• the quotidian (4.30.12)

    Quotidian: daily, usual or customary; 
     everyday; ordinary; commonplace

     

    Masking tape and brown bag shoes: they’re all the rage, didn’t you know?

    Dressed up and nowhere to go…except to the front yard to dance for the passing cars.

    Goat cheese, asparagus, red onion, and bacon pizza: I was the only one who liked it.

    An ice cream sandwich experiment: I am unimpressed.
    (The cookie part isn’t soft enough—actually, it isn’t soft at all, boo hiss.)

    In preparation for the family reunion this weekend:
    40 jumbo jalapenos, 2-3 pounds of cream cheese, and 2½ pounds of bacon.
    (I’m hoping for leftovers.)

    Peanut butter cookies: it’s tech week for the older kids’ theater production 
    and I’m in charge of one of the cast suppers.
    (The reunion and play are both this weekend—I’ll consider the week a success 
    if my head doesn’t fly off my shoulders.)

    Trying to get some respect…

    …and getting put in his place, ouch.

    Stripping down the table for a redo (five years late, but that’s beside the point).

    He got sick of the messy craft table and now I have a new shelf, hallelujah.

    Fact: trampolines aren’t just for jumping on.

    This same time, years previous: baked beans, shredded wheat bread, rhubarb jam

  • Sunday somethings

    1. Julie introduced me to PicMonkey.

    I’m a goner.

    2. Have you seen this mathemagician? My husband and I were slack-jawed. My children cheered. (I howled at his Rain Man impersonation. I really must see that movie again. Soon.)

    3. I forgot to alert you to my latest Kitchen Chronicles.

    Better Brownies

    If you prefer a lighter brownie, you can dial back the chocolate to 2 or 3 ounces.

    ½ cup butter
    4 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate
    1 cup sugar
    2 eggs, beaten
    1 teaspoon vanilla
    1/4 teaspoon salt
    ½ cup flour

    Melt the butter and chocolate in a saucepan over low heat. Off heat,
    stir in the sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Gently stir in the flour and salt.

    Pour the batter into a greased 8×8 pan and bake at 350 degrees for 20-25
    minutes. The brownies should look underbaked—still jiggly in the middle
    and only just beginning to pull away from the sides. A toothpick
    inserted in the center should come out wet. (If it comes out clean,
    you’ve gone too far and your brownies will be dry and crumbly.)

    Delicious served slightly warm, with a scoop of coffee ice cream and a drizzle of caramel sauce.

  • mousy mayhem

    I was sitting on the living room sofa, happily absorbed in some good writing time, when my children materialized in front of me, bearing wriggling, squirming, breathing mice.

    I hit the roof.

    “OH MY WORD! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING! GET THEM OUT OF HERE! OUT! OUT! OUT!”

    They slunk outside. I followed, equal parts curious, disturbed, and grossed out.

    The dog discovered the nest, they said, and then they saved the mama and her babies from the dog. They had her in a bucket. She was wild-eyed and slightly chewed on, her babies still nursing away.

    “Take her down in the field and feed her to the dog,” I ordered.

    “But we want to take care of the babies, Mama!” the girls pleaded. The younger one was sobbing wildly.

    The kids took the bucket of babies and the mother out in the yard and held a conference. Then my older daughter took them out in the field. Relieved, I returned to my couch.

    But all too soon, my daughter was back. With a handful of babies. “Please, Mama? Can we feed them?”

    The mother was dead, but my younger son kept carting her around, refusing to chuck her. “Her babies need her milk!” he wailed.

    Now I had three crying children. The idea of nursing babies and a dead mother—it was just too much for them. Especially for my littlest one who still remembers the safety and warmth of his breastfeeding days.

    “Fine,” I said. “Get that dead mouse out of here and then go get a box. Here’s a medicine dropper and a cup of milk.”

    And that’s how our house came to be a mouse NICU unit. The kids salvaged the nest (the mama had stored all sorts of seeds, they reported). They fought all day long over who would get to hold which mouse when…to the point that I threatened to flush them (the mice, not the kids) down the toilet.

    My daughter wanted to do research on how to care for baby mice. “If they’re alive in the morning,” her father (who was even more grossed out than I was) and I said. “And no, you may not get up to feed them in the middle of the night, either.”

    They were alive in the morning, so, with my daughter breathing down my neck, I typed in “how to care for orphaned baby mice.” I read about formulas and sugar water solutions, stimulating the genitals so they could pee and poop, the signs of pneumonia, feeding methods, etc. She weighed the mice and calculated the amount of food they would each need.

    Three days out and the mice are still alive, though I think they’re weakening.

    Considering my children’s fixation on raising these helpless baby rodents to adulthood, what happened Friday morning might strike some people as a tad bit ironic.

    1. I saw a mouse streak across the back hall:
    2. I screamed and yelled.
    3. The kids all picked up shoes and ran to my rescue.
    4. The children tore about the back hall in a frantic search for the scrabbling mouse.
    5. They children threw shoes at the mouse and missed.
    6. The mouse jumped into an empty backpack that my younger son was holding.
    7. My son picked the bag up and shook it.
    8. The mouse jumped out and ran straight for my feet (my shoe missed) and under the washing machine.
    9. The mouse ran behind the toilet.
    10. Et cetera. 

    And on and on and on until the mouse ran out to the kitchen (and straight for my feet again, eeek!) and I chucked a shoe and maybe missed and the mouse ran/limped/stumbled under the stove. Where my husband found it, dead, that evening. So apparently I have better aim than I thought. Or maybe it was the backpack jitterbug that did it in. We’ll never know.

    So my children tenderly care for baby rodents and hurl shoes at the grown ones.

    No one said life has to make sense, right?

    This same time, years previous: roasted carrot and red lentil soup, creamed asparagus on toast, together