Things to Do When You Can’t Go Outside

It is too hot to go outside right now and I have been sitting here thinking what we could do that doesn’t involve going outdoors. This is what I came up with:

• Read a book
• Play a game
• Color
• Finger paint
• Rearrange your furniture
• Dust all those out of way places
• Organize your photo albums
• Bake something (but not if you live where it is hot)
• Give yourself a pedicure
• Paint a room
• Paint part of your child’s room with chalkboard paint for drawing
• At this point I am actually running out of ideas… I don’t like being inside
• Look out your window and watch your plants wither and die in the heat (I didn’t say it would be a "fun” list)
• Do pilates or yoga
• Find a recipe and make a special dinner ;)
• Have friends over
• Surf the internet 
• Look for houses in California, Oregon or Hawaii while surfing the internet (great weather, never too hot or too cold)
• Look for jobs for your husband in the above mentioned states 
• Send your husband an email when you find a great house in a beautiful green state with beautiful outdoor weather all year long begging him to change jobs because you are tired of being stuck inside for seven months out of the year (YES! it is seven months of over 100° temps in Arizona)

It is really hot today and I am stuck inside. I was trying to think of things to do and this is what I came up with. I am sorry my list of indoor activities sucks. Frankly, there is very little to do inside if you are an outside person except move to where the weather is nice all year long.

Making Cake with a Toddler

I said in a previous post I am not a baker or even an enthusiastic cook, but it appears my toddler is. Obviously, he inherited the baking gene from his father. A couple of days ago my son helped mix the ingredients for his own birthday cake and he did a great job. Today is his father’s birthday and he wanted to make the cake. I prepared all of the ingredients at the counter and he took it from there. He poured each ingredient into the mixing bowl saying each one out loud as he went along: “Water. Oil. Eggs. Mix, mix, mix.” He has baked so often with his father he knew how to turn on the mixer. When it was all done in true baker fashion he licked the mixing sticks (I am sure there is an official name for those things but I don’t know it) and the scraper (the little rubber tool to help frost) until all the chocolate was gone. Of course I put the cake mix into the pans and then into the oven to bake for 25 minutes. Once the cakes cooled we frosted each layer. Since his father loves chocolate we used not only chocolate cake mix, but chocolate frosting and topped it with crumbled German chocolate candy bar. To which again, in true baker fashion, my son sampled the broken and shredded chocolates to make sure they were of the right quality for his father’s cake.

This was a very fun activity to do with my son since I really did very little of the actual baking part. The fact that I did not overcook it is a testament to my son’s excellent baking skills since he checked the oven window frequently. I would definitely recommend this activity to other anti-baking mom’s and dad’s.

Scorpion Hunters

My husband and our neighbor Shane forged a bond early this summer over their mutual dislike of scorpions. Together they are…. the scorpion hunters. On their nightly hunts they kill and collect scorpions saving the neighbors and their children from a fate undeserved. There are many ways to kill scorpions, but my husband’s favorite is smashing them with the end of the screw driver. His second favorite way is to burn them (apparently favorite way of many fellow scorpion hunters) as is necessary when they retreat into cracks. Fortunately, this year it is forbidden to bring the pregnant females into the house and dissect them – apparently a favorite past time for Shane as well.

Like most scorpion hunters Erkan (my husband) and Shane are equipped with the usual gadgets: black light, flame thrower, and squishing device. The area they cover is vast. Not only do these fearless hunters search and protect their own homes, but they survey the walls of all those living near them in an effort to extinguish the vermin. At the end of each night they tally up their kills and in true engineering/nerd fashion my husband enters the number into an Excel spreadsheet for future reference. I don’t know what Shane does, but as an inventor of unique items I am sure he is engineering a device capable of mass scorpion destruction. May they continue to protect those who are unable to protect themselves.

Black Thumb of Death

Water, water, water and water your yard if you live in the Valley of the Sun. And if you live in Maricopa, fertilize, fertilize and fertilize because they built your house in the desert. I have always considered myself to have a green thumb, but since we have moved to Maricopa (aka armpit of Arizona) it is more like the black thumb of death. Every shrub I planted the first winter here died (about 20). Three orange trees – dead. Now my beloved plum trees planted in the spring of this year – dying. Five previously beautiful red flowering plums. Sadly, even my roses which usually go nuts in the summer are barely productive. The grass was brownish and slow growing as well. What I have learned the hard way is unlike where I grew up (on the west side), plants here in Maricopa need constant fertilization. I suspect the water isn’t as nourishing here as it is on the west side either. The water here is so “hard (super high mineral content)” we have to use CLR to clean our shower everyday. The water sucks, its windy, far away from everything, it stinks…sorry I am getting a little carried away. Since this posting is about the yard I won’t go into how much I don’t like Maricopa….moving on.

Now I have come to the realization plants in Maricopa need more than most and therefore I fertilize every two to three months. I fertilize the grass twice based on the seasons: winter and summer. So far this has worked out well. Our winter grass had died off initially last winter (as it had the winter before)-- unbeknownst to me it needed fertilizer. I had never fertilized a winter lawn prior to living here in lovely (sarcasm) Maricopa. We applied the fertilizer the landscaper recommended and Voila! The yard looked fantastic for the remaining two months of winter. I applied it to the ailing summer grass a few weeks ago and it is a lush thick green carpet now.

As for my ailing plum trees – I am trying everything I know (which is very little) and a product called Super Thrive the Home Depot expert recommended. According to the package each dose “packs a super punch” of vitamins and such that plants need to grow. Supposedly you will see two years growth in one year. It has been one week and two applications with no visible results with the plum trees. However, it maybe my imagination (which my husband says it is), but the other trees look like they have grown. We have six Sisso trees which are extremely water loving and have been doing quite well here. They line the perimeter of the backyard and I hope one day they will provide massive amounts of shade as the sun is even more hostile here in Maricopa (did I mention it is also very windy?).

As for the plum trees, I hope they are lying dormant due to the hostile elements and will be strengthened in the cooler months to come—if only they could last until then. Did I mention summer is longer in Maricopa?

Yes, I Did Graduate From College

Articulate means to speak clearly and distinctly. Since the birth of my second child I have noticed my ability to be articulate is absent. Point in case I have to read and reread my posts for grammatical accuracy and proper spelling. I am certain this is related to child rearing….or is it early memory loss? Could it be the lack of sleep or constant preoccupation? It is very frustrating for me as well as my husband to carry on a conversation due to the lack my ability to finish a sentence. He just said to me yesterday “can you try to finish your sentences?” – and in case you read the quote imagining he said it in a kind and loving way….stop. It was dripping with sarcasm and disdain. I understand it can be annoying to have a conversation with someone who can only speak in one syllable words and short incomplete sentences. I am sure he feels he is speaking with a child. I understand because sometimes his occasional emotional immaturity makes me feel like I am speaking to a child as well. But I digress…

Occasionally I miss the old me who could use multi-syllable words correctly without thinking. Now if I want to use a big word I really have to think about it, what it means and am I using it correctly – by the time I have thought it all out the moment has passed and once again I haven’t completed a sentence. I hope by the time I outgrow this phase I haven’t moved into a new phase known as old-timers-syndrome. However at least I will have a real excuse for not being able to remember anything -- for now people just wonder how I graduated from college.