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Freezer Full of Meat

An open freezer houses two ice cube trays, ice cream, and multiple bags of frozen foods.
It tastes better than it looks, I promise.

I hate casseroles. They’re just gross. When I think of casseroles, all I can think about is how a day’s worth of calories is packed into a starchy, fatty, brown cube that can be consumed in three bites. I love efficiency, but come on now. They also remind me of my 80s childhood mealtimes—something to be fondly remembered but never revisited. (Nothing personal, Mom! It was the times, not you.) Casseroles are the reason that I have largely avoided freezer meals. Every time I decide that I should get organized and explore freezer cooking, I abandon the enterprise when I realize that everyone who does it eats casseroles.

However, recalling more recent memories of how the family cruised into the end of last semester on fumes and fast food, I thought that I should reconsider. Not casseroles, of course. Just freezers. With casseroles being out and vegetables not being the most freezer-friendly foods, the most obvious option for making my life easier was to freeze massive amounts of meat. Over the summer I experimented with a few things, so when I placed my grocery order at the first of the month, I bought seven pounds of ground beef, a value pack of chicken breasts (about 6 breasts), a value pack of chicken legs, a pack of hotdogs (yay Labor Day!), and a pack of bacon. I also bought two Aldi pizza that I freeze, one for every Friday night. We rounded out our Labor Day feast with some great venison burgers with meat that a friend gave us.

It’s worked out beautifully so far. I’ve been cooking less often and saving scads of time and dirty dishes. We’ve all been full, and very little except some Labor Day hotdogs has gone to waste. Now we have multiple meals in the freezer to pull out on busy days, like the three evenings a week I get home around dinner time. So what did I make with all of this meat?

Chicken

Frankie marinated and grilled the chicken breasts and legs on Labor Day. We ate some for leftovers the next few days, and I put some in my salads for lunch. I chopped about half of the remainder and added it a variation on my favorite corn chowder recipe. The corn for the chowder was bought in the last wave of summery goodness at the farmers market and frozen. The grilled flavor from the chicken was a fantastic addition to the chowder, so we will probably keep grilling with this particular marinade, even throughout the winter. We ate most of that and froze maybe two bowls’ worth. Then I chopped the remaining breast and a half and froze it. I will probably use it in a stir-fry or something similar—maybe warm it in a pan with olive oil, artichokes, lemon zest, and white wine and serve it with rice and plain Greek yogurt. I have some frozen onions that I can thaw and add.

Ground Beef

Sunday lunches are always a challenge for us with Frankie being a pastor. The whole family gets home from church late after the entire congregation has cleared out. Sometimes Frankie hangs back longer to meet with someone and we beat him home. Most weeks we all get home around lunch time good and hungry. The absolute last thing that I want to do after church is cook with a bunch of tired, hungry, antsy children under foot. The slow cooker is OK, but it requires me getting something going around six in the morning (I’ve been tired lately, so not the best option). A freeze meal seemed like a better solution. Shepherd’s pie sounded like a good, hearty meal that could be frozen but not quite a casserole. I made two, with a pound and a half of beef each. We reheated one today, and I whipped up a super fast gravy because the mashed potatoes do dry out a little bit when frozen and rebaked. This one is a keeper. The only change I might make next time is to spread it over four smaller casseroles so that we’re not eating leftovers for several days.

With the remaining four pounds I made a double batch of an already-large chili recipe. It made an absolute ton of food. Frankie and I ate several meals from it before I froze two gallons. Two gallons. This will be a great food to pull out for company or when my family visits for Bear’s birthday. The chili was too spicy for the kids’ taste (beware when eyeballing cayenne pepper), so I will have to plan a separate dinner for them when I thaw this. Unfortunately, that’s not an usual occurrence in our house. They will probably be happy with some cornbread, fruit, and cheese. Bug is a starchivore anyway, so the extra cayenne won’t result in any starving children. This particular recipe was nice and soupy and will soak into cornbread well.

Other Leftovers

This is going to sound stupid after I just talked about all of the food that I froze, but when I looked at what was left of the grocery budget until payday, I panicked. Then I remembered all of the stuff that I had in the freezer. Duh. Even with only $65 or so for the next week, we’re set! After school tomorrow I plan to hit Aldi for a refill on the kids’ lunch stuff—bread, string cheese, fruit, cheese crackers, apple juice, and maybe some meat for my salads if there’s any money left. If not, I’ll just pull something from the freezer. Tomorrow I’ll be making the easiest ever ham and bean soup in the slow cooker with a frozen ham bone (stay tuned for the recipe). One night will be out for pizza for the kids at a church thing (from the “fun money” budget category, not groceries), and dinner out for my birthday.

A week from Monday starts a new pay period, but I doubt that I’ll need to buy, cook, and freeze quite as much meat. Maybe I’ll aim to use half of the freezer stash during the second pay period and cook a bunch of meat during October’s first pay period. We’ll see. It depends on the sales and my schedule. I’m not going to sweat it until next week, but I can rest easy knowing that I have a freezer full of flexibility.

Jumpstarting the Semester

Our family has just survived our first week back to school. In a wonderful stroke of scheduling luck, the girls’ school started the same week as mine, and I was able to get Boy back in daycare that same week. After carefully coordinating the cars (only one has carseats at the moment), packing lunches, laying out outfits, and several calls back and forth about who would be getting the children and when, we’re kicking off our long weekend by doing pretty much nothing on what is surely one of the most beautiful evenings of the year.

Luckily for me, the first week of school is a little slow academically, which gives me the chance to start off right. What does it mean to start “right”, and how do you do it? For me, it means getting organized: getting all of the stuff you need, getting everything on your calendar, and getting down to business with reading and homework. Falling behind on an easy week is a very, very bad idea. Don’t do it.

Put in on the Calendar

I’ll go into more detail later about the stuff I use for school because it’s not as important as the scheduling. You can buy new school supplies or switch out your backpack mid-semester. It’s much harder, if not impossible, to catch up mid-semester if you fall behind. Obviously I’ve known my class schedule since registration last spring, but there will always be some adjustments as well as assignment dates to note. For one thing, I learned this week that one of my labs only meets every other week (we have online assignments on off weeks). Not only do I get an unanticipated three extra hours of library time every other week, I also know for sure that I’ll be able to pick up the kids on those days. Frankie will be happy.

The first thing that I do for all classes is put my exam dates on the calendar. All but one of my professors has given us exam dates and stated that they try really hard to stick to them, which is awesome. Classes are rarely cancelled in the fall for weather, so the odds of exams being moved are slim. Finals definitely don’t move, so they’re on the calendar, and I’ll share them with Frankie when we go over the schedule this week. One professor does not advertise dates in advance but gave a vague week for when an exam would probably be, so now I know to reschedule a doctor’s appointment. You might want to put other important dates on there too, like the end of add/drop periods, fall break if you get one, and major project deadlines. Share the dates with people close to you. Frankie has already agreed to drop the kids off on days that my 9:00 class has exams so that I don’t have to stress about being late. Frankie is awesome, if you haven’t already gathered.

Make Lists

Now this is a personal preference of mine, but I choose not to clutter up my planner with every single assignment, reading, and due date. If you’re a traditional student without family responsibilities, this might not be an issue for you. A normal academic planner will probably suit you well. But my planner would be a cluttered mess if I added all of my school stuff to an already-full personal calendar with the kids’ and Frankie’s comings and goings. What I do instead is keep a running to-do list on my iPad. You could use a notebook or a document on your computer for this—whatever works for you. I personally like keeping the list on the iPad because I have the advantage of hand-writing with the pencil while also easily editing the same document over and over without fear of losing it or confusing myself with multiples.

A computer document displays a to-do list with the headings Quant, Orgo, ODE, Physics, Due Dates, and What’s Next. Each heading has a bullet list of readings, assignments, and tasks under it. Some items are crossed out.
My list of lists keeps me organized.

My to-do list is actually several to-do lists on one sheet of paper. One sheet is all that I allow myself because I edit the document daily, and I want to be able to see everything at a glance. I start by making a heading for each class, and under each heading I put everything that I need to do for that class in the next few days to a week: reading assignments, homeworks, online quizzes, practice problems, stuff to buy. Everything. Then, although this is redundant, I make a separate list of upcoming deadlines, generally in chronological order by due date. This way I can easily see everything that needs to be turned in for points without having to scour each individual class’s list. Finally, I have a “What’s Next” list. If you can see the image here (and I have limited alt tags if you can’t!), you’ll see how much stuff is on here. And it’s just the first week of class. This is the least amount of stuff I’ll have to do all semester.

The “What’s Next” list helps me to focus my energy on my upcoming tasks in the most efficient way possible. This is often by deadline, but sometimes it’s not. For example, I have a chemistry homework that’s worth as much as an exam due on the 6th. It’s a big, important assignment, and it would be stupid to save for closer to the due date. I need to work on it now. So I push some easy assignments closer to their due dates to prioritize the big thing with a later due date. Likewise, I got my differential equations book late and was a little behind because the professor jumped right into the new content—and I haven’t had calculus in almost twenty years (I spent all summer reviewing!). So last night I made sure to read the math book and try a few problems until my brain just gave up. And other nights I might have important stuff to do but be so tired that I knock out some of the easier things like mindlessly making flashcards of functional groups or reading the safety section in my lab manual. You get the idea. The “What’s Next list is extremely fluid and allows me to plan the best use of my time in the moment. I intentionally make it flexible and have no guilt about changing it up.

Right now the best use of my time is having dinner with the family and enjoying this weather. We only get a few evenings like this a year, and I don’t want to miss it

Toys, Toys, Toys

Toys are scattered across the floor of a family room.
Before the final clean-up—but after several bags of toys had been removed.

Managing the overflow of toys has hands-down been my biggest clutter challenge to date. No one with children needs to told how quickly and how easily the toy situation can spiral completely out of control. So I’ll just cut to the chase and tell you how we’re regaining control of the toys.

If you read regularly, you’ll know that we have three small children and moved in the past year. Our new house is absolutely perfect, but it is tiny—about 1300 square feet. That doesn’t leave too much room for living space, so we use a first-floor room as a combo toy/TV room. We have some overflow in the basement for larger items like a kitchen set and tent and an old coffee table in Frankie’s workshop for messy art things, like paint. We do not keep any toys in the bedrooms except for some stuffed animals and books, so we strive to keep the great bulk of the toys in the toy room. Trying to keep all of the toys in a small space has been disastrous, as one might expect.

Over winter break I tried to declutter with the kids Marie Kondo style, but it didn’t work. We lived in chaos over the spring semester with me occasionally bagging up whatever the kids left on the floor and hiding the bags in the garage. Each bag contained a hideous combination of unrelated objects, ranging from Barbie shoes to broken crayons to scraps of paper cover in spilled juice. It was gross. I really didn’t want a repeat of the spring semester as far as the house went this fall, so I knew that I had to get the toy room in shape over the summer. With school starting on Monday (how’s that for procrastination?), I finally buckled down today to finish the job. Here are things that work for us to make clean-up easy and to prevent messes from escalating.

The Rug

Our home has lovely hardwood floors, which are excellent for sending objects sliding in all directions. Before we got the rug, an astonishingly large amount of clutter got wedged under the sofa, lost for months at a time. Shoes and clothes went missing, sippy cups got moldy, and random pieces of toys and games hid out under there. Getting the rug has drastically reduced the ease with which junk slides under the sofa, preventing stuff from going missing in the first place. The rug isn’t anything fancy—just a bound remnant from Ollie’s for about $70. No need to go fancy or expensive on something that will be used mostly by little kids.

A tidy room has a sofa, rug, and shelf full of toys.
After—a place for everything and everything in its place.

The Shelf

We got this awesome shelf at IKEA (Kallax model) last year for about $200. It measures about six by six feet and has 25 cubes. You can add drawers, doors, and other accessories as needed, and IKEA sells bins that fit inside the cubes perfectly (the green and polka-dot ones in the picture). Each cube holds a designated object or category of objects, and each girl gets a cube where she can keep one special toy. One toy isn’t a lot, but I found that any more than one toy was unmanageable. The top row allows some room for my knitting and books and family photos.

Toys, books, photos, and bins are stored on a large shelf.
If it doesn’t fit on the shelf, it doesn’t get to stay.

Book Bins

I got some book bins at Wal-Mart for coloring books and library books. The bin works well to hold floppy coloring books upright, and I can cram loose-leaf paper in there for Bug to color. The other book bins are specifically for library books and library books only. We’ve had a few go missing as they mix in with the family’s collection, and the bins make it easier to keep track of them and prevent fines. Now that Bug has her own library card, she’s on notice that she’ll be paying any fines for her books if she can’t find them before the due date. The bins came in a set of five, so I put two in the girls’ rooms.

Two plastic bins hold books on a shelf.
Library books get their own home.

The Sofa

Yes, I have a slipcover on a slipcovered sofa. When Bug was a baby, I bought the IKEA Ektrop sofa and loveseat set in white. The white washes pretty well, but removing the cover to the frame is tricky. I gave up on washing out anything besides body fluids and covered up the whole thing with something I got from Wayfair. It’s very easy to clean, and I let the kids play without stressing about them ruining the sofa. I made sure to get a colorful pattern that can hide the occasional marker or crayon streak. The top cover also minimizes the amount of crud that slides under the cushions, so I don’t have to vacuum as often.

Overflow

In the interest of getting things done, I have to admit that I didn’t actually get rid of too much. We still have most of the toys. I unpacked all of the bags and boxes of toys that I could and matched up all of the pieces to each (Frankie took the kids to Nana’s today—this is not a project to do with the kids around). Once each toy had all of its pieces, I put it into a giant storage bin and moved the bin to the garage. Right now we have three bins full of toys that we can go through when we have time. The remainder are going to Nana’s, Goodwill, and the garbage.

Maintenance

Moving forward, I think that the toy room will be pretty easy to keep clean. If I can get everything off the floor and vacuum each night, I’ll be happy. We now have a clean, open space where the kids can do puzzles and play with their train set and building blocks. I have a nice space to do pilates, and Frankie and I have a clean place to relax while we watch TV. After everyone has settled into the routine of a new semester, I’ll probably bring a bin of toys out for the kids to purge or rotate. But until then, we’ll all just forget that the overflow exists and enjoy our tidy room.

Summer Reading: O Pioneers!

A hard-back edition of Willa Cather’s novel O Pioneers! rests on a table.
O Pioneers! is worth the read.

Ah, summer. Since quitting work to stay home with the kids and then returning to school full time, I get the comparatively rare adult luxury of summers off. No work (except self-imposed math review to prepare for the fall), long evenings, trips to the beach, and ample free time to read. So what do I read? Well, choosing a book has been harder than I thought. My main goal for a beach read is to avoid using too many brain cells while not killing any, either. And I prefer fiction for vacation, although I readily concede that there are many fine non-fiction books that meet the above criteria. Being a person of extremes, I have struggled to find the sweet, narrow middle ground between chick-lit and The Brothers Karamazov.

My strategy was to recall the authors from my high school English classes or the authors of classic novels that I had memorized from my Academic Team days (the nerdiness goes waaaay back). A book with high quality writing and a decent plot that would make a ninth-grader’s head hurt seemed just the ticket, so I headed down to my local library to browse the stacks. After failing to find a few titles, I recalled how much I enjoyed My Antonia by Willa Cather and decided to see if there were more of her work checked in. When I saw O Pioneers!, I knew what my next read would be.

Set on the Nebraska frontier (the same setting as My Antonia), O Pioneers! chronicles the life of Swedish immigrant Alexandra Bergson, who came to the frontier as a child. Alexandra is fated to run the family farm after her father’s untimely death (and her brothers’ general ineptitude in business matters) but accepts her lot with grace and humility. To say much more would probably give too much away, but suffice it to say that book explores Alexandra’s relationships—relationships with family, community, the past, the land, and ultimately herself.

I marvel at the way that Cather was able to craft a tale worth reading about such an ordinary existence. This fact is, in my opinion, a testament to Cather’s writing skill. Where she shines the brightest, however, is in her incredibly vivid descriptions of the Nebraska landscape. I have never been to Nebraska and cannot vouch for any degree of accuracy, but I can say that I felt the landscape. I could imagine myself there—in the orchard on a dewey summer morning, half frozen in a horse-drawn cart in the dead of winter, and walking through a field at sunset.

Some turns of events were predictable, which I did not mind. O Pioneers! is not a who-done-it, and I was not reading it for the thrill of solving the puzzle. Rather, I read it to vicariously experience life in another time and place, and that is what I got—an enjoyable, predictable trip to the Nebraska frontier.

Matchy-Matchy

An open dishwasher holds matching sets of children’s dishes.
Life is easier when stuff matches. Trust me.

As any parent knows, one of the major challenges to a tidy home is kids’ stuff. Toys, books, clothes, baby-proofing stuff, and dishes. Dishes may seem like an odd addition to the list. You probably throw them in the dishwasher with all of your other dishes and don’t give them much of a second thought. But what about putting them away? Do you struggle with where to put them? Are you greeted with an avalanche of mismatched plasticware every time you open the cabinet? How about which lids match which cups? Yeah, I thought so. We used to struggle with all of these things until I got smart.

The adult dishes have always been a snap to put away because they all match. When we got married twelve years ago, Frankie and I registered for two sets of dishes—a fine china pattern that lives in the china cabinet and Fiesta Ware, which lives in the kitchen cabinets. Over the years we have added onto the Fiesta set, but the critical point is that this is the only pattern we have. With the exception of about five plastic plates for eating outdoors, we do not have any dishes expect for the Fiesta Ware. Why is this important? Because when everything matches, it’s easy to put away. So easy. Putting away the grown-up dishes has always been a totally automated process with no thought involved. All you need to do is stack the plates or bowls on top of the like plates or bowls. Before you know it, you’re done.

Fiesta Ware dishes are stacked neatly in a kitchen cabinet.
About half of our dishes are dirty at any given time, but you get the idea.

The very obvious answer to my kid dish problem had been staring me in the face for twelve years, although we’ve only had kids for six years. Make everything match. Over time we had amassed a mish-mash of odd plates, bowls, and cups that didn’t nest or stack neatly, causing me to dread opening the kid cabinet. There was the Choose-Your-Plate plate, the Minnie Mouse with funny ears plate, and the dinosaur tray (which had cracked, anyway). They all had fond memories attached to them, but they had outlived their welcome in my kitchen. On a family trip to Wal-Mart, I decided to end the mess and grabbed two sets of kids’ dishes, each containing five color-coordinated sets of plate, bowl, TV tray, cup, fork, and spoon. Each set cost $5, so this is not an expensive solution. While I was at it, I scooped up some more of the cheap sippy cups that we like. Although I try to be conscious of the environment and avoid disposable products, the reality is that we lose cups every year under sofas and car seats and all sorts of other places. We’ve already lost most of the lids and straws. Organizing the playroom and the Land of Lost Objects under the sofa is another topic for another day.

When we got home, I let each kid keep one fun cup (the fun ones are always the worst to wash and the kids’ favorites—I still remember the cool orange-shaped cup with the green lid and Mickey Mouse logo from my childhood) and bagged up the rest of the dishes for Nana’s. She didn’t have too many plastic plates for the kids, and we didn’t want Boy destroying her real dishes. All of the kids’ dishes fit neatly in two drawers, with the exception of the flatware, which fits in the main flatware drawer.

And here’s a bonus tip that puts the icing on your matchy-matchy cake. Put the kids’ dishes in a drawer that they can reach. My girls now set the table with their dishes and put them away after I’ve dried them. Boy grabs a cup when he’s thirsty, shoves it in my face, and says, “Eh!” He also throws them on the floor, but if you’re going to have a drawer that a toddler can reach, it should contain stuff that won’t hurt him and that he can’t damage, right? Back to doing dishes. I do them all day long since the dishwasher broke, and as I go, I stack the kids’ dishes on top of the counter. As the girls pass through the kitchen several times a day, they can grab their dishes and put them away. It’s not quite a habit yet, but we’re working on it. Sure, it wouldn’t take much longer for me to put their dishes away. The sink is literally one step from the dish drawer. But if I can save myself even ten seconds multiple times a day, that adds up, and the girls are learning how to take care of the home.

After seeing the success with the kids’ dishes, I did the same thing with our plastic lunch containers. Like types are nested with their lids in a single drawer, and they are only to be used for lunches. There have been too many times that I’ve gone to make my salads for the week only to discover week-old leftover fish stowed in a salad container at the back of the fridge. No, siree. Leftovers get the random assortment of containers stowed above the stove. Lunch containers are in an easily accessible drawer because they’re used more frequently.

As the summer winds down and another busy semester is staring us in the face, it’s good to know that we’re getting some systems in place that actually work and are pretty easy, too. So now that kitchen organization is down, what’s next? The toy room. Oh, the toy room. We made some progress this week. Next week I’ll let you know if my ideas have worked.

Grocery Pick-Up

Several bags of groceries and a gallon of milk sit on a cluttered dining room table.
Why did I wait so long?

Anyone who has ever taken three young children to the grocery store knows that you’re pretty much guaranteed a spot in Heaven if you and all three children survive. The work starts before you even get to the store. First you have to get the kids dressed, which is its own difficult chore for my nudity-loving children. Then you load everyone in the car kicking and screaming because they’d rather do anything besides grocery shop. Once you get there, the kids insist on getting the car cart, from which the preschooler is a perennial escapee. Add in the impulse buys, sudden urges to visit the bathroom after we’ve put everything on the belt, and Bug crashing the cart into things, and I’m exhausted just thinking about it. The only thing that we can all agree on is that we absolutely must visit the lobsters.

To avoid this mayhem, Frankie has just been going to the store on his way home from work or other errands. It was nice to get a break and was an OK system, but it’s awfully fragmented and leads to overspending. Plus the man really does not need one more thing to do; he deserves to just come home at the end of a long day. In an effort to make our lives easier, I finally looked into online grocery ordering. I am here to say that it is amazing.

For the longest time I had dismissed it as something that was just super fancy and luxurious and only for rich, fancy people. We are not rich or fancy and don’t indulge in many luxuries, so it didn’t seem like it was for us. The thought of other people doing my errands when I was at home with the kids and had time to run said errands myself was just weird. But then the store got the self checkout lanes, at which point I caved. No, I do not want to be looking up a bunch of produce codes while my son swipes all of the candy from the shelf at the checkout. This child tries to eat candy with the wrapper on. Left to his own devices, he could easily have added $20 of smooshy, inedible chocolate to our order. It was time to try online ordering.

It is so worth it. And would you believe that it can save you not only time but money? Yes, money. Shopping online has saved me money in two ways. First, the online ordering tool allows you to sort by unit price, which makes it so easy to get the best deal on what you need. No more standing at the shelves, staring at all of the price tags crunching numbers. Just sort! Second, there are no impulse buys. Despite my best efforts, impulse buys do happen, especially when children are in tow. Some people might characterize such impulse buys as bribes. They might be right. If letting each child choose a treat will keep chaos at bay until we leave the store, then that’s what we do—until now. Right now we’ve been getting an introductory special for free pick-up (there is a small fee involved), but even if we were paying the fee, it would be less than the cost of a treat for each child.

Now every Monday morning, I check the fridge, freezer, pantry, and calendar and put in my order. We do still fill in with some small things and runs to Aldi for produce, bread, and anything else that looks edible. Their grass-fed ground beef is almost always cheaper than our local big chain. I also like to scour the aisles of the bigger store for reduced-for-quick-sale meats when I go in person. Those sorts of deals can’t be had with the pick-up service and are worth looking for if you have a few extra minutes. I think that the grocery pick-up is something that will be even more valuable in the fall when I’m back in school and our schedules are even more crazy. And now that I have an hour of my life back, I’m going to do something fun besides grocery shop.

Emergency Turtles

A turtle hovers near the side of its aquarium.
I did not sign up for this.

Last summer, my husband made the mistake of bringing home an absolutely adorable turtle from Nana’s house. Now you cannot bring animals home for a visit because children get attached and make them pets. I thought that we were clear about the pet thing. I absolutely do not want to put that much work into anything that’s not a person. Not that I’m an animal hater; I’m an animal tolerator. If you want to own a pet, have at it. Just don’t judge me for not wanting one. I’ve got enough on my plate without animals in the mix.

The turtle was supposed to stay for a week, but that didn’t happen. Bug got attached. This is the same child who once had a pet earthworm, Wormy, which she lovingly caressed and kept in a Solo cup full of dirt, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. Frankie did what any soft-hearted father would do and made a home for it on the deck. He poked holes in the side of a big plastic storage bin and outfitted it with a brick, grass clippings, and water. It smelled awful. But Bug loved her turtle, and so did Frankie. She named it Necky, after a legendary turtle from Nana’s woods with a (you guessed it) unusually long neck.

Weeks passed with Bug and Frankie lovingly tending to the turtle. Then the kids and I visited my family across the state for my nephew’s birthday party; Frankie stayed back to do a funeral. When I called to check in, he delivered the bad news. Somehow, Necky had escaped his bin and was found crushed in the church parking lot (we were still in the parsonage at the time, right next door to the church). Well, I figured, pets die. It’s a valuable life lesson about loss and death. Maybe it’s a little early, but Bug will cope.

Then he delivered worse news. Rather than let his sweet child suffer from a broken heart, he went online and ordered two turtles. There was a buy-one-get-one-free sale. He got expedited shipping so that they would be there before we got home from our family visit. The price? $75.

“How are we going to pay for this?! What budget category is this going to come from?” I fret.

“The emergency fund!” he says in all sincerity.

At that moment, I’m moved by his sweetness and am grateful that my children have such a loving, caring father. So I become complicit in the lie and spin a story to explain the extra turtle. I tell Bug that Necky’s sister has come to visit. Daddy found her while he was mowing at Nana’s. She doesn’t question the explanation, which is good, because when one of the turtles bites the dust a few months later, I tell her that the visit was over and the turtle had returned to Nana’s. She still has no clue.

So far Frankie has spent something like $300 on the turtles. In his impulsive zeal to save his child from disappointment (a very lovable trait, really), he failed to do his research and later discovered that they grow to be quite big—up to a foot across—and many people end up having to give their turtles to some sort of facility that can accommodate their vast space needs. Hopefully that won’t happen for a few years because Bug is just enamored with her pet. But when the time comes to let it go, Frankie’s going to have to have some explaining to do.

Bad Hair Day

Now that the semester is over, I am once again a full-time stay-at-home mom and attending to the mom things that I’ve let slide over the course of the semester, like my children’s hair. I’m pretty sure that the girls’ teachers know when I’m on break based on the state of their hair. Tidy ponytail with a cute bow? Mom’s on break. Barely combed? Mom has school. I thought that boys would be easier, but then I realized that they need frequent cuts. Darn.

Frankie has been pestering me for several months to get Boy’s hair cut. He’s almost two years old, but I was still holding out. If you saw him, you would understand. He has soft, bouncy, angelic, strawberry blond curls. My mother told me that my baby curls permanently disappeared after my first cut, so I know that once scissors meet hair, Boy’s curls will be gone forever. Women of all stripes gush over his hair, which I think is sufficient justification for keeping it as is. The girls are on my side, too. When Frankie mentioned The Cut a few weeks ago, Bear proclaimed “You can’t give him a haircut! Mom loves his awesome hair.”

And yet. Frankie has been increasingly frustrated that Boy is occasionally mistaken for a girl. I tell myself that people just see the pink stroller handed down from his cousin and make assumptions. And you know what you make when you assume: an ass out of you and me. Maybe people are confused by how much he looks like his older sister, but I think that people are just being lazy. Honestly. He wears boy clothes and walks around saying “Car go! Vroom vroom!” Not that we aim to gender stereotype or anything, but OshKosh just doesn’t sell a lot of girls’ clothes in solid red, navy blue, and gray, you know? And the kid just likes cars.

With great reluctance, I agreed to let Frankie get Boy’s bangs trimmed—just to get the hair out of his eyes. Today was the day. We swapped cars and children after I took Bear on a field trip and he took Bug to the doctor, and I took both girls home to rest while Frankie took Boy for The Cut and a few other errands. When he got home, he quickly placed Boy’s carrier inside the door and ran off to his next appointment. He looked very, very guilty.

And he should have, because my son now has a horrific combination of a bowl cut and a mullet.

And he looks more like a girl than before.

I have to evaluate my options here. Keep the bowl-mullet and live a life of ridicule and constant justification? Nope. Find a time machine and go back to the early 80s? Cool, but not happening. Get a real haircut and bid the curls farewell? I want to cry, not as badly as if my kid went out in public with the bowl-mullet. Real cut it is.

The family agrees, and they’ve all been quite entertained by my sweet boy’s misadventure at the barber shop. Sister One says, “OMG, I’m so sorry.” Sister Two says, “Oh no no no no.” Mom says, “Oh, that is bad.” My father says that I need to get it fixed before we visit and that Boy looks like he’s from the Dukes of Hazard. He’s right on that point. And Bug, ever the honest child, wailed, “Boy’s haircut is so horrible! I don’t want to be near him if he has that haircut!”

Who gets the blame for this atrocity of style? Naturally the ladies blame Frankie, because of course men don’t understand that when a woman says, “Trim his bangs,” that does not mean just chopping away any hair that might fall over the eyes. After all, Frankie just buzzes his own hair at home. My brother and brother-in-law blame me for giving bad directions, and I can’t say that they’re totally wrong on that one. I should have found a picture of what I wanted. But we’re all in agreement that the barber is not to be blamed. Boy didn’t sit still at all, so I should probably just be thankful that he still has both eyes and ears, let alone a few curls.

So tomorrow after my last final, I will load my sweet little baby into the car and take him for his first real haircut. I won’t just miss the curls; I’ll miss his baby look and probably cry a little as he morphs into a little boy. But while I cry, I’ll also be laughing really, really hard about his very bad hair day.

Update: We got the cut, and it looks good. He looks like such a little man now. The family is much relieved.

How to Study: Cumulative Science Exams

A large back pack and a stack of textbooks rest on a coffee table in a messy living room.
Finals time!

It’s probably obvious that I’ve been busy these last three months or so, since I’ve barely written anything here. Yes, we’ve been running around like chickens with our heads cut off as we tend to sick children and our respective work and school duties as the house devolves into something close to a public health crisis. But some things just need to get done on a schedule, like exams and church meetings, while other things, like dust bunnies, can wait. I started writing this post around midterms, and now finals are upon us. That gives you a sense of how busy I’ve been.

One of the classes that I’m taking this semester is notoriously difficult at my school. Last semester I heard students talking about how hard it is, and I wondered if it really were that hard or if people just didn’t know how to study. Now that I’m in the class, I will say that it’s a bit of both. Forewarned about the difficulty of the class, one brave student asked the professor how students usually do on the midterm. His answer? “I’m usually pretty bummed.” Well then.

What to do? How to study? The test covered 350 pages of very dense material plus lab techniques. There was no study guide, even though students asked for one (and to be honest, I can’t really disagree with the professor’s approach). If you have no clue where to start, or if you thought that you had a clue but your grades say otherwise, hang tight. I will tell you how to study. I’m happy (actually thrilled and surprised) to tell you that I got a 96.8% on the micro midterm. That includes a few stupid mistakes because I was sick, so suffice it to say my plan works. I don’t say thing to brag, but you wouldn’t trust my advice if I got a C on the exam, would you? No, you wouldn’t.

Oh, I should also say that we all know That Person who frets and frets over exams and loudly proclaims how they just know that they failed, and everyone rolls their eyes and bites their tongues because That Person always gets straight A’s. I’m not that person. Usually if I get a good grade, I walk away from the test knowing that I did well because I know the material. When people ask “Wasn’t that hard?!” I just say something diplomatic like, “It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be” and go on my merry way. I don’t go on about how hard an exam was unless I actually thought it was hard. This one was hard. I left the exam having honestly no idea how I did.

Are you just dying to know how I did it? Yes, you are. You know you are, because you want good grades, too. And you can get them, if you work hard and smart. Without further delay, here’s the plan.

Read.Keep up with assignments and readings all semester. That’s right, studying effectively for any exam means starting way before the exam. It starts on day one. There is just no way that you can cram 350 pages of reading and hundreds of flashcards into a few days. Not happening. But if you haven’t been keeping up, don’t tune out. Keep reading and do what you can.

Set Expectations. Talk to your professor and know his expectations. Try to ask more specific questions than the very vague “What will be on the exam?” If the class is microbiology, then the answer is, “duh, microbiology.” In this case, we were told that the exam was cumulative, and he told us that it would be a combination of multiple choice, true-false, fill-in-the-blank, and free response questions. I asked what level of detail he was looking for. Would he get super granular, or would he be looking for broad, overarching concepts? Would the multiple-choice section be on a Scantron, and would I need a pencil? His answers: not granular, no Scantron. Great. So I knew that moving forward, any knowledge of details would be at the service of the big picture. He probably wouldn’t be asking about a specific step or molecule in a metabolic pathway.

Flash Cards. Make and review flash cards. This is something that should be done all semester as you read so that when you get to the exam, you’re just reviewing. My personal favorite flash card app is Anki. The desktop version is free, but I sprung the $25 for the iPad app. It is amazing! I might do a separate post on Anki. But back to my main point, use what works for you and just do your flash cards. Your textbook’s keywords and glossary are a great place to start. I make a card for every keyword, equation, symbol, conversion factor, important chemical compound, whatever. Also keep an eye out for anything that your professor calls out in lecture. If your professor says, “This will be on the test,” don’t be stupid and ignore that. Take the low-hanging fruit.

DIY Study Guide. Make your own study guide. This is the good part, and there are several ways to do this. Consider the resources you have at your disposal and then make them work with what I say here. In this class, my professor had PowerPoint slides of lecture notes that he uploaded to the class website after class. This is hands-down you best source of information about what the professor wants you to know. I learned this lesson the hard way on my last chemistry exam when I relied on the book instead of the professor’s notes to learn all of the strong acids (the book failed to list one that was on the exam). You will often find clues about what he considers important in the form of bold words, slide headings (think overarching concepts), bulleted lists, and other annotations. Is there a picture that appears in almost every lecture (*cough, cough* phylogenetic tree of life)?

Armed with my lecture slides, I started to make my study guide. But how? It’s easier than you think. As you read through the slides/notes/whatever, look for learning goals and ask yourself if you have met them. If you can’t immediately say “yes” with confidence, then rework the learning goal into a question, and then dig in your lecture notes, book notes, and textbook for answers. Type the answer into your study guide, and make sure that you understand the answer. For example, one slide heading was “Determining the Level of Antimicrobial Activity” followed by a list of three methods and a series of slides elaborating on each method. So the question that comes to mind and goes in the study guide is, “What are three ways to determine the level of antimicrobial activity?” Then I answer my question with three bullet points under the question with some concise ideas, like “Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion tests—put disks with different drugs on inoculated medium, see which has biggest clear zone around it, disk diameter related to microbial resistance, KB used to determine safe dosing.” Sometimes as you read, you’ll think of a question that isn’t on the guide. Put that down.

But what if your professor doesn’t provide lecture notes or slides? Please tell me that you’ve been taking lecture notes all semester. Please. Because if you haven’t been, you’re probably out of luck. Either that or you’re in the very embarrassing position of having to ask a classmate for notes (if you’re going to do this, offer something in return—like the study guide you make from said borrowed notes). Even if your professor does give notes, I still recommend reviewing your own lecture and book notes to add to the guide. Sometimes the book will provide a different angle or level of depth on the topic at hand. Sometimes the book will phrase things in a way that clicks with you when your professor’s explanation is confusing.

When do you write your study guide? You have two options. Do it as you go, adding a little bit each week as you study, or do it all in one go, starting at least a week ahead of the exam. It should go without saying that you should start earlier if you need to cover more material. If you’re a nontraditional student with a family, pad in time for emergencies (that’s good advice for anyone, but you’re more likely to have emergencies with kids). Over the past two months, everyone in the family has been sick multiple times. We’ve dealt with fevers around 105 for all kids (including an ED visit) on multiple occasions, croup, random vomit, a Crohn’s attack for my husband, and pink eye and some sort of flu-like virus for Nana. If you’re in a similar position where you could be losing weeks of study time throughout the semester, be smart and start studying well in advance of your exam.

And that’s the bulk of the plan. You can also review any online exercises bundled with your textbook, do practice problems (good for chemistry, math, and physics), and review previous assignments like quizzes, homeworks, and exams. I found the online homework questions for microbiology to be helpful as I fell asleep with visions of vancomycin in my head. If your professor provides a study guide, use it. Obviously. If you’ve done all of the above and still have questions about concepts, go to office hours or ask a classmate.

Finally, if you do feel ready for your exam, why not help out a struggling friend and share your study guide or flashcards? (Digital flashcards only, though—last semester a classmate asked if he could have my hand-written muscle flashcards, complete with origin, insertion, and nerves. Obviously I said no. Come on, dude. I was kind enough to tell him that I just copied everything out of the lab manual so at least he could make his own.) No, you’re not doing the work for them or hurting your chances of getting the highest grade in the class. If you see that someone is struggling, be kind and help out. Remember, people aren’t going to college just to get passing grades. They’re going to build a knowledge base that will serve them in their careers, which may serve us all in the end. If you have any inkling what you’re doing, extend a helping hand a be a part of someone else’s success.

Got any questions on how to study? Leave a comment and I’ll try to write a post about it 🙂

Exercise Update: Unexpected Progress

A large backpack, two textbooks, and several notebooks sit on a coffee table.
I had no idea that school could make me skinny.

It’s been a month since I publicly committed to exercising, and the results are in. And they’re mixed. But it’s OK! Even though the weight didn’t shift as much as I would have liked, I lost a lot of inches. Here’s the tally so far: I’m down 6 pounds since January 1 and have lost 2.5 inches off of my natural waist, 3 inches off of my low waist, and 2.5 inches off of my hips. Sometimes I lose in a funky pattern like this—the weight stays the same or even goes up, but I lose inches. The point is to be smaller, not necessarily lighter, so in that regard, I’m winning. Measuring yourself or going by how your clothes fit (unless they involve elastic waistbands) can be a really good motivator when the scale isn’t moving. I was totally convinced that I wasn’t making any progress (because of the scale) until I tried on a pair of pre-baby-#3 shorts and discovered that they fit.

Almost immediately after I made the public declaration that I would be exercising, I got sick with a nasty, nasty cold that kept me off the bike for at least ten days. Then kids got sick, and I was running on like five hours of sleep and my muscles hurt, and life more or less got out of control. We did finally run out of clean underwear (but it took an entire month—this new record is progress!) For about a week the laundry was at that dangerous point where the clean stuff had gone unfolded long enough that it could almost be considered dirty. All of the dishes were dirty because….I don’t know why. I’m lazy? (Frankie is not lazy about dishes—as he will tell anyone, he used to be a professional dishwasher. He is a dishwashing machine.) All this to say that things have not been operating at their best these past few weeks, so I’m not really sure how I shrunk.

Certainly part of it is diet. The constant salad for lunch has been a huge help both in limiting less-nutritious stuff and in getting enough vegetables. Breakfast is still consistently fried eggs or oatmeal, and I rarely snack when I’m on campus. Since I’m there for eight hours two days a week, that’s a good long stretch with not eating mindlessly. If I were at home, I’d just be stuffing my face while I procrastinated on scrubbing toilets or something. I know my habits.

Another part is movement. The cycling has been much more sporadic than hoped, but apparently lugging a giant backpack around campus is an acceptable substitute for “real” exercise. Actually, the CDC agrees. They recently updated their recommendations to say that anything that gets you off your butt and gets your heart beating faster counts. When you commute and are on campus all day, you have to lug everything around with you instead of popping in and out of your dorm room to lighten the load. And when you’re old, you get the bonus of not being able to stand electronic textbooks, so on most days I have at least one giant, heavy science text. Yesterday I had the iPad, chem lab manual and notebook, a smaller notebook, my chemistry and microbiology textbooks, a statistics book, my wallet, a travel coffee cup, and probably a pound of random crap like pens, tampons, and wads of old (unused) napkins. I just weighed it, and the backpack is around 25 pounds. I don’t do a lot of walking because the campus is small, but I do take a lot of stairs because the campus is on a hill. I was worried that spending so much time sitting while studying would be my downfall, but I guess not.

So what’s next? Just keep it up. Now that everyone is hopefully recovering from the most recent bout of illnesses (Bug and I had a stomach bug this week) and the bike shorts are washed again, I can get back on the bike. Tonight I was kind of organized and made a big pot of oatmeal for the week and started soaking beans for a bean, ham, and kale soup tomorrow. We have fruit and salad stuff. And now I’m going to go to bed so that I have the energy to make all of this happen.