WARNING: Whining Ahead

I hate this time of year. Really.

I'm tired. The weather's crappy, or teasing us with *almost* nice weather and then going back to crappy.

Did I mention I'm tired? As in, could sleep for several days, tired.

Blah.

Tomorrow's payday. Yippee! Money comes in.....and money goes out. But, hey, at least it all balances. Job is secure, payroll is made, utilities are paid, mortgage, food, and even clothes for the kids who won't stop growing! Yes, I am grateful, even when there doesn't seem to be any money left, that there was enough to begin with.

So, because tomorrow is payday, it is also grocery shopping day. I have a love/hate relationship with this. I LOVE finding deals on food. Things like the "manager's specials" in the meat department where things have been marked down because they're nearing their 'use by' date. I buy and I freeze and we eat. I love combining a coupon with a clearance deal and getting things for next to nothing....

I found, in the clearance section, the Laughing Cow cheese wedges for $1.50. And, I had coupons for $1.00 off two, so they were $1.00 each. And they didn't expire until December 2010. No idea why they were in that bin, but there they were. I bought 4 because I really really really like that cheese. It's the only exception to my no "pasteurized processed cheese food" rule. LOL!

Now, inside these little treasures, I found another treasure.....a coupon for $1.00 or $1.25 off the purchase of the little mini gouda cheeses. You know, the ones that come wrapped in wax? Yeah, those.

Guess what I found in the clearance bin the other day? Yep, mini gouda cheeses for $1.50 each. Go me! I got 4 of them for less than $3.00 and I still have a couple more coupons!

This excites me. Yes, yes, my life really is *this* boring.

Now back to my love/hate relationship with grocery lists. I plan meals two weeks at a time. Lately, I have zero imagination and even less motivation. I can't seem to figure out *anything* for us to eat. Tristan doesn't like red sauce, fish, or shellfish. His vegetable consumption is limited to canned green beans and raw carrots. He has, however, recently stopped disecting his food, parsing out just *exactly* what's in it like an archeological dig. Alana is at that "vegetarian" stage, so she's not eating much meat. And Shannon is on a gluten-free diet.

Many people subscribe to the "serve what I want and the kids have to suck it up" school of thought. I understand this, however, it just doesn't sit well with me. How would I like it if someone told ME that I must eat something I don't like?! So, I save the spaghetti, salmon, and shrimp for nights when he's not here, which is usually once a week or so.

Throw in the time constraints of busy evenings, plus the fact that 5:00 pm is probably the point at which my energy is at it's lowest. I don't WANT to peel potatoes or make rice or brown this or cook that, thankyouverymuch!

Bruce gets home from work at 6:00 at the earliest. Often I don't start dinner until then, which means we're eating at 7:00, and the kids don't get to bed on time as a result. I've *got* to do something about that, getting dinner on the table earlier, but per the last paragraph, 5:00 means ZERO motivation for me. Really, I want to take a nap!

I'll figure it out, I suppose....and the coupons are calling my name.

It's Ash Wednesday today. The beginning of Lent, the 40 days (not counting Sundays) before Easter. It's a time for Christians to reflect and prepare for the biggest event of the Christian calendar, Easter. The 40 days is quite Biblical, though there are disageements amongst Biblical scholars as to the absolute truth of the number. Seems, in Biblical times, 40 was a sort of slang for a really long time, like we say "a bazillion," and may or may not have meant exactly *40.* The Jews wandered in the wilderness for 40 years after escaping slavery in Egypt. Jesus went out into the wilderness for 40 days after his baptism, before starting his ministry.

Traditionally Catholics gave up meat and other things during lent, to fast and prepare for the coming Easter events. Over time, that practice has waned, but I think it's an important spiritual discipline so it's one I participate in. This year, I'm giving up junk food, chocolate, soda, and added sugar (yes, I know that soda and chocolate are "junk food" but I'm expanding on my previous years of "just" giving up soda and chocolate...there's a theme here even if I'm the only one who can see it!).

I'm also giving up computer games. So I say goodbye to Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook, after acheiving a score over 400K last week. And I say goodbye to all the fun solitare games and puzzles and so forth on MindJolt through Facebook. Whatever will I do with myself now?

This season is also a time when I get bitten by Spring Fever, despite what the weather is like outside. And Protestants have been pushing the "take on something" rather than the "give up something," so with that in mind, I'm taking on writing and blogging and journaling. I'm saying goodbye to the time-sucking games on this machine and saying hello to yoga and walking and sewing (Easter dresses!) and scrapbooking. I'm turning toward the promised renewal of spring after this winter of rest and hidden growth, hoping that growth will manifest itself outwardly just like the new growth outside.

Tragic news today

A young man at Tristan's school killed himself over the weekend.

There's really no easy way to type that out. It seems so succinct, almost too succint, and yet, it's also precisely what happened, in black and white.

Nathan Flint was his name. He was a 9th grader. Tristan had Jazz band and symphonic band with him. I've seen him many times at concerts. I may have even had him in class a couple of weeks ago when I subbed at the school.

Tristan reacted with shock. I tried to tell him gently, but there really is no way to soften that news. He and his dad were on their way to Scouts, and Tristan did quite a bit of crying over it. He chatted with another adult at church, and by the time he got home, he was back to the macho-man "I'm fine, Mom." *big sigh*

You and I know, from our adult perspective, just how senseless this is. What a horrible waste of a wonderful life. He was a talented guitar player in Jazz band. Clearly, from the reactions I'm seeing in the neighborhood and school, he was cared for, but it would seem that he couldn't see that for his own pain.

My heart breaks today for this young life, taken far too soon, and for his grieving mother, who's now left alone.

I pray that Nathan has found the peace he sought, and that his mother will too.

Here's his obituary from the local paper. Tristan cut it out of my paper this morning before I even got up. I'll be buying another copy of the paper today.

I've lost my mind!

Completely and totally, I think.

We got a puppy.

She's a purebred chocolate lab named Max and she's about 10 weeks old. She's going to be trained to be a diabetic alert dog for the kids, alerting them (and us) when their sugar drops too low. She's been donated to us by her breeders, complete with AKC papers should we choose to register her. A friend is doing the majority of the obedience training, keeping her during the week and bringing her to us on the weekends. It's a tremendously generous gift, and that, coupled with Shannon's doe-eyes, overrode my objections to yet another animal in the house.

She really is cute, in a funny-looking, too-small-for-her-skin kinda way. But it's like having a baby in the house. She woke us up at 5:30 to go out, and then at 6:30 for good, and you know how much I just LOVE Saturday mornings (not!). I finally dozed off again and heard the carpet cleaner going! Right now, though, she's sleeping at my feet looking as innocent as can be.

Groundhog Day Desserts

Look ma! Two posts in one day! LOL!

Despite my earlier musings about Groundhog day, I decided it was as good an excuse as any to have a little fun with dessert. My dear neighbor was making lettuce wraps and Thai chicken from an alleged Cheesecake Factory recipe and wanted to share. Who am I to turn down free food? She cooked all day and it was YUMMY! And I get it...if you're going to go to all that work, it would be nice to share it with someone who appreciates it, as opposed to the moody teens and preteens that populate both of our houses.

So it was my job to provide the table (my house is bigger), beverages (Brazilian limeade) and dessert. I found this adorable little guy on Family Fun, but really, who are we kidding? Martha Steward, I am not, and that's without the gluten-free issues.

But that gave me an idea! Remember "Dirt and Worms" with chocolate pudding, crushed Oreo cookies, and gummy worms? I ran with that.

First, though, I had to solve the gluten issue. Oreos are yummy, but they are definitely NOT something Shannon can eat. I thought I'd find some gluten-free cookies like that, but the more I thought about it, the more expensive that got to be. GF prepared foods are not cheap, so I choose carefully if I'm buying them.

In the baking aisle, it hit me! Chocolate! Shaved, chopped, shredded chocolate. Bonus, I already had chocolate chips at home (a side effect of my addiction to clearance shopping).

So, here you go. First I tried my Pampered Chef chopper. But it really didn't work. Probably because the chips were frozen (I thought that would make them more brittle and therefore more breakable. Notsomuch). After pounding forever, all I really had was a mess.

But I was not dissuaded just yet. I've got all manner of Pampered Chef tools, so I knew I had to have something that would do the job. I found this one, designed to shave little pieces of garlic. Turns out, it works pretty well on frozen chocolate chips too! In no time, I had a pile of chocolate shavings (and sore arms--this one you have to press and turn and the chips were still, after all, frozen).

Next, we must make the pudding. I had two different kinds, to serve a total of 12 people. My children, strange beasts that they are, don't like chocolate pudding. So I had some chocolate for the normal people and some vanilla with cholate chips for my odd bunch. I made up the chocolate pudding using what we call a "boing boing." I'm sure it has a more official and kitcheny sounding name, but I grew up calling it that, so there you have it. Descriptive, yes?

Chocolate pudding, check! Poured into little clear cups and awaiting decoration. On to the vanilla/chocolate chip pudding. But wait......this box says just 2 cups of milk where the chocolate box said 3. Sneaky folks at Jello! The boxes are the same size, but the chocolate pudding makes 6 servings, and the fancy pudding only makes 4. There are 11 of us. The math doesn't add up! Uh-oh!

But, once again, my shopping saves the day as I had a smaller package of vanilla pudding hiding in the cupboard. Phew! Crisis averted. (See, look, silly me thought that the same size box would make the same amount of pudding!)

Then it was time to make the sunshines. NO, those are not flowers, shilly people. I was kinda hoping for a "didn't see his shadow/cloudy day" result because I was going to smoosh marshmallows to make clouds. But nope. Sunshine it was.

Seriously, I wandered all over the store tying to come up with an edible (and affordable) sunshine. Dried apricots? Too orange. Maybe some lemon slice candies stuck together? They don't have the gel frosting I wanted to use. Hmmmm.....okay, so how about a gummy peach slice with a gum drop in the middle? That's getting expensive and slightly silly (yes, only slightly). Then I remembered the MOUNTAINS of scrapbooking tools, supplies, and paper I have here at home. Duh!

So here you have the final product. Pudding, with chocolate "dirt," a gummy bear "groundhog," some spring sprinkles because a.) I'm an optimist and they'll be blooming soon, and b.) Phil is often wrong about this whole predicting thing. Topped off with a sunshine on a toothpick.

On Groundhog Day

Okay, really? Really? This tradition has never made much sense to me. I'm sure there's some history I haven't bothered to look up, but still (note to self: find out origins of Groundhogs as weathermen).

First, I read or heard somewhere that people actually decide days ahead of time if the critter is going to see his shadow or not. So much for the creature doing any kind of predicting. Not to mention that he's on the East Coast and he's predicting something for the entire country?

I also read that he's been right about 40% of the time. He's got a 50/50 shot and he's wrong more than half the time. So why are we making a fuss about all of this?

Then there's the whole event. The critter is SLEEPING in his nice warm den, minding his own business, when some dude in a fancy coat and leather gloves reaches in there and pulls him out. And they're surprised when he bites?!

I'm not a groundhog, but my family knows that if they bug me while I'm sleeping and warm on a chilly February day, they're going to get bitten! And I don't even have overgrown teeth to do it with! Sheesh!

Google can be hazardous to my housework

Let's just get this out of the way first.

I HATE JANUARY. There, I said it. New year, new leaf, aside, I really really REALLY despise January. It's cold. More often than not, it's polluted and hazy out there (more of a geographic accident than anything else, but still). I want to pull the covers up over my head and sleep until February 1st. And I probably could use the rest. But, alas, the rest of the world seems to think a month-long hiatus from life is a sign of some mental disorder. Nah. It's just January.

As if the weather weren't bad enough, everyone's running around making resolutions. Now, I'm all for improving oneself, but when I look back at my list of things to accomplish in 2009? Yeah, most of them are carrying over to 2010, and include such things like "catch up on my scrapbooking," "experience a state of fully-rested," "organize the laundry room," and, of course, "lose 20 lbs." That last one was found on a list from 2005 as well. *sigh*

But, I digress (and that's new how?)

You thought I fell off the face of the earth (the 3 of you who read this). Nope. Just fell into January. But it's February now, and I'm back!

Google can be Hazardous to my Housework

You thought I would say FaceBook or some game site, right?

Nope. Google.

It all started innocently enough. My darling middle child wanted to know about the giant coming out of the ground. Took me a minute too. She's referring to The Awakening , a sculpture formerly in Washington DC, but now in Maryland, not far from The District. See Shannon thought it was nearby and wanted to visit it again. Good thing I scrapbook so she'll know the facts of it someday or she'd be wandering around the West looking for a giant metal dude!

So, I googled it because I knew there had been a TON of conversation about the thing. It was only supposed to be in DC for a short time, on display for a sculpture exhibit or whatever. But, it's HUGE, and no one, including the sculptor, would take responsibility for it....at least not publically, so it fell to the National Park Service to deal with something it neither owned nor wanted! It's now been sold and moved and is apparently quite happy in its new MD home.

But, again, I digress.

I spent well over an hour looking at photos of it and finding news articles. I'd like to visit it again someday as I think it's pretty cool, so I'd like to know where it is now.

And that led me to a wonderful blog called "Odd Things I've Seen," or "O. T. I. S." and the afternoon was lost as I perused his wonderful site. It makes it even more entertaining because I, too, have seen some of those odd things, like Seattle's Underground (pleased to hear it's reopened after the Seattle earthquake in 2003) and the Hope Diamond.

This isn't the first time this has happened to me, either. I think "I just need to find out....." and the next thing I know I'm reading page 5 of a travelog (spelled that wrong) about the southwestern US, including Mesa Verde, Hovenweep, and Newspaper Rock!

All the while, the laundry sits in the washer, forlornly wondering if it will ever be dried, and the children will, once again, have to dig for socks in the overflowing sock basket in my bedroom.

*sigh*

So much for my housework-related resolutions.

But, dude, there's some good stuff out there!