Triangle Mamas

Bargain Hunting with the Durham Rescue Mission

By Abby

I have a little secret and I'm not sure I should share. If I share, all you local peeps just might start shopping there too and then I'll have to compete with you for all the good stuff.

All the good stuff, you say. Where?

At Rescued Treasures, the Durham Rescue Mission thrift shoppe -- located on US-70/Glenwood Avenue near Brier Creek.

It's here you can find all sorts of awesome deals. I brought home a whole bag of Linus clothing for only $10. It included some pretty nice pants (some still with tags) for $2 each. Right now, Linus is rocking a pair of Gap jammies that I got for -- $2. That's right, most kids clothes are only $2 each.

You can't beat that price anywhere.

Not even at Goodwill, where kid's clothes are $2.25 each.

But even better than prices that beat Goodwill is that unlike GCF, the Rescue Mission's clothes are sorted by SIZE. It's so easy to find a bargain.

My mom even scored a Peg Perego Pliko stroller for $15. She's gonna clean it up, repair the seat fabric, and then pass it on to my expectant sister-in-law, Kate.

And the furniture. I haven't even mentioned the furniture. I have my eye on a desk, if only I can find a way to get it home AND convince my husband that despite it's imperfections, $25 is NOT too much to pay. We'll see.

The other great score I made at the Rescue Mission -- my mom's Christmas present.

But you'll have to wait until Thursday for that one. Stay tuned.

Almost forgot -- While you're there don't forget to donate all your unwanted, gently used household goods and clothing. You can just drive on up, let them unload the car, and walk away with a tax write-off receipt. Easy-peasy.

 

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This is an original Triangle Mamas post. Abby blogs about local finds, shopping steals, and much more at My Sweet Babboo. You can also find her on Twitter when she's not moving laundry around.

Giveaway: Burn the Floor - Raleigh

Are you often on Twitter talking about #SYTYCD? How about #DWS? If you know that those hashtags stand for 'So You Think You Can Dance' and 'Dancing with the Stars', then this giveaway is for you.

And, even if you don't watch those shows, seeing a LIVE performance right here in Raleigh is sure to spark your interest. Who knows-- maybe next week it will be you who's tweeting all about ballroom dancing.

Burn the Floor, a ballroom dancing spectacular, is coming to Raleigh Memorial Auditorium from November 30 to December 5th. This is your chance to see the Cha-Cha, the Tango, and the Jive performed by professionals who have spent their lives training to be the best.

This is so not your wedding, where the Chicken Dance got the most enthusiastic response. It's also not your college fraternity formal where a few couples swayed back and forth until the kegs arrived. This is REAL dancing -- ballroom dancing.

See for yourself.

Amazing, isn't it?

Lucky for you, Triangle Mamas is giving away TWO pairs of tickets (that means TWO winners) to the November 30th show. All you have to do to enter is share one dancing memory. It can be embarassing, sweet, or simple.

Mine? Well, there was that college fraternity formal where my partner and I were attempting this dance but instead ended up kicking the chandelier loose. Yep, and that was before the kegs arrived.

So what's your dancing memory?

Additional entries (one entry per bullet item):

• Tweet about the contest, being sure to include @trianglemamas in your tweet. (Come back here and leave us a comment with a link to your tweet.)
• Subscribe to Triangle Mamas via RSS through whatever reader you prefer. (Leave us a comment telling us you've subscribed.)

That's it. Contest is open until midnight Friday, November 26th. Winners (because there will be TWO) will be informed via email (so don't forget to provide us with it) and they'll have 24 hours to get back to us.

Good luck!

Hey, even if you don't win, you can still go. Here's where you can purchase tickets (with a reduced price for the 30th and 1st shows). It's going to be an amazing show!

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The fine print -- Triangle Mamas was provided with two tickets to see the show for ourselves as well as the two pairs for the giveaway. We rarely do giveaways, but we thought this was a great LOCAL experience allowing us to say thank you to our readers. This contest is obviously open only to those who can be in attendance November 30th in Raleigh.

Open letter to the City of Raleigh

Dear Parking Gods of the City of Raleigh,

Last week, I went shopping in downtown Raleigh. It's something I used not to think twice about - going downtown to eat or shop. That has now changed.

I understand the need to increase revenue in the city. Everyone is hurting for money, and that includes Raleigh. I get that. When every single 2 hour parking spot in downtown Raleigh disappeared and was replaced by meters, I only groaned a little bit.

On this particular rainy morning, I parallel parked on Martin Street. It was raining. I left the baby in the car, ran to the meter, and fed it all of my spare change. I had over an hour running on the meter. I ran back to the car, sat and waited for the store to open, and then went in to do my shopping.

Being the first customer of the day, I had to wait a little bit for the shop owner to process my transaction. I watched the clock, and knew that the meter might be about to run out. However, I was almost done, had the baby with me, and it was pouring down rain.

Ten minutes later, I got back to my car and found a ticket. The parking person was two cars up from mine; he had just left the ticket for me. I didn't argue with him. I'll pay the ticket. I was over my meter by five minutes. I understand that.

So, dear City of Raleigh, you will get your $20 because I didn't drag my infant back out into the pouring rain to feed the meter another nickel. What you will also get here though, is someone who is reconsidering renewing her membership to Marbles because of parking. You get someone who won't pop downtown to pick something up from Square Rabbit on a whim anymore. You get someone who won't choose to eat in a restaurant downtown when she can go to North Hills and park easily for free.

As I was driving away, I counted FIVE parking people writing tickets. In the rain. FIVE. And I wondered how much it cost to pay those people, and surely there was some sort of balance between wasting money on an army of ticket writers and bringing in $20 parking ticket fees.

There are so many things I think you get right, dear City of Raleigh. This, however, is definitely not one of them. If you don't work downtown, it's already hard enough to figure out where to park to begin with. Now, you've put predatory parking vultures out on the street to give tickets the second the meter expires.

Sure, it's fair. I'm not saying that I should have let my meter run out. But is it encouraging me to come back downtown anytime soon? 

Absolutely not.

Sincerely,

One peeved Mama

 

This is an original Triangle Mamas post. You can find Marty blogging the 30 Days of Truth over at Don't Take the Repeats. Her more random thoughts and favorite Etsy finds pop up on Tumblr, and she chit chats on Twitter and Facebook. 

I Voted

When Pippi and I walked into our polling place yesterday, I had to laugh. And not because Pippi was wearing plastic princess heels (which she was) or because all the little old ladies in the room were so sweet to her and her weather-inappropriate footwear (which they were). 

I chuckled because of the particular neighbor I recognized sitting at the table working through her ballot. She's a great friend and I love her -- and she's a Republican.

I know, I know -- even liberal ladies like myself have a few conservative friends in the closet. In truth, she and I probably agree on a number of issues, but we tend to live on opposite ends of the political spectrum.

Still, I was happy to see her at the polls. Although I can't really talk politics with this friend because she gets me all worked up and preachy, I still respect her right to vote for the candidates she believes in, even though our ballots probably cancelled each other out in most races.

The reason? Because she's paying attention. She was sitting at the table with her ballot and the newspaper's voter guide, reading through the candidates' information to make her selections. She's not voting straight-ticket out of blind allegiance or (worse) simply not voting but complaining about the way things are -- she's listening to the facts, weighing the debates and making informed choices.

Sure, I wish I could bring her over to my side on more issues -- particularly given the way some of the races turned out. And yes, I'll probably dodge any political debates with her in the near future. 

But I'm still glad she was there to vote. And I trust that all those women who fought so hard for the two of us to have the right to disagree on a ballot would be proud.

An original Triangle Mamas post. Cyndi writes about all sorts of things, including her political soapboxes, at My Convertible Life and @convertiblelife. 

The New Playground in Town: Bad Name, Great Park

by Melissa

When I first moved to Raleigh a couple years ago, I learned pretty quickly how many great city parks there were in town.

 

That’s why when a new park opened near my house this summer, I had to check it out.  It’s quickly become our go-to park. It has a GREAT playground, some actual shade structures and some nice walking and biking trails. 

 

The only problem? The name...

 

Landfill District Park

 

Ok, I’ve been in marketing for over 10 years. I’ve named golf clubs, checking accounts and smaller things like newsletters. So I’m having a hard time figuring out why on Earth the park namers (marketers or not) decided that using the word “landfill” in the name of a park where kids play was smart. I mean, it’s LITERAL I guess but marketing isn’t about being literal.

 

Truthfully the name isn’t the only thing that might scare people away. When you drive in, you’re greeted with a chain link fence and these...

 

 

Yes, tires. Then you actually drive AROUND THE LANDFILL. Maybe it should be obvious from the name that there was a landfill at the park. But I naively thought that maybe it USED to be a landfill or something. I didn’t expect to drive around a huge mound covered in grass to get to the park.

 

Before you click away from this page and say “Gee, Mel, way to sell me on this new park!”... let me show you these:

 

 

A new modern (and CLEAN) bathroom, complete with shade structure and benches.

 

A “little kid” play structure and a couple of baby swings.

 

And a cool rock climbing thing, a rope tower and a play structure for the bigger kids. 

 

Now, isn’t that better? There’s also a few walking and biking trails.

The kids don't seem to mind the name. Big Roo would have only flinched if the name had Doody or Toot in it (ah, boys).

  

 

If you can get past the name (and the fact that it’s behind the landfill), then this is your park. In fact, the dreaded name must not be scaring away all that many people. It seems to be relatively busy anytime I’ve been there. 

 

I’ll go there. A lot, in fact. Just if someone ever asks me what park I like to take my kids to, I’ll have to always follow the name Landfill District Park with a rambling explanation of how, no really, it’s a great park!

If you ever want to join me, here's more info about the park.

When Melissa isn't critiquing the names of otherwise great parks, she's blogging about motherhood, the outdoors and marketing at Adventuroo.com.

Dirt and Noise: Raymond Cook Makes Me Sick

by Ilina

I’ve been sick. I missed my birthday festivities and didn’t even have any cake. And you know how much I love cake. While I was in the middle of my pity party, I saw some news.

You might remember when I wrote about a careless drunk doctor who slammed into an innocent ballet dancer and took her life. About a year ago, Raymond Cook took to the wheel after several too many cocktails. He was driving at speeds that only hubris and a ne’er care less attitude could fuel. Some people at a local tavern tried to stop him, but didn’t want to get punched in the face or something so they let the doc go. I don’t know exactly what transpired that night, but there were accounts of people trying to stop Raymond Cook from driving. I’ve worked in bars and have taken a patron’s keys and called a cab on more than one occasion. Sure, I got cussed out but I didn’t care. All I know about the night Raymond Cook drove off from a local bar’s parking lot is this:

20-year old Elena Shapiro died.

42-year old Raymond Cook walked away unscathed.

Click here to read the rest of Ilina's post at Dirt and Noise and leave a comment.

Glass Houses and Logs in Your Eyes

Last week, the boys and I headed to North Hills to get our stroller fixed and buy me some new sunglasses so I could be guaranteed to find my old ones (which I did the very next day). It was lunch time, so we headed over to Chik-fil-a, but stopped by the commons to play for a minute first.

There is always something going on there in the mornings for kiddos. That day, they had tents set up for shade and play mats out for tumbling. Christopher took his shoes off and started to play.

Another mom was standing near me. She had twin girls that looked to be about two. Maybe a little younger. The girls were busy busy, getting water in cups from the cooler that Starbucks provided and dumping it out onto the mats. Every time the mom would wrangle one of the girls and get her to stop, the other one had started doing it. She was trying her best, but they were playing her.

I had my hands full with my two boys, but tried to give her an understanding smile as she ran circles trying to corral the twins. A third mom sat on the ground, watching her phone mostly. She looked at the twins' mother and said, "Can you clean that up please? Someone is going to slip."

She had a point. Water on the mats was kind of dangerous, but rather than just telling her, couldn't she have helped her?

I blew it off because it didn't seem to bother the twins' mom. She went into Starbucks (having to leave the twins to get more water while she wasn't watching) and got some napkins to pacify the bossy mom.

Meanwhile, an older boy had started chasing Christopher. Even though they were the same height, it was obvious that the boy was a good two years older than Christopher. As soon as he would catch up to Christopher, he would spit on him.

Mama wasn't happy.

I watched for a second to see what my little boy would do. He turned to the older boy and said, "Please stop."

Just like that. Please stop, politely. Of course, when the older boy didn't stop and just pursued him more aggressively, the polite voice that Christopher had turned into screaming pretty quickly.

I headed over to get him away from the older boy and finally figured out which one was his mom. She had turned to see who was screaming at her son.

Bossy mom. That's right. Little Miss Clean-up-that-mess was too busy bossing around other moms to notice that her son was bullying a two year old.

Nice.

My passive aggressive kicked in as we stood next to her to put Christopher's shoes back on. I praised him loud enough for her to hear. I praised him for asking the boy nicely to "please stop" and told him that sometimes kids didn't listen or play nicely. Then I told him he could always come to me for help if that happened again.

I doubt she took any notice of any of that though, because she most likely was already back to patrolling the other, less perfect than herself, mothers.

Crossposted from Don't Take the Repeats where you can find Marty pontificating about life with a high schooler and two preschoolers. You can find her in less words on Twitter or just go ahead and friend her on Facebook.

Music Together with Suzanne, now with more cowbell!

Never fear, Triangle Mamas is still a place for mamas to come and share their stories. It's not just a place to let you know what to do and what's going on in the Triangle. I mean, we'll do some of that too, but I am not a reviewer. I just don't have the patience. Some of our other mamas are fabulous at it, but also, it turns out, there is a lovely blog that launched in Aprdoing a great job of sharing events. Do you know about them? Go over and say hello to A Mom in Chapel Hill, please. Tell them Triangle Mamas sent you.

Back to the matter at hand, however.

If you read my personal blog, then you know that I'm a musician. I'm a musician who believes that music in early childhood is absolutely key for optimal brain development.

I'm also a little neurotic sometimes. So much so, that I started taking my oldest son, Christopher, to Music Together classes when he was 7 weeks old.

Yes, I realize the insanity of that now, but what can I say? I had a good time, and the boy has solid rhythm and pretty good pitch now. He also has some phat communication skills and problem solving abilities for a 2.5 year old. Of course, I am his mother, and I also will tell you that he can probably achieve world peace if you would like for him to.

Anyway, Music Together with Suzanne isn't actually with Suzanne this year. It's with Catherine. This new teacher is fresh in from Austin, TX, and is phenomenal. I'm not kidding. She is so good - I want to go to her class everyday. 

You don't have to believe me; you can see for yourself. There are two more free demo classes for the summer. Bring your kids, ages birth to five (seriously, 7 weeks old, people), to the Unitarian Universalist Church in Raleigh on Wade Avenue on Friday, August 6 and August 13 at 10:00 to meet Ms. K and her super cool and awesome guitar. She wears pearls with her t-shirt (points in her favor), but isn't too prissy to blow raspberries in a ionian tonal pattern (bonus points in her favor).

This is an original, unsponsored Triangle Mamas post, although Marty does do a little work for Suzanne on occasion. This, however, is not part of her work, just an invitation to join her and her boys at the next demo class. You can also join her at her blog, Don't Take the Repeats, on Twitter, or on Facebook.

(Also, that picture was taken on Halloween during class. Dressing like an animal is not required to attend.)

Did You Miss Me?

by Marty

It's easy to disappear in blogland. Just as quickly as you set up shop and start blogging, you can simply quit and evaporate into the ethernetsphere.

Here's where I started to say, "Recently, I had a baby," but that's not entirely true. I had a baby in January. Almost five months ago. Really, there's nothing recent about that. It was, however, when I stopped blogging.

Thankfully, Abby took up the gauntlet here at Triangle Mamas, keeping the posts up and running for me. I can't express enough gratitude to her for that.

What my accidental hiatus has taught me is significant. I think I've come back around to confidence in who I am as a blogger, and that's a good feeling.

So, partially inspired by Melissa's recent list of 100 things she's learned about blogging, I give you some of my recent enlightening brought on by my disappearing act.

• The internet goes on with or without you. It has to be your choice to join in or not.
• There is plenty of bandwidth for any and everyone.
• I like life a lot better when I'm never ever doing giveaways.
• I love Triangle Mamas because even when I need a break from writing, I still feel a part of a community.
• Blogging really is something I want to fit into my life. It's not a full-time priority for me, and I'm becoming okay with that. I've wanted the benefits without wanting to do the work. That came across much more lazy than I intended it to be.

I would like to sincerely thank all of the ladies here at Triangle Mamas for keeping up and forgiving me the time off that I needed to have. I am so happy to be connected with you here online and in real life. I'm a lucky woman.

Me, Melissa from Adventuroo, and Heather from Follow Linus (hey, want to join us over here?) at the More than a Picnic Picnic by Hebrew International and hosted by Ilina from Dirt and Noise and Molly from My Go Mom! It was a fabulous day in Moore Square with lots of local mom bloggers.

Marty can also be found blogging at Don't Take the Repeats. She has all but completely deserted Twitter, but occasionally pops on as canape. Here's hoping she'll meet you at the Type A Mom Conference in Asheville this September!

An Open Letter to Harris Teeter at North Hills East

By Cyndi

Dear Harris Teeter --

You had me at $20 off.

Every time I would start to wander, begin to think that your new North Hills East store was too crowded, imagine that I could save more at Kroger, get annoyed about not being able to find things as you shuffled the shelves around -- somehow you always knew. And every time, those magical $20-off-a-$50-purchase coupons would appear in my mailbox. They worked like a charm.

So given that you seem to have such a keen understanding of your shoppers' minds, how is it possible that you built a two-story store and put the cereal and juice upstairs? And then seemed surprised when people complained? And then spent goodness-knows-how-much money and time remodeling your brand new store to get those items downstairs again? Didn't you know that every mom forced to cram two (or more) children into one of those oversized-yet-still-too-small rocketship carts would have to buy cereal and juice on nearly every trip? And didn't you know that said moms would really hate having to wait in line for the elevator because it's impossible to fit more than three carts at a time?

Or maybe you didn't know there were thousands of local moms you could ask who would have told you that valuable bit of information BEFORE you built the store instead of AFTER?

Well then, allow me to make an introduction. Harris Teeter, meet the blogging moms. We're on Facebook and Twitter and lots and lots of blogs -- and we love to give advice (just ask our children). You don't even have to send us free samples or coupons (although I'm sure we wouldn't say no) -- but you do have to ask. We could have saved you a lot of pain and suffering, but (much like our kids) you had to learn the hard way. We hope you (and our children) will consider consulting us in the future.

Best of luck,

Convertible Girl

P.S. I've only got one $20 coupon left, so please send more. You know, just in case I start to wander again.

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Since taking over the grocery shopping at her house and giving up the online ordering service, Cyndi has developed strong opinions about grocery stores. When she's not shopping or cooking or complaining about both, she can be found at My Convertible Life, where she writes about her two children, one husband and a million other things.