Christmas Traditions: Front Porch Pumpkins

Christmas traditions can be wonderful, conjuring up memories of happy times together with friends and family. They can also be stressful, piling up into to-do list items a mile long. The key to the successful tradition is to find the right ratio of enjoyment to effort.

Using that scale, my most favorite tradition is the Christmas Pumpkin. It requires almost no effort on my part -- all I have to do is not carve my Halloween pumpkins and leave them on the front porch until December -- and I get unending joy every time I look at my house.

What's a Christmas pumpkin, you ask? And how you can you get some with so little work? Well, you start by living across the street from Ms. Marty. Because the truth is that the Christmas pumpkins actually take a great deal of effort -- it's just that she's the one who makes it all happen.

It started with felt in 2009, when I accidentally left my pumpkins on the porch past Thanksgiving.

And then there were lights in 2010.

In 2011, she took it up a notch with this little crowd. Their song sheets are for "Silent Night," in case you can't tell.

2012 arrived all tied up in ribbons and bows.

 

 And just when we couldn't imagine what could happen for 2013...

Seriously, y'all -- that's eight tiny pumpkin reindeer led by a pumpkin Rudolph and pulling a pumpkin Santa's sleigh and his bag of toys. That one we had to bring inside to display on the table because it's just too cute. (And yes, the middle-schooler in me laughs every time my kids say "Look at the HO on the front steps!")

So, to recap, in case you want to implement this tradition at home:

• Step 1: Move across the street from Marty.
• Step 2: Buy an assortment of pumpkins for Halloween. Do not buy them too early and do not carve them.
• Step 3: Wait patiently.
• Step 4: Enjoy the brilliance. Be careful not to puncture any of the pumpkins.

Badassery

Today is my 41st birthday.

I started the day with friends at our neighborhood boot camp at 5:45 a.m. in a cold misty rain. This seems crazy, I know. But it's actually a good thing.

Going to boot camp, especially when it's cold and/or raining, makes me feel like a badass. Like I'm tougher than I thought I was. Like if I can do burpees and diamond push-ups and kickboxing crunches outside in the dark when it's almost cold enough to snow, then I can probably handle whatever else is coming at me today.

This is what I learned in my year of being 40: Every life needs a little badassery* in it.

Ordinary life can be a big heap of mundane scheduled into a whole lot of routine. Some of that ordinary can be wonderful -- my daughter's small hand in mine on the way into school, my son's wiggly eye brow when he tells a joke, my husband's secret code text telling me he's on the way home. Some moments, the every day is  total chaos -- too many practices, games, meetings, lists, demands and errands colliding into a pile. There are so many things I simply cannot do or cannot do well that the stress of it all makes me buckle.

But I'm finding that if I can carve out some part of my life to feel like a badass -- even just here and there -- it all seems closer to possible.

I've never actually been much of a badass. I tend to be the person who follows the path, does what's expected, takes the easy option. But over the past 40 years, some of my best experiences were those that caused me to summon up some extra courage and at least pretend like I had a little badass alter ego.

These days, I'm not likely to get my belly button pierced or live overseas for a year, so I have to look to smaller spaces to find my badassery. More often than not, it's boot camp -- or whatever alternate workout opportunity my boot camp friends lure me into. Like aerial boot camp, for example.

It started, as most crazy ideas do these days, with a Living Social deal. Some of you may remember the last time I purchased an online deal for a class. It involved a pole. There was only one class. There are, mercifully, no photos.

This time, there are pictures -- and they make me (perhaps unreasonably) proud.

I should explain that the "aerial" portion of aerial boot camp for beginners involves trying to climb heavy streamer-like silks that are hanging from the very tall ceilings. You start by gripping both silks in our hands, then wrapping one leg around the silks and looping it over that foot. Pulling your body up with your arms, you lift your other foot and trap the silks against the bottom foot and inch your hands higher up the silks. After unwrapping your bottom foot, you pull your legs up, loop your foot back in, pinch again with the other foot, and continue on up the silks.

That description makes no sense when I write down, but trust me it's even harder to actually do it.

The first class, I didn't get much higher than this:

The second class, I barely made it off the ground.

But the third class? Well, this photo was taken when I was on my way back down. From the top. As in, touched-the-metal-ring-connecting-the-silks-to-the-ceiling top.

By the time I got back to the floor, my heart was pounding, arms and legs were shaking, and hands were burning. But damn, I felt like a badass.

And if I can do that? Well, then I can sure as hell handle 41. 

*For real, y'all, that sounds like a made-up word, but it is in the Oxford now so I'm using it.

Sharing My Collection

I am a collector -- not in any official way, but more in my approach to the world. I collect family photos, my children's drawings and baby clothes, posters and tchotchkes from traveling, lots of books, letters from friends. I even collect actual friends.

Being a collector is part of why I write this blog. I like to collect ideas, stories, memories to share and revisit.

Letting go is not my strong suit.

When each of my grandparents passed away, I inherited pieces of furniture from their homes. Over time, I accumulated scores of items large and small between things I received directly from them and things I scavenged from my parents' attic.

Some of the furniture I took was purely functional. But many of the items hold personal significance. There's the picnic table that my grandfather built out of the hatch cover from an old ship -- he taught me to pick crabs at that table when I was a kid. It weighs a ton, but makes a quirky rough dining room table under the crystal chandelier from my in-laws. Or there's the antique sofa that my grandmother saved specifically for me, her only grand-daughter -- we recovered it in red corduroy to make it less fancy, but the curved feet at the bottom still set a grand tone.

But after years of taking in these hand-me-down treasures, our decor sometimes looks like we did all our shopping in the Dead Relatives Collection -- and there's only so much space for keeping furniture in our house.

So when we started talking about decorating Pippi's big girl room, I realized there were two pieces I was going to have to let go. One was a white dresser with glass knobs that had been in my room and my brother's room when we were kids and then in both nurseries when my children were babies. The other was an upholstered rocking chair that had belonged to my grandmother before serving as my reading chair in my teens and 20s and then my nursing chair in my 30s.

I considered selling them on Ebay or Craig's List, but never seemed ready to make the leap to post them online. Too much hassle. I thought about taking them to an antique store or consignment shop, but just couldn't bring myself to do it. No one else would think the furniture was as valuable as I did. How do you put a price on something filled with memories of multiple childhoods? It sounds melodramatic, but how could I haggle over the space where I rocked my children to sleep?

And then I found the Green Chair Project, a nonprofit organization co-founded by Jackie Craig and Beth Smoot in April 2010 to take quality donations from people like me (who have too much furniture but have a hard time letting go) and get them to people in transition (who actually need the items). The Green Chair makes the furnishings available for a nominal fee to individuals and families identified and referred by its partner agencies.

What makes The Green Chair different is that their warehouse is actually staged and decorated. It's not a pile of castaway junk that no one wanted, left behind for others to dig through. Instead, visiting The Green Chair is like wandering through any other furniture store or consignment boutique, allowing the recipients to shop with dignity as they furnish their home and create nurturing environments for themselves and their families.

I don't know who has my dresser and rocking chair now. But I like to imagine that somewhere there's a mom making a new life for herself and her baby, tucking away tiny onesies or snuggling together to nurse before bedtime. Or maybe it's a little girl who loves books as much as I do, happy for her own space to curl up and disappear into a story.

Letting go wasn't easy -- but somehow giving away the furniture instead of selling it seemed like the best way to honor the memories that have no price tag. Letting go created a new opportunity to be part of someone's next chapter. Letting go opened up space in both my house and my heart.

And I still get to collect the memories.

# 21

Since July, I've written two blog posts. I posted once in August and once in October. And one of those was a recipe.

That's pitiful.

In 2009, when I started this blog, I wrote 158 posts. In 2013, this post will make 21.

Back in May, I wrote about the incredible experience of reading at Raleigh's first Listen to Your Mother and promised myself I would start writing more regularly again.

Back then, I thought I would have more time to write starting this fall -- with both of my children in school now, I would finally have a morning or two when I wasn't in the office or chasing little people and I'd be able to focus on writing again. Except it seems that every week there are doctor's appointments and grocery lists and volunteer projects and office work that spills over and a messy house that doesn't self-clean -- and suddenly those two free mornings are spent.

Then Friday, the incredible Anne Lamott posted this on her Facebook page. Specifically, she wrote:

You're pursuing a creative call of some sort, now? You're not pretending that you are going to get back to writing, singing, dance, as soon as this or that happens--i.e. as soon as you graduate or retire, or your youngest leaves home? You're doing it NOW, badly, herky-jerkily, as a debt of honor? That is the bigger meaning of it all: creation.

So here I am, doing it now. Badly, maybe, but starting again. Maybe I can get to 25 before the year's end.

And you? You know who you are... Thanks for being here with me. Now I have to go and write some more. Hope to see you soon.

Photo: That's me with the top down, not just a gratuitous shot up my nose. Stopped, not driving, so it's totally safe. 

Vote Yes for Wake County

What if the ceiling in your office leaked every time it rained, leaving your papers and books almost always slightly damp?

What if you had to evacuate your office in the middle of the work day because the HVAC unit on the roof above you caught fire on occasion?

What if, when the HVAC wasn't on fire, it simply didn't work sometimes, leaving you sweating in the summer and freezing in the winter without notice?

What if you had to squeeze in an extra five coworkers into your cubicle? Or what if you didn't even have your own desk, but instead just traveled around your office to whatever space was available at that moment?

Now imagine that your job is going to school -- as a student or a teacher -- under those conditions every day. And for some in Wake County's public schools, they don't have to imagine it because they're living it. That's not what I want for my kids or for the rest of the children and educators in Wake County.

Thankfully, we have an opportunity to change those conditions. 

Next Tuesday, October 8, Wake County votes can say "YES" to an $810 million bond issue that would allow the county to borrow money to pay for school construction, renovations and technology.

Here are the facts:

• The plan was proposed by the county board of education and approved by the county commissioners -- it may be one of the few things that the two boards agree on. 
• Bonds are the smartest way to pay for construction and renovations, in the same way that most families use a mortgage to pay for their homes. Wake County has a triple-A bond rating from all three national rating agencies -- the highest possible rating -- which allows the county to get the best interest rates.
• A little more than half of Wake’s 170 schools would share in $244.9 million for renovations. That includes six schools getting major renovations and 79 schools getting small amounts to replace aging equipment, such as work on HVAC systems, electrical systems and roofing. Thousands of children are spending their days in these buildings -- they deserve a space that allows them to succeed at their job as students.
• One of the schools slated for major renovations is Green Elementary, where the media center roof leaked and the HVAC caught on fire when Junius was in first grade. Again, they're not talking about putting in marble floors in the gym and a chocolate fountain in the cafeteria -- it's about creating a safe and productive learning environment for children.
• The $810 million bond issue would cover most of a $939.9 million school construction program. Of that, $533.75 million would pay for 16 new schools to help keep up with enrollment projections.
• Wake County grows by an average of 64 people each day (that's about three kindergarten classrooms) -- the recession slowed growth some in recent years, but it hasn't stopped people from coming to the area. The county expects to pass the 1 million mark in just two years.
• Wake is already the 16th largest school district in the nation with more than 150,000 students. More than 20,000 new students are expected by 2018; more than 30,000 by 2020.  Since our last bond in 2006, Wake County has added more than 170,000 people -- and they are still coming.
• To accommodate this growth, the proposed building program includes 11 new elementary schools, three middle schools, and two high schools to be built in the next five years.
• Charter and private schools can accommodate only a small portion of the student population, even with the recent growth in charter options. 
• Even if you don't have students in Wake's public schools, living in a high quality district benefits your quality of life -- from the resale value of your home to the caliber of graduates living in your community.
• The bond would result in an increase in county property taxes; the owner of a home assessed for taxes at $263,500 (the average value of a Wake County home) would pay an additional $11.52 per month. That seems a small price to pay for schools that work.
• Voting against the bond doesn't mean that there will be more money for other things, like teacher salaries or special programs. School construction and teacher pay (as strange as it may sound) aren't connected and don't come from the same place. Bond money can only be used for capital expenses, meaning school construction, renovation and technology. Paying for those capital costs without the bond will either end up costing more or force the district to cancel some of the plans -- or both.

Mark your calendar, set a reminder on your phone or put a post-it note in your car -- but just don't forget to vote on Tuesday. There are at least 153,152 reasons to vote yes, with more on the way.

Click here to learn more about the bond and click here for information about voting.

Note: Current student enrollment numbers updated on 10/4/13 based on 10th day totals.

Recipe: Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cookies

If your children are anything like mine, they're strangely picky about what they will and won't eat. One loves breaded fish, but won't eat black beans. The other happily eats quinoa, but refuses grilled chicken. 

Given that both will eat more than cereal or mac-n-cheese, I should probably just be grateful. But I keep trying to sneak healthy items into their diet nonetheless. 

Enter the brilliance of zucchini chocolate chip cookies. This recipe arrived courtesy of The Produce Box with a heap of locally-grown zucchini, so I gave it a try. While the cookies turned out more cake-like than I expected, they were a complete and total hit -- both kids (and my husband) loved them! We've also shared them with other friends ages 8 and under with regular success.

Full disclosure: The first time I made the cookies, I didn't tell the kids what was in them. After they had already enjoyed them, then I confessed. Now they find it highly entertaining to tell their friends there's a "secret ingredient" in the cookies.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup brown sugar 
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1/3 cup honey
• 1 tbsp. vanilla extract
• 1 cup white flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. cinnamon (I used a heaping 1/4 tsp.)
• 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
• 1 cup finely shredded zucchini (I used 1 medium-sized zuke)
• 12 ounces chocolate chips (I used the mini-sized semi-sweet ones)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees (I never actually do this at the beginning because it takes me longer to get everything ready than it takes the oven to heat up. Is that just me? Or is it just because I have a five-year-old "helping" me?)
2. Cream butter and sugar. Add egg, honey and vanilla.
3. Combine flours, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg in a separate bowl. Blend flour mixture into liquid mixture. Mix in shredded zucchini and chocolate chips until well combined.
4. Drop cookies by spoonful onto greased baking sheet and flatten with the back of a spoon. (I used parchment paper and no grease. You definitely want to keep the dough flat because the cookies don't really melt down at all.)
5. Bake for 10-13 minutes. (My oven needs 13.)

Do you have a favorite recipe with a "secret ingredient" disguised inside? Share it in the comments so we can all enjoy your genius.

Friday's 5: Pandora Stations

Among the reasons why I love our TiVo is the ability to stream Pandora through our television. Having music on in the house makes me happy, but we don't have a radio that works well downstairs and I'm generally too lazy to actually put a CD in the CD player -- yes, I still have CDs, so shut up.

Anyway, we have a long list of stations that we've compiled over time -- a little something for every occasion. What I've learned over much trial and error is that sometimes the best stations come not from artists or genres, but from specific songs.

You'll want to tweak them as you listen to steer them in the direction you like best, but here are five of our favorite stations:

1. Man or Muppet Radio: This station is my kids' favorite, not surprisingly. It includes a range of Disney movie songs from Mary Poppins to Tangled, but also most of the songs from the most recent Muppet movie. My personal favorite is the Spanish-language version of Gonzo's chickens singing "Forget You" (you know, because chickens clucking in Spanish is totally different than clucking in English).
2. The Girl from Impanema Radio: The summer before I got pregnant with Junius, my husband and I spent a few days in South Beach. Two nights in a row, we went to this great club and listened to a fantastic Latin jazz band. Now, on the rare occasion that we get our kids to bed early, this is the station we pick to bring back that same mood. Goes best with mojitos.
3. The Dog Days Are Over Radio: Strangely enough, I discovered this Florence + the Machine song via the spectacular Pentatonix on "The Sing-Off." Once I got accustomed to the original version, I found that it pulled together a station of some familiar songs and lots more I didn't know into a really interesting station.
4. This Must Be the Place Radio: I love 80s music and have more than one 80s-related station set in Pandora. But this one gets to a really nice mix of 80s that my husband enjoys listening to as well (translation: it's not all Bon Jovi and Tiffany).
5. Flashlight Radio: Sometimes my day just needs a little funk and Parliament is the way to get it. Ha da da dee da hada hada da da. That is all.

Leave a comment with your favorite Pandora station and share the good listening...