Because Midwest.

Sometimes I go on vacation because let's face it, living in the breathtakingly beautiful wine country of Northern California can really get a girl down. Sometimes these vacations involve beaches, and cocktails, and being lazy and basking in the glorious sunshine all the live-long day. My most recent vacation included...some of these things.

I went to the Midwest, woo hoo!

This trip back to the land from which I sprang was extra fun because I brought along my man, good ol' Paulie who, being the good sport that he is, allowed the kids and I to drag him first to Cleveland, then to Detroit, then to Kalamazoo (and surrounding areas) and finally to Chicago. Needless to say he freaking loved it. And, there were a couple of beaches involved so...yeah.

Because it's summer and no one has time to do things like 'read this blog', I'll give you a Top 5 list of things we loved the most:

1. Visiting Grandpa Janik. I mean, grandpas are the best, so there's not much else I need to say here. My grandpa has a pool, a hot tub, and really nice whiskey. Being at his house is like, well, being on vacation.

I immediately put the kids to work

Also, grandpa's dog Buddy is the Best Old Dog in the whole wide world and I could watch him walk to greet whoever is at the door a thousand times and be humbled and happy at the simple determined devotion of a good dog every dang time.

2. Detroit! Seriously, Detroit. I really wanted to check out this city because I love me a city fighting it's bad reputation and winning. It did not disappoint. Aside from the general cruising around one does while traveling with Paulie so he can do his fantasizing, we visited friends while there. One works in an incredible restaurant - converted from a pawn shop in the Corktown neighborhood and decked out in reclaimed materials - called Gold Cash Gold, which easily rivals any farm-to-table establishment here in Sonoma County. Another friend lives in an old school which was converted into condos, which was kind of the coolest thing ever. The kids especially loved hiding in the lockers outside their door. 

While Paulie and I were too busy looking at maps and street signs during one of our many navigation-fails, Jonah spotted a huge lot full of these freaking incredible structures:

We heart Detroit.

3. Canada! Okay...Canada was actually pretty boring. But to be fair we only went over for lunch - I mean, how could we be so close and not pop over to get another stamp in the ol' passports, right? What was exciting was the fact that I'd forgotten to bring the letter I'd carefully written up and had the kids' father sign which stated that yes, he was aware that I was taking the kids into Canada and no, I was not in fact trying to steal these two beautiful children with different last names than both myself and the driver of the car. Good thing Canadians are so trusting and friendly! We only had to take a slight detour into higher security to convince them we weren't on the run from our sad shambles of a country. Other than that, Canada was kind of a bust. Except for the cuisine, of course.

Can we take a moment to talk about Poutine? Picture french fries and cheese curds covered in gravy. Now picture yourself eating this magical concoction of delicious wonderstuff. You now have a small idea of my joy.

Will you marry me?

4. SWIMMING! 

She is so super badass!

Michigan has one thousand bajillion lakes and I grew up swimming in them. This is a pastime I am determined to instill in my kids, even though it's too cold to swim in water where they are growing up, i.e. northern California. Swimming in lakes is a big part of why I try to take my kids to the Midwest every so often. 

Unfortunately, the water was soooooooo cold while we were there. Like, painfully cold. Paulie was pretty sure he saw an iceberg floating by when we flailed around trying to warm up in Lake Michigan. Despite the look of raw misery on Jonah's face, he absolutely got into that water again, and nagged us all to do the same. Several times. Ouch.

When it was just too dang cold to get into the water, we did other Lake Michigan-related activities, like walking to the lighthouse in South Haven. This requires a photo, of course. Or, several attempts at a photo:

5. Van Buren Youth Camp. This is the camp I was lucky enough to attend in my youth. I was then a counselor, and eventually a staff member. One of the reasons we went to Michigan this summer was for a camp reunion, and then Jonah spent a week there as a camper. *Sigh* *Traditions Continuing*

Oh, man! I went through the whole Top Five and I didn't even get to all the time we spent in Kalamazoo, or hanging out with friends which makes me so super mind-bogglingly happy, or how Paulie got to shoot some guns, or the alligator sanctuary, or the time we spent with family, or how Evie got lice, or touring around Chicago - I skipped Chicago! Jeeeeeeez. Clearly I need a Part Two for this thing. Or, you can just take my word for it that we had a beautiful visit and even though I now need a second job to pay for it all, we can't wait for the chance to return. 

We love you, Midwest!

The Cast

"When it comes to parenting, use what you know"

No idea why that's in quotes. No one said that ever. I just Googled it. Nada. Moving forward.

My area of expertise is making drugs palatable. It's true! Drinking straight ethanol is pretty rough and unpopular at parties. Wine, on the other hand, can be a delicious and classy way to get your fix. Surely if I can get wine consumers to drop forty bucks on Zinfandel, I can get one 5-year-old to take his pain meds. It's all about how you mask the bad stuff.

I did my research (asked the girl at the grocery store which fruit soda was best) and set up a bench trial:

It turns out Strawberry Crush is indistinguishable from liquid Boca™ Hydrocodone Bitartrate and Acetaminophen Oral Solution, in both color and taste. Boylan's Black Cherry was the hands down winner. So, of course, as I dashed out the door to pick Liam up from daycare, drug him, and take him to have his splint changed out for a his permanent cast, I left the soda sitting uselessly on the kitchen counter. In desperation I hit up the McDonald's drive through for a cheeseburger and an orange soda. I added a full 10mL of his gag inducing drugs to the soda and he gleefully downed the whole thing. Way to go MacDo.

The sedating effect helped him through the worst part, which was having a nurse take a circular saw to your freshly injured arm.

After that she wrapped him up in his chosen color of orange and he is doing so much better. It's like it's not even there. The bad news is he didn't get a waterproof cast. The pins holding the break together protrude through his skin so it has to stay dry. The good news is he gets it off in three short weeks. Summer isn't ruined!!

The Last Laugh

For those of you who don't know, I recently tried comedy.

COMEDY.

I'm not talking about fun stuff like Mortified. I'm talking about the thing masochists do when self-deprecation, self-verbal-abuse, self-hatred and self-flagellation haven't quite done the trick, so you decide to write some jokes and get up on a stage in front of a bunch of strangers and tell these jokes.

Ohmygod it's so hard.

The problem is, I didn't realize this at first. See, someone convinced me to sign up for an amateur comedy contest called "So Your Friends Think You're Funny" at a place called Sally Tomatoes. Please don't even get me started on the names of some of these venues, okay? So I was like 'psh, sure, whatever,' and threw together a little routine. Turns out, the people and the judges liked it, and I got 2nd place. Woo hoo! One local comedienne in attendance said that I was "robbed for first place". Another comic said "Amanda Janik is going to have a very busy year." Yeah so, I got cocky. I mean, I'd literally never tried comedy before - I'd never even been in or even to an open mic - the closest I'd ever gotten to bonafide comedy was holding an imaginary microphone at parties when I'd had too much to drink and no one was listening to me, which I would fake-tap with the palm of my other hand, saying loudly, "is this thing on?!"

So I got invited to be in some comedy shows. I didn't know that this was a big deal, or that this is what the people who actually go to open mics and test out their jokes beforehand actually strive for. I was just like "oh you want me to be in your comedy show? I don't know, let me check my schedule...." I really liked that when you do a comedy show, you sometimes get money. Or in the case of the show I did in Healdsburg, wine!

I became friends with comics on Facebook and started to realize that I was running a super sham operation. They were out there, schlepping from city to city, room to room. 'Room' is, I learned after far too long, what you call it when, I guess, a comic has their own show. Wherever they have their show is called a 'room'. You're welcome: I just saved you from having to take this guy's classes.

I did a few shows but it quickly became clear that I had to change up my routine. See, my original, second-place-winning routine was pretty heavy on the whole 'Stupid Shit My Boyfriend Says' material, and he was totally down with that - he's very giving and when we first started dating he told me that I was free to mock him and use anything he ever said against him forever and ever amen.

But then he said some reallllllly stupid shit and I made a publicly displayed comedy routine out of it, which he encouraged...but then watched a few times, sat through being publicly called out, and finally decided that maybe we should have a lil' sit-down.

I only had one other show after that because, really, how funny can I be if I'm not publicly shaming my boyfriend for the stupid stuff he says, right?! The show was at Christy's, it happened to be their last night open before a 'remodel' (read; rumored straight-up closing), so I decided to dress nice. I wore a sexy velvet dress, red heels, makeup. This, it turned out, was a mistake.

There were a bunch of foxy babes in the audience that night. By 'foxy babes' I mean desperate bachelorette party attendees in teensie rompers and hooker heels, and while I thought they would be a great audience for my bit, let's just say...they were not.

See, in my schpeel I talk about how my boyfriend thinks I need to lose weight. Yeah. And all of the fun things that come along with that, like breaking up, considering prostitution, etc. You know, the usual. This tends to be pretty funny and generally goes over well, if only for the "oh no he di-int!" factor. However, when I'm looking Super Smoking Hot in my sexy dress talking about how my boyfriend thinks I'm too fat boo hoo, the lasses in the first three rows weren't having it. They collectively sucked in their tummies a bit, having perhaps just settled into their seats after secretly cracking their backs in the handicap stall of the women's room because their heels made them want to die, all the while trying to keep their Spanx from rolling under their bellies every time they bent over to reach for their Lemondrop...and here was this naturally gorgeous, curvy, voluptuous, clearly-a-perfectly-fine-weight woman standing before them complaining about her boyfriend...this is how I imagine the inner dialogue went:

The dress is velvet. The heels are red.

She has a boyfriend?! Look how much work I put into my appearance and I don't have a boyfriend and my stupid friend is getting married and I'm going to be alone and I hate this comic she's the worst I will KILL HER...gaaaaaah! Oh wait, and now she's making a joke about one time when she had make-up sex with her boyfriend in the handicap stall of the women's restroom?! Right where I just purged?? OHMYGOD!! I just got her toilet sex from a year and a half ago on my vomit-face!!"

Yeah so needless to say that audience didn't love me.

For the record, Paul was sitting way back at the bar and he said several people near him were laughing, but they were quiet laughers. And his ex wife was there, too! She said she was cracking up as well because she was agreeing with all of the things I said. "Yes he does clip his toenails in bed!!" It was suggested that she and I develop a comedy routine together but sadly she declined.

Anyway. Even though I know the main reason my last gig was a bust was because I was way too super-hot, I've decided I'm done with comedy. And it's not just because, while I made a record-breaking $10 to do the show, I spent $5 to get in, therefore grossing only $5 (math!!!).

It's because comedy is not for the weak, the lazy, the paranoid...aka me.

Apparently, I already knew that.

Liam Ruins Father's Day

I'll share this story in bullet points because getting into the details will have me reliving it and I'll start weeping again which is really irresponsible since there's a drought.

• I got a call Wednesday from Liam's school saying he had taken a spill and was hurt and could I come get him because he might need to see a doctor.
• I casually made my way to his class room at 120mph.
• I assessed the situation and called the ambulance.
• Yadda yadda yadda, he'll be in a cast this summer.

The last five days have been a steady stream of agony and panic, relieved intermittently with drugs. Also, Liam has had a hard time.

I snapped a few shots during the whole thing which may seem insensitive, but I honestly just meant for them to be a shortcut to having to call everyone and tell them what was happening. I had my hands full and I was alone, so I knew there would be panicked family and friends relying on me for updates. I thought that I'd group text these photos of Liam just so everyone could see he was okay.

Not okay.

Super not okay.

I didn't send any of them. Erin joined me as soon as she could and was amazing. Her tricks for distracting Liam and keeping things light were much more effective than my sobbing and pacing.

A little morphine didn't hurt either.

I was a firefighter and EMT for a number of years, but there's nothing that can prepare you for the heartbreak of seeing your own child in pain. It was the worst day of Liam's life and definitely makes it into my top five.

The days since then haven't been a picnic. To say Liam hasn't been sleeping well is a gross understatement. The neighbors can attest to that. In fact, Jodee went and talked to them yesterday to assure them that nothing sinister was happening over at our house. Frankly, we were surprised no one called the police.

For you medical folks and parents of young ones it was a "displaced supracondylar humerus fracture" caused by a little shithead kid that shoved Liam off of the play structure at Summer School. To be fair, rumor is Liam pushed first. Regardless, I politely asked his teachers to NOT tell me which kid did it. I don't want to know.

I'm trying to look for some silver lining to this accident, but it's tough. It's going to be a complete drag for Liam for the next couple of months. I guess if there is a bright side, it's that he's clearly not a victim of "helicopter parenting." He won't be one of those kids who grow up and have their parents write their doctoral thesis for them because they've never had any independence. I don't know. You learn a lot from taking a hard fall, but it's a stretch to call a five-year-old's broken arm "character building." I'm just going to have to take comfort from the old adage "It Could Have Been Worse."

Jodee and I ended our shift this morning and are sending Liam to mom's house until Wednesday. Jodee's been a godsend. With Liam's language issues it's been particularly hard getting him to understand what's happening and why we deny his insistence every hour to "take it off." Jodee had the brilliant idea to collect photos that might explain the situation better. He seemed to understand but was slightly horrified when she showed him this:

 

Neither of us has slept much the last three days since she's taken on as much nursing duty as I have. Getting Liam to drink 5mL of Hydrocodone at 2am is a process akin to waterboarding and definitely takes two sets of hands. It will be nice for us both to have a reprieve.

Poor lil' guy.

Heck Yeah Summer!

I know some (most?) parents dread summer, for with this hottest of seasons with the longest of days comes the age-old question of "what will I do with my dang kids all day?!" Because to be a grownup often means to have a job of some sort, trying to figure out how to safely keep our kids busy while also enriching their brains just a teensie bit during those long work hours can be a daunting chore. Let's just say we all do our best, shall we?

Alas, thank the sunshine and stars because with all of those hours spent at a babysitter's with strangers or in front of the TV while we work, we guilt-ridden working parents are redeemed by the magical thing we call...occasional play time! I personally crammed as much of this into the first few days of vacation so the kids might be blindsided by the extreme fantasticness of it all, and would perhaps be too tuckered out from all the fun to notice the time spent doing non-fun things afterward.

On day one of the kids' Summer Vacation: we went to the pool.

On day two of the kids' Summer Vacation: we went to an entirely different pool.

On day three of the kids' Summer Vacation: we went to an amazing music festival two blocks from our house!

On day four of the kids' Summer Vacation: the kids were picked up from Sprout by a magical fairy and taken to the river where they swam, and swam, and swam.

On day five of the kids' Summer Vacation: we, um, well we spent the day at work. But still. You have to admit that wasn't a bad start, right?

So we've come up with a great plan, and that is to simply continue having heaps of water-based fun, with some days at work, sleepover camps, traveling and all kinds of other time-fillers thrown in there for good measure.

Hey Summer: come at us, bro!

Back to Beverly Healdsburg

Liam's teachers met with Erin, my mother, and I for his annual IEP (Individual Education Plan) and it
was decided. He's coming back to Healdsburg!!

Why am I so thrilled?! Because I'm a frickin' SNOB!

There are some great towns around Sonoma County, but none better than Healdsburg. He's been going to a school in Windsor for the past year and Windsor is just....well. I mean, you can tell a lot from a town's slogan.

Santa Rosa: Out There in the Middle of Everything

Healdsburg: The Heart of Sonoma County Wine Country

Windsor: Where the Walmart is.

Last year it was deemed that Windsor had the only program suited to Liam's needs. I like to think that this fact kept the head honchos at the Healdsburg school district awake at night, fretting over the fact that they'd failed a local treasure.

"We've GOT to get Liam back!" they all collectively agreed.

Well in the intervening year the good old HUSD got their shit together and created a program that is suspiciously perfect for Liam. He'll be finishing out summer school in Windsor, which is merciful of him. I think his teachers will need time to come to terms with their loss. 

The Very Competitive Salad Competition

My daughter is a huge fan of creating contests, giving elaborate orders to those around her, and making dinner plans on our behalf. So it didn't come as much of a surprise when, while making dinner the other night, Evie declared that Paulie and I were to have a very serious salad making competition the following night. "Why salad?" I asked. I assumed it was because I was at that very moment making a salad, so she was just going with a visual impulse. Instead she said "for a contest, and for health. So we can have both."

Smart kid. 

Text from Paulie, 3.5 minutes before I left work

I am in general not a very competitive person (read: this is something said by people who don't realize just how competitive they actually are), so I forgot about our contest until about 3 minutes before I was due to leave work for home. I hadn't planned out my salad yet, but I figured, no big deal, right?

It soon became clear, however, that Paulie was taking this thing seriously. 

As soon as he walked in the door, he took on a warrior's stance and declared that no children be allowed into the kitchen during the preparing of the salads, lest they choose the winner based on favoritism alone. With kids sufficiently banished, we set to work. 

I decided to make a 'know your audience' salad, with a couple of things thrown in that the kids don't like so it wouldn't seem like blatant suck-upery. While I was steaming my green beans, Paulie disappeared for a while. When he came back, I wasn't too worried:

Fresh-trimmed baby lettuce? Meh. 

Then when I went to the sink to rinse my tomatoes, I caught sight of this pile of stuff: 

Flowers and mint? Oh hell no...he...didn't.

I mean, the guy plans on putting flowers into his salad?! Come on - totally cheating. But hey, I knew I could still pull it together. I rolled my shoulders back and opened a can of black olives: my secret weapon. Around this time, Evie bumped her way into the kitchen with her eyes squeezed shut, and dropped this reminder onto the table: 

"Remember be competitive" 

She's kind of a task-master.

Since I am a very good rule-follower I took her instructions super seriously. Every time Paulie looked over to my work station and asked "oh, are you putting those sliced almonds in your salad?" or "are you using that feta?" I was like "BACK OFF, BITCH! All of these things are miiiiiiine!" Eventually I let my guard down enough to glance over my shoulder, and I saw that Paulie was beginning to plate his salads. 

My boyfriend: Mr. Fancy Pants

Needless to say, I was not encouraged. Evie loves avocado! Maybe that was his secret weapon? The bastard! *Deep Breath* I knew I had to stay focused...head in the game, Janik, head in the game. I tossed my salad together and thought it looked pretty damn good. 

Then, I made the rookie mistake of checking in to see what was happening over at Paulie's work station. 

You've got to be kidding me

Oh, really? Yeah. Okay. I see how this is gonna go down. Resigned to failure, I begrudgingly plated my own salad, then we set the table and called the kids in to judge the fruits and vegetables of our labor. It didn't take long before my frown...turned upside down. 

He is NOT pleased.

This one isn't so sure, either

Yep - the kids hated Paulie's salad! Woo hooooooooo!!! Sure, they liked mine only slightly more than his and still didn't want to eat the majority of it, but still. All that counts here is WINNING, amiright?

"I don't like this either, but I dislike it less than the pretty one"

As soon as Jonah had eaten a respectable amount of each salad, he said "so, um...where's...dinner?" Imagine his immense disappointment when I pulled the broccoli and cauliflower gratin out of the oven! Oh man, he was super bummed, heh heh. Luckily we had a bag of 'I'm sure these things don't expire even though the sell-by date was six months ago' frozen pork sausage patties in the freezer, which both kids fell upon like a pack of wild dogs after a long winter. 

While they ate, Paulie plotted our rematch. The next competition, much to both kids' delight, will be a Steak-Off. Since I basically never even eat steak and have no freaking idea how to cook it am a thoughtful and giving girlfriend and don't want to hurt my boyfriend's pride, I think I'll let him win that one. 

No guarantees, though.