Sitting in cookware

My mother is an amazing hostess. For as long as I can remember, having company over meant a picture perfect table setting, an abundance of made-from-scratch dishes served on crystal plates and bowls, and layered cakes that could grace magazine covers. In the summer, the fruit salad was garnished with fresh mint from the garden. On Christmas Eve, we'd share holy wafers blessed by the Pope himself in Poland.

I was often sad for my mother, because she didn't seem to enjoy entertaining. Hours before the guests arrived, she'd already be frantic, chopping vegetables while pots bubbled and pans sizzled on the stove. I'd ask her what she was doing, and she'd reply, "Siedze w garkach" - literally translated, "I'm sitting inside cookware." It was just a Polish idiom, but it sounded like she was in a prison.

Thoughts from the 699

As a resident of an outer suburb who works downtown, I should probably complain about my commute. I can't. I spend my commute surfing the Web on my phone, listening to my iPod, and drifting in and out of sleep. It's all good, because I ride the bus. All in all, I'm hard pressed to think of a better way to start my day.

I nestle into my seat next to the window, smush up the hood of my wool coat as a makeshift pillow, and lean into the window. The suburbs float past in a dreamy haze: Eden Prairie, Edina, St. Louis Park and Golden Valley. The sights weave in and out of focus: An apartment complex telling me I'd be home if I lived there, an office furniture store, bird-filled wetlands by the side of the highway, an endless stream of SUVs and Pontiac sedans lining up across the lanes.

Nearly snowbound

I grew up on a cul-de-sac where the kids were plentiful, the parents were friendly, and everyone knew one another.

There was no need to make plans. On a summer afternoon, I could step outside and find a cadre of playmates riding bikes. In the evening, we'd go door to door rounding up kids for a game of ditch -"Psst... Meet at sunset. Wear black. Tell your brother."

I've always wanted to raise my kids in the same kind of neighborhood, the kind of place where I could set vague rules like "Be home before dark" and trust they were safe. The kind of place where neighbor kids might wander into my house and I would feed them pizza rolls and let them play on our swingset and send them off with friendly greetings for their mothers.

If only it were so easy.

Art, coffee, and an extra shot of guilt

Veterans' Day is one of the few holidays on which the bank where Sam and I work is closed, but our daycare center is open.

One could make a compelling argument for keeping the kids home and having an extra Saturday. Our weekdays are busy and our weekends are always shorter than we expect them to be. The evenings speed quickly from dinner to bath time to bedtime stories, with little time or energy for the relaxed kind of play that makes parenting such a joy. With an extra Saturday, one that's not swallowed up by dance lessons and Target trips and laundry and yard work, we could all relax and enjoy each other's company.

It's my navel, and I'll gaze at it for as long as I please, thank you very much.

I should blog more.

That's what I tell myself, anyway. Fairly often. The other night, I read through some of my older posts, and I loved having those mile markers of my own history and snapshots of Evie's babyhood. I even had a few moments when I read a long-forgotten sentence and thought, "Hey, I phrased that pretty well."

I'm an enthusiastic writer in the past perfect tense; I love having written. Why, then, is starting a blog so difficult for me?

Honestly, I'm not sure. Here are some of the excuses I've turned to in the past. None of them hold up to scrutiny.

I'm too busy. This is the easiest excuse to invoke, and I might have a legitimate claim to it, considering that I have two kids and a full-time job with a 45-minute commute.