Still alive, and coated in crumbs
I had a mentor once who taught me never to promise anything in print that I did not deliver immediately. For example, one should never write, “see you on the flip side, with photos!” because then one is obligated to actually arrive on the flip side, with photos, in presumably a prompt and timely manner.
Suckas! All my pictures are still sitting on the memory card, which is lodged comfortably in the camera, which is somewhere in the living room. I have promised something, Supa Readers, and this is the part where I hang my head in shame because I have been too busy baking strawberry shortcakes and sweeping the floor to upload them.
Tangent: I told Owen we were having strawberry shortcakes for dessert the other day and he was all, say what? Are we going to brush their hair? How do you eat a doll? And I realized it was because we were playing with the actual early-80s dolls at Pirate Grandma’s* house over the weekend. I had to explain the concept of the dessert, and he still didn’t like it anyway, so nyah nyah more for me.
De-tangent. So. While I bustle about doing momly things and keeping the house in order and disciplining my children (gently, but firmly enough to get them to stop having Nazgul shrieking battles in the kitchen), you will have to wait. I will deliver, and I have video, some of which is going to make you reach for the cotton wadding to stuff in your ears but is still cute, and you will be glad you have learned the sweet art of patience.
That, or you’ll delete me from your feedreader because I suck at updating these days. Either way. It’s cool.
*He actually calls my mother-in-law Pirate Grandma, as an honorific, the full title. Not because she’s swashbuckling, but because she always sets out the world’s coolest pirate ship play set when we come to visit, and as such has earned Owen’s lifelong devotion and highest esteem.
Road trip!
Leaving in five minutes for Pittsburgh and a party at my sister’s house in Columbus — the weather will be”fabwelous” as Owen puts it and we’re going to slip in an early birthday cake for Cormac, too. See you on the flipside, with photos!
That’s unheard-of in this house.
I’m going to tell you this, but you have to promise you won’t get jealous.
You know how the kids always wake up between 6:09 and 6:15? Usually screaming their fool heads off about something, so that your dreams are pierced by a sound far worse than any clock-radio could produce?
Yeah. This morning I didn’t get out of bed until — and please notice the excited italics here — 7:45 in the a.m. And then only because I figured somebody had to be hungry.
I first awoke at five after seven, which is itself a luxury, of course. What met my ears were not cries of “Ma! I want my cereal!” or “Waaaaaah!” but the hushed giggles of two hooligans in cahoots. I waited patiently, eyes closed, buried nose-deep under the quilt, praying to the Almighty that I could stay there just a little longer. I was certain, because history had evidence to back me up, that it would be a matter of sheer seconds before the wailing set in.
It did not.
The unmistakable thump of the crib hitting the wall issued forth. Springs bounced. The giggles escalated into shrieks of laughter. I peeped one eye open; surely something awful was happening. Perhaps an early-bird intruder, hopped up on some Colombian joe and reeking of McMuffin, had just broken in with kidnapping on his mind. But then: why the giggles? Even a bacon-bearing burglar would surely arouse some sort of suspicion in these kids.
The laughter subsided to whispers and giggles again. I could hear pages turning. Presumably some other stuff happened but I believe I dozed off for half an hour then.
Next thing I know it’s twenty to eight, and I’m still warm and cozy in my bed, and further emanances from the children’s room seemed to indicate their continued safe presence. I realized that the goobers must be starving for their Apple Jacks and YoBaby, so I reluctantly left my nest and opened their door.
Two bright, smiling heads popped up above the crib rail. A more beautiful sight I have never, ever seen. My sons, my two sons, playing together. By themselves. In the morning.
It’s enough to make a girl give up complaining altogether.
As done as we’re going to get!
I had grander plans for this room, as I always do, but we kind of blew our stash on fixing the the actual problems (unlevel floors, water damage, rotted wood, rotten doors, ad nauseum) and it didn’t leave much left over for gussying up. So I bought some curtains and some pillows and a toy box, brought in furniture from other parts of the house, and arranged it to the best of my ability.
The one long wall is hilariously blank, because the bookshelves are nowhere near done and I just don’t feel like hanging art just yet. We’re kind of waiting on something. A big vague something. So the place is still echoey and that rug makes it look like the set of a high school play, but I don’t care. The green carpet is gone! Gone gone gone! The leaks are fixed and the floor is fresh and clean and there’s a place to sit and play a board game or read a book. I moved our displaced junk out of the rest of the house’s living areas and back to its rightful spot (or at least the attic) and now we can finally get back to living again.
Phew.
Homemade Auntie Anne’s pretzels
So I picked up this book at the library the other week, on a whim: “Even More Top Secret Recipes: More Amazing Kitchen Clones of America’s Favorite Brand-Name Foods.” I got it to show Iain the KFC recipe mentioned on the cover, but when I opened it up the second recipe on the lineup was Auntie Anne’s pretzels.
I never had an Auntie Anne’s until I was in college, visiting the Rosstown Mall in Pittsburgh with my boyfriend. It was an instant conversion. They’re good. They’re loaded with butter and they taste like Mall, but in a very good way.
So, anyway, I like them. They have happy memories for me (that boyfriend? That was Iain). So I dug out all my ingredients after dinner and put my little apron on and started making them. Respect for copyright prevents me from duplicating the recipe here, but it was pretty simple. The only thing was, the dough? Was crazy sticky. I mean it was ridiculous. I was stuck to the dough which was stuck to the counter and it was like a dwarf version of some horror-flick blob monster was eating my hands.
I finally scraped it all off and into what was supposed to be a lightly oiled bowl but in actuality was more like an oil bath for a bobbing lump of sticky dough. It rose sufficiently after 45 minutes sitting inside a cold oven, and I tried to roll it out into the requisite three-foot ropes only it started sticking to everything again, and the dough stretched out when I picked it up, and the water bath pretty much disintegrated what vague pretzel shape might have been eked out by my clumsy hands. I have had some prett-tay rotten luck in the breadmaking arena of late, so this looked to be just one more perverse notch to carve in my … uh, mixed metaphor of a breadpost.
So, I baked it. Er, them. Eight pretzels, seven of which were gross lumpy shapes. Took them out, brushed ‘em with melted butter, and ate one piping hot. And you know what? It was good! It actually tasted as close to an Auntie Anne’s as I think I could get. They came out looking like ass, to be blunt, but they taste wonderful. I am totally going to make them again.
The last pretzels I made (from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook) were much prettier, and Iain likes them better, but they weren’t coated in butter, now were they. So how could they measure up?
Fivespot
Your neighborhood librarian tagged me for this five-themed meme. Really hit the spot this week; I think I’m in the mood to do another one.
What were you doing five years ago?
Generally? Um. Working and stuff. Polishing my leather boots on Sunday nights. Carefully maintaining a hygiene routine (home spa days, even!), drinking on the weekends, shooting pool, sleeping in, staying up late, burning the toast. That sort of thing. Childless newlywed type things. Smoking. Trying to quit smoking. Working out. Obsessing about the size of my ass (if only I could have seen the future! I would have embraced what I then loathed!). Reading. Renting The Sopranos from Cranbrook Video. Emptying the ashtrays. You know.
What are were five things on your to-do list for today (not in any particular order):
And I quote, from my little notebook:
- Lasagna
- library
- laundry
- dishes
What are five snacks you enjoy?
- Utz Cheese Balls (forever)
- The Chex Mix my dad makes
- Tostitos and queso
- chocolate-covered pretzels
- Cormac’s chin
What five things would you do if you were a billionaire?
- Assign chunks of money to give to members of my family
- buy people presents
- hire a staff
- move
- donate large amounts to my favorite charities — and then get taken off their phone lists.
What are five of your bad habits?
- I am unremittingly self-centered
- I stay up way too late and then am snappish the next day
- I procrastinate
- I underestimate myself
- I am frequently tardy, flighty, and lost in another world while you’re talking to me
What are five places where you have lived?
- Louisiana
- Pennsylvania
- Ohio
- Indiana
- Virginia
What are five jobs you have had?
- dental x-ray developer
- country-club waitress
- stagehand
- bakery clerk
- cartoonist
What five people do you want to tag?
I would like to tag five people who lurk here and NEVER SAY HI. I (think I) know who you are. HI! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!
(I know. I hate it when people are like “tag yourself! la la!” and here I am doing it because it’s too late for me to go rooting around for blog addresses for people I dig, but I’ll try and do it for the next one, and soon, because personally, I love being tagged, and i should send that special feeling back out to y’all.)
Nearly halfway there
We laid down a whole bunch of this click-floor stuff last week but then had to pause it for a weekend trip. We still have about six boxes’ worth left to do, but man. Once the momentum builds on this part the rest is just sledding downhill.
I’m still trying to decide on some sort of color scheme — thinking royal blue with yellow-green accents, but I’m not married to it — and figuring out what to do about curtains. As in, where to get them, where to put them, what they should look like. And what to do about those 15-light doors: Roman blinds? Some sort of panel-curtain set up? Not sure. Suggestions welcome on all fronts.
And somewhere down the line I’d like to reupholster this pair of chairs we inherited:
… but I’m not sure what fabric to use. I’m thinking some sort of floral or wallpaper print, large-scale and without an obvious repeat, because I love this so much, but the fabric is a titch too crazy. But then I think maybe I ought to stick to a solid color, something with a little more staying power. I don’t know.
Anyway. It kills me how long this project is taking. Iain knew it would but I naively thought we could knock it all out quickly, 1-2-3. It’ll be weeks yet before we can put it all together, since we have to take turns working on it on the weekends or do what we can after the kids are in bed and before we collapse, asleep, where we stand. But oh, the end will be worth it. It’s such a great room, and to fix the problems and redecorate it intelligently will make it so much more pleasant to hang out in.
One toilet funeral, coming right up
It’s like a piscean Survivor over here in our living room. Or maybe Real World: FishTank. Six strangers, picked to live in an aquarium.
Only Yellow and the never-named white one are still on set. Frankie, Suzy, Red, Nemo and Uncle Ryan have all packed their bags and bid tearful goodbyes. No more hot-tubbin’ or algae-flingin’ for them.
I’m just glad it isn’t Aquarium Idol. Then the little bug-eyed fish would be squeaking, cursing, and threatening to come back, and that would be gross. Even grosser than trying to explain to a three-year-old why his aquatic pet is kind of … stuck in the filter intake valve. And never coming back.
All hands on deck
Still working on the “green room.” Iain installed the doors and we have spent (OK, HE has spent) ages trying to get them to hang properly and shut correctly. The entire room is like some sort of crazy-house parallelogram imitation of a room. Nothing is square, true, plumb or level. I’m rather shocked I hadn’t noticed before now.
But, at long last, the doors are nearly finished. I caulked them myself Wednesday afternoon, in a blessed respite from the world’s loudest-slash-whiniest children (it was a tie), and all that remains is another coat of ultragloss arctic white.
Then we clean up the subfloor (literally: remove the cocoa puffs and oak-tree debris littered about) and start laying some delicious Ikea laminate flooring.
That should start the train a-chugging toward Completion-town and, my favorite, Decoration-ville, with a brief stop in Furniture-Arranging City.
I think I need me some graph paper; I have plans.
Drowning in the money pit
Huzzah! Our internet is working again! I fear that condition will be fleeting so I’ll make this quick: Money pit, we can has one. Oy.
As I posted previously, we set about redoing our back room, thinking to pull up the carpet, paint the walls and call it a day. Well, now we are finding ourselves hoisting out rotted subfloor, yanking out door frames and tearing out our hair. And did I mention the entire room is not level? In much the same way that a gas will expand to fill a container, or that your wardrobe will expand to fill your closet, home improvement projects always expand to fill your available time and resources. We are pushed to the max but with more rain coming we can’t exactly leave things as they stand.
The kids have been pent up in the front part of the house — the parlor, if you will — with no space to play (or eat) and a crazy mom hovering over them with a Dustbuster. Nobody’s having any fun, is what I’m saying.
But I think there might be a light at the end of the tunnel — I just hope it isn’t attached to the mag lite of a very expensive contractor.
Now if only our DSL wouldn’t keep kicking the bucket I might be able to pull through in one piece. Ah, suburbia!
recent flickr
-
my sewing tutorials
See my tutorials featured on SMS' Handmade Holidays!
