When swimming lessons changed for our family
I folded the towel to make a pillow for my head, leaned back in the Adirondack chair, lowered my sunglasses and let my eyes close slowly. The warm air and the lulling sound of the water were making me sleepy.
No, I wasn’t on a beach or relaxing poolside at a hotel. I was fully-clothed at the rec centre, watching my kids’ swimming lesson, but it felt like I was at a spa.
You see, our family has had a rough history with swimming.
My husband and I are “passable” swimmers but don’t really enjoy it, so it’s not something we’ve been very good about ingraining in our kids.
Our son failed Sea Otter what felt like a million times (three) and only passed when his little sister was old enough to join him in the level. I’d been beginning to wonder if he’d be 17 years old and still blowing bubbles for his instructor in the shallow end.
While they always enjoyed swimming lessons, they weren’t willing to do everything the instructor asked. They struggled with nervousness and both disliked getting water in their eyes, ears and noses — but I couldn’t really blame them because I’m still like that at 33.
When I’d take them to the public pool, even as recently as last summer, they’d alternate between paddling around confidently in their floaties and clinging to me for dear life. Literally all of their friends were much better swimmers.
Oh, and then there was the evening our daughter’s floaty sprung a leak and she slipped under while I dashed through the shallow end to snatch her back up. I’d read a terrifying Facebook article on ‘dry drowning’ earlier that week, so I spent a worried, sleepless night making sure she was still breathing.
This summer, however, things have been different …
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How to cook bacon in the oven
1. Stove-top bacon often needs to be cut in half so it fits in your pan.
2. Halved bacon does not taste as good as full bacon.
3. Not only is the bacon cut in half, but it shrivels up in the pan and gets even smaller.
4. It feels like you’re eating far less bacon. Which means you eat MORE bacon because it’s tiny bacon.
5. You have to wait for the grease to cool and then scrape the yucky white fat into the compost bin, ew ew ew.
6. It makes a goddamn mess of your stove-top and the dials. Grease city.
7. You’re going to get burned from splatter at least once.
8. It takes many, many batches to cook a full package of bacon in that one pan.
9. It’s hard to cook all of the pieces consistently.
10. I … just feel like lists should have an even number of items.
Cooking bacon in the oven is FAR superior because …
* You can cook the whole package at once!
* You don’t get splattered with hot grease
* No dirty pan to clean
* Your bacon stays nice and flat (and whole)
* It’s more like “restaurant bacon”
Ready to learn how?
1. Preheat your oven to 400F
2. Cover 1-2 cookie sheets (with edges) with tinfoil.
No need to use nonstick spray because bacon is greasy AF, naturally.
3. Lay your bacon strips on the tinfoil.
Any direction is fine. I like to use two pans that fit side-by-side in the oven, which allows me to cook a whole package without any of the strips touching each other.
4. When your oven is preheated, slide the pans inside and set the timer for 15 minutes.
This is the point when you’ll want to check the bacon, because EVERY package is different — even if it’s the same brand. It depends on how the bacon-cutter has cut the bacon. Some packages have skinny slices (and more of ’em) and other packages have thick slices.
If your bacon looks perfect, take it out.
If it looks like it needs a few more minutes, try flipping it over with a pair of tongs first. Depending on what pan you’re using, this can be just the trick.
5. When your bacon looks just right, lift the pieces onto paper towels.
For me, perfect bacon is “bendy but firm.” If you leave your bacon in the hot pan, even just on top of the stove, it’ll continue to cook and get too crispy.
Once the pans cool, you can ball up that tinfoil and throw it straight into the garbage — and then put the cookie sheets back in the cupboard.
NO! WASHING! DIRTY! BACON! PANS!
The next time you’re cooking up some bacon, try doing it in the oven and let me know how it goes!
Refreshing a $1 lamp with chalk paint
It’s the perfect cheery addition to this corner of my all-new DIY studio, but who knows if it will stay here forever.
That’s the beauty of lamps like this! They take about three minutes to paint, and you can repaint them and re-home them for years.
Quite the transformation, huh?
That was $1 well spent.
Don’t forget to check out the fun flea market furniture flips my friends are doing!
Click on the thumbnails to take a virtual lil’ round-trip:
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Finances on a Friday
Our daughter cried when we told her we wouldn’t be able to go to PEI this summer.
It hadn’t even been on our radar, but apparently it had been on her little barely-five-year-old mind. She looks at our photo books constantly and loves seeing the happy pictures of vacations past.
She must have been looking at the book from a couple of summers ago, when we went on our one-and-only family vacation to PEI for three (or was it four?) nights of camping by the ocean.
She cried when she brought up PEI and I had to tell her it wasn’t happening.
She cried, and so did I.
Right there in the accountant’s parking lot.
***
Nope, this isn’t the light “Happy Friday” post that so many bloggers reserve for the TGIF-iest of days.
Talking about money is hard.
Harder than it should be.
Harder than it NEEDS to be.
***
We have been struggling lately because of Reasons and those Reasons were the yucky beyond-our-control kind of Reasons.
(Those are the worst, aren’t they?)
Financial worries have ruined a lot of days for us, mainly me, lately. I have had dark, terrible days when it seems like nothing will ever be OK again. I have let the worry consume me.
We are not out of the woods yet, but today we made some decisions that have me feeling a little lighter inside.
I’m grateful for the caring professionals who have helped us figure things out. I’m also grateful to have a partner who is equally determined and disciplined (mostly, unless the dream of a truck is involved) when it comes to Being Responsible With Money.
***
Money is hard, but in the end it really is JUST MONEY.
You’re likely never going to be an ideal financial situation, or maybe you are, but it will kill you slowly if you let it fog up your mind.
Sometimes you pay things you don’t want to pay, but it’s for the best.
You take money from an account you really don’t want to take it from, but it’s for the best.
It’s all digital “money” organized into different digital folders in your online banking profile, and just because it doesn’t look the way you envisioned it doesn’t mean it’s “wrong.”
Sometimes you have to take a deep breath and realize you are — as difficult as it feels — on the right path, and that it’s just going to take MORE time and MORE discipline to get where you need to be.
xo
Why schoolwork is saving our summer vacation
One of the most fun summer activities at our house isn’t swimming in the inflatable pool, playing on the new monkey bars or having water fights with the neighbours.
It’s a daily spelling test.
It all started exactly one week into summer vacation. The kids were staying up much later than usual because of the summertime backyard merriment. Dinner was served later because everyone was playing happily with friends and then bedtime was delayed because everyone had gathered in the yards to chat and watch the dogs run around.
The much later bedtime meant everyone was too tired for our nightly reading practice with our soon-to-be Grade 2 student. After a full week without him reading to us, I knew we had to change things up. If nighttime could no longer be reading time, then I’d move it to the morning when everyone’s fresh and awake.
Then I decided to go even further. After all, I reasoned, his reading’s good but his writing and spelling could use work. What if I changed the kids’ summer morning routine from lazing in front of the iPad to a casual form of, dare I say it, homeschooling?
I announced the change that evening.
“When you wake up in the morning, no iPad or TV — or any screens,” I added. “Instead, you’re going to read one long book (or two short books) to your sister and then we’re going to do some writing or spelling or math together. Fun, right?”
Continue reading in my weekly parenting column, The Mom Scene …
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