bLimey...

So I am going to start by telling you that this post has no point, really. No great ending to the story, no ending really at all, just a bunch of self-indulgent drivel that you probably don't have time to read anyway, but yesterday was just so random that I had to share it with you.

It started when I was trying to get some pictures edited. I shot a bazillion at the wedding and although I have finished editing a few, I am still in the sorting process with the rest of them. A bazillion files take a lot of time to sort. So there I am, slowly sorting files, because those bazillion files are now eating up memory on the computer and making it move very s l o w l y... which is bad for file sorting, but really good for Bejeweled Blitz as it stretches that minute into a minute and a half, allowing me to finally get past 100k on the thing.

Back to file sorting... I love all of the pictures. Really, truly. They are fab. I have lots of work ahead of me. And I am still working on MissE's and Susyj's pics also, as well as my own. Sheesh.

So it is 9 am and I remember that I have told my friend K that I'd go to Michael's with her that day, as I have 3 coupons for there and I really like to go places with K because a) she's cool and fun and b) she has a minivan so I don't have to drive. I don't like to drive.

I call K and she comes and picks my sorry tush up and we go to Michael's and have a grand time picking out things for her daughter's birthday party. I, too, have a basketful of goodies, mostly Martha Stewart crafts that I have a 25% off coupon for in my purse... or so I think.

Come to checkout time, I have the 40 percent off coupons for K, but brought next week's flyer for myself instead of this weeks (which has the MS coupon in it), so I leave my basket there, telling the Zac Efron look-a-like that was manning the checkout that I will be back later in the day to get the stuff, knowing that there is only a slim chance that I will actually return. I did, however, pick up the Knifty Knitter Loom for G (per my mom's suggestion), some super soft yarn and a package of retro iron ons that rang up for one penny. I didn't realize I have no idea how to use such a loom until I got home. I am sure YouTube will rescue me on that front.

I get back home and show K all of the tomatoes that are growing in the garden. We have at least 100 on the three plants, but for some reason, they never turn red. The yellow teardrop ones yellow on the vine, but the others remain green. 4 of the 15 we have in the kitchen are turning red now, though. The others are destined for fried green tomatoes I suppose. Must scavenge a recipe for that. Please note, I cannot take the credit for any of the garden bounty. That is all Mister's doing. I only came up with the seeds for him to plant.

K goes to pick up her little man from preschool, so I get back to sorting the files, thinking to myself oh man I need to got to the bathroom, but I am all the way in the basement, so I shall hold it. Then the baby is hungry, then back to sorting, then Jezabelle is hungry... I can tell by her yelping and howling that is now echoing throughout the neighborhood. I go out to feed her and see that her pen really needs a good hosing off, only to find that the hose to the hose winder thingy has sprung free, and each time I try to replace it I get sprayed with water and create a huge pool of muck. And I cannot get the hose off of the hose winder thingy to hook directly up to the faucet, either. Oh, man I still have to pee. Lots of water splashing around. No good. Mosquitoes have now found me and I am quickly becoming their Friday Afternoon Brunch Buffet. Mental note: Gotta get some more Revolution for the dogs.

Now there is water spurting everywhere, I am drenched and just barely able to refrain from pissing myself, being eaten by mosquitoes, barked at by dogs, cried at by babies and still cannot find a hose. I look up... there is one.. right..in..front..of..my..eyes. Finally.

Dog is clean and watered and fed, I am drenched, I sit back down with the baby on my lap to continue sorting when I realize that I have to get to the bus stop to pick up G. Oh and I still have to pee. I run upstairs, finally hit the bathroom, carry baby on my hip down to get G from the bus stop, barely making it in time. G tells me that the Boys Across the Street have invited her and Tyge over. THANK GOODNESS. We wait for their call. G collects all the phones in the house so that she can have at least one with a good battery withing her grasp when the fateful call comes in.

At 4 pm, the phone rings. At last. There is much hollering and goodbying and the two olders fly out the door. I am nursing baby on the couch now, watching Jamie at home BBQ on his antique rotisserie the has "made his culinary year" thinking that looks tasty, but I am totally off meat at the moment and cannot think of a veggie that would be as good to BBQ. Baby falls asleep on my lap and I fall asleep, too, knowing that if I move her she will wake up and I will be miserable. I wake 15 minutes later to Tyler Florencce making margaritas and fajitas. Hmmm, that sounds good. I have all the fixings for that if I could jest get the baby down without waking her up... NO GOOD. Nurse her back to sleep again.

Now the TV switches to Oprah, who has a recipe special on and some guy is making Key Lime Pie. Mmm that sounds good, and looks easy to make. Kids are gone, I can run over to the grocery real fast and get the ingredients and have it cooked in time for Mister to take to the football game.

I call across the street to let them know I am going to the store, and then I set off. My list : Key Lime juice, sweetened condensed milk, organic graham crackers. I find all of my ingredients quickly... the lime juice is organic and in the clearance bin for $1.99! I am so meant to make this pie. The grahams are a bit trickier, but the Annie's Bunnies are on sale and I can just grind them up, right? And chocolate chip ones would be even better, right? Oooh and look! They have a 6 pack of Fat Tire! On Sale! Sweet! AND Guacamole Corn Chips. It was Meant To Be.

Home I go. Small children come running telling stories about mud pies and I immediately send them upstairs to bathe. On to the graham crushing.

How many bunnies to crush, exactly? A whole box is good, I suppose. Doesn't look like enough. Oh well, add the two sticks of butter anyway. Mister has taken the olders and left to Tennessee by now. Little Guy was not supposed to go along, but decided to go at the last minute. I packed him a bag, he changed out of his Florida Gators tee (at his dad's insistence - I say he just wants to represent the WINNERS) and off they went. See ya! Baby is asleep in the crib this time. Ahh, think I'll have a Fat Tire now.

OK, added the two melted sticks of butter, but the combination does not look like wet sand like it did on Oprah... more like brown mud. Oh well, pour it into a pie pan and bake it anyway, it will harden up, right? And after one full Fat Tire ale, the remnants of the chocolate chip graham-butter mud are VERY tasty. On to the pie filling. And the guacamole chips and salsa. Oh so tasty.

Darn, ran out of salsa. Will Ro-Tel and lite Ranch dressing be a good substitute? Call my cousin from New Mexico. Get no answer. Go ahead and try it anyway. BAD IDEA. Salsa is in jars for a reason- so it doesn't taste like tin. Blech. I dump out the Ro-Tel ranch mixture and go on to carrots and ranch instead. Much better. The crust is bubbling now... Hmm, odd. Well, better get to beating those eggs and the milk and whatnot. 15 minutes later, the pie filling is ready, but the crust is still... bubbly. And starting to smell a bit burnt.

I pull it out of the oven and dump the filling in. It immediately sets up. Oops. I was supposed to let that crust, cool first. Now I have Key Lime Scrambled Egg Pie. Whatever, I am two Fat Tires into it now, might as well forge on. I put the pie-egg-scramble in the oven and bake it. It rises? That is strange, it was supposed to be a custard. Well, the vanilla whip cream that I have made is tasty anyway.. and it will cover the entire top of the "pie" so no one will notice, right?

Half a Fat Tire later and the "pie" is in the fridge, the baby is awake, and I am falling asleep.

I have a headache today. But, I have had half of the "pie" and although the crust is like chiseling chocolate graham marble, and the "filling" is very much reminiscent of those dried scrambled eggs they serve at continental breakfasts at the Holiday Inn, it tastes pretty decent.

I meant to do lots of work today. I awoke with the best intentions. But all I've been able to do is type this blog post and take care of the baby. The Vols won. I talked to Mister on his way home. The kids forgot top put underwear on today. I am renaming them both Britney. That's how we do it here in the south. Ding Dang.

Hi Aunt Angie

Greetings to my leader.

Corn!

corn \ˈkȯrn\ noun

Definition: Car + Horn = Corn!

Usage: You are caught daydreaming at a stoplight which has turned green, and you hear this proclimation issue forth from the backseat... "Mommy, it's a Corn!"

Baby Jokes

Last night, I was holding Little L on my lap after she'd finished nursing and she was just chattering away. Suddenly, she grabbed my face with both hands, and brought it toward hers. Her lips landed on my chin and she started sucking, like she was trying to nurse on my chin. After a minute she popped off, leaned back, looked me in the eye and laughed, laughed, laughed. Then she did the same thing, though this time she nursed on my cheek. Then my nose, my chin, the corner of my mouth, each time popping off, catching my eye and only then laughing. Like she had to know that I knew that she was being silly before she's let loose with her funny little chuckle. Such a character... and only 5 months old!

You see what I have to put up with?

Her expression says it all.

Bersonkers

Pronunciation: \ˈbər-ˈzäŋ-kərz\

Function: adjective

Definition: How Little Guy acts after he's had one too many jelly beans. A combination of berserk and bonkers.

The beanbag chair IS NOT a toilet.

So yesterday my kids were taking a bath. I know, taking a bath is part of most children's regular routines, but I do believe that my children have become addicted to that warm enveloping tub of water as they ask for a bath about thrice a day and when they finally do get in one remain in it for 90 minutes or so at the very least.

Well, after they had finished with their bath, (only because I went up to check on them and they had shared their bath with the entire bathroom floor and were subsequently ejected from said bath, mind you) they came downstairs to "warm up" in front of the space heater in the TV room. Putting actual clothes on would have made too much sense.

As they dried off in front of the space heater, I cleaned up the mess in the bathroom. I wiped the counters and the walls, and then soaked up the mess on the floor with some towels. The bathmat (that I had JUST washed) was sopping wet and needed to be washed yet again. Oh joy. I carried the drippy mess downstairs to put it in the washer when I noticed a suspicious puddle in the pink beanbag chair. I went closer to see exactly what had happened and that is when I realized... Little Guy had PEED in the pink beanbag chair! Un. bee. lievable.

And when I asked him if he had done it, he said no. He blamed it on Grace. As if she'd pee in her own chair. And they say kids are so honest.

Brown Sugar

One time, G asked me if she could have something to eat. I was busy editing a session at the time, so I told her to go ahead and get whatever she wanted to eat from the pantry. 20 susipicously quiet minutes later I found her in front of the TV eating chunks of brown sugar straight from the bag.

"But you told me I could have anything, Mommy"

Oy vey.

A thief and a crook... the chronicles of a candy addict

So it started back in October... well really it started when she was 2 and climbed the pantry shelves to get at the jelly beans that she *thought* were there, got stuck and contemplated about what to do for half an hour before she called us to come and get her down.

Anyhow, back to October. On the 11th we went to the annual Youth Day parade here in Roswell. This year's theme was conservation and recycling... all of the floats were of the reduce, reuse, recycle genre. As the floats drove past they threw out massive amounts of candy to the children waiting on the sidelines. Save the Earth, Kill the kids. Oh yeah, and litter at the same time ;)

Well, every year we gather enough candy to fill TWO Target shopping bags. And that's without even trying. (There was one girl standing next to us with an upside down umbrella and a "Throw me somethin, Mister" sign, a-la Mardi Gras.) We sort and save this candy, and redistribute it on Halloween.... tacky, yes, but whatever, we get rid of the stuff that's cheap. And here in Roswell, they are pretty good about tossing us good candy anyway.

After being thoroughly sorted, the bags went atop the refrigerator, out of small children's reach... or so we thought. After catching G sneaking candy, oh about 10 times, we moved it to the pantry and locked the pantry doors. Well, each time the pantry was unlocked, she climbed in there and snuck more candy. And this is a girl who is ALLOWED to have candy. The only requirement to get said candy is to either a) ask or b) clean up something.

Eventually, she snuck around with the candy so many times that she lost the privilege of Trick or Treating this year. Harsh, I know. She still had the chance to go to the neighborhood Halloween party, though. After the party, G and I stayed at her friend Abby's house with Abby's mom until the dads and Abby and Little Guy came back, buckets filled to the brim with candy... of which Grace was allowed none. I did give her a bag of Cheetos. Wouldn't you know it, ten minutes later she's going upstairs with her bag of Cheetos, when Abby tells me "Um, grace put candy in her Cheetos bag and is sneaking it upstairs." DAH!

Well, it has been almost two weeks since Halloween and after we threw out all of the candy IN OUR HOUSE I thought perhaps we were starting to shake this candy monkey on G's back. That was, until Friday.

Friday we went to Michael's craft store to do some shopping. Now, Michael's has candy on display at the checkout, which generally isn't a big deal because I have never bought candy at a checkout line... ever. Gum, maybe, but not candy. After Michael's we hit the mall to exchange a few things, and then we were slated to go to Chuck E Cheese as a reward to Grace for reading 100 sight words in one day.

Well, as we meandered through the mall, Little Guy kept badgering G for her purse. He wanted to hold it. He also kept asking her for candy. Now, wanting to hold the purse is a normal thing for Little Guy...he loves lipgloss and bracelets and hair doodads...the candy thing, not so much. I kept telling him that Grace didn't have any candy. After the 3412nd time of him asking her to hold the purse, I told her to just give him the darn thing already. She said "NO!"... hmmm, unusual. So I told her to give it to me. "NO!" she says. Hmmm, very unusual. "Give. me. the. purse." I say. "I put candy in it" she sheepishly admits. But where did she get the candy? Her purse is TINY, and the stuff at Michael's would have been way too big for it.... if she didn't have such good taste.

Inside that little sparkly Mickey Mouse bag I found SIX dark chocolate Lindor Truffles. Well, really only 3 truffles and 3 wrappers. OMG! I have spawned a shoplifter! (A shoplifter with a sophisticated palate, mind you) Needless to say, there was no Chuck E Cheese that night. And then, today, as I am dong the laundry, I felt something hard in the pocket of the skirt she was wearing. No, she didn't... oh yes she did. Ghirardelli squares!!! Oh my....

Cave Painting.

Do you ever feel like you are living in a cave? No, not because you keep your lights off most of the time to conserve energy (like the energy it takes for you to get up and turn them on), or because all of the rooms in your house are painted in dark earth tones(they were that way when you bought the place); but because all over your house, on the walls, the back of cabinet doors, under cushions, on the washing machine... you find stick figure drawings with tiny, wobbly print next to it?

Is this a 4 year old stage? We have stashed away her pens, markers, crayons. She has limited access to glue, paint and colored pencils. And yet she still finds a way to make her mark.


"How is this?" you ask. "How can she make these marks with no...mark-ers?" Well I'll tell you. She's a resourceful little imp.


Yes. Lip balm. She used lip balm. Aaargh!

She did clean it off though. Without prompting.


A note: As much as it irritates me that she draws all over everything, I do appreciate that all of her pictures are so full of love and happiness. This particular mural was of her, Little Guy, and the two boys across the road...and love.