Grilling Out

With the arrival of spring, we hauled our (new-to-us) grill out of the garage and fired it up!

What we've cooked so far:

• Burgers
• Hot dogs (they were fancy hot dogs, really!)
• Beef kabobs
• Potatoes
• Asparagus
• Pineapple

I'm the prep chef, and DF is the grill master. I realized that, although I think of myself as an enlightened woman of the 21st century, I still expected DF to just know how to use a propane grill - like, it's a skill that resides on the Y-chromosome or something.

In reality, neither of us have ever really grilled much before. It's a learning experience which, to date, hasn't resulted in any explosions. Yay! I think we probably need to try smoking something to be authentic Memphians :)

The Importance of Waving

Yesterday, I had a cultural experience right in my own front yard.

I was expecting a repair crew to come by and fix or replace our dying washing machine in the afternoon. To make it easier for them to access the back door/kitchen, I moved the van out of the driveway. As I was parking on the street in front of our house, I saw our next door neighbors pull into their driveway. I waved to them as they exited the car. They didn't return the wave, so I figured they hadn't seen me, and I went back inside.

[Sidebar: the preceding paragraph is a good example of the use of imperfect and preterite verb tenses in Spanish!]

About half an hour later, I heard a knock on the front door. I expected it to be the appliance repair people, but when I opened the door, I saw my neighbor. She said, "I just wanted to come over and apologize for not waving back to you earlier. We were coming home from a funeral and we were a bit down, so I'm sorry." I was surprised! I said, "Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. Don't worry about it!" I gave her a hug. 

Then the babies squawked and she said, "Oh, are the boys awake? Can I see them?" She came into the playroom and cooed over them for awhile. (Unfortunately they were in a pretty bad mood due to not taking a nap, so they screamed a lot...it isn't polite to scream at your admiring visitors, boys.)

For context, these neighbors are probably about 80 years old. They have lived in their house for 50 years. They are kindly grandparent types :)

What I learned from this interaction:

• It is vitally important to wave at your neighbors in the South. The only acceptable excuses for not waving are extreme personal distress (grief/sorrow), or probably illness/injury.
• If you do not wave at a neighbor, you should apologize when you are able and offer an explanation for your rude behavior.
• Or, perhaps, if you want to visit your neighbor and see some cute babies, you can do so under the guise of apologizing for lack-of-waving.

Parenting in the Dark

For some reason, the power seems to go out a lot here in Memphis - way more often than it ever did in Seattle. (But, sidebar, probably about as often as in the DC metro area, another well-known thunderstorm center.)

Before we had kids and the power would go out, it really didn't faze me much. If it lasted too long, DF and I could just hop in the car and drive somewhere that still had electricity. If I woke up in the middle of the night, I might not even have noticed if the power was out. Or if I did, I'd just go back to sleep and hope it came back on by morning.

Being in charge of two little ones really raises the stakes for power outages. Over the summer, I nearly had a total meltdown when a branch fell on the line supplying electricity to our house just a couple weeks after the babies came home from the hospital. In that case, we sought refuge with some kind friends who had a couple spare bedrooms. I'm so glad we found a place to go since it took over 48 hours for repairs to be completed and power to be restored! 

I might have a little PTSD over that incident because the power has gone out twice since then, and I've kind of panicked. A couple months back, I woke up to a baby crying in the night. When I went in to check on them, I noticed their sound machine was off. I thought that was strange since it was pretty new and really shouldn't have broken already. Then I also noticed their nightlight wasn't shining, and the furnace wasn't running. My sleep-deprived brain finally connected the dots that the power was out. I looked out the window to see that all the neighbors' houses were dark, too. So I grabbed my phone and called the MLGW outage reporting line. It told me they were working to fix the outage, which had started about 20 minutes ago and was affecting about 100 customers. I tried to go back to bed, but I couldn't sleep. I was worried about the babies. Were they going to be warm enough without the heat running? Should I go in and cover them up with some blankets and then hover in the nursery watching them sleep so they didn't suffocate themselves? How was I going to use my breast pump without power? What about all our food in the deep freeze? Was it going to melt? I laid awake, my mind spinning, for about an hour. Then <click, whir> the furnace started up again, and the nightlight flashed on in the hallway. Power was restored, and all was well.

Last night, we lost power again. I think I coped a little better, though I did go into hyper-vigilant-problem-solving mode immediately. I wasn't as worried about the babies since it was fairly warm last night and we didn't even have the heat turned on. But I wondered if our hot water tank would work without power. I think it runs on gas, but I'm not sure. I need hot water to warm up the bottles, so I decided that if the power was still out in the morning when the babies needed to eat, I could heat up their bottles by boiling water on the (gas) stove. There's not really anything else they need that is electric - they have clean clothes and plenty of disposable diapers standing by. During the day, we can open the curtains to let the sunlight in. As it was the power came back about 30 minutes after I woke up. So, I could sleep easy!

This morning I put batteries into the sound machine for a backup in case we have another outage. Trying to be prepared...

My point is, as a parent, I seem to have a lot more responsibility in life. It makes me kind of glad for all the problem-solving experience I gained in my last job. I never had the power go out during an exchange student event, but plenty of other unexpected things happened. When they did, I had to take charge to implement Plans B, C, and D, preferably without the students knowing anything was amiss. (Sometimes I was creating Plans C & D on the fly...) I guess I'm doing the same thing now for my own kids. Well boys, I hope I can teach you to be flexible and adaptable like good exchange students!