As any mom will attest to, cooking for a family is about as rewarding as … well … every other household chore we have to do: mowing the yard, doing the laundry, vacuuming the family room and scrubbing the soap scum off the shower wall.

We do it because it has to be done, but we know we are going to have to do it again in a few short hours and no one will ever say thank you. The only time that you get noticed is when you DON’T do it.

I will never forget (nor will I let her forget) the time that one of the girls (who shall remain anonymous for the purpose of this blog) “deserved a medal” for choking down the meal that I had prepared for them. To add insult to injury, we were on vacation at the time.

Yes, it was vacation and I was cooking and they were STILL complaining.

Everyone has different tastes and what one kid likes, another one doesn’t, which makes mealtime in any household a bit of a challenge.

This is especially true in a combined family like ours. What one set of kids grew up with as their “comfort food” is completely foreign to the other set of kids.

Rick and I decided from the very beginning that we weren’t going to succumb to the whining. You can never please everyone so you just have to try to disgust the fewest of them.

Each of us cooks and each of us cooks different things. The kids can guess by the menu who is going to be chef for the night. And because we are so stubborn and have insisted that they eat what is served … or don’t eat… they have all grown to appreciate a wider variety of foods.

Last week, my oldest son Marty called and paid me one of the highest compliments known to a mother; he asked me for a recipe. I didn’t remember that he ever actually liked my chili, so I could hardly contain my joy as a recited the ingredients for him.

It’s one of the few recipes that I’ve actually written down and it’s one of the few meals that everyone seems to love… well, everyone except Jack. I’ll keep working on him.

So here it is, chili that the whole family can enjoy… not too hot, not too mild, ingredients that you probably have in your pantry, and, best of all, a perfect meal for these cooler fall days:

2 lbs. browned ground beef (you can substitute ground pork or cubed leftover roast beef)
2 T chili powder
1 T Worcestershire sauce
1 T oregano
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp sugar

Add spices to meat.

Then add:
1 large can of tomato sauce
1 small can of diced green chiles
1 32 oz. carton of beef broth
1 can of diced tomatoes

Simmer one hour.

Add 4 - 16 ounce cans of Brooks hot chili beans (they really aren’t hot)… and more spice to taste

Simmer for another 20 minutes.

Add some shredded cheddar and crackers and you have the perfect chili warm-up for your chilly trick-or-treaters.

For weeks now, Gracie was supposed to be reading some mystery novel for a special book report. I am certain that she made more than one trip to the library to get said book. And I’m almost positive that her dad also made a special trip to Barnes and Noble to get her a different book.

Nonetheless, when I picked her up last Thursday, she was busy reading yet another book entirely. I didn’t think much about it.

Now, Gracie is not really the nose-in-a-book type. Rather, she’s the type that hops into the passenger seat and starts flipping the channels on my radio, singing along to every song from Taylor Swift to Eminem. But there she was completely engrossed in a book … and only three pages in.

Then she asked me what a ‘hard-on’ was and I really began to question what on earth she was reading. I got some mumbled response about a book that someone else suggested and something about having to have some project done by Tuesday.

I was a little concerned about the book’s content, but, sadly, I was even more concerned about the fact that she was only three pages into a book that she was supposed to have been reading all quarter.

So here we are: 10:16 pm on a Monday, frantically trying to complete a project that we have known about since the second week of school.

I say “we” because somehow she has managed to get the whole family involved in this last minute project. I am sitting typing her analysis as it comes off the presses. And Caryn just came downstairs with a report on the last 20 pages of the book. It appears that Caryn’s assignment was to actually finish reading the book and fill Grace in on the essential details.

Where did I go wrong?!

I knew this was going to happen. I knew this was going to happen when I first heard about the project because this is what happens with every single project that ever gets assigned.

I beg, I prod, I urge gently… trying to get them to not wait until the last minute. It obviously gets me nowhere but hoarse. On Thursday, when I saw what was about to happen, I threatened. And that project STILL didn’t get done over the weekend.

So Gracie is going to lose her phone: one hour for every one minute past ten that this project isn’t done. We’re at 11:07 now. Sixty-seven hours without a phone.

Wonder what she’s going to do with all of the extra time that she used to be texting. Oh, I know! Maybe she’ll work on her next project! And maybe next time, she’ll just go ahead and read the nice, wholesome and SHORT Nancy Drew book that we got her in the first place.

Can you still get an A on a book report without reading the whole book?

The potluck suppers when I was growing up in a rural community were grand smorgasbords of delicious homemade treats. Everyone brought enough to feed their own family, and shared their most prized dishes with their friends and neighbors.

Tables overflowed with cakes and pies, four kinds of fried chicken, three different but equally tasty meatloaves, two deep dish lasagnas, side dishes galore and enough food to gorge a group six times the size that actually was in attendance.

This is not the case here in suburban school sports banquet land. In fact, quite the opposite is true. At a typical potluck gathering here, I have discovered that if you aren’t one of the first ten in line, you will be ordering a pizza when you get home.

The banquet tables at this new, foreign-to-me version of a potluck are a wasteland of cardboard, plastic and paper containers of mediocre carry-out/grocery deli foods.

Someone brings a small bucket of chicken wings. Someone else stops and picks up a quart of potato salad. There are always a couple of dozen day-old plywood flavored cookies in those hard plastic containers from the Kroger deli. If you like chips, you might be in luck because there are usually six different varieties of those. Some families even go all out and crack open a jar of salsa as well.

Usually there are one or two moms or dads that have managed to get into the kitchen and actually bake a casserole of baked beans or cheesy potatoes. And one or two others have made brownies. (I’ve only HEARD about these rare finds as, by the time I get to that place in the line, the last crumb has been scavenged by some 200 pound football player or 95 pound cheerleader.)

I have come to the conclusion that the main reason that modern day urban potluck suppers are such a sad affair is not because parents don’t know how to cook. It’s not because they are too busy to cook. And it’s not because they are too lazy to cook.

It’s because they didn’t know they were supposed to cook until … at best… the morning of… but, more likely…half an hour before said event.

It seems that children above the age of ten believe in the “potluck fairy.” The potluck fairy is a mythical creature known only to children who have long since forsaken the more commonly known legends, the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.

The potluck fairy is similar to her sister, the laundry fairy, in that she can complete her assigned household chores at miraculous speeds, known only to mothers of multiple children.

Just like the laundry fairy — who can have a pair of mud-caked white football pants sparkling clean and dry between midnight and 6:30 am – the potluck fairy can whip up a culinary delight in the twenty minutes between leaving work and arriving at the potluck.

All of my children seem to believe in this other-worldly creature since I can’t count the number of times that I have had to race home to prepare a dessert, side dish or entrée for one event or another.

I absolutely refuse to stop at the grocery and “just pick something up.” It goes against my very grain… and they know it. They know that somehow I will figure out a way to bring something homemade.

Most recently, my notification came earlier than usual: 7:15 am. I groaned and went to the pantry to look for my last-resort brownie mix that I keep on hand for just such occasions. No such luck; I used it last week when I was in the midst a chocolate fix emergency.

I did discover a box of fundraiser cookie dough at the bottom of our freezer. They are not exactly homemade, and they don’t begin to compare with the two pecan pies that my mom would have made, but they will have to do.

Where is that potluck fairy when you need her? She and her sister must be on vacation because the laundry is starting to stack up around here too.

I rushed out of work yesterday at 4:30 to pick up Susan and Lauren to take them to Grace and Caryn’s cross country meet. We made it just in time for the 5 pm race. That would have been great if the actual start time hadn’t been 6:30.

The story of my life!

I have spent the last several weeks so engrossed in a structured schedule — short run, football, easy run, cheerleading, long run, cross country, interval run, grocery shopping, more running, laundry, more running, work, run, run, run — that I completely neglected to realize that there would be life after the marathon. A life that still included dirty clothes, homework drama and, most importantly, starving children.

My detailed plan ended at 8 pm Sunday evening.

So when we trudged in the door at 7 on Monday after the meet, I looked in the refrigerator and then in the pantry and realized that we had absolutely no food. The really scary thing was that fixing supper for them hadn’t even crossed my mind… until I looked around the kitchen at a bunch of expectant children and one hungry husband.

Much to Jack’s disappointment, I refuse to feed the kids fast food for supper.

I just can’t see giving the kids greasy burgers and fries for their one and only nutritious meal of the day. Breakfast at our house is on-the-go toast, a banana, yogurt or nothing at all (depending on how long the hair and makeup took that morning). Yes, I know it’s the most important meal of the day. And, yes, I know that my former mother-in-law NEVER sent her son to school without a hot breakfast.

I also know that I have rushed around to prepare one too many weekday breakfasts to see them go untouched. So I keep cereal, bagels and fruit on hand for quick and easy self-service. If they don’t self-serve, that’s their problem.

As for what they have for lunch at school … Lord only knows. We send enough money with them to feed a small army, but I’m guessing they eat french fries and a brownie or something similarly healthy.

So last night, take out Chinese won over fast food. Whether it’s truly better for you, I don’t know. But it SEEMS like it should be.

Having spent time abroad when he was in the Navy, Rick is quite the connoisseur (pronounced “cuh-noiser” in our house) of Asian fare. He has decided that the very best Chinese food in our neck of the woods is Lucky House on Schrock Road. And I have to say, we all agree with him. Everyone was happy with chicken fried rice, spicy beef lo mein, and the perfect sweet/heat combination of their General Tsos. Yum.

I still haven’t found solid ground yet so there has been no trip to the grocery and thus, still no food in the house. McDonald’s is looking better and better all the time, but before I subject our arteries to that, I think I’m going to go for a run and try to come up with a new plan.

10 weeks of structured training, 251 miles on our nearly-ready-for-retirement running shoes, two black toenails, countless aches and pains, 2 BIG bottles of Advil, and more pre-dawn hours than I wish to count.

And it all boiled down to this perfect autumn morning. We set off before the sun came up at temperatures in the low to mid 30s with nearly 15,000 of our closest friends to run the half during the Columbus Marathon. 13.1 miles through downtown, the Near East Side, Bexley and German Village.

Staying warm before the race. We were lucky to have the girls there to take our extra clothes… and they were happy to have them to wear.

It would be a nice Hallmark story for me to describe how we happily traveled downtown as a family with all of the kids in tow to cheer us on. But, the reality is it was a little too early and too much stress for me to try to drag everyone out of the house (i.e., Jack and Lauren, the higher maintenance ones).

Not to mention leaving them alone downtown for two hours would probably not win me any mom-of-the-year points. I could just picture Lauren having one of her rare, but perfectly conceivable temper tantrums with Rick and me six miles down the road and unreachable. Or Jack having a meltdown because the girls were being mean to him.

As it was, Grace and Caryn went with us, dragging themselves out of bed at 5 am and standing around downtown in the cold… just to cheer for us at the beginning, the 9 mile mark and again at the end.

We tried not to embarrass them too much, but we were a little excited!

Before we left the house, I handed Caryn all of the cash I had so they could get something to eat or something warm to drink. It happened to be $13. She had me dig out a dime to make it an even $13.10. Slightly OCD child that she is, she wouldn’t let Gracie buy a donut for fear of jeopardizing our chances of finishing the whole race. (Good thing Jack wasn’t along… that would have triggered a huge problem!)

It was nice to have them there… something to look forward to. And they didn’t even drink our water this time!

The last four miles were a little difficult for me and I was really happy to be one of the group that was turning left onto Nationwide… instead of heading for another 13 north on High Street. Maybe another year.

But… we MADE IT! What an awesome feeling! 1:53:06 at an 8:38 pace. Better than I expected, 19 seconds per mile less than my time last spring, and probably half a minute more per mile than what Rick could actually do if he wasn’t such a great husband who insisted on crossing the finish line with me.

Thank you Rick for running with me. Thank you to all of the great volunteers at the race. Thank you to the bands and the crowds lining the streets for giving inspiration. And thank you to the kids for putting up with our training schedule for so many weeks. (They might actually get breakfast before noon next weekend.)

The only sticker that I have ever put on my car… I even got Rick to put one on his too. Of course his isn’t pink!

My mother is the most unpretentious, practical…bordering on spartan…woman that I have ever met. When I was a kid, Mom never went clothes shopping, never got her hair done at a beauty parlor and the only makeup that I ever saw her wear was lipstick. (Even that made her feel ostentatious but she wore it because Dad liked it.)

She was raised a Quaker and all that fancy schmancy stuff was just unnecessary, bordering on sinful. She never actually said that, but that was the implication.

I, however, was not raised in the Quaker church. I was raised as a wanton Presbyterian. And I longed for designer clothes, perfect skin, elaborate hair styles and colorful makeup like the girls in my Seventeen magazine.

Mom just really didn’t understand me and I just really didn’t understand her.

Until now. It took me about twenty years, but with three teenage daughters in the house, I’m beginning to see the wisdom in her no-nonsense approach to beauty and fashion.

Although Mom never verbalized it, she had a good point. Less is more. Rick likes to say that, after about 45 minutes, the beauty of the girls’ hair is inversely proportional to the extra time that they spend on it.

Susan was beside herself two weeks ago when she only had 2 ½ hours to get ready for the Homecoming Dance. There was just NO WAY she could possibly get her hair and makeup done in that amount of time! Thank goodness, Grace and Caryn were there to help.

I started to point out that last year at my WEDDING, I was still running around in shorts and a tank top and hadn’t even started my hair and makeup when the guests started to arrive. But I realized that I was sounding like my mom and that they were rolling their eyes at me the moment I left the room, so I gave up.

Just like I did, they want to look like those girls in the magazines.
Someday, they will be moms too and they will realize that the more effort we women put into our hair, makeup, and fancy clothes, the less time we devote to the important things in our lives… like running our kids from practices to games to parties.

And they will realize what my mom knew all along: those girls in the magazines aren’t real.

Check out the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty: http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/home_films_evolution_v2.swf

I’ve never considered myself to be the least bit athletic.

Back in the 70s and 80s, when you got good grades and wore glasses starting in the second grade, you were automatically assigned to the geek/nerd/bookworm/misfit area of the lunchroom. Having been identified as one of THOSE kids, I was automatically the last kid picked for any sports team. When you’re the last kid picked to be on the team, you are expected to be horrible at whatever game you’re playing, be it volleyball, badminton or tiddly winks.

When everyone thinks you are bad, they never pass you the ball. When they accidentally do pass you the ball, you don’t know what to do with it because you’ve never had it before.

And the whole thing snowballs.

It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: everyone thinks you stink so you think you stink and … you stink.

I was terrible. I threw like a girl, I ran funny, I couldn’t hit a ball. Phys ed classes were interminably long and painful to me. I dreaded Tuesdays and Thursdays when I had to get undressed in front of a bunch of other girls in a stinky locker room and stand around in ill-fitting gym clothes waiting to be embarrassed by my athletically gifted peers.

(Thank goodness the teachers gave written tests on the rules of whatever sport we were learning. That way I was able to maintain my grade point average.)

The whole thing starts to weigh on an adolescent’s self esteem. So at an early age (somewhere around 9), I decided that athletics just weren’t my thing. And that was that.

Oh, I did some aerobics classes in my early twenties and I tried the tennis lessons for a while… and yes, I’ve run a few times throughout the years, but I’ve never gotten serious about a sport. I was so pre-conditioned to think of myself as a stereotypical bespectacled graceless oaf that I would never even dream of actually TRAINING for an athletic event.

Until now.

A year and a half ago, I decided that I was not going to succumb to the extra 10, 15, 25, 50 (you pick the number) pounds that seem to creep up on women (and men) my age. I decided that regardless of my lack of skill and coordination, I wanted to stay healthy and fit. Running was something that I could do with little special equipment and no gym membership. Not to mention the added bonus that I ran early in the morning when no one would see me.

And here I am at 42 years old getting ready to run my second half marathon in six months.

In the first round of training, I learned all about blisters, the importance of Vaseline when the temperature is below freezing (on your FACE to prevent chapping), and the necessity of stretching. Who knew that there is a muscle deep in your buttock called a piriformis? And who knew that you could actually strain that muscle? Even better, try doing the exercises required to stretch that muscle. (You’ll need a Boy Scout handy to untie you.)

In this second round of training, Rick has joined me. I think he was a little jealous back in May and wanted to be a part of the aching joints, sore muscles, black toes and shin splints. He’s now had all of them. And over the weekend, he developed another runner’s badge of honor, chafed nipples. Poor guy is going to have to run the half with strategically placed bandaids.

(I haven’t been particularly compassionate with him on this one. My response was, “Try latching a hungry baby on that now and see how it feels!”)

I still don’t consider myself an athlete, nor do I even consider myself a runner.

I often talk to Rick about what the “real” runners do to train and the pace rates that the “real” athletes achieve. (It didn’t help that the former college football player that works in my office laughed at my time on a recent training run. I’ll bet he was never the last one chosen for a team.)

But I didn’t set off down this running path to become an elite marathoner. I did it to prove something to myself and, hopefully, to be a healthy example for my kids and maybe even for other women.

Last week, I had just finished a solo run and was cooling down with a short walk back to my house. A lady about my age, who must teach or go to school at the nearby college, was getting out of her car as I passed. I may have seen her before in the neighborhood, but we don’t know one another. We exchanged smiles and she surprised me (and I think herself) by saying, “I’m really proud of you.”

She immediately seemed embarrassed and quickly added, “not that you need ME to be proud of you.”

And, no, I don’t… but somehow it meant the world to me that some stranger had noticed that I had been working hard and it lifted my spirits to know that she was proud of me. I walked the rest of the block, blinking back the tears.

So, if you are downtown this Sunday morning to cheer someone on at the marathon or at the half or at the 5K, cheer for some of the other runners too. They may not be “athletes” in the traditional sense, but they all have a story and they all appreciate your encouragement.

A couple of spare bandaids in your pocket might come in handy too.

Our girls have a rather interesting sense of style. Most days we see them rush out the door in hoodies and baggy sweat pants.

(Picture the oldest, grungiest, most faded pair of black or gray sweats that your husband wore sometime in the mid 80s. I found a couple of pairs like that when I was cleaning out closets and thought I was going to have to break up a fight over who got to keep them.)

Other days they are in jeans so snug that I’m not sure that they will be able to sit down, shirts so tight that I think they wore them in the second grade and shorts so short that I know they are a size 8 (from the little girls’ department).

Requests for them to pull up their neckline, unroll their shorts at least one roll, or stop sagging their sweats are met with reluctant compliance and usually an eye-roll and a huff (if they think I’m not paying attention).

So imagine my surprise when this was the feedback from the Miley Cyrus concert:

“She really needs to get some more sensible clothes.” — Caryn

“Miley was doing some inappropriate things, bending over and showing things that she shouldn’t have been.” — Gracie

“There were FOUR YEAR OLDS there!” – Both of them

This isn’t the first time that I’ve heard them worry about the appropriateness of some star’s actions or clothing. The “wardrobe malfunction” of Super Bowl XXXVIII caused them great distress.

They, along with Susan and Jack, were watching the infamous Janet Jackson-Justin Timberlake half time show in the play room when they raced out to the garage rec room to voice their concern that four year old Jack SHOULD NOT be seeing such things on national television. (So worldly they were for 7 and 9 at the time.)

The girls are also no strangers to watching one of their childhood idols shed her Disney-pure image and bumble into adulthood with fashion mistakes and lapses in judgment. They speak fondly of the “old” Britney Spears and I think they are somehow worried that Miley Cyrus will let them down in the same way.

They feel a sort of nostalgic connection with these stars that reminds them of their childhood. They desperately want their idols to maintain innocence and remain on a pedestal.

But Miley is just like every other American teenage girl … including my own. They CAN’T WAIT to be adults! So they act, say, dress, etc. in ways that they perceive to be grown-up and sometimes they miss the mark.

Thank goodness I didn’t have the whole world watching ME at that age. I would not have been on anyone’s fashion pedestal although I also wouldn’t have been caught dead in my dad’s sweat pants.

The last time we had this dilemma, it was over Buckeye football tickets. But seats to an OSU game are not as hard to come by. The Bucks have been around for a while, there are seven home games each year and there are 102,329 seats in the stadium.

This time the stakes were higher. Miley Cyrus tickets, Nationwide Arena, one night, and somewhere around 20,000 tickets.

Now you might think that at 22, 15, 13, and 13 the girls are all too old for Miley. And you might think that a ten year old boy would turn on the macho, no-way-would-I go routine. Not so on either count.

Lauren is probably the biggest Hannah Montana fan that ever walked. I’m quite certain that she could recite every episode word for word if you would ask her.

And although the three teenagers have a far deeper taste in music than my own penchant for 80s-inspired bubblegum pop, they still all love the light-hearted boppy tunes that Miley Cyrus releases.

And, as for Jack, he’s quite secure in his masculinity and would have been happy to go sing along to Party in the USA.

So, I begged, I pleaded, I groveled for more tickets. No luck.

I went on line and found tickets available and I was half a second away from clicking “buy now” when I looked at the $325 price tag again. The practical Cindy (who I manage to suppress as often as possible) took over and reminded fun mommy Cindy that winter is fast approaching and the kids all need new coats, Christmas shopping is just around the corner, we need a new dishwasher and the lease expires on my car soon. Too much to spend for 2 ½ hours of fun.

So the debate began. What one kid gets to go to a concert that they would all love to see?

Much to his distress, Jack’s name got crossed off the list first. He was the lucky winner with the Buckeye tickets.

Much to my surprise, in a rare moment of maturity and selflessness, everyone else agreed that Lauren should be the one that got to go. And that would have been the easiest solution.

But as I’ve said, Lauren doesn’t operate the same way that the rest of the world does. Lauren starts to self destruct at around 7 pm. Bed time can be no later than 9 for her. She is just too tired. If we had told Lauren that she was going to get to see Hannah Montana, she would have gotten herself worked up into such a frenzy that she would have crumbled before Miley even took the stage.

Back to the drawing board. Names in a hat? Skip the whole thing?

In another fortuitous moment of generosity, Susan suggested that we just choose between Grace and Caryn.

And there we were, back to the two of them…the two who have to compete against each other to see who gets the first pancake.

I punted. I let them go alone.

Yes, I did it. I took two thirteen year old girls downtown, dumped them off and let them go to a concert by themselves.

Ok… it wasn’t quite like that… I went to will-call with them, got their tickets and proceeded to give them a detailed lecture about strangers, where to go afterwards and staying together – even to the bathroom – and yes, I meant the same stall.

They were on cloud nine. That first taste of freedom is so sweet!

Jack got some rare alone time at dinner and a movie with Rick and me and Susan will get the next round of free tickets.

All is good until the next round of tickets turns out to be to Sesame Street Live… or, worse yet, to some bizarre “Sex Pistols Return” cover band. If that’s the case, her dad is taking her and I’ll stay home and listen to my Tiffany CD.

As for Miley Cyrus: we were thrilled with the tickets that we did have and the girls said the show was spectacular. Their thoughts, however, took me by surprise… more on that another day…

After the show on the roof of the parking garage, enjoying the city lights and waiting for the traffic to disperse.

Yesterday, our typical boisterous Sunday night family dinner was brought to a screeching halt by a Lala sneezing fit.

Once in a while, everyone has multiple sneezes…two or three sneezes in a row… sometimes four or five.

Not Lauren. Lauren NEVER has any less than 20 sneezes in a row, giving us good reason to coin the word “sneezure” in our house. (I googled “sneezure” and I guess we aren’t the only ones that have experienced this phenomenon.)

But Lauren’s sneezing fits are like nothing I’ve ever seen before. They are not a series of delicate achoos, after which a giggle and a couple of “bless yous” are in order. No, Lauren’s sneezures are full-fledged phlegm slinging affairs that leave no unprotected surface unsprayed.

Ewwww!

Especially ewwww during dinner!

Unfortunately, Lauren doesn’t really have an understanding of her bodily functions…nor does she have the spatial awareness to recognize that she is sliming everyone in her general vicinity. It’s not her fault. It’s just another part of our Lala land.

So, when Lauren had a sneezure at dinner last night, as usual, everyone ran for cover. Jack grabbed his plate of food and ducked under the table. Caryn and Grace both dove for the opposite corner of the room and Susan threw her napkin in Lauren’s general direction and jumped into the corner with the other girls.

Being the mom, I am the one that runs INTO the maelstrom instead of away. I grab whatever tissue, towel or washcloth is handy… anything that I can use to cover her face as quickly as possible to minimize the spray factor.

I’ve gotten pretty fast and was pleased that I salvaged everyone’s dinner except Susan’s. (She decided that she was finished after Lauren’s corn ended up on her plate.)

I was not quite as lucky this morning when I was brushing Lauren’s teeth. My reflexes were still in bed and my “Lauren” towel was out of reach. The bathroom mirror will never be the same.