Somebody stole my weekend

I came to work today in order to relax.

Between eye appointments, fence removal, garage door repairs, etc. I am wiped out. And I did very little physical labor.

I am back in my normal office at least.

Here are some hurricane Ike damage pictures.

We were extremely lucky, as this was our only house damage, which was easily pushed back into position:

We lost our entire fence.

This is the side fence, posts snapped at the ground:

This is the back fence, posts also snapped at the ground:

This is the other side. The side with the lady with the dog. The side that disintegrated. We are missing whole pieces of this fence, and that one chunk in the middle that seems to be in one piece? That's the one I fixed, it's the only reasons it stuck together.

And the plant and branch we lost in front:

We currently literally have no fence. Clinton and Shane took it down yesterday, and Shane will be rebuilding it this week. I'll post pictures when it's done.

Landon learned stuff too

I stole the idea to give him a bunch of 1/2 inch PVC pipe and connectors as toys from Tiffany at Electric Boogaloo. We showed him various ways to put them together including making a flute/horn.

Yesterday at home he was playing with them on his own and he was making his own version of the horn. So I took a picture, and instead, I got a picture of him smoking his "special" pipe. It would be a bong, but I don't see anywhere for the reservoir.

While at my in-laws, one of the things we looked through together was a beading magazine. One page in particular had a bunch of pendants. So we talked about each one. These are the ones that stuck:

Could this week get any worse?

Wait.

Don't answer that.

I was at work for a whopping 1.5 hours when the day care called. Landon had a 102° fever. They have a 24 hours fever free policy. So he can't go back tomorrow.

GAH!!!!!!!!!!!

I Dislike Ike

Hey, for all my calculation work yesterday...25 more customers in our area don't have power. You know, just to make things more difficult - and actually still very much in line with my trendline since I had used the early morning estimate on the 23rd and that's the end of the day estimate of the 23rd - which is what I used for all the other days. Our day care had a generator set-up yesterday - I'm pretty sure they're renting it because I doubt the city will approve of where it is sitting. So Landon is back at his normal school. It seems that the internet cameras are not running, but that's ok.

In other good news, my parents have power as of yesterday.

And, because you can’t have a major catastrophe without learning a lesson or two.

Things we did well:

We had water. We had plenty of water. One case of bottled water, a couple gallon jugs. Honestly, I kind of knew that without electricity, we’d be leaving for somewhere better anyway, so we really just needed enough to last a day or so. If we’d had a generator and intended to stick it out for the whole non-electricity debacle, we’d also need a generator. Our windows on one side of the house don’t open, so creating a cross breeze by opening windows doesn’t work.

I filled the voids of our deep freeze with ice prior to the outage (we will probably purchase dry ice to put in there for the next storm.) That ice and not opening the freezer is probably the only reason we did not have to throw out any beef. On Wednesday when we were still without power I sent Linda over to shop in our freezer. When she opened it she found that everything was still frozen and we still had ice. We got power that evening, so we were good to go.

I drained the pool as low as I could, and the rain refilled it to just over full. It kept us from having all the earthworms in the pool that normally result from a hard rain overflow.

Things we will do differently next time:

Food. Our food choices were…peanut butter on saltines…and peanut butter on saltines. I cannot find my Coleman stove, although I am still looking for it, so we had no heating up ability aside from the BBQ pit. For all the ice I put in the deep freeze, I had none for a cooler, if I stocked the freezer of the outdoor fridge with ice as well, we’d have been able to salvage a lot of stuff by putting it in a cooler, including condiments. I should have planned a “camping trip” style menu, instead of wishing for the best and thinking I could pull some kind of magic out of my butt to create a meal out of our unstocked pantry. The main issue here is that we shop like Eminem's trailer park girls (round the outside), we don’t eat a lot of canned or processed food, so we had nothing really. We also don’t eat a lot of bread, so we didn’t even have sandwich type making stuff.

Evacuating. When we finally made the call to leave, we grabbed just enough clothes for what we thought would be one night and planned to return in the morning. Clint was better prepared because he had a bag packed when he thought he’d be riding out the storm at work. Things we were missing once we realized we were not going home the next morning: my deodorant, dog food, any kind of baby friendly washing supplies, enough underwear for me, enough diapers for Landon, and any food at all. We made it work, we were able to do a load of laundry once we got to my in-laws and we bought what we needed as we needed it, but it would have been nice if we’d had it to begin with.

All in all, I much prefer the way this disaster went over Rita any day. Massive lengthy power outage not withstanding.

The Definition of Insanity Revised

I just plotted the trend line of power restoration to time in our zip code to see if there's any possibility that our day care will get their power back today. My calculations predict that yes, they will. (Technically what I plotted was the outtages remaining to time...the goal being - for the outtages to reach 0.)



Actually the first one I did I used more data points, this one only has the last given data point for each day. I tried all kinds of trend lines and the linear one actually worked the best.

I am a nerd.

That is all.

Back to still not normal

Please excuse the lack of pictures this week. I am temporarily officed with a "partner." But only one Internet plug works, so I'm sitting at someone else's computer in another office, and downloading photos to someone else's computer isn't something I want to bother with.

The toll road is still not charging tolls, so I think people are all "GET ON THE TOLL ROAD WHILE YOU CAN FOR FREEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" They are in my way, and I hate them.

Landon's school still doesn't have power, but they opened up their sister school (10 miles out of my way) to kids from his school. So until they have power we are packing his stuff that normally is in his cubbie every day. Not convenient, but way better than what we did yesterday.

Did you know how exciting it is to slam office doors and sneak behind desks and bang your fists and head on the wall of neighboring offices? We lasted 2 hours before I nearly killed him. Or he nearly killed himself, since he found the keys to the drawers in the desk and thought the electrical plus looks suspiciously like key holes.

He took a 20 minute nap on the way home. And then refused to take a normal nap at home. And then starting at 4:30 pm began screaming at me, but refused anything I offered him. And then at about 5:45 banished me from my own bedroom. "GAH, MOOOM, I'm trying to watch TV in peace, how dare you disturb me with your mere presence! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!! GET OUT!!!!" By 6:15 he was asleep. And then he slept all night.

So I made the executive decision that we'd go to the sister school today. Even though I can't watch him on the Internet there.

I asked him this morning if he wanted to go to school and see his friends. He said yes.

The receptionist distracted him with fissies (fishies) while I made my escape. (I am sick of fissies, I have seen enough Nemo to recite the movie in its entirety.)

And here I am sitting at not my computer in not my office with little to no work to do. But...no one is screaming at me about my existence.

Let there be light

So. We got our power back on Wednesday and came home Thursday morning. I was supposed to report to work Thursday morning at 10 am, which I didn't get the message about until about 1:30 pm. Never the less, I wasn't expected to be there because I had child care issues. I actually still have child care issues, they do not have power, so I have a 2 year old in my office. This is not going to last very long, but I had to come in and get some files so I could conceivably work from home, you know, if they had moved phones AND computers to our new offices instead of just computers...

Anyway, hopefully the day care will get power today, that's what the map says should happen. And tomorrow I can return to work as normal.

We're ok

We rode out the storm, lost power about midnight or so, then wait around until about 8 pm Saturday to decide that no, we cannot sleep in an non breezey non A/C'd house. We went to my parents Lake house, we are now at my in-laws house, from our sources back home we apparently have no power still, although the rest of the nieghborhood has power.

Anyway, work's been canceled, schools are canceled, we're not going back until we have power, and when we do, we may very well have to throw out 200 lbs of beef. If power doesn't come back on today, I have little hope for our freezer. Or we'll pull it all out in the front of the house and start cooking for all the neighbors.

Anyway, this isn't a very put together post, but I thought you might be interested in our well being.

Ike Ike Bo Bike, Banana Fana Fo Fike

Unless you're living under a rock, you know that Ike is aiming it's big fat fist at Houston. Actually it's the eye, but that sounds dumb, I'm menacingly aiming my eye at you!

So yesterday Clinton and I put everything in our backyard in the garage. Well, most everything. We're not in a flood plane, we're not in a mandatory evacuation area, we are going to probably see winds between 80-110mph. Which houses in our area are built for. We have a case of water, and when/if the water runs out and if we don't have electricity at that point, I will pack up the car and head out. To where? I don't know. But hopefully it won't come to that anyway.

It will be 10 am before most places in our area are going to make the call about whether they are closing on Friday or not, schools included, as of now, they have not canceled classes.

When we evacuated for Rita, we learned many many lessons. One of which was...don't go if you don't have to. A 24 hour car ride with 2 dogs was excruiating, I can't imagine adding a baby to the mix. And the possibility of one less adult as well (since Clint may be staying at work.) Rest assured, I will not be so bold as to stay when/if I think the conditions warrant leaving, and at the very outmost possibility, we have an upstairs window to rooftop, so I can climb out with Landon and the dogs and assuming the cats are even findable, and sit on the roof and wait for the helicopter. If I black out some of my teeth and wear a nightgown I might even get interviewed by the news!

Cow rider

Only in Texas.

We saw this sign on the dirt road that leads to a dairy farm...I guess they didn't want to have to take care of horses too, so they just ride the cows. We're pretty sure that's a cow anyway.

Confirmation that Landon is getting breakfast, since I can't get anyone to write that down. I'll never really know if he eats it, but at least they're serving it to him.

And that's Noah, whose back is towards the camera.

Don't mind those kids with the square black heads...they seemed normal in person.

Tomorrow I hope to get over myself and have something about the experiment.

Abandonment

Landon did great yesterday. Although his sheet doesn't tell me what he ate for breakfast, I was assured he had indeed eaten breakfast; it's just that his teacher who fills out the sheet came in late.


His sheet says he played outside, he sang songs, he "Mr. Ralphed", he sat on the potty 3 times, although apparently just for fun, and he had like 7,438 diaper changes and/or checks. I am going to go broke if they keep changing his diaper that much, but maybe it will lead to potty training, so who am I to argue? It also says he was happy and active. Also, I can only assume Mr. Ralph was the music guy.


He had spaghetti and meatballs for lunch, and since they said no bibs, even if it hadn't been on the sheet, I'd have known by the shirt I sent him in - it was so messy; it was not the shirt I picked him up in. What do they have against bibs? I realize they're not doing the laundry, but jeez. He ate "most" of his peas and none of his roll. (Weirdo.)


I did get access to the web-cams yesterday right about the time they were taking a nap. And in the afternoon I peeked in on him, he alternated between standing and sitting still watching the other blurry little kids run around him, and playing by himself. Now, I did notice that the other kids didn't really seem to be playing with each other either, so no biggie. He played with some kind of paddle looking thing, and a baby doll for a while. He appeared to be giving the baby doll the chest compressions of CPR at one point.


He also appears to be a ladies man, when he did socialize with anyone it was girls. One girl hung out with him and each had a doll at that point, they walked the dolls around the room. And later when they put all the toys up and were sitting waiting for the teacher to start some kind of lesson, he and another girl entertained themselves by holding their feet and rolling backwards. It was hilariously funny, apparently. He did check in on Noah occasionally, but only briefly to find out if Noah had a toy worth playing with.


Anyway, after watching him a lot of the afternoon and not getting much work done, I was thinking we had made a good choice and all was well in whoville.


And then I showed up to pick him up. He was bawling on the teacher's lap. He saw me and ran to me, and he kept sobbing. It was heart wrenching. The teacher said he was fine until Linda came in to pick up Noah. And when Linda left without him, he was inconsolable.


I called Linda to ask if that was going to be her normal pick up time, so that I could maybe arrange my schedule to match, and she said she didn't know, that classes had let out early, they didn't have her computer and stuff set up and they had nothing for her to do, so she really didn't have much choice but to leave.


I asked him all kinds of questions about school and what he did. He said yes to everything. Did you have eggs for breakfast? Yes. Did you have waffles for breakfast? Yes. Did you learn about music? Yes. Did elephants come in and play with you? Yes. Did Miss Linda come and pick up Noah? Yes. Did you know Mama or Daddy was going to come back and get you? Yes. Why were you so upset then? Yes.

He drank a bunch of water, orange juice and milk when he got home. And by a bunch I mean, I was beginning to think he had been dehydrated. But bonus! he was so tired from all the playing that he went to sleep at a decent hour for the first time in like...forever!

This morning, we got there at 6:00. Landon didn't want to stay. Noah wasn't there yet and I waited around for nearly 20 minutes, but they hadn't come yet. I know it will take an adjustment period for him to get used to this. I know that a two year old isn't logical, and I know that eventually he'll run in like the other little kids do. But watching Miss Keisha hold him while he screamed his little head off as I pulled out of the parking lot this morning was enough to make me want to sell the house, downsize everything, and stay home with him.


Here's a picture of what his first day of school would have looked like, except that he was wearing a different shirt, and different pants, and he was asleep yesterday and I just located his backpack this morning. Maybe I'll start a new tradition and take his picture on the second day of school every year.



If you need me, I'll be studying for my inspector test.

Everything changes

Landon started day care again today. I'm going to call it school though, because they're going to teach him a lot of stuff.

The last time he was in day care, he contracted a cold, which led to pneumonia. And while I know that he's got a better immune system now, thanks to licking floors, and kissing the dogs. I am terrified beyond belief.

This day care that we chose, has allowed him to be placed in a class with Noah, despite the fact that Landon is a month too young for that class. When they saw each other this morning, I know that it eased a little of my apprehension, since Noah was so excited to see Landon, and they immediately walked to the door of the nursery to see if they could get a sneak peek at Jonah. This afternoon, he'll be treated to a musical lesson, which I know he'll love.

I should have known better than to try to get a goodbye hug and kiss, or even a wave, because he screamed and hugged me so tightly as I tried to leave. But we settled him down at a table in the cafe (thank goodness for his love of little chairs), and Noah was there, and he seemed basically happy when I left.

The tears didn't really start until I left. I don't know how he did though - the internet camera set up is going to take a day or so to get me registered.

I honestly hope it's struggle to get him to leave this afternoon. That's what I want. I want him to love going there.

And here's where I should have a picture of him all ready for his first day of school...but he was totally asleep this morning - so I guess I'll get one this afternoon.

Raising a Republican

Before you get all huffy and puffy about republicans or democrats, let me tell you this: I am neither. There are things on both party platforms that I disagree with. Not just slightly, but vehemently. So much so that I do not wish to associate with either side. I'm not going to delve into which ones, because this is not a political blog, and I have no desire to debate the merits of any of those things. I am an independent. I have voted democrat, I have voted republican, and I have voted libertarian.

I do my best to find unbiased information for each candidate and vote based on their overall views. I am not a one issue voter, and I am not an uninformed voter. Clinton can tell you how annoying it is around the house during election times when I can't find information on some candidates (mostly the local ones for school board and such) and feel like I'm just picking which name I like best.

Last night Clinton and I wanted to watch Governor Palin's speech at the Republican convention. Pretty much our knowledge of her has been that her daughter is pregnant - which is what the media is focusing on, even though neither the daughter, nor the baby is the one who will be making the decisions that the VP makes. Anyway, we were both interested in what she had to say. It was a good speech, I can see why she has been called a formidable campaigner, and I look forward to the VP debate whenever that happens.

Landon watched the speech too, and he clapped every time the audience clapped. I can't say he wouldn't have done the same if we'd watched the democratic speeches - because we didn't watch any of that coverage - much like we haven't and won't watch any of the rest of the republican convention coverage.

So, either he's already feeling very republican, or he's just an enthusiastic clapper.

Monthly Newsletter #23

Dear Landon,

Holy bejeebus, you are talking. Not just talking, but saying things that people can like understand and translate into a more enunciated form of English. At this point you could probably take a job as a college professor and all the students would be able to understand you just as well as any of the foreign professors. You say “see you” to the dogs when we kennel them and leave for the day. You say “hi cow!” to all the cows (and horses) you see out the window when we drive by them. You say “Mom, dat’s oww” when something hurts you. You say “dorree” to the dogs when we tell you to tell them you’re sorry after you beat the crap out of them.

You are also starting to repeat what we say. Which isn’t going to fly at the Day Care in which we are about to enroll you. Uh…that’s probably something we need to work on, not so much that you need to. Miss Linda got a job, so we’re looking into Montessori Schools and day cares. We visited one with Miss Linda and Noah, you liked it, but we’re still looking at a few other. Everything is still very up in the air, but hopefully we will find a place where you and Noah will be in the same class at least for a little while. I don’t know how long this arrangement will last, but we have to consider it a permanent change at this point.

It also appears that wherever we send you, they may very well wean you of the bottle. We’ll see, you’re a little demanding when it comes to the bottle and even more demanding of how milk is delivered to your system. You have no issue with juice in a sippy cup, but clearly milk does not belong in a sippy cup in your mind. Ever. They would prefer you use a sippy cup for everything, but said a bottle is ok for a while. Rather than shake up your entire world at once, I will give them the bottles and the sippy and we’ll see what they do.

You are very curious. This will probably serve you really well in the future, so I’m trying not to dissuade you of it, except in cases of impending injury. It has come to my attention that you are now tall enough to reach your hand up to the countertop and get things within 3 inches or so of the edge. Pot handles in on the stove now. But it also means I can leave you a snack or a juice on the counter and you can swoop by and get it. It also means that you want to taste everything we eat, which is kind of awesome. You had your first cream of poblano soup, and your first corn on the cob this month. When you like something your eyes get big and you nod yes. Like a little food critic. When you don’t like something you spit it back out on the plate…which I guess is fine, eventually we’ll teach you to do that into a napkin. You seem to like the spicier foods too. Curry satay chicken is one of your favorites, as well as sausage.

Unfortunately along with curiosity comes responsibility, and when Daddy and I say you need to stop doing something, you don’t always do it. You have probably experienced more time outs in the last month than you have in the past year. We set you on the bottom step of the stairs and you…actually stay there. It’s amazing! You know you’re in trouble. When we go to get you out, you give us hugs and tell the dogs sorry (since normally what you are punished for is hitting the dogs.)

This month will be rough for you; you will be in a new environment during the week. I hope you are happy there, I hope having Noah with you will help ease the transition, and I hope that you will meet some new kids and find out that other kids are not so scary. I hope you are as excited about the new place, wherever it is, as you were when we went to check out the Montessori School. Last but not least, I hope you do not catch a cold which develops into Pneumonia. Oh, and try to learn something while you’re there.



Love,
Mama

Packing my bags

I called Landon’s Dr. to get an appointment for his 2 year well child visit. I have every Friday off and the closest Friday to his 2nd birthday is…his birthday. So I scheduled it for that day and the receptionist/appointment booker lady basically called me mean. And told me he would remember his 2 year old visit. And told me that we had to get him some really big presents to make up for it. And I told her to mind her own beeswax and that if I needed her parenting advice then I would ask for it and also, would she like to pay me my normal wages to come in on a day I don’t have off, if she thinks it’s so terrible that I bring him in on his birthday. Except I didn’t. I possibly mumbled something about his party being the next day and that he wouldn’t know the difference.

****

A couple weeks ago I took Ivan in to the vet for his annual cortisone shot. He’s allergic to mosquitoes we believe, and basically we wait until his ears are all red and bleedy and gross and his nose swells up and get him a cortisone shot and it all goes down and he’s happy until the next year when the mosquitoes come back. He also gets his annual shots when this happens and I tried to combine this appointment with Alexander’s well cat visit, but when I went to gather the cats, the yard guys were making as much noise as humanly possible and only Ivan fell for the old tuna trick.

Well, as it turns out one of his lymph nodes is swollen in one of his hind legs. The Dr. aspirated it and didn’t see anything that indicated cancer or lymphoma saying that not only are the typical cells not present in the sample she took, but also that normally a cat with lymphoma has all his lymph nodes swollen, not just one. But she gave him an antibiotic shot and sent us packing with a huge vet bill. Thank God Alexander was hiding, because if I’d had them both there and had to pay for his shots too, I’m not sure we would have made it out of there without having to wash dishes or something. She said to call in 3 weeks or so and check back in about his lymph node.

Well, she called to check on him. His lymph node is still swollen. She said she has to recommend a biopsy. And I felt like a jackass, but I asked “how much money are we talking here?” She added the histopath and the anesthesia and came up with about $300. “And what happens if it comes back as cancer? Cat Chemotherapy?” Yeah, pretty much.

And here’s where I then have to choose between money and cat chemotherapy.

Cat chemotherapy will probably only actually extend his life a year. A sick year. A year of 2 daily pills and a shot every 3 weeks. Basically, a year of hell. And since I suck at remembering to administer pills probably less than a year. On a cat that seemingly is pretty durn healthy at the moment. I didn’t even ask how much that was going to cost me. She did say it was pretty reasonably priced. This vet also told me that the shot antibiotic I had opted for over the pills was about the same price and very reasonable ($90 is NOT reasonable for a cat antibiotic.)

Bottomline, I’m not going to go for cat chemotherapy – I’d rather watch him live happily as he is doing now, and when/if I see a decline in his health we’ll reevaluate the situation. She said if I wasn’t going to do the treatment there really no reason to biopsy. Honestly, I think that it was probably inflamed due to an infection from the mosquito bites and once it’s all good and healed he’ll be fine. Plus, he’s an outside cat, and he’s 6 years old and he’s already outlived a lot of his siblings.

****
The dog next door is still there, but they did get his fur cut. So yea for the system. Except, he's still alone 99.9% of the time and I still feel bad for him.
****
Have you seen the commercial where they ask President Bush if he ate dinner with his family growing up and claim it keeps kids from doing drugs and committing crimes? He says he did, and then Barbara chimes in about it...does no one remember his convictions for cocaine. Is he really the best spokesman for that spot?

When babies attack

Landon is no longer content to let you take his picture.



You get to take one.



Then he must see the camera.



MUST SEE IT!!!

Mad at the Chinese

In getting ready for bed one night, in honor of the olympics, Landon wanted to don his Chinese pajamas, brought back from Thailand by his babysitter's mother (she made it clear that the pajamas were not Thai, they were Chinese.) But then we started watching and some of the girls seemed a little young, and then some of the Chinese girls fell and didn't get points knocked off like the other girls did when they fell. And it seemed like their difficulty ratings for stuff was higher than other countries when the routines were the same. And Landon is PISSED!

All set to be a hobo

Slides and Bridges

We went to see one of Clint's friends on the north side of Brenham, and decided to stop at a park near Lake Somerville this weekend. Landon liked the water and all, but since we didn't think to bring a swim suit with us, he just really looked at boats and stuff. When we mentioned the playground that we could drive over too, he was pretty pissed that we had to get back in the car and drive to it. He wanted to run there. Like a half mile. Which would be fine if he would make it the whole way, but he was only going to make it a hundred yards or so before someone had to pick him up and carry him the rest of the way.

Anyway, once at the playground, Landon was very cautious about the bridge because it moved a little. He's excited about the slides though.



I am under a heavy load at work this week, so I'm going to set up auto posting, and it will be boring. You've been warned.

Genie in a bottle

You know when you're changing out a ceiling fan and you think to yourself, "If only I had someone with not quite enough strength to turn a wrench that would make me hold him and he could flick my nose?" Landon's got you covered.


Or you're changing out the faucets in the bathroom and you think, "If only I had someone who was totally interested in seeing what I was doing and could lay on top of my side, while I try to uncomfortably stuff myself in the under sink cabinet?" Landon's got your back there too.


Literally.

And then you think, "You know there aren't enough serious under two artists in the world."


He's all about making your wishes come true.

Rain

I love the rain. I love the smell in the air as a storm approaches. I like that the sky gets all dark and spooky. I like to watch lightening and listen for the thunder. I like to count the seconds between them and try to decipher how far away a storm is. As a kid I liked riding my bike in the rain, so much so that I invented a bike umbrella in the 4th grade for one of our SEARCH* projects - but still liked getting wet while riding, so didn't really use it after that year. I like to sit out under a porch and listen to it hit the roof. Even better if it's a metal roof. And I like walking barefoot through puddles.



Maybe it's genetic.


* SEARCH stands for something which essentially means gifted and talented. And if I learned anything in that not for a grade, one whole day a week, classroom, it's that memorization is a low end skill on the thinking spectrum and is basically worthless, you're better off if you just know how to look stuff up.

And what do you know - I looked up what SEARCH stands for: Seeking Excellence through Ability, Responsibility, Creativity, and Honor. They done did learned me sumthin.

The William Hung of Meat

We followed the directions perfectly. We cooked it to feel instead of based on the time.

We like our meat medium to medium rare. And we came out with a perfectly cooked steak.

We both sat down, ready for the best steak we'd ever eaten.

Clint swallowed one bite, as did I.

Like a transvestite - pretty package, but not really what you were expecting on the inside.

And like William Hung's singing, I am confused as to why anyone likes it.

We'll be sticking to the grain-fed.

Productivity - we had it, by the numbers.

# of things we returned, bought different ones, and installed this weekend: 4

# of people I called when one particular plumbing issue was going to cause us to call a plumber: 3

# of hours we had the water turned off at our house due to the plumbing issue: 2

# of people who made an aside comment which led us in the right direction towards actually fixing the problem: 1

# of times I thanked God that I had put out a bowl of water to thaw my fingers while skewering chicken, because once the water was off, my cleaning of hands capability rested solely in the hands of baby wipes: 4,582

# of Things I took pictures of to make a good weekend post: 3

# of cameras sitting on my breakfast table instead of in the bag where they belong: 1

# of older pictures you will have to settle for: 1

What Cannibalism Can Help us Learn

UPDATE**

I submitted this post to the Farmer's Market Report hosted here.

****

Clinton and I have been looking for a good farmers market for a few months now. Our first trek was to a very yuppie one which seemed more about soap and artisan bread and goat cheese than it was about vegetables - in fact I don't recall seeing any vegetables at all the time we went. It was like watching rich people pretend to be hippies, because they think it’s the “in” thing to do. Needless to say, that wasn’t what I wanted.

On Sunday afternoon we went to another disappointing farmers market. I want a farmers market to have a bazillion different veggies, fresh greens, generally look like the produce section in my grocery store without all the fluorescent lights. I did buy a couple zucchini, but I was hoping for more than that. Not more zucchini, there were plenty more of those, but more options.

Sadly, this one only had 6 booths. 2 had vegetables, but not many. Apparently this soap thing is big and salsas and jellies and pretty much anything non-vegetable. The first booth had grass fed beef. (And the zucchini and watermelon and local honey (although if it was local to his farm, that’s not local to where we were or where we live)). Now, as you will recall, we debated the grass-fed vs. grain-fed when we were shopping for our side of beef. We ultimately landed on grain-fed – mostly because the meat market we found only had grain-fed.

One of the benefits of speaking to the people who actually raise the animals that you eat? Their knowledge is something to be tapped into. At the very least, you can then go home and google it and see if they’re full of it or not.

In speaking with him, we learned a lot. Grass fed beef has significantly less fat, so you cook it to about 45° less than you would grain fed to get the same finish – which translates to roughly about ¾ of the time – and also instead of watching the clock, you need to watch the meat.

And a light bulb turned on above my head.

For the sides of beef we have bought, the difference between what we bought the first time around and what we bought the second time around is that the first time was prime, and this time was choice. Choice meat has less fat than prime. But we have been cooking this meat for the same amount of time that we did the prime meat, I think we stumbled on our problem with the new meat – here’s to happy eating the rest of that cow. I hope.

We did buy one grass-fed steak. It is a 1lb rib steak (that’s a rib-eye with bone attached). It was 16 freaking dollars. And it had better dance, and dance well. It has to serve as dinner AND entertainment. I don’t want the So You Think You Can Dance rejects. I want the winner. For serious. (I’ll let you know when we actually cook it. I did find a farm online that would sell me a grass-fed side of beef for roughly $4/lb – so if it does dance, at least I can buy it cheaper.)

But also when talking to him, he tried to sell me on their ground beef (HAHAHAHA have you seen my freezer? I do not need any more ground beef, thankyouverymuch), saying something to the effect that they don’t mix cows when grinding beef. All of the beef in any given package is from the same cow. And that somehow makes it better. He didn’t elaborate.

But the idea alone kind of puzzles me because cow is cow, and beef is beef, no? I mean, especially in the same herd. Theoretically they eat the same stuff, have the same general genetics. This is neither here nor there, because all the ground beef in each package in my freezer is from the same cow too. It’s just not a hoity toity grass fed cow.

When I brought up my confusion to Clint, he said:

“If someone cooked you, and then they cooked me, don’t you think we’d have different flavors?”

Touché.

*****

Gratuitous Kid Picture:

Why yes, that is a clown nose on his ear. The only place he was willing to wear it.

Scarlett finally figures out the best way to cool off in the pool:

On Beyond Bovine Trial #2, #3 & #4

I should stop for a minute and reflect on the loveliness that is my husband. He hates vegetables. HATES them. And yet, when I told him what I wanted to do, he put on his big boy pants, and said he’d be willing to go along with it. And in doing so, has tried, not just the new vegetables, but other things he had previously pish poshed. Just last weekend he tried BJ’s version of Chili’s Southwestern Eggrolls. And lo, he did like them. He is like totally expanding his horizons!

Oh, and a housekeeping note. Did you know that they have like 236 different squashes on the left end of the produce section? And if I continue on my quest to go left to right, we will be eating squash for 2 months before getting to anything else? So, scratch that. I’m going to meander. I’m going to aim for 1 new thing every other week, and some oldies but goodies during the times between.

Last night I made fried shrimp, which meant it was a perfect time to bust out with other deep fried yumminess. Our kitchen still stinks from the oil this morning, so I'm kind of glad I got all the frying out in one meal. But dang, that was a lot of fried food at once.

Trial #2 Vidalia Onions

Clinton wanted to try onion rings made with Vidalia onions.

Cast of Characters:

Just follow the directions on the box. Except the box says slice onions to ¼” thick and I went a tiny bit smaller with mine.

Deep Fry:

(That big circle in the middle is a slice of zucchini, not an onion)

And Done:


Reactions:
C – Vidalia onions are good.
K – I think we finally found our onion ring batter mix. They’re just seasoned enough, and the onion adds a hint of sweetness.
Landon liked the onion rings at first, but once the novelty was over, he just played with them.

Trial #3 & #4 Zucchini & Garlic

Clinton said his boss made a zucchini bread at work and that he didn’t care for it, so that’s out. The pioneer woman saved my day. Actually some tattooed pastor guy that she had put a recipe up did. Garlic is kind of a fringe veggie in here, so I’m knocking it off the list.

Zucchini cakes. No, not like cup cakes, but like crab cakes, but with zucchini instead of crab, not in addition to the crab, which actually doesn’t sound half bad, but I didn’t have any crab, so it’s plain zucchini cakes.

I bought these zucchini from the farmers market we went to on Sunday.

Anyway, the recipe is here.


Cast of Characters (not pictured, 3 eggs):


Everything grated, squeezed, minced, and combined:

Frying:

Done:
(See the half cake there? Yeah, Clinton ate a half of one and snuck it on to my plate.)

They are fantastic, maybe a bit much garlic - but the "recipe" didn't have real amounts for the zucchini, I mean he said his zucchini was giant or large or something, so I used 1 1/2 normal sized ones, and then followed the rest of his "about" measurements and needed 3 eggs instead of 2 to make it do what he said it should do, I thought that there wouldn't be enough garlic as a result and added a 4th clove, maybe I had too much garlic in there.

Reactions:

K – I really like them a lot, but dang that was a lot of frying.
C – No. Just no. It had kind of a funny zing.
K – For the record I may have put too much garlic in, I used like 4 cloves.
C – Still. No.
K - Did you try them with ketchup?
C - Yes. And still no.

Landon took his little piece and immediately handed it back to me. Wouldn't even taste it.

A picture of a heart attack waiting to happen:

Please ignore the falling off the shrimp breading. In an attempt to not burn the zucchini cakes and the onion rings I kept the oil a little too low, temp wise, and all my breading fell off my shrimp when I got around to frying them. And I didn't figure out the problem until after dinner.

You really can get pretty much ANYTHING there!

If I'd known that, I wouldn't have bothered with that whole annoying pregnancy and being cut in half business.

On the bright side, our house didn't blow up.

Clint stayed home on Thursday for the A/C guy (4th time out to our house, only charged us for one visit.)

When I got home, I stepped into the garage to drop off a bag of coke cans from my office. I smelled what I thought was paint thinner. So I asked him if he painted something in the garage. Nope. He had smelled it, but said he didn't know what it was.

We were grilling ribs from Michoacana for dinner, so Clint loaded up the BBQ pit with charcoal. Only to discover that I had bought regular charcoal instead of matchlight. And we had no lighter fluid. We tried all kinds of stuff to get the fire going. Nothing doing.

I went to pick up Landon, and borrow some lighter fluid. By the time I got back the fire was going fine. We ate. We swam.

We went to bed. And I smelled the same smell in the house.

It was almost midnight, when Clint said "Do you want me to investigate?"

Well, duh!

Apparently his project truck had been leaking gasoline. It was coming out of a hose dripping on the floor of the garage, streaming down towards the garage door and pooling in the low spot where the garage door meets the concrete across the entire width of the garage door. Less than 10 feet from where we used the blow torch to try and light our BBQ pit.

Tidbits

Yesterday at work, they passed out ice cream sandwiches and fruit popsicles (your choice.) Today the leftovers are in the freezer. One in particular has this note: "[Lastname]'s. EAT & DIE."

Our A/C is being worked on. Again. I think when we had the drains re-routed a while back, the guy who did it didn't do the angle right or something. It keeps clogging now.

Clint is at home due to the A/C thingy, but he woke up early enough to do everything I normally do to get ready for work, except wake the baby and get dressed. Including getting me my normal breakfast from Chick-Fil-A. The girl who normally serves me gave him a funny look and asked if it was for him. He said "No, it's for my wife." She said "I thought so, tell her I said 'Hi.'"

I don't have anything else of note, so here are a few things I read/saw in the past week or so that made me laugh, cry, wonder and boil.

Laugh:
Jesus on a dog butt!

Cakewrecks

Cry:
Feral Girl is found living in unfathomable conditions. She was rescued. She has since been adopted by a loving family, who kind of treats their son like a red headed step-child now, because she needs so much attention.

Wonder:
Montauk Monster washed ashore. What the hell is it?

Woman fights off lion during donkey ride. (No, Nonsoccermom, not your kind of donkey - a REAL donkey) This story was on the news this morning, but they kept saying she was on a bike ride. Was the donkey named Bike?

Boil:
GWB goes to China. Arrives with a soap box under his arm, fresh from having insulted his hosts.

The very last time we ever eat at BW3s

Buffalo Wild Wings only contains "W" two times. But people call it BW3s and it annoys the everloving crap out of me. There's a historic reason for the 3, but that's not the name of the place anymore, so it's BW2s if anything.

Our particular Buffalo Wild Wings is being run by teenagers. Teenagers who are blind, and independently wealthy.

Blind, because when a person is only half finished with their meal, and is sucking on the bottom of their cup through their straw, a normal waiter just shows up (or preferably had already shown up) with the tea for a refill, rather than asking if we want more tea. (Nope, I prefer to suck on ice with my hot wings! Who needs tea?)

Independently wealthy because clearly, they don't want a tip, or they would have come and collected the ticket, run it through the machine and returned to the table rather than SIT DOWN at a booth to bullshit with his friends for 5 full minutes.

When Clint finally got someone else to run the card, they were about 15 seconds from a walkout, she was all "well...you know...sometimes...it's just..." No. Unacceptable. Half the tables were empty. It was not busy. There is no excuse for this.

When Clint asked to speak with a manager...."uh...he stepped out." Bullshit. You just don't want to yelled at for your crappy crappy work ethic. (Not that the manager would have, because dude, if ever there was a 30 year old man trying to be friends with teenagers...it was him.)

Now, the one near my former place of business is always totally packed and when we've gone there we have recieved decent service. But this one. Never again.

I think it has something to do with the building itself. It used to be an Applebees and those people sucked at their jobs just as badly.

On Beyond Bovine Trial #1

****
I am working from home today. We actually dodged the bullet on Edouard as far as wind is concerned, but the resulting rain...well...one of the ramps from one highway to another on my way home is down for construction, which means I have to take surface streets. Surface streets that flood if enough people spit in the street, so I didn't really want to chance it after 8 to 12 hours of rain. I could have gotten to work, but I absolutely did not want to get stuck there.
****


I suck at documenting experiments. I have no pictures of what the finished product looked like, I'm going to get better at this I swear.


Also major props to Clinton who tried this thing with me. And he didn't complain, although he did mention the need for the props.

Trial #1

Chayote. This was the first thing on the left hand side of my Kroger’s produce section when I originally came up with this weird plan. It’s a catalyst of sorts. Of course, now they moved over and there are some other strange little squash guys, but never you mind. Chayote is #1 in this here produce section.

I bought 2, and was kind of surprised when the check out lady knew what they were.

I may or may not be responsible for the eyeballs. I admit nothing!

My research told me that I would be able to eat them raw on a salad or cooked – specifically boiled – with any kind of sauce my little heart desired. So first I cut them up and Clinton and I each tried a piece raw.

Reactions:

C – You first.
K – I don't think I want this on my salad, it has a familiar flavor, I can't quite place it.
C – Yeah, I don’t know what that flavor is.
K – It’s kind of soapy.
C – What’s with the aftertaste? Now I know why they look like they have bitter beer face.

I dropped the remaining pieces in salted boiling water. The internet said to boil them for 45 minutes, but it also didn’t say to cut them up so small, so I just waited until they were tender.

I topped half with an alfredo sauce (in which I forgot to add garlic, so it was a little bland) and half with plain butter.

Reactions:
K – It tastes like…um…nothing? I mean, the butter one tastes like butter.
C – That’s weird.
K – This is kind of anti-climatic.
C – If I wanted to eat butter, I’d have just eaten a pat of butter.
K – I guess if you had a sauce you REALLY love, you could put it on it.
C – It's not even a good kind of tasteless, like a joke.

Post experiment, my mother chimes in that they’re used in Mexican cooking a lot and I should look in a Mexican cookbook or something. Hector says they’re a filler used in Fideo soup. Neither of these people offered this information before hand.

At any rate. It’s a filler, much like potato, except like no flavor, so kind of weird. I will probably not be buying them again. I kind of like my food to have a flavor.

Monthly Newsletter #22

Dear Landon,

Yesterday you turned 22 months old.

This month you’ve seen more family than I thought was humanly possible in such a short amount of time. Every weekend included extended family in some form or fashion and we didn’t even go to everything we should have. We missed out on Zoey’s birthday party – but we’ll make it next year. You ate up every bit of the extra attention, but it made for a pretty stressful home life, so we’re going to try and take it down a notch for a while.



We had some napping issues this month, mainly because of all the travel and extra excitement, you were totally unwilling to go down at normal times and ended up staying up way past my bedtime. And then of course you woke up at your normal butt crack of dawn, so there was no relief there either.

You’ve begun actually watching TV. As in, if you like what’s on, we cannot get your attention. (I think it’s genetic, I won’t tell you who it came from, but let’s just say it rhymes with Paddy.) I can see that we may be setting limits on TV in the near future, but for now, at least I can turn the TV to Sprout and walk away to make dinner and I don’t have to have someone tugging on my back pockets while I do it.

You are still helpful as ever, doing what we ask of you most of the time. Given specific direction, you can retrieve needed items, throw away trash, and close doors. You just need to be a little taller and then you can get mama a coke.

You have developed an interest in the potty. You like flushing it. You like dipping your hands in it, and I think you may be scooping up water to drink. Which, eeeeew, Stop that! Anyway, you wanted to sit on it, so I bought a potty seat that fits it. And even though you aren’t doing anything productive in the potty, you do like sitting there. Whether naked or clothed. It’s great place to park you after we get out of the pool before the water is warm enough in the shower, so it works pretty well. I am not under any kind of delusion that this is the beginning of potty training, because I’m pretty sure you’re not ready for that yet anyway, but it’s nice to have another parking place for you.

When we went to see your older cousins in a play this weekend, you were pretty well behaved, considering. You were impressed with the lights and sounds, and once a stranger sat down next to us, you were nice and quiet and stopped trying to find exactly the best position on the steps, and decided it would be ok to sit on my lap. Of your older cousins, I think you have the biggest bond with Joshua. He always makes a point of saying hello to you and getting a hug. He was not very receptive of your kiss, but one day (hopefully in the distant future) he'll have a little kid and he'll understand.

While we were waiting for the older cousins to get dressed to leave, we played on the stage for a while, you tried to get Zoey to come to you by patting your leg, the way you call Scarlett. When she wouldn’t come, we suggested holding her hand. So you took her hand and darted across the stage. She could barely keep up, and you had to be reminded to slow down. A LOT.



You’ve somehow decided that you don’t like your sandals anymore, you like your tennis shoes the best, so you wear them 99% of the time. I was pretty surprised at how the laces are not any worse in terms of re-trying every 5 minutes than the Velcro was. Actually, it’s better, because we double knot them, you only occasionally are able to get them untied, and normally it’s during a car ride.

All in all it’s been a pretty decent month with you. You’re talking a good bit more and we understand you more and more (or we’re pretending to know what you said because it vaguely sounds like that, pot-A-toe, po-TAH-toe.)

Love,

Mama