Failure to communicate

Meg dropped some applesauce onto the table this morning, and I looked up to see her finger-painting with it. So I handed her a paper towel. She looked at it confused and then delicately, delicately, wiped one finger on the towel.

We all burst out laughing.

Special reasons

"But I don't want to share the car with Daddy! I need the car for special reasons. FOREVER." Meg

Pink skirt

I've been wanting one of those knit skirts for a while. You know, knee-length, stretchy, a little bit flared, maternity-friendly, and preferably brightly colored. The least expensive one I've found so far was $10 at Wal-Mart, which while not that much, is kind of a lot for a Wal-Mart skirt that I plan to wear for maternity: not to be a clothes snob or anything.

But today I was at Wal-Mart and found a $3 shirt, size 4X-Large. Now THAT, my friends, is about right. It caught my eye because it was a good shade of hot pink and had some cute stud detailing around the collar. I could do something with that.

XXXX-large shirt

Ta-da! Pink skirt. It looks much better on me than on the hanger.

The sleeves became pockets and the studded collar became studded pocket edges. I think they keep it from looking obviously homemade.

The sides of the skirt come up in a subtle scallop. It's such a casual skirt, just zig-zagging it was enough. It will be easy to hem it later if I decide it needs it.

A legal lunch

Meg tried to snatch back her hamburger bun before eating the hamburger, and Jonathan warded her off. "YOU don't have a vested interest in this bun. You have a vested interest subject to divestment! And I have divested you of this until such time as you eat your hamburger!"


Then Meg started singing.
"Row row row your ketchup
Gently down the french fry.
Merrily merrily merrily merrily
Life is bun a dream."

The rain it raineth every day

We're having a grand rainstorm this afternoon with tornado watches, flash flood watches, dire hail predictions, the works. I think it was a cold front plowing into a hot (yep) humid (yep) mass of air? The radar maps are very exciting with lots of bright red on them. Anyway, we decided it was not a good day to go swimming, and also we won't be able to go to Bible study this evening if it doesn't calm down.

Meg was particularly concerned about Bible study, because that's where the dessert is. So she tried to get me to make it stop raining. When that didn't work, she took matters into her own hands.

"Rain, stop! Rain, be still! STOP!"

Without ice cream there is only darkness and chaos

There was no ice cream and the power stayed on today, but we did have a certain amount of chaos. It all started when I picked up a big package of chicken thighs at the store and had Meg help me fix them. We discovered she has a passion for dredging chicken in flour - which is great, because I don't particularly like doing that. She dredged and I browned and we were a great team until we ran out of chicken. Then it (amazingly) started snowing chickeney flour all over that corner of the kitchen. I mopped it off her hands, feet, face, and stepstool, had her wash her hands, and then she snuck back and started spreading the love again. So I washed her thoroughly again, exiled her from the kitchen, rescued the chicken at a suitable shade of brown, got the crockpot going, and declared naptime.

Then I wiped off the counters, swept, and decided that what this world really needed was a pot of rice. The rice wasn't where I thought it was, but I came across it in the pantry, so I was able to get it going and sit down to peruse recipes.

Was that something... burning?

It sure smelled like something burning, so I got up, moved the rice off the burner, and went to fill the pot lid with water to add back into the rice pot, to cool it off. Only I forgot that the pot lid was glass. And it was hot, since it had been on the rice pot.

BOOM!

The lid exploded all over the sink and floor. I spent the next half hour sweeping and picking up little cubular shards of tempered glass. We didn't really need that lid anyway. However, I still need to go borrow a shop vac and suck the remnants out of the disposal.

On the up side, the rice was just fine and the chicken, cooking merrily in the crock pot, was really good. I can definitely recommend pre-browning the chicken thighs, if you're willing to risk chaos.

Kitchen principles

I feel like so many people are working so hard be healthy in what they eat. And yes, it's important. But unless you have a particular medical reason, I can't help but suspect that balance and moderation go a lot further than all this baked-everything weirdness full of kale. In my quest to spread cheerfulness and light and because I think certain foodie trends are silly, I'm compiling a list of principles which you are welcome to ignore completely as it suits you.


1. Just fry the French toast already. It'll take five minutes and taste right.

2. Eat the yolks too. They're full of choline and who knows what all that you probably need. Eat a reasonable number of eggs, not five dozen like Gaston, and it'll be fine. The exception is if you're cooking something fussy that you actually need only egg whites for, like meringue.

3. Put sugar in the ice cream. Don't add corn syrup, aspartame, or lovingly hand-harvested organic agave nectar. Then eat a reasonable serving, not the entire batch.

4. You may eat kale if you actually want to. If you want to put caramelized onions and bacon bits in it, do it. If you secretly hate kale, please use it for centerpieces and eat something else. Exception: if your hostess fixed it, you may eat it anyway.

5. Bread won't kill you unless you're genuinely gluten-sensitive. I think the era of worrying about carbs is mostly past... I hope. It goes without saying you should also be eating things that aren't bread.

6. Have you ever noticed how much saturated fat and cholesterol is in coconut oil?? Compare it to olive oil sometime. Don't use coconut oil for, on, and in everything. Use it sometimes (like for frying French toast, yum).

7. There is no shame in macaroni and cheese. Probably don't eat it every day unless you're expecting. Grilled cheese is another completely legit food item, especially around small children.

8a. Potatoes are food, not fiend. Sweet potatoes are good too, but they're not regular potatoes, so please don't use them for all the same things.

8b. Zucchini slices and spaghetti squash are not pasta. They're good too, but they aren't pasta.

8c. Greek yogurt is not heavy cream.

9. If someone offers you something they grew themselves... eat it and thank them!

Are you happy??

Me: "Okay, hon, your mom's coming tomorrow."
Meg: "DAD! Your mom's coming tomorrow! Are you happy about it??"
Jonathan: "Yes."
Meg: "Okay. I need more ketchup."

Please don't apologize for your house

No, seriously.

You can consider it a ministry, if you like. The reason is, it's so very depressing for someone to decry the state of their bedroom and I go in, expecting something really epic, and it's actually a lot cleaner than my own. Now I feel like the bad housekeeper in this situation.

I'm usually just grateful to have a place to set up a pack'n'play in!

Job-hunting

For those of you who haven't heard yet, Jonathan is looking for a new job. On the one hand, this is kind of concerning, because, well, we like to eat. Also, job-hunting is stressful. On the other hand, it's a little exciting. It's like sniffing the air and knowing rain is about to fall - it has that smell. I can't conjure up a job for him, but the Lord can. I did the calculations, and one or the other of us has hunted for a job on average every eighteen months since we were married and God has always provided.

So most of the time, I manage not to worry about it. It's kind of like George whosit, trusting the Lord for his orphanage - He's brought us here, and to a significant degree, it's His business to keep us. I even comforted a sweet lady the other day who was pretty upset on our behalf. Then I have other days where everything is bad and we're doomed and Meg will wear diapers forever and I'll never, ever get to live in a real house or have a garden this side of heaven. So there. Or we might have to move to Kentucky. The horror.

So if you want to help, do please pray. If you know of anyone who wants a researcher/strategist lawyer type, by all means let us know. There's a fine line between getting lost and having an adventure, you know.

Geek cred: neutral

So, we went to see the new Star Trek movie. I liked it.

I hadn't realized it was a reboot of Wrath of Khan - which was fine, because I haven't seen Wrath of Khan since high school and I've lost a lot of brain cells since then and don't actually remember anything about it except the pink blood when they lost gravity - but when Khan showed up in this version, I shrieked (softly, since it was in the theater), "IT'S DR. WHO!"

Please note, I haven't actually seen Dr. Who. I tried to watch one episode and got halfway through before my laptop overheated and still don't know how it ends. Also, I've only seen one episode of the new Sherlock Holmes.

Khan, incidentally, is not Dr. Who. He is Benedict Cumberbatch, meaning he is Sherlock Holmes and Smaug. The Dr. Who I was thinking of is David Tennant. So yes, my geek cred took a pretty serious nosedive this afternoon. I still maintain that in Khan's trench coat, he looks like Dr. Who. He kind of acted like him too, part of the time, as much as I can tell from my (obviously) vast second-hand Dr. Who experience, except for being a homicidal maniac.

Then I came home and saw the trailer for the new Percy Jackson movie, Sea of Monsters. Hermes is going to be played by Nathan Fillion. When I got to that point, I shrieked, "IT'S NATHAN FILLION!" I was right.  It looks awesome.

So, we have determined that while I'm kind of foggy on Benedict Cumberbatch and David Tennant, I can spot Nathan Fillion at fifty paces. I guess that brings my geek cred for the day about up to neutral.