I’m participating in a blogosphere writing challenge: for the next 30 days (starting today), I will be responding to a provocative question/prompt. It’s all part of a celebration of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s book “Self-Reliance,” which I’m not sure I’ve even read. I’m not doing this because I’m a big Emerson fan – although I suppose I’ll have to download some of his stuff to the Kindle now – I’m doing this because my friend, Alicia (here’s her blog), tagged me in a Facebook post, which is our generation’s version of a dare. And I’m never one to let a good dare go unchallenged . . .

This has been all over the “Internets” and TV but just in case you missed it:

Since we moved into the house last summer, we have a lot of stuff unpacked, but not organized. We were obsessed with not having any cardboard boxes lying about so we emptied every box and put things away but not necessarily with any order or organization. We have slowly been tackling our closets and drawers.

So far, we have organized our pantry – and in so doing emptied an entire shelf that we can now use for all the piles that accumulate on the breakfast table or kitchen island. This includes my work pile; my favorite place to work from home is here in the kitchen.

After the pantry, we tackled the junk drawer. It looks so nice now! Then, I went to work on the built-ins in the great room. I moved and re-arranged and organized enough that we could put some of our son’s toys away, further de-cluttering that room. (The plan is to rotate toys in and out.)

We’ve managed to do about one project like this a week. I figure if we keep this up, we might have the house fairly organized by spring, which would be lovely!

Today’s project is going to be digital. After I publish this post, I’m going to plug in my external hard drive and back everything up – especially the photos and videos. And later today, I have my twice-a-year computer maintenance visit. If you’re in Atlanta and need a tech person to keep your machines and printers running, give Adam a shout at Dunwoody PC. He’s the best nerd out there – and he’s funny to boot.

I mention the digital organization because I know too many people who lose their data when their machines crap out on them. We all know this and we all suck at keeping up with it. So consider this a nudge!

We were so fortunate to have our son’s 2nd birthday party in our brand new house with room for all our visiting family. Christopher’s parents made the trip, as did his sister and darling niece. My dad came in. It was wonderful to see everyone.

As you may have heard, Hunter is obsessed with buses and trucks. Cars, planes, and trains are OK, but he really, really loves buses and trucks. So we went with a transportation theme. Here are the pics and links to where I got everything!

The “Kids’ Table.” Cones and construction hat (which we filled with fruit bars for the kids) from PartyCity. School bus chalkboard decal made by WallCandy. I found it half price on a one-day online sample sale (HauteLook, I think) but you can find it here if you want to pay full boat.

We got the school bus cake from a friend of a friend who does this as a hobby. I shudder to think how much this would have cost at a proper bakery! If you’re brave enough to try and make one yourself, I did find some tutorials online here and here.

See, PopPop? This is an octagon (Hunter’s favorite shape, I think!). Stop sign was a super cheap find at Party City.

Last year, we got an ADORABLE photo banner from Etsy seller MaryHadALittleParty. We worked with them again this year for another banner (GREAT keepsakes; we will treasure these forever), and also had them make this door sign and favor bags and tags. The designs came from their Go! collection. They added a bus for us and customized the colors.

The food was a hodge-podge. We made some stuff, bought some quiches and breads from Whole Foods. Served mimosas to the adults!

In the favor bags, we had miniature race car notebooks I found on Amazon, truck stickers from Party City, and these darling truck crayons from Etsy shop Red Elm Designs. They were so nice to work with and created a nice mix of vehicles for us.

Having fun with Nana and some of his new toys.

Last, but not least, we bought these cute thank you cards from JMCollections on Etsy. They are sitting right here, waiting for me to fill them out! (Our holiday cards are also sitting here.) <sigh> I’ll do better next year.

This post is part of the Works for Me Wednesday series. For more great tips, check out WeAreThatFamily.

He was at the park with our wonderful nanny. I was at a meeting and texted her to give him a big kiss from me. She scooped him up, planted one on his cheek and said, “this is from mommy.” He smiled and said, “I  love you, Mommy.”

She texted me and it was all I could do to pay attention to the rest of my meeting. I wanted to get home and cover him with kisses!

I’ve lived in Cleveland, driven in blizzards, gone to the movies with 16″ of snow outside, and even had to stay the night in a seedy motel once driving from Cleveland to Louisville when the highway iced over. So 5″ of snow should be no problem for me, right?

Trust me. It’s a problem. When you live in the South, northerners are fond of saying, “it’s not the snow that scares me, it’s the other drivers.” But that’s not really true. In all fairness to my Southern brethren, it’s hard to drive on roads that aren’t cleared and we just don’t have the equipment down here that they had back in Ohio. I just heard on the news that Atlanta’s airport only has enough equipment and crew to de-ice 10-12 planes per hour. The busiest airport in the country,  with roughly 2400 departures and landings a day, can only de-ice 12 an hour. Nobody’s going anywhere in a hurry.

And then there’s the freezing rain that would be a problem no matter where you live. Our temperatures down here tend to hover right around freezing during snow storms.  Go up a few degrees, it’s rain. Drop a few, it freezes. It’s a mess. That is what’s happening today. We have sleet and freezing rain coming down on top of the lovely snow that fell last night. So we’re all working from home, at least until the ice coats the limbs, which will fall and knock out power lines. But let’s hope that doesn’t happen.

We don’t own a snow shovel, nor do our neighbors. No sleds, either (plenty of cardboard boxes we can turn into one) – but it’s hard to go sledding with ice pellets slapping your face anyway. We’ll all stay indoors and post pics of our snow-covered patios on Facebook. And make french toast with all the bread, milk and eggs we stocked up on!

It’s the South, People. We live here, in part, because of the mild winters. We’re not equipped for snow storms. So just sit back, relax, and – er – chill.

My dad used to make these all the time – and even though he’s a vegetarian now, he still makes them for us when we visit. In fact, they’ve become our Christmas Eve dinner staple. We love them because they’re a complete meal in a handy little pocket (think of them as a homemade “Hot Pocket”). Whenever I have leftover Basmati rice (which is to say any time I’ve made Persian or eaten out at a Persian restaurant), I whip up a batch of Piroshkis.

Here’s what you need:

1 lb ground beef or ground turkey
1 medium onion, chopped
1-2 tablespoons vegetable oil (or whatever kind you like for sauteing)
1 container Grands biscuits (any kind except flakey) – get the can with 8 big biscuits
1 cup of cooked Basmati rice
2 or 3 boiled eggs, chopped
1/2 c to 3/4 c of dried barberries (we get them at Persian grocery stores; I think cranberries would work just as well)
salt and pepper
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Pre-heat the oven according to the biscuit directions. Saute the onions in a little oil over medium heat until they are carmelized and yummy brown. Sprinkle in some salt. Add the ground beef or turkey, salt, pepper, the turmeric, and cinnamon and cook it till it’s brown. No pink spots, especially if you’re using ground turkey.

Dump all that in a mixing bowl with the rice, chopped boiled eggs and barberries. Taste and adjust the seasonings.

Next, get your grandmother’s wooden rolling pin, sprinkle some flour on the counter and roll those biscuits out until they resemble a long oval. Fill them with two big spoons full of the meat mixture.

Fold the dough over in half, like you’re making a turnover. Crimp the edges.

Put them all on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake them in the oven however long the biscuit can says to (or until they’re brown). The meat mixture is already cooked so you’re just looking to cook the dough at this point.

Serve with a salad or something green so you feel like you have a well-balanced meal (haha!).

These re-heat very well wrapped in a paper towel in the microwave for about 20 seconds. I also like them cold. (Thanks to my handsome honey for taking pictures. My hands had way too much flour on them!)

My son is obsessed with buses and trucks. He likes cars, trains and airplanes, but he LOVES trucks and buses. So it seems pretty obvious what theme we should have for his second birthday party. I’m thinking of going with school buses primarily but not sure I want a whole bright yellow party. Still working up ideas but here are some of our initial thoughts.

My husband’s going to make a sign similar to this but perhaps a bus stop or stop sign:

I’m going to buy some of the bus fabric on the right and use it in the invitations somehow. I haven’t figured out how yet:

I bought these giant school bus cookie cutters and will make sugar cookies as favors. Note to Ruthie: I haven’t iced a sugar cookie since I was, like, 12. Need your tips STAT! I also bought cookie cutters shaped like a train, an airplane, and a truck. These cookie cutters are HUGE. Maybe I’ll make sandwiches and cut them out in vehicle shapes?

Maybe these cute little favor tags:

I’d like to find a crossing guard uniform for Kirby to wear. She’ll kill me but she’ll probably do it. Kirby is my best friend’s 21-year old daughter who works all my parties. She’s the best hostess/server/set-up/tear-down person ever. Plus, she is very, very dear to me. Here she is at my son’s first birthday party:

I bought this very nice school bus chalk board decal that I’ll post somewhere welcoming everyone to the party. (Bonus: I got it half off on one of those online sample sites.)

So these are a few ideas we’ve come up with. If you have some more, please share them in the comments. I’ll keep you posted on our progress.

Just came from a fabulous pedi. Yes, I blew off work and went to the nail salon. It’s my “golf.” It would have been wonderfully relaxing (in that good guilty kind of way) except the woman next to me was talking on her phone very loudly, and passionately. No wonder! She was telling her friend how she chewed her dad out for having an affair.

I got an entire blow-by-blow of the conversation, how upset she was with her dad, how she told him his affair isn’t just between him and her mom because it affects the whole family, how he pitifully replied what a sad sack he is, and more, more, more. . . more than I could take.

I was of two minds: 1) Good for you for getting that off your chest and telling your dad how you feel and 2) when you’ve had a chance to calm down, you might want to redirect your anger at him. What happened? What caused him to cheat? What’s changed? Besides the fact that he got caught? What’s changed? Because without getting to the root cause, I fear she will be sitting next to me again in a year or so, venting about how stupid her father is for some new – probably worse – transgression.

On the other hand, that’s a conversation best had between her parents. I have no idea how an adult child is, or should be, involved in marital infidelity. I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on this.

Our nanny is leaving us in October and so we are looking at our childcare options. We are interviewing a woman next week who also speaks Spanish and wants some flexibility in her schedule. So maybe we’ll put our son in preschool two or three mornings a week and have a nanny the rest of the time. Or maybe I’ll just work part-time the days we have him in preschool and full time the two days we have a nanny.

There are so many factors to consider: finances, the impact it will have on my business if I cut back (which circles back around to finances), whether or not my son is ready for out-of-home care, and of course, whether or not I’m ready to have him go! I work from home now and get to see him as much as I want. Although truthfully, the nanny takes him out for hours and hours every day so I’d probably “see” him just as much.

We’ve been touring preschools in the area, trying to find one that can continue his Spanish language instruction. There are precious few that offer that. The two closest to us are both new (one’s been in business for one year and the other is starting this fall), so they don’t have much of a track record. Should that be a concern?

I know every parent struggles with finding good childcare and worries about whether or not they’re doing the right thing so I suspect I’m in good company.

On another random note, t-shirts are on sale everywhere right now. I know that summer will be over soon (well, maybe not so soon here in Atlanta) but I like to stock up on t-shirts for the winter. I think t-shirts layered over a long-sleeved shirt look really cute and are perfect for our milder climate. So I plan to stock up (buy one size up to allow room for the shirt underneath) on some cute tees now.

Now that we’re more or less settled in the house, we’ve started to cook more. We have a perfect kitchen to cook in and a new grill; it’s been fun to break them in. What’s not been fun about the new house? Cleaning. Too many bathrooms (we tried to get the builder to get rid of one of them but the architect insisted and we caved). Fortunately for us, my husband hates to dust and I like to. But I HATE, HATE, HATE to clean floors and he doesn’t mind that at all. That just leaves the bathrooms (mostly me) and the dishes (always him).

No plans yet for the weekend. What about you?

The guys at FunnyorDie thought it’d be fun/wicked/awesome (!) to send Jewel out to a karaoke bar to sing her own songs.  She’s such a good sport and still seems so down-to-earth. I watched the video while eating breakfast this morning. Now, off to get some work done!

Enjoy:

“Honey, all my girls are good cooks. Therefore, I won’t allow you to become the exception. Love, MamMa” (Christmas, 1986)

So reads the inscription in my Better Homes and Garden cook book. My grandmother, an English teacher, had a way with words. So it was that when we found ourselves with some great ground beef and a downpour (not grilling weather), I said, “hey, let’s make a meatloaf.” The last time I tried, I used a recipe I found online from that Southern fried cook, Paula Deen. Made it. Didn’t like it. It was too . . . mushy. And didn’t use catsup! I wanted a basic meatloaf recipe and MamMa’s cookbook provided one.

It was yummy. I’ll add green pepper next time, but otherwise, perfect. My husband loved it. My friend, Vesatee, is sitting here at the table with me chowing down on some leftovers.

I have a friend, Ruthie, who used to work with me. Our office had a little cafe with a cook named James. Every now and then, he made meatloaf and Ruthie and I swooned. “Is it Meatloaf Monday?” we’d inquire giddily as we ran to the cafe. James’ meatloaf was the good ‘ol basic kind.

What is it about meatloaf? By the time I reached high school, I hated it, along with some of my mom’s other standards, like fried chicken. Once I hit my 30′s, though, I ached for some good ‘ol fried chicken, or Mom’s pot roast, or meatloaf. Incidentally, it’s times like these that I miss her. It’ s always the little things, isn’t it? I really wish I had her pot roast recipe. Lipton’s onion soup mix and all.

Christopher hung our wind chimes the other night. I’m typing in our breakfast nook looking at them, dangling, beautiful and still. It’s hot. No breeze. There are nests that look like gigantic spider webs far, far up in our trees (maybe 50 feet). Not sure if we call a tree company or pest control or just not bother at all. But then I have images of spiders dropping one by one onto the yard, or the house. Or maybe it’s not spiders but some flying insects. Whatever. It’s gross.

My dad, sister and nephew came for a visit last week. Hunter was slow to warm up, as he always is, but by the end of the visit he was happily going to Pop Pop – especially since Pop Pop indulged him in many walks “abide” (outside). My son loves to be outdoors.

But not me. Especially not with 95 degree heat, no breeze and mysterious critters growing in my trees. No thank you very much.

Writing is a habit. The more you do it, the easier it is to do. I find that if I don’t blog for a few days, I start to run out of ideas to write about. Conversely, if I keep blogging, the ideas keep flowing.

I’ve considered myself a writer since I was about six or seven years old and was “published” in the school paper. I wrote an essay on our trip to a bread factory. I also had a poem published. I wrote poetry throughout my childhood and poetry became my personal emotional outlet for most of my life. I stopped writing about ten years ago when I decided to mostly be happy. (Real happy not the pretend happy of my twenties.) I find it difficult to write poetry unless I’m desperately sad and lonely or heartbroken.

I’ll trade happiness for heartbreak and poetry any day!

Even when I was a child, my poetry had a tinge of sadness. Consider this, written when I was around 11 years old and vacationing with my family at the Caspian Sea:

The wind blows
The sea roars
My feet are cold
on the naked floors

The sky hath grown dark
unto the sea
as the wind whispers
and wails at me

The sun has gone down
The moon has come up
My feelings are all mixed
and jumbled in a cup.

Yes, I wrote “hath.” I had just finished reading a biography of the Bronte sisters and was in a hath kind of mood. It really was storming, the floors really were bare and I had pink eye and sand in my butt from earlier in the day. All I remember of the trip was writing the poem. Which makes sense when you consider how much focus and effort it takes to concentrate one’s thoughts and express them in rhyme.

In college, a number of professors commented on my papers that I had an “easy, breezy writing style” and similar sentiments. That little bit of unsolicited praise was all it took for me to decide to become a writer. After graduation, I landed a job at an ad agency and within months became their copywriter.

I continued with jobs that required a great deal of writing until my mid-30′s. I found that writing for a living took the pleasure and joy out of writing for me. It became something I had to do instead of something I wanted/needed to do. I was a pretty good copywriter, which is to say I can write short, pithy bits. I tried to write a novel – indeed, I still have several ideas for one – but I’m just not that kind of writer. I remember being VERY excited when I first read “Tales of the City.” The whole book is mostly dialogue and short, short chapters. I thought, “Hmmm, maybe I CAN write a novel if I do it like that.” Of course, I’m not funny enough and so that dream died.

As I advanced in my career, I did less writing for work and seemed to give up writing for pleasure altogether. Until now. Blogging has become my modern-day journal, diary, place to express myself and have some fun. But there are days, like today, when I can’t think of a thing to write about. So I wrote about writing.

Yep, I hath done it.