit) on Pinterest!
But sometimes (sometimes!) I feel like maybe I get it right.
Nate's 2nd grade class has a Surprise Reader that comes in every Thursday morning. Parents or family members sign up for a spot and the stage (or the rainbow mat – whatever) is yours to talk or read about anything. His sweet teacher emailed me a few suggestions – ranging from a science experiment (yea, that's a no for me) to making paper airplanes (props? We can bring props? Yes please.) to reading a favorite book.
I wanted to share something both Nate and I love. He has a few books we read over and over and over. One of those is "Ted Williams :: The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived" (A baseball book!? GASP.) There aren't many kids in his class that play baseball or softball so I wasn't sure how the book would go over, but, well, 2nd graders are pretty rad and they were totally into it.
I also brought some super old baseball cards. (Most married people have to combine, like, their CD collections. Karl and I had to combine our old baseball cards. I mean, what do people even combine now? Their iTunes accounts!?) Anyway, the kids had a blast looking through the cards and picking out their favorite 80s mustaches.
I regaled them with horrible old lady stories about walking to the neighborhood drugstore (And then thought - crap can I say drugstore!? HA.) to buy a pack of baseball cards for 25 cents mostly so I could get the stick of sweet cardboard-like gum. Raise your hand if you remember this sweet waxy packing and the gum sticks! (Also this is an old photo from the internet, I only WISH I still had some of that gum in the original packaging. Imagine the rock-hardness.)
Then we made our own baseball cards. Well, Nate and a few others made theirs baseball related. There was also a nice variety of soccer, gymnastics, dance, basketball, cheer and one horseback rider. I'm sure I am breaking some copyright law here with the Topps logo but there were a bunch of blank baseball card templates on The Internets so I'm going with LEGAL.
All in all, pretty adorable, right?
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katandkarl
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11:25 AM
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Labels: errbody in the club get tipsy
9.23.2015
Sweeps Month is Here. Let's All Cancel Cable and Blog Again.
At this point, I don't know exactly where to start. Blogging obviously is not high on my priority list and, like one of my old bosses said way back in 2005 when I tried to convince him to start a blog and use social media for a client, the trend is on it's way out, right? (HA. I'd love to hear his current opinion on the state of social media.) For me, there are so many other avenues to connect with people online, this one just sort of fell to the wayside.
Problems with this:
Our family archives are a little more blank than they used to be. Events aren't reflected the same. My brain is getting more spotty, not less, so writing things down is becoming increasingly important. (See also: My planner looks crazy, the to-do lists are long, and second grade is hard.)
My writing is RUSTY at best. (That's the first time I've used CAPS FOR EMPHASIS in, like, forever.)
It's still one of my great loves – to blog, to write it down, to connect with people when they read it.
Advantages to this:
I have more time to focus on the life in front of me and hanging out with those two small people I birthed many moons ago.
I have more energy to focus on some things that needed focusing on in the last little bit of my life – namely, myself and my people.
But like every season of change (Come on FALL!), I feel myself feeling antsy for a change and unclear where to start. So I thought I would come back here – to this space that made me happy for so long – and see what might happen.
Hope you will join me. (Subscribe here.)
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katandkarl
at
9:26 AM
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4.24.2014
#nashbash success
I STARTED THIS POST ABOUT THIS GIRLS TRIP WEEKS AGO!!! I SUCK AT LIFE. I WILL NOT ABANDON YOU BLOG.
Anyway.
Here it is:
A few weekends ago, the first weekend of the kid's Spring Break, I headed to Nashville to celebrate my friend Julie's upcoming wedding. Since my friend set is oldER these days and we can afford to do more than just drink a bunch cheap bud light pitchers at crappy bars and run around town until our fake veils are dingy and crooked and full of cigarette burn holes, we tend to make weekends out of bachlorette parties. It has its perks - more time to spend solely focused and with precious friends in this crazy, hectic time of our lives. It has its downsides - multiple weekends away are a huge hit on my pocketbook (since I am oldER, I now carry pocketbooks) and my husband's sanity and, essentially, we do the same thing except maybe with craft beer, fancy bars and tiaras? Oh, and, in this case, BOOTS. (You know, because of the Nashville!)
Because of some extenuating circumstances, a few of us were unable to leave until Saturday morning at the bright and early hour of 5 a.m.
Our day went as follows:
5:30 STARBUCKS. Coffee. Always start with Coffee.
5:45 FROZEN SOUNDTRACK. Please note the rising sun and the happy coffee flowing through our veins. (10 second video link: http://youtu.be/wBV10f-EdqE)
6:35 SALT and PEPPER. Duh. The sun is UP UP UP. Time for sunglasses and bad 90s rap. (8 second video link: http://youtu.be/E64j7b_xLlo)
Continuous Spotify of bad 90s music - heavy on the Paula Abdul and pretty much any song we could semi-remember the words to... As we got closer to Nashville, we started getting belting Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry with NO SHAME. None. And also to the tune of a breast pump. Ya'll. I have not been to a girl's weekend or a bachlorette party in the last 5 years were there was not at least one breast pump involved. Ahhhhh mid - 30s, you are glorious! (Insert the weep weep weep - let down - WHUMP-WHUMP, WHUMP-WHUMP of your favorite pumping nightmare!)
12:00 Arrive in Nashville and BRING ON THE BLOODY MARYS. Noshville in Nashville is apparently famous for serving pickles at every table (like bread or chips and salsa at other establishments) and two bloody marys in, we found these pickles HIGHLY entertaining. I will spare you the photos but I laughed so hard I cried several times. (Apparently my sense of humor occasionally rivals that of a preteen boy. Moms gone wild and all that.)
2:00 BRING ON THE BOOT SHOPPING. If you are in Nashville, you should totally go get boots. The outlet we visited was buy 2, get one free. It was also banoodles crowded. I don't do well with shopping crowds. Shopping, it's not my thing. So....
Since I already own the most perfect pair of cowboy boots of all time (purchased not in Nashville but at a real boot store the first year I moved to the "country" slash Arkansas), my friend Jenny and I scoured the tourist area for, uh, a case of Bud Light?!? (Maybe forget all that I said above about fancy beer.)
3:30 BACK TO FANCY BEER. BRING ON THE BREWERIES. This part of the day could have gone one of two ways - a nap or continuing to run around town. Though the siren call of naptime was STRONG, I resisted! (ONE DAY IN NASHVILLE - had to pack in as much as possible!)
This brewery had quotes stamped into their tables. My seat, appropriately, housed a quote from Tara Reid THE VOICE OF OUR GENERATION.
5:00 p.m. GET PRETTY. DANCE PARTY. CABS.
8:00 p.m. Pseudo disco nap over dinner at some place called Suzy Wong's House of Yum (For the record, my meal was decidedly un-yum. Maybe I am just not cool enough for a restaurant that advertises itself as 'a brothel of epicurean delights.' Also, it took our waiter approximately 4 hours to handle our party.)
10:00 p.m. Hit the HONKEY TONK. We went to a bar called Robert's. This place = all that is fun about Nashville. If you are there, you should go.
12:30 a.m. Try not to fall asleep AT THE BAR.
1 a.m. Walk out the front door, bypass the hot dog cart line EVEN THOUGH YOU REALLY WANT ONE, grab a cab and return to your hotel. Purchase hot pockets from the night clerk but fall asleep before you can eat them because THE EFFORT IS JUST TOO MUCH!
8 a.m. Check out and drive home in pajama pants, chugging powerade and IN SILENCE.
The end.
#nashbash
Out.
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katandkarl
at
1:27 PM
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2.09.2014
In Honor Of The Walking Dead Returning
So... sometime during the last season on the Walking Dead, I decided (zombies be damned!) I was going to watch with Karl, who is, to put it mildly, a fan. I totally got into it and jumped on the "classic" zombie support bandwagon - you know, the people who support the crazy, dumb, lumbering yet deadly zombies (as opposed to the quick moving, TERRIFYING zombies.... like in say World War Z, a movie I would never consider watching.) (WHAT? After listening to horrifying zombie slaying sounds from the other room of my house for several Walking Dead seasons, I feel I have FULL AUTHORITY to be snobby about my zombies.)
ANYWAY, I totally got suckered by one of those stupid quiz things popping up in my facebook feed about Which Walking Dead Character you should be. Also, in case you wanted to know, the career I should have is A Writer, the city I should live in is NYC, my dialect quiz results were straight up Midwest and I am totally Donna from Parks and Rec (Treat yo self.). Hmmm... I may need to curb my little quiz problem, eh? Stupid Internet. Actually, no, I blame years of unhealthy YM magazine obsession circa, um, all of the early 90s? (Remember that "Say Anything" feature? THE BEST.)
ANYWAY, as usual, Karl and I were texting each other from various rooms in our house (that we were both in)....
Conversation as follows:
CAROL??! Really? An abusive husband, a murderess and BANISHED from the camp of survivors by Rick.
Anyone else excited for the Walking Dead to return? (For the record, I am NOT b/c the writers totally got me to like the stupid Governor and now everyone is dead.)
I think we need a new Sunday night show!! What are you all watching? Downton Abby? Isn't everyone dead on that show now too?!?!
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katandkarl
at
2:35 PM
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1.16.2014
Moving :: 6 Months Later
People continue to ask if we are settled in - to which I fervently
reply NO! most of the time (and still, NO! six months later.)
Por ejemplo....
THIS GUY.
Yep. He's been sitting on my night stand for....oh... three or four months (don't worry that kleenex is from last night and not six months ago!), giving me his pensive little smirk every evening and every morning.
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katandkarl
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3:06 PM
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1.10.2014
A Different Kind of Toast.
This one time, yesterday, I kept both of my children home from school. Nate was running a low fever the night before and, to be honest, I was too lazy to then get up and take Nora Kate to school. We lazed about in our pjs a bit. They have finally hit some magical play-together stride that allows me moments of peace in between the requests for help getting out toys, putting together toys, picking up toys, playing with toys aaaaaaannnd snacks.
Always with The Snacks. (Can someone please help me to just say no to constant snacks!?)
Me: I am making toast. Who wants toast?
NK: MEEEEEE.
Nate: I don't waaannnttt toast. I want OATMEAL.
Me: I am making toast. T-O-A-S-T.
Nate: OATMEAL.
Me: Toast.
Nate: OATMEAL.
Me: FINE.
Commence with the making of toast for me and Nora Kate and oatmeal for Nate. Milk for all. We sit down that the table, I take one bite.
Nate: I want toast.
Me: Absolutely not.
Nate: With Jelly.
NK: ::munches toast happily::
Commence argument about toast making. To which I eventually give in to (HELP ME!) because I don't want to lose my mind. (For the record, he made the toast on his own but the jelly spreading was just an obstacle that apparently could NOT be conquered alone.)
Twenty minutes later:
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katandkarl
at
10:33 AM
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