Balanced Meals & Foraging.

Children, one of the chief differences between myself and your father is our eating styles. I, for one, am a "balanced meal" type of person. For example, this is what I eat for breakfast (almost) every morning: a banana, oatmeal, peanut butter, and coffee. Your father's breakfast, on the other hand, looks more like this:







This is called "foraging." I'm no evolutionary biologist, but I theorize that this behavior may have something to do with his innate need to somehow "conquer" a meal before eating it. His favorites are things he pulls from the very back shelves. He also likes the thrill of "dominating" whatever he eats:
Manners? I'm working on it. Maybe by the time you children are alive... (though I'm not especially hopeful).


He's what I like to call "hapless but lovable."

How to Make It Snow.

Well, children, if you're reading this, you've probably attended at least a few years of school, which means that you probably know that snow days are the best thing in the universe ever. But how can a mere human compel a snow day into existence? Just this week, your father broke the code. Turns out, there is a complex series of dance moves that will -- almost without fail -- cause winter weather to render roads unsafe for school buses. Here are those moves:

Move number one. Open your arms to the great sky, inviting its frozen majesty unto earth.

Move number two. Wave your hands across your body, signaling to the sky that "nothing will hinder the earthward progression of your frozen majesty."

Move number three. Rock your arms in a sea-wave-like motion, demonstrating for the sky how high you would like the snow to drift. Simply do this for one hour before bed, eat all your vegetables, and when you wake up in the morning...
Voila. Snow day.


(What, it didn't work? You must not have eaten all your vegetables.)

How to Stay Fit When the Weather Turns Ugly.

As you may know, your mother is an "avid" (read: compulsive) runner. But what happens when the weather turns nasty outside and the gym is too far away to reach safely? You guessed it: Indoor Aerobic Dancing (IAD). See, your dad and I don't really have the space (or spare change) for a treadmill, but thanks to an innovative streak (and a fear of eventually finding myself in prison), I've drummed up a few moves to get a good cardio workout without any machines. I call this one the "high leg with an under-thigh slap."


But to keep things interesting (and to stay on-beat with the music), I've developed a variety of moves, including the "gentle twisty jump," the "nonchalant high knee," and the "triple axle with toe touch" (not pictured):

Visiting Family: A Holiday Tradition

One important thing to do from time to time (assuming you don't have an easily communicable disease) is to visit family members. You may be thinking, "but we live with our family -- why would we need to visit it?" (and yes, family takes the singular pronoun "it" in U.S. English; if you want to use the collective "them," you'll have to go over to the U.K.).

So what should a person do when visiting family members? Here are some suggestions that your father and I have to offer:
Number one: Take pictures. After all, you never know when you'll see these people again. Plus, holding a camera is a good way to get people to look at you.









Number two: Drink wine and wave your hands. What better way(s) to keep your blood flowing on a chilly winter night? (Bonus: Drink wine and wave near fire and you'll triple the warmth factor.)









Number three: Come with a date. After all, it's a family get-together and the pickings are by definition going to be pretty slim once you get there.








Number four: Take care of your chores! Moms are great but they aren't super-humans, so they need a little help around the house (especially when guests start showing up with dates to drink all night). So be a good relative and check your to-do list before you get too comfy around the sofa.

Why Haven't They Been Posting Anything?

A fair question, I admit. But, you see, sometimes Mommy and Daddy get horrible viruses from their students and they are reduced to fountains of germ-laced snot. For example, this is the pile of tissues I accumulated after a single morning of writing Poetry. (Please note, too, that I attempted the "apple a day" illness prevention technique; clearly, it didn't work.)

But now that I'm feeling better, the posts shall return with a vengeance.

Hallowe'en.

Sometimes people don't know what to do with spare curtains they have lying around the house. Not so for your father and me. We use them to craft classily understated Hallowe'en costumes: Notice how our Superhero Pose doubles as a gentle yoga stretch for the left arm and right leg.

Expected/Unexpected.

Most things in our lives are pretty predictable. For example, on any given night, there's about a two-fifths chance I'll make a pot of popcorn. And, if I do, there's about a nine-tenths chance that your dad and I will polish it off, even if we meant to save some for lunch the next day. Oopsies. For another example, there's about an 88 in 89 chance that on your father's "front door table," he'll have three framed photos, four writing utensils, a flashlight, a phone, a wallet, car keys, a knob, some spare wire, and some paper scraps.














But some things are less expected. Like the tornado siren that went off at 5:30 in the morning because of the fierce windstorm whipping through Carbondale. Notice your father's yawn. I hope he didn't dislocate any face bones. Oh, geez.

Can a Man Be Pretty?

I'll let you judge for yourselves.

Some Thoughts on Food Preservation.

One thing I'm always saying to myself is "will this go bad before I buy it?" Luckily, I say it in my head because usually when I say it I'm at the grocery store and unaccompanied, so talking out loud would be suspicious, by most people's standards. So here are some tricks, my children, for making sure that things won't go bad before you can use them all:

Freeze things. Here, I've frozen leftover chili, some overripe bananas, and some clementine slices. Perfect for a quick meal or a smoothie down the road.

But, you say, what if it's not preservation tips I need, but tips on how to ripen something quickly so I can enjoy it? Luckily, I have experience with just that situation.





These sale-priced (but very hard) avocados got my attention at the market, but could I eat them right away? Not a chance. So I have set them near the warm coffeepot, where they will ripen faster than in the cold recesses of the kitchen. Are you taking notes? Good.








And, of course, food isn't the only thing that needs preservation. Love does too. That's why your father and I practice hugging every day. This is a hug style we invented called the "Plain Hug:"

Notice how our arms aren't bent around each other, as they would be in a standard hug. And here's the "Reverse Plain Hug:"

Hopefully one day there will be a competition for hug invention and we will win the grand prize, which will be a shopping spree at Whole Foods and health insurance for life. Consider my fingers crossed.

The New Recycling Bins.

Your father has worked out a new system for the recycling bins and he's very excited about it. Like, impromptu dancing in the livingroom excited. Singing along to the radio even though he doesn't know any of the lyrics excited. I can only imagine how embarrassed you all would be if you were alive already and could witness this. I mean, I, too, love recycling, but probably not as much as your father does. Actually, definitely not as much. I wish I knew how to do video on this thing. It's quite a sight to see, with those long legs of his. But, anyway, the main thing is we now have separate bins for the paper products and the plastic/glass (if you can even imagine such extreme luxury).
Oh what a tangled web we weave. A web of recycled goods. And it's actually not tangled any more, thanks to this system. That probably wasn't the best quote to use.

Back to Normal

So Sunday was a little exciting for us, which is why we didn't write about it. Your dad and I both had a touch of something (light food poisoning, he thinks), so it was not very "everyday." I did not have my usual number of vegetable servings, to put it mildly. But things were normal again this morning.
These are my legs. Never let a man tell you that your legs look like tree trunks. And if someone tells you that, assume he means saplings and thank him. Also, some Indians worship trees, I think, so there's that aspect. Before I head out I like to do some dynamic stretching, which is the latest fitness trend. These things change all the time, but that's what people think is smart these days.
Also, the arms. Gotta stretch those arms: And, of course, what would fitness be without proper hydration? Work camp, that's what. So this is just the sort of thing that happens around here in the mornings. You'll notice your father is not in these pictures. He's just out of the frame, in bed.

Typical.

This a Saturday, so it's our weekend life, therefore somewhat atypical.

Hello again, future children. I feel a bit disingenuous starting this blog on a weekend, because weekends are less "everyday" than weekdays, I think you'll agree, but still--they happen, so we document them. This morning, your father and I had some cereal. If it seems like we eat an awful lot of cereal, that's because 1. we do, and 2. it's the end of the week, which means I need to pick up some other food types at the store. Ho, hum. How very quotidian, right?










And after breakfast, we both did some work, because we're still in grad school and weekends don't mean full-blown frivolity. So here we are at our separate (but equal) work stations. You'll notice mine has the American peace flag hanging behind it. Some people would call us "hippies" for that, but mostly we like it because we can sit at the desk and give pretend State of the Union addresses. When I do it, I introduce myself as the "Peace President of the United States." Take that, Obama (but seriously, give the guy a chance, right?).





And, of course, your father has a bad back (maybe it's better by the time you're reading this?) so he sits in his enormous back-support chair to work. He's studying "Executive Power." Ooh. Fancy.

This is a picture of our car. I know it looks terribly old-timey to your future eyes, but actually it's quite modern right now. Your grandparents gave it to us for a wedding gift (thanks, Bill & Laurie!). Its name is Peter Honda. I wanted to name it Jane Honda, but your father was driving so he won. If you don't get that pun, look it up on the future Internet.

This is our everyday life.

Dear future children,

Hi. It's your past parents--your parents as we were in the past. We want you to know what we're like now, before we had you. You'll notice that the blog is called "Everyday Lifer," which you could take to mean either that your father and I are both "lifers" in a very casual, "everyday" thing we call marriage. Or you could take it as I was drinking wine when I titled the blog and didn't notice until too late. Take your pick.

So anyway, here's some of our everyday life(r):
This is your dad. He's making a snack. It's a very nutritious snack: an apple with moderate amounts of peanut butter. I can't say for sure, but it might even be an organic apple. It's also a delicious snack, which is why he agrees to eat it.
Now he's having cereal (for dessert).

See how real this is? We even have laundry hanging around the kitchen:

This is just our normal, everyday life. We won't straighten specially for a photo shoot and also we will never look at the camera on purpose. Because we're not celebrities, so that wouldn't be part of our everyday life. Also, my bike fell over but I haven't picked it up yet. That's just the kind of everyday life thing that we'll capture (but not force) on this blog.