Monday, September 28, 2009

Okay, so my friend Ali keeps telling me we should write a book and my coworkers keep telling me I should blog about work related stuff. I don't think I am ready to commit to either of those things so I will start small with something easy. Tonight my son, (who I am sure you will hear more than you ever wanted to know about) went to bed at 7:20pm so I decided I would start my blog. My other options were to a) empty the dishwasher, b) watch another few hours of HGTV, c) work, so I am choosing d) create a blog.

Now when I started this I thought I am just going to login and write whatever comes to mind. I had no idea that I was going to have to commit to a name and url for my blog. This immediately made this more difficult than I wanted it to be. This is something I would usually need days to obsess about, it is kind of like an invitation ,if you don't get it right, no one will be excited about coming to your party. Well obviously I am past this anxious moment and have moved on.

However, I will tell you a little about my thoughts on this name and why I thought it would work. I plan to write about - well nothing - just my uneventful day(s) in suburbia. Which I usually describe as "Have you ever seen stepford wives?". We are lucky enough to live in one of those American towns that you drive down the streets and wonder, "Who lives in these houses?", "Who has time to do all of this landscaping?" and you eventually you keep driving and think "Is this for real?"

I say "lucky enough" with a grin because I can remember the days when I was sitting at the office at 9pm and thinking, "All I want is to be married, have a house, not get on an airplane every week for work and I longed for a day when my biggest concern of the day would be "what should I cook for dinner..." So let's get this clear, I thought this is what I wanted........

Fast forward to now many years later, what did my son have for dinner? Fish Sticks, Frozen Peas and Mandarin Oranges. Yes Fish Sticks, he loves them and I can get a million things done while they are in the oven, so it works. For all of you very concerned tree hugging mom's - yes I bought the ones with "No MSG!" So no need to remind me of the effects of msg and that I need to read the contents of everything my son puts into his mouth.

Okay, so back to what I am writing about life in suburia. I love to complain so I am going to force myself on this blog to tell you the good and bad parts of my day...

Good - Beautiful weather today, spent hours with the landscaper being a difficult client (I love being the client!), Nicholas (my 2 1/2 year old son) smiling at me and Nicholas going to bed at 7:20pm

Challenges - Spent too much time with the landscaper so I had to cram six hours of work into three 1/2, Being awoken at 5:45am by my lovely son, third challege, the fact that I still need to empty the dishwasher

Big ticket item of the week - as you have heard already, the fall landscaping. So my husband (his name is Richard by the way) has told me that I am no longer allowed to talk about the landscaping, he is tired of hearing about it. Really that means I am obsessing which I am good at and I need to stop. So good, now that I have a blog I can talk to you instead.

For those of you that own a home and have done landscaping, you know that now is the time to worry about the landscaping. I have now learned the hard way that if you miss your small window of opportunity to plant shrubs, perennials and/or trees, you will be obsessing about it for another year, so this is a big DEAL! Last year I left it to a contractor to come up with some ideas, plant some stuff and hope for the best, okay so a year later I feel like I am starting over. Live and learn, I do like some of the stuff he did, but there is still tons of room for improvement. Now my new landscaper, poor guy, had to review the plans with me again for the third time and he was all ready to start tomorrow morning but I had to add my last few change request in today. But anyway I have digressed because you like my husband have more important things to worry about so I will stop with the landscaping. When it is done I will post some pics. If you want to know which book, website or who to talk to about plants, don't hesitate to ask I have spent hours scouring over this material. I have to tell you I cannot believe that I just spent that long talking about landscaping, again I think back to the day when my biggest concern was "where is the closest nail salon that stays open until 9pm?" Don't get me wrong, I used to love driving down tree lined streets and thinking "wow, this is beautiful". I honestly thought landscaping just happened, there were a bunch of people with green thumbs and fancy lawn mowers out there. So now I know, beautiful landscaping takes three things, money, patience and persistence.

What else happened today? I have the luxury of working from home, which is wonderful: no commute, no hotels and no dressing up. But what it really means is I get to stare at my unfinished house all day and think about the fact that if I ever want to have it properly decorated, I have to hire a decorator. Work was fine today, no complaints.

Picked up Nicholas from school, he was happy, we came home, he ate his fish sticks and then we played cars for the 16,000th time. However tonight he was in an unusually aggressive two year old mood - which meant I was not allowed to move the car ramp, the cars had to be lined up just as he wanted them and that I could not look at my iPhone anymore while playing with him.

Bathtime ended in a screaming fit, which is unusual for him, it was triggered by a slip and hitting his little head on the soap dish and of course "me" not letting him sit in the bath tub as all the water went down the drain. He has to stay in the tub until every last drop goes down the drain, I am sure I will never understand why.

Then I rushed him through reading time because I knew he was tired and selfishly, so I could get downstairs to start my HGTV marathon. Instead I started my blog. So here I am now, sitting in the quiet working on my blog and waiting for Richard to come home. It is 9:20pm and I better go empty the dishwasher.....

7 comments:

  1. Okay, apparently I can have a blog but cannot figure out how to post a comment, so trying again...so apologies if this double posts.

    The whole Kelli-stream-of-consciousness bit is awesome.

    You've got a great voice -- keep using it.

    Cameron

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  3. Kelli, I LOVE your blog!!! I have been laughing aloud in my little coffee shop in Beirut explaining to my Swedish/Iranian travel friend what I'm laughing at. You are HILARIOUS. It brought back so many fond memories of being a houseguest at your super cool stepford pad in the rolling hills of Charlotte, NC - like when your neighbor dropped off the fish for you to fish-sit...and how Nicholas knows all the names of the plants in your landscaping. I'm going to blog about your blog.

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  4. Am sitting here gnawing at my nails because I don't know if you have emptied dishwasher yet. It is so exciting emptying dishwashers and cannot understand why you wait so long to do this, is a mystery to me...kind regards....Myra (Ali's avid blog follower......Just say Phuket, how good is that, eh !) Oh, yes, forgot to mention, love your blog, so very entertaining - don't forget DISHWASHER

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  5. Kelli, I can tell I'm going to enjoy reading this, as I keep thinking we need to move to suburbia also. Maybe we should stay in London?

    P.S. I have Owen help empty the dishwasher. He loves it! He pulls things out and hands them to me, and this has resulted in only 1 broken thing so far :)

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  6. Listen up Sarah, if you be wanting a new dinnerset then grease up Owen's fingers with loads of butter, that way he'll be dropping plates and bowls left right and centre and you'll be ready for a brand new range of china in no time. A change is as good as a holiday, the same goes for new china and crockery, you'll never want to leave home and imagine all the money you'll be saving by not vacationing. With the kindest of regards, LOLA!

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