family

Egg hunt with the chicks

~ thedailydish ~ 4 Comments

Happy Easter everyone! Sending candy-coated wishes to you all. Here at the palatial West Philly estate, we are still recovering from the FIVE HOUR LONG birthday party we sponsored yesterday, which was super fun & super successful, but left us reaching for the bottle well into last night. Well. o-kay, just me.

This morning my husband, live-in tech whiz supremo that he is – recorded the ladies egg hunt, which of course I just KNEW you’d be dying to see, even though we have not showered and are not wearing any fancy pants Easter costumes or anything. So w/out further ado, Click here for the HUNT.

Weekend with Mommy

~ thedailydish ~ 10 Comments

My weekend in one word:

CHA-CHING!!!!!!!!!!

And in two:

CHA CHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For those of you who are vision impaired, Saturday night I won $738.50 at the Borgata Casino Hotel & Spa on a slot machine. I will NOT tell you which one b/c it is now my secret luckiest winniest machine ever and MINE ALONE. Plus I do NOT want to encourage anyone in the folly that is gambling. Let’s face it folks, you are probably better off going into the bathroom, taking out your wallet and flushing it down the toilet than to try to WIN AT GAMBLING b/c it ain’t gonna happen. EXCEPT FOR ME!!!!!!!! WOOHOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

What a magnificently crazy fun-filled weekend!! Today I am trying to get back into the swing of things, but frankly I’m really not feeling much inclined. And who can blame me? The prospect of laundry and chores, bleech. I haven’t even brushed my teeth yet, and I might not now b/c I AM RICH. I am ready to retire for good. Like my good friend Jim next door who has thrown in the towel after 36 glorious years. And I am not speaking of 36 years of WORK – Oh NO! He is 36 and has decided to retire. B/c THAT is West Philly living and I LOVE IT!

SO where was I?? Oh yes, the weekend was grand. Well to be honest it started out a little shitty, but what else could it be when a sewer line backs up into your basement? Ahhhhh. Nothing like the smell of poop in the morning. Or the afternoon. Cause that’s how long it took us to remedy THAT lil problem. And by US you know of course I mean my beloved husband, b/c he’s the one who had to touch the stuff. YUM-YUM. Here is a photo for your enjoyment:

Look at that hand. He joked that he was going to rinse it in gasoline, but I do not think he actually did. At least not while I was watching. He had to go to the Home Depot and rent a big giant snake. It is a tool for plunging out your sewer line and not the fanged animal of course, though that would have been preferable to the poo. So the weekend’s festivities got off to a bit of a late start, but you can see how Saturday night finished, so who cares. right? My husband is the BEST.

Sunday we took in the last day at the Philadelphia Flower Show. They were not being persnickety about which door you used either, much to my relief. Though of course you had to buy tickets which of course did not come cheap. But that’s o-kay b/c our weekend was ON THE BORGATA. So the flowers were fun, the swarming masses much less so. We ate lunch across the street at the Reading Terminal Market. We had cheesesteaks at Rick’s, which is still there, at least until the court date in June. I had not eaten at Rick’s for quite some time and realized why. No offense to Rick’s, but they are one of the few (if only) Philly cheesesteak joints that 1) don’t chop their meat, which I don’t care for, and 2) offer the “works” aka lettuce & tomato on the steaks. As a Philadelphian I have to say this is weird. I have eaten steaks all my life and have yet, until this weekend, to see hoagie fixins on one unless it’s a HOAGIE. Oh well. It was otherwise o-kay. And of course we had Bassett’s which rocks above all others. I had pumpkin AND peach on one cone and it was simply Heaven in an ice cream.

Yesterday we spent the day at Peddler’s Village in Lahaska. My parents used to live minutes from there in New Hope, and my mommy hadn’t been back since moving to Atlanta. Almost a year and a half ago. So we took the tour and tooled past her old pad. It was not looking too bad, but it just wasn’t the same. We spent the rest of the afternoon eating and playing games at Giggleberry Fair, the Peddler’s Village (slightly) less commercial equivalent of a Chuck E. Cheese. Since it was a Monday afternoon, it was D-E-A-D. My mom took the girls on the carousel and the older man who runs the thing let them stay on waaay longer than normal. I believe out of sheer boredom. It was great fun the first 5-10 minutes, but after that all three of them looked a bit queezy. My husband & I were both very glad to be watching from a bench. Afterward, we hit the outlets. My mommy bought the girls a HUGE bag full of stuff from the Children’s Place, they must have gotten like 5 outfits each. Everything was BEYOND CHEAP, like 99 cents, $2, $3. CRAZY. I think she spent $70 total on the whole lot of it. I really like the Children’s Place very cute & colorful clothing, but some of their stuff can lean distinctly towards trampville. Hoochie mama gear on women is mildly entertaining; on a 4 year old it is criminal.

My mommy also bought me the rockingest pair of shoes. They look like granny shoes, here I am wearing them:

YES they ARE COOL. They will look better w/out my fuzzy polka dot socks, but they still look great even with them. WOW. I love these shoes. I used to have a pair like this back in the early 90s (that’s 1990s NOT 1890s, though they probably looked just like this back then too). My friend Daffy just bought a similar pair. Yay! Okay now all you crazy salivating foot and shoe fetishists can MOVE ON.

SO I had been thinking of buying a sewing machine with my remaining Borgata winnings, but when we went to JoAnn Fabrics yesterday to check out the machines all they sold were Vikings. I’d read great things about Brother machines; not only are they inexpensive but they are supposed to be FABULOUS. So I passed on the $400 unknown Viking. I am going to continue researching. or maybe I will stumble into one at a thrift shoppe for an irresistible LOW LOW price and go for it. I am lucky, you know. But now that my mommy has once again returned south, the whole idea seems less pressing. Or maybe just less fun.

My mommy left at the crack of dawn this morn, leaving behind the faint scent of her perfume and the familiar dull ache which has returned once more to my heart. I know that there are people out there who have awful mommies. and I feel so badly for them. BUT I do not exaggerate when I say that my mommy is simply THE BEST MOMMY IN THE HISTORY OF THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD. Unfortunately for us, she is also a successful executive who now lives 800 miles away in ATLANTA. SO unlike yours truly, she can’t just hang out in West Philly for all eternity not brushing her teeth. Don’t get me wrong, I am beyond proud of my mom. To me as well as the rest of the world she is a certifiable SUCCESS in every way. And being a success is a good thing. But being on the receiving end of success sometimes truly sucks. I miss her. I wish she didn’t have to work so hard for people who don’t really care about her. My daughters sob when she leaves. And so do I.. Which is better?

All-in-all, this weekend of fun with my mommy has reminded me of several things. Poop smells. Gambling does not pay unless YOU WIN. And I would rather be with my family and have less money, than be rich & successful apart from them. YES money can be great, especially when you are poor. But it cannot buy you happiness. A lesson that Eliot Spitzer should have learned, but. unfortunately some never do.

Sunday drivers.

~ thedailydish ~ 2 Comments

Just before Christmas I took my daughters to the art museum. As we walked through the Renaissance section, they were totally transfixed by the paintings of the many saints and martyrs. And when we got to the portrayals of Jesus, they really started asking questions. Mommy, why did they nail Jesus to the cross? Why are his ribs sticking out? Why is he bleeding? What are those people doing? and so on.

I have always been extremely candid with my children. I am not one to pussyfoot around an issue or sugar-coat things. It is a matter of personality, but it’s also a matter of what I perceive as truthfulness. I think children can take reality a whole lot better than many adults believe they can – if, that is, it’s presented to them in a way they can understand. Therefore, I do not lie to my children ever. When they ask me a question, I answer them honestly, and I communicate my answer to them to the best of my ability, so that hopefully they at least understand or get a glimpse of what I am trying to explain. When they still aren’t quite getting it, I remind them that we will talk more about this as they get older, and that in time, they will understand.

For this reason, they have known since birth that there is no santa claus, no easter bunny, and no tooth fairy. These fabrications were created in part to manipulate children into behaving in an “acceptable” fashion, and I see no value in perpetuating such lies. My kids understand that Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Christ, and we exchange presents because of our joy and thankfulness at such a gift. The same goes for Easter – we celebrate Christ’s resurrection. We eat candy b/c we like it, not for any symbolic reason. And when my older daughter loses her teeth, she gives them to me, I place each in a bag with a description, and I put a treat for her under the pillow. So you see, my children are not being deprived in any way, they simply know the truth. The truth that their parents love them and therefore don’t lie to them.

So when my girls started asking me those very pointed questions about Jesus in the museum, I knew it was time for real answers.

I was raised as an every-Sunday church-going Methodist and I am a Christian. I believe in God, I believe in Jesus. My husband is more of a Unitarian. He believes in God, but isn’t firm on anything else. He wasn’t raised in any faith other than celebrating secular Christmas & Easter at home. We do not regularly attend church and never have as a family. We do say prayers every night with our children and frequently read stories from the Bible. But now that our girls are getting older, we are sensing it is time for church – or at least more disciplined, if not totally “organized,” religious study.

We have done some “test-driving” of churches. Our experiences thus far:

We attended a Presbyterian church in our neighborhood several times, and initially liked it very much. We were friends with some of the people already and the older British pastor was an engaging orator, reminiscent of C.S. Lewis. Unfortunately he left to take a position in Minnesota, and the replacement pastors (a married couple acting as co-pastors) didn’t fit for us. It only got worse when the couple left following a scandal involving the husband and a female member, which pretty much tore the church apart.

We’ve visited a very historic Methodist here in Philly. The building itself is gorgeous – all white and stark and New Englandesque – but the congregation is tiny, and they have no sunday school.

We attended another local Methodist church, just the one time. The service was fine, but afterwards when we went to collect our girls from Junior Church, we discovered they’d somehow “misplaced” our younger daughter. We spent the next 15 longest minutes of our lives scouring the enormous very gothic church, WORRIED OUT OF OUR MINDS, finally finding her in the pitch-dark basement clutching a door knob. I am still traumatized by the experience. Long story short, this visit left us (especially me) scarred and I can’t even drive near – let alone past – that church anymore.

Just before Christmas we attended a Mennonite church around the corner a couple times. The service was extremely low key, with lots of beautiful singing. The message was genuine. It helps that the congregation are almost exclusively from our immediate neighborhood and we already know or are friends with many of them. This church would be perfect, except for the fact that sunday school meets after the service.

Not a very wide search so far, but there you have it. We’re looking for a fairly traditional church – preferably one with a service we can attend while our children are in Sunday School. But we don’t want someplace too big, too small, or too “pushy.” My husband and I are both very turned off by interrogation tactics, especially when they involve personal religious beliefs. Neither one of us enjoys being put on the spot and asked whether we’ve been saved. I love God and don’t need an intermediary. My husband took a job in IT precisely to avoid dressing up, ever. He is not interested in a Sunday fashion show. and neither am I. We do not want people looking us up and down, judging our family when we go to church. In summary, we are looking for a group of people sincerely interested in worshiping God and serving their fellow man humbly and unpretentiously, with a traditional service that meets at the same time as children’s Bible school. It is a tall order. Wish us luck.