suburban kamikaze

Family Reunion Day 2, or Possibly 3: Teenagers sleep through breakfast buffet, wake up hungry

Greetings from the Kamikaze Family Reunion 2015, where we have taken over a beachfront hotel on the Florida Gulf Coast and stuffed it with children, all of whom are potty trained and growing like mildew on a pile of wet beach towels. 

In other milestones, some of them are not even children any more - old enough to toss them the car keys and send them on an emergency grocery run for more red wine and breakfast cereal.

There are 25 or 26 of us here - we have not been able to agree on an exact number. Our mistake was in setting the little ones loose on the beach before attempting to count them.

The important thing is that we are all here and no one has lost their only pair of eyeglasses in the surf or left their wallet in a pile of sand on the beach at 2 a.m. and had to go back out searching for it at 3 a.m., or gotten into an argument with their siblings over things like Why do I have to Sleep on the Couch I Slept on the Couch Last Time You Did Not Yes I Did. 

None of that is technically true, but when you are drinking red wine and listening to the surf roll in under a blue sky, surrounded by some of your favorite people, grievances have a way of losing their shape, like a sand castle built a little too close to the water. So yeah, our grievances are a pile of wet sand. 

Except probably my big-sister-in-law is saying to herself, am I really expected to feed this horde of 25 or possibly even 26 people every single night just because I did all the grocery shopping and all of the food is in my room?  That is probably a pretty well shaped castle right about now.

Meanwhile, the teenagers are beginning to stir. Soon they will wake, discover that they slept past the hotel breakfast buffet, again, and begin to assemble their own sand castle grievances. Why would they shut down a breakfast buffet at 9:30 a.m. ?Are they trying to ruin my life? 

It's a good question, but I really don't want to revisit that sand castle. I am afraid that next week, after my tan has faded a bit and I am back to my soul-crushing job in the grownup sector, I will look back on that sand castle metaphor and start to squirm a little bit. Really? I will say to myself. Sand castle grievances? Why didn't you just write something about the moonlight on the waves while you were at it? I won't lie to you, there is every possibility. 

From the sister-in-law archives: Like sisters only Mom loves you a little more

8 Worries Moms of Teenage Girls Can Cross off the list

 

8. Are we getting enough sprinkle cupcakes in our diet?

7. Do we have enough nail polish to get us through to the end of time?

6. Am I doing enough for the Victoria's Secret shareholders?

5.  Where should I look for that expensive new scarf/sweater/bracelet that has gone missing?

4.  How can I be sure there is enough drama in my life?

3. How will I ever keep up with the stuff that Taylor Swift did this week?

2. Where can I find someone willing to give me the unvarnished truth about my appearance?

1. What if something I did, or said, or wore was stupid? How would I know?

 The No Worries archives

This week in lost causes: Perspective

No drawer big enough to hold our 2015 ambitions

The first day of a new year is a day in which no ambition is out of reach. Everything seems possible.

Which is why I know I am not just organizing a drawer as 2015 opens on the Kamikaze family - I am turning the page on an entirely new way of living. We are taking the proverbial first step of a 1,000 drawer journey: 2015 will be The Year of the Drawer. Probably just this one drawer, but still. 

By we, of course, I mean me. The teenagers are perched atop a pile of Chipotle wrappers in the basement playing video games. Mr. Kamikaze is off napping in his Christmas pajamas somewhere. But I am setting the tone, laying down the first layer of our newly organized life - a life in which things make sense and every drawer has a "purpose", or at least a "theme" or at the very least "can be opened." Once the rest of the Kamikazes see how nice it is to live this way, they'll be all in.  

I begin by declaring war on "The Everything Drawer." I know this concept has to be killed and killed fast because it cropped up recently in the basement, where new trends in slovenliness are franchised faster than you can sweep pistachio shells under a couch cushion.   

"What's this?" I ask the girl upon discovering a drawer in the basement kitchen that contains hair brushes, toothpaste and cupcake decorating supplies. "It's the Everything Drawer," she says.

"There is no such thing as an Everything Drawer," I say. I try to sound firm, but there is no disguising the fear in my voice. What sort of new anarchy was this? 

I drag a box up to the kitchen and pull open the drawer I have always thought of as the Takeout Menu and Pencil/Pen/Spare Key and Loose Change drawer where we keep the scissors. I take everything out and pile it on the floor where a quick inventory reveals we are also using it to store lettuce seeds and a rubber cockroach.

The cockroach I understand, but the lettuce seeds make a mockery of my denials. If you had asked me at gunpoint to produce a packet of lettuce seeds from somewhere in my house, I would have sworn it could not be done.

Still, a couple of seed packets, some breath mints, two rulers, an antique protractor, a roll of mailing tape, two wooden Easter egg ornaments, a giraffe-patterned pacifier, some first aid supplies, two flashlights, some old business cards, two last century cell phones, some hand lotion, a tube of lip gloss, an electronic wine guide, an assortment of charging cords for devices we no longer own, the remote control for an air freshening system we gave up on years ago and five pairs of eyeglasses are still a couple of playing cards short of "everything."  And while the 7/9 of diamonds I find at the bottom of the drawer might be doing double duty, it's still really only one card. I get rid of it anyway because I'm not taking any chances.   

Photo: The Year of the Drawer, Day 1.

Christmas 2014 shaping up to be the least artisanal Christmas ever

There was a small part of me that believed there would be seasonal decor and greenery adorning the planters on the back deck by Christmas morning, at the latest. Was I wrong? Not entirely. It was the same part of me that believed the children would wake up to pancakes shaped like little Christmas trees. 

Wishing you all happy holidays! -SK

The 12 Days of Teen Christmas

On the first day of Christmas my teenager texted me:
Just to let you know it's not all my mess. Also, I’m going to clean it up.

On the second day of Christmas my teenager texted me:
Are you planning to go the store anytime soon? Because there is nothing to eat in this house.
Also, I’m going to clean it up

On the third day of Christmas my teenager texted me:
Some of us are going to Chipotle. Can I have some money?
There’s nothing to eat here
Also, I’m going to clean it up

On the fourth day of Christmas my teenager texted me:
Some friends are coming over. I call the basement.
I need Chipotle money
There is nothing to eat here
Also, I’m going to clean it up

On the fifth day of Christmas my teenager texted me:
Chillax. It’s barely dented.
I call the basement
I need Chipotle money
There’s nothing to eat here
Also, I’m going to clean it up

On the sixth day of Christmas my teenager texted me:
Hey, we’re all out of milk. How come you never buy enough milk?
You should just chill-aaax
I call the basement
I need Chipotle money
There’s nothing to eat here
Also, I’m going to clean it up

On the seventh day of Christmas my teenager texted me:
Why do I have to do everything?
We’re all out of milk
You should just chill-aaax
I call the basement
I need Chipotle money
There’s nothing to eat here
Also, I’m going to clean it up

On the eighth day of Christmas my teenager texted me:
No one understands your rules. Your rules make no sense at all.
Why do I have to do it?
We’re all out of milk
You should just chill-aaax
I call the basement
I need Chipotle money
There’s nothing to eat here
Also, I’m going to clean it up

On the ninth day of Christmas my teenager texted me:
Do you have any plans for the car? Cause I’m going to need it.
Your rules make no sense
Why do I have to do it?
We’re all out of milk
You should just chill-aaax
I call the basement
I need Chipotle money
There’s nothing to eat here
Also, I’m going to clean it up

On the tenth day of Christmas my teenager texted me:
There are no clean towels. Someone needs to do the laundry.
I need the car
Your rules make no sense
Why do I have to do it?
We’re all out of milk
You should just chill-aaax
I call the basement
I need Chipotle money
There’s nothing to eat here
Also, I’m going to clean it up

On the eleventh day of Christmas my teenager texted me:
I’m probably going to be late tonight. I’m just letting you know because 11 o’clock is not realistic.
There are 10 loads of laundry
I need the car
Your rules make no sense
Why do I have to do it?
We’re all out of milk
You should just chill-aaax
I call the basement
I need Chipotle money
There’s nothing to eat here
Also, I’m going to clean it up

On the twelfth day of Christmas my teenager texted me:
So, the new iPhone is out. I could really use a new phone.
11 is too early
There are 10 loads of laundry
I need the car
Your rules make no sense
Why do I have to do it?
We’re all out of milk
You should just chill-aaax
I call the basement
I need Chipotle money
There’s nothing to eat here
Also, I’m going to clean it up

We may have to rethink our hiring practices

Number of light bulbs may vary

Chicken pot lie

It is a longstanding tradition here at Suburban Kamikaze to begin every Thursday with a confession.

Ok, so that's not true. 

But now that we have, it could be a thing. And we are desperately in need of "a thing" here at Suburban Kamikaze, where the stuff of big-time blogging - cats, recipes, readers - is in very short supply.

We tried to establish a more disciplined theme and publication schedule once, but it was anarchy trying to corral all of the other themes and it also turned out that there was not as much interest in the stuff under my couch as I had anticipated.

But whatever, Internet. Now that I've got you hooked with a confession, you will be putty under my couch.

What is it that we love about a confession? I suppose it has something to do with the feeling of superiority it provides, the feeling that no matter how we have wasted our lives trying to reproduce stuff off the recipe cards inside the Martha Stewart magazine at the hair salon, somewhere out there, someone else has done something even worse.

This week it was me.

And I'm not just talking about pretending that Confession Thursday was a real thing. Because at this point, the gap between that being a complete fabrication and mostly fabrication is starting to close a little bit. Truth has a funny way of coming true like that. 

But I didn't come here on Confession Thursday to write about truth. That would make no sense.

I came to write about a teeny, tiny not-truth:

I didn't make the chicken pot pie.

The chicken pot pie came to us almost exactly as it was when Mr. Kamikaze first cast his eyes upon it - only a lot colder, from a box inside a freezer in the aisle at Costco.

I didn't plan to lie about it. It's just that he looked so happy when he saw it. And he made a point of complimenting me on it. Asking me whether it was corn starch that made the sauce so thick? What was I supposed to say? I have no idea? What kind of an answer is that?

I know how discouraging it is to come home from work day after day to find that the girl and I have visited  grocery and specialty stores across the Midwest, hand selecting entree after entree, filling every cabinet in the house with boxes and bags and unrecognizable, but expensive-looking containers of the kind of food he doesn't like.

Does an olive grow anywhere on the planet that has not been in our refrigerator? How many different kinds of bread can a counter hold before something that looks like bread to him will appear?  

I know how hard it is for him, with his crazy, olives-don't-count-as-dinner dietary requirements.  So I let him believe we had made him a chicken pot pie, out of, you know, caring and stuff, and whatever else goes into a chicken pot pie. Carrots, I think.

Once the misunderstanding was out there, there was no way to roll it back up. Not even with the rolling pin I might have dusted lightly with flour and left out on the counter. 

Photo: The author often once never prepares homemade chicken pot pies at home for the members of her family, so the fact that anyone would believe she had is really beyond the point at which she could be criticized for not correcting the record. Which, for the record, she just did. So.

99 Reasons to Drink in the Suburbs #33: Pinot No

As the creator of a 500 black sweater wardrobe, I am not in a position to play fashion critic. But I can't help but feel that that any wine bottle that goes out wearing one of these "Autumn Wine Sweaters" is making a mistake.

I'm not saying there isn't a bottle out there somewhere with the grapes to pull it off. But, generally speaking, putting a sweater on a wine bottle is a terrible idea. I am pretty sure.

As the owner of 500 black sweaters, I have a bit of authority on the subject, so I'm just going to come out and say it: these are terrible sweaters.

And no one can question my authority on the subject of terrible sweaters.          

99 Reasons to Drink in the Suburbs #32: Lime does not heal all wounds

There is nothing quite like a lime to put you in the right frame of mind for the coming of winter.

A lime reminds you that no matter how cold and dreary it is wherever you are, in other parts of the world people are warm and probably getting ready to grill some chicken in the backyard. 

Lime-covered stemware that arrives in a box on your doorstep on your birthday reminds you that no matter how many miles separate you from the warm, chicken-grilling people, they are thinking of you and sending warm, chicken-grilling thoughts your way from the backyard. Or from the pool. Or from one of those cool little beachfront bars where they hang out without you and text you pictures from their phones.

Bitches.

 

 

from the cocktail archives: Trial and error Margaritas 

Meanwhile, back in suburbia...

I come home from work to discover two hefty jack o' lanterns on the front steps. What's really spooky is that I can't find the splatter of seeds and pumpkin guts anywhere.

Ordinarily, it requires very little investigation to reconstruct the movements of the 16-year-old girls who haunt my house. Here is where they painted their toenails, over there is where they ate uncooked ramen noodles out of the bag. Here is where they plotted their next romantic conquests while drinking lattes, watching The Vampire Diaries and pretending to do their French homework. The evidence trail is never cold.  

But the seasonal vegetable carving seems to have taken place somewhere off-site, which makes no sense at all. I know the jack o'lanterns are their handiwork because I recognize the shrieking expression on one as the work of Dark Polly. Polly is one of my favorite 16-year-old people on the planet because she combines the adorable perkiness of a high school cheerleader with the world view of a cranky, middle-age, high school cafeteria worker.          

Her pumpkin projects PMS/pop quiz/I hate my life! with as much teenage angst as a squash can emote. But she is as unlikely as any of them to have initiated any degree of pumpkin clean-up. 

I circle around to the back yard; I scan the back deck. I peek in the basement, the girl's room - and with my heart pounding - into the room of Boy, Esq., which is undefended territory while he is away at college.  This is where I will find the entrails. I am sure of it.

But the boy's room is untouched - by pumpkin carving. There is a nail salon set up on his desk, but no winter vegetable parts that I can see.  

I turn to Mr. Kamikaze for answers. He was home all day. Is it possible that he actually cleaned up for them?  

He looks a little surprised at my query, but he recovers in time to take credit.

"There is no mess because Dad was in charge." 

"Ok," I say. "But where, exactly, were you in charge?" 

The girls asked if they could carve pumpkins on the back deck, he tells me. He said "no." They asked if they could carve them on the driveway.  He said no again. Eventually, they settled on a spot on the edge of the front yard - practically in the street - where they sat in their Pink yoga pants and sculpted their Halloween pumpkins. I find the spot, and although we will probably have a pumpkin patch in the front yard next year, it's really kind of a Halloween miracle. No carving knives left behind, no sign of blood; only a few small bits of rind and some scattered seeds.  

I would like to publicly congratulate Mr. K. on a first-rate piece of teen parenting.

I would like to but I can't, because he didn't think to take a picture. How adorable they must have been! How we would have treasured that image, especially now that we have reached those years in which the children refuse to pose for photographs other than the 15 or 16 they post each day to their Instagram, Twitter, SnapChat, Vine, Facebook and other Twitter accounts. It would have looked something like this probably, only with a lot more mascara:    

 Small hands, big knives: Pumpkin carving in the elementary school years. 

 

from the Teenage Girls are Adorable archives: How to get ready for school in as many steps as it takes. Part 1-Whatever.

To do and do not

They say the first step is admitting you have a problem. But really, no shit. It must be nice to have the kind of problems that are so subtle that merely acknowledging them counts as actually taking a step.

My problem announces itself on every surface of my desk, on the seat of my car and in the scraps of to-do lists mocking me from the bottom of my purse:  I can't get anything done. 

I don't literally mean "anything."  I manage to make a lot of lists of the things I need to get done. And I am constantly doing "something." Do something.✔

But getting the stuff on my "list" done is another thing altogether. Sometimes, in an act that is as desperate as it is delusional, I actually put "make to-do list" on my to-do list just so I can have the satisfaction of crossing something off. Which is just sad.

Because other than that? Shit is not getting done. I blame my family mostly, for the obvious reason that they are mostly to blame. Blame family.✔

I didn't go to bed last night thinking I will get up at 6 a.m. tomorrow and spend two hours taking care of everyone else and their pet rabbits too, but that is where the morning went. Again.

Between ferrying various family members to their various destinations and cleaning various rabbit cages and picking up the various items of footwear that accumulate in every corner of the house overnight, my plans for finishing the important stuff on my list before noon were variously fucked.

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking: Is all of this profanity really necessary? And, why doesn't she just write "provide morning taxi and latte service to family members" and "unplanned rabbit cage cleaning" on her list and then cross them off? Or possibly you are thinking anyone could have told her the rabbit was a bad idea. Which is really not helpful at all.    

The point is, I have rules about what can go on my to-do list. Pretend to be operating under a system of rules.✔ And one of those rules is that I can't put something on the list after I have already done it. That's cheating.

So the interruptions don't count as having done anything, even if they take up the whole fucking morning. Employ a minimum of three uses of profanity in blog post.✔

I can't blame my family for all of it, however. Pretend to share blame.✔ The fact that "finish novel" and "Halloween care package to practically grown man" occupy the same list is surely a sign of trouble in the area of prioritizing. What makes me think I can finish a novel when it has taken me three days to cross "Halloween care package" off my list?

Why does it take three days to cross "Halloween care package" off my list? Because instead of waiting until the last minute to buy Halloween candy like my mother did, I buy it as soon as it shows up on the grocery shelf - to give myself plenty of time. I am pretty sure I am the only one in my family who even understands how "time" works.

Sadly, however, I miscalculated the equation Halloween candy + time so now I have to go buy more candy. Just like last year.

Buy more Candy. Just like last year.✔

Photo: In hindsight, I should have sealed the box immediately. I know that now.

 

from the archives: Hallowhat?

Tourist season on the Danube

Greetings from Budapest! Or, as they say in Hungarian ... something very similar - at least in the Intercontinental Hotel, where they speak mostly English and where I have not had the opportunity to use my six-word Hungarian vocabulary as much as I had hoped.

Still, I like to think that I have managed to soak up an authentically Hungarian experience, no matter what Mr. Kamikaze says.

Did you ever even leave the tourist areas? he asks when I arrive home with a suitcase full of palinka and tourist tchotchkes. Mr. Kamikaze's idea of a European vacation would be visiting the headquarters of the Hungarian Secret Police. In 1952.

But it's not as if my mom and I spent two weeks in Europe doing nothing but visiting biergartens and palaces. We also posed for pictures in front of fountains. We drank beer from giant mugs. We drank wine under patio umbrellas. We photographed our food. We bought paprika in Budapest and scarves in Bratislava. We drank white Russians in Vienna and thanked our waiter in a language that might have been German. We met some locals. They were from the Chicago area, but still.

We were photo-bombed by a Hungarian chef at a sidewalk cafe along the Danube. We drank Palinka and Unicum out of the minibar. One of us bought a coat in a shopping district full of Hungarian street cafes and fountains. It was from the Benetton store, but we paid for it in forints, which is authentic Hungarian spending money. 

And if there is a more authentic experience than sipping apricot Palinka and reading Hungarian literature in Budapest, I would be willing to go back and try it.

Egeszegre! A waiter taught me that. It is some kind of toast. So yeah. I am practically a native now.

- SK

P.S.  You might be as surprised as I was to discover palinka in the archives. 

Photos: Authentic Hungarian souvenir shop, Hungarian charcuterie, dining on the Danube, meeting one of the locals in Bratislava. 

Sneak Preview: New One Direction lyrics celebrate your mom's good taste

Yeah, you should really let your mom pick out your homecoming dress, your homecoming dress

You look good in everything, but I'm leaning toward the one your mother likes, your mother likes

Yeah, I'm leaning toward the one your mother likes....