What I've been up to today...

 

Various and sundry

It has been a while since I blogged something substantial.  As I think I may have mentioned, Sarah and I were writing novels last month.  I ended up having to write the final 10,000 words on the final day.  That taught me something, and no, it wouldn't be the obvious.  It taught me that, properly motivated and with the right tools, I can really write.  I haven't looked over it since Sunday because I want to give it a rest and see what it's really like when I go back to edit.  I still think that last year's novel is better than this one.  This one was way too painful to write.

Tuesday afternoon, Neighbor Lady called me and said, "I think that Son #1 broke Son #2's arm.  Could you come over?"  (I am making them sort of anonymous, if that isn't perfectly clear.)  After audibly gasping and telling the children to "STAY HERE!" I ran next door.  The arm wasn't as bad as I had feared (compound fractures were going through my head) but it was clear that he was hurt in some way so I wrapped his arm to his side in an Ace Bandage and Neighbor Lady took him to the doctor.  I stayed in her house with her babysitting girl and Son #1 who was mortified that he had done that to his brother (especially since he did it trying to drag said brother out of the bedroom of Son #1).  I called the house and told the twins to come over.  Eventually everyone but Abby drifted over for one thing or another.  The good news was that the arm of Son # 2 was not broken.  The elbow had been pulled apart and they needed to put them back into place.  Which took 2 tries (that was the bad news).  In the mean time, Son # 1 introduced me to the wonder of Wii.  And it was very fun.  And I had a sore arm and shoulder for two days as a result of playing Wii Tennis over and over.  And then Son # 1 got in trouble with Mom because he apparently wasn't supposed to have the Wii on during the week.  Ooops.  Gotta remember and obey those rules (which he has had trouble with a lot, especially with regard to stuff he does with us).

We had a fabulous Thanksgiving with my brother and his family.  I haven't seen him since Thanksgiving two years ago.  The two older girls have new puppies and we got to enjoy them.  And even better, they don't run away like Lucy the Wonder Dog, who was insanely jealous of her new cousins.  I got some pictures, but none of the food (we had a more traditional Thanksgiving this year because I love my sil and she's not much on ethnic foods) and few of groups of people.

The day after Thanksgiving we played board games.  I had bought 2 new copies of old favorites because the twins had destroyed the others (Yahtzee & Scrabble) and a new one that I'd seen recommended all around (Apples to Apples).  While I couldn't tempt anyone to play Scrabble with me until a couple of days after the family left, when Friend Husband finally threw me a bone and played with  me, we had big fun playing Apples to Apples & Yahtzee. 

Oh, and I almost forgot the morning!  Abby and Aunt Amber have a tradition of making us monkey bread to eat for breakfast, so they did that.  It was too yummy!  And since Friend Husband didn't wake up early enough to suit my tastes, I put another female in bed with him to convince him to wake up.



He woke up much quicker after Daisy visited him.



A duty well done.





Two of the cousins are the same age, as they were both born in 1999.  Cass is about 5 months younger than Abby but at least 2 inches taller.  I also thought their feet looked fun together (both were running around barefooted, naturally).



One finished monkey bread.



This is Cass and sweet Dolly (well, Dolly is the dog)



This is sweet Daisy and Autumn.

Friend Gina brought it to my attention quite inadvertently that teachers generally receive gifts this time of year.  Yeep!  I've not done it before!  So I worked hard to get some cardamon bread baked as teacher gifts yesterday.  Here are a few pics of that, without the finished product, sadly.



I thought this looked interesting.  You braid the bread from the center out.  Abby wanted to know why it was that I was posting pictures of bread dough.



Twisty braid and finished braid.



All the loaves during the final rise.

Well, I've been messing around with this for a while and need to get moving on my laundry debt and housecleaning.  Bleah.  I hope I haven't totally lost you all.  I've been trying to revisit blogs but I also have a major blog debt so that's a little difficult too.  :-)

Swell Monday

Well, the weekend was interesting. Saturday was the second day of summer (did you know that Friday was actually the first day...Leap Year and all). It was an absolutely gorgeous day...cool and sunny. And we spent the entire thing in the house.

It wasn't too bad after we finally convinced the neighbor's grandchildren that D&K really couldn't come outside. David was bouncing off the walls, though, because he badly wanted to see his daddy. It was a joyous occasion when Daddy and the Sisters were home.

We took the twins to services Sunday morning, as they hadn't broken out with anything, but we kept them away from everyone and whisked them out to the car when it was over. We decided that we should keep them home Sunday night. So the twins and I stayed home.

For some reason, I was just wiped Sunday. I don't know what the deal was, but I was tired. David was again bouncing off the walls, but I finally convinced him to crawl into bed with me and we had a very sweet little nap. It's not often that I can get the little guy settled down that much. Zi came to find us and apparently couldn't. At some point, she decided that it would be a good idea to look under the quilt rack for us? Yeah, that's what I thought. Well, she fell asleep under the quilt rack, which is heavy with quilts. When I woke Dave up, we went looking for his sister. She was nowhere to be found. The doors were still locked so I knew she wasn't outside (and she has trouble opening the doors anyway, so it would be unlikely that she'd get out). We searched high and low for her and David was starting to get really upset when I heard a whimpering in my room, under the quilt rack. I saw her two little pink Crocs twitching and called to David. That's when Zi told me, between sleepy sobs, that she'd been looking for me and couldn't find me.

"You thought I was under the quilt rack?"

"Yeeesssss," she wailed.

"But I can't fit under the quilt rack."

"I knooooooow!"

There's no logic with little people.

So, after he got home, Friend Husband told me that, as a special gift (birthday? thank you for watching the twins for a week?) that he was going to give me Monday off. Hot diggety! I pondered what to do but couldn't come up with anything exciting, so I just went to bed.

Monday morning dawned happily (it's always a happy day when I can go off on my adventures) and the only thing I'd come up with was having lunch with Friend Gina. I thought, "Oh! I can go work in the garden! Or get the house cleaned!" But then I thought that it was very sad that I couldn't come up with something more interesting to do when I was child-free, aside from stuff I already do.

As I was pondering what to do, I did go out into the garden to pick peas. I thought I had a lot more of them than I did. I never can get enough of those sugar snap peas or snow peas. I wonder if I'd have to plant a whole patch to have enough at one time for a meal. I also noticed that I'd missed picking some of the catnip on Saturday so I snipped that and ended up in my new herb garden and noticed that the mint needed pinching back as well, so I did that.

The mint is a new transplant from the other side of the house and I am just so tickled that it is doing so well. I love mint. I know it's basically an invasive weed but I even like that about it. Number one, I can pick as much of it as I want and chances are, it won't affect the plant. Number two, it's hard for me to kill. I like that about my plants. Anyway, I knew that if the transplants needed pinching, the main bed also needed it so I went over there and pinched them back. I ended up with a lot of mint.

I also noticed that the lemon balm needed some severe attention but I so didn't have the time for that...because it was time to make bread dough and then to have lunch with Friend Gina. I got a new challah recipe from a blog I read and since she bragged about it so very much, I wanted to make it.

She was right, it was wonderful. You should make some yourself.

Anyway, I had a lovely lunch with Friend Gina then took myself to Home Depot and Meijer to see if I could find some cheap petunias. I've had no luck finding cheap petunias for the past couple of seasons. I needed to fill my hanging baskets and a couple of cement planters I trash-picked earlier in the spring. I found a few things that would suit and hauled it all home to unload. I brought Friend Husband's computer in from the car for him and grabbed a couple of glasses of Indian soda, then told FH I was off again.

"Where are you going?"

"To the library."

"But we already went today."

"Yes, you did, but I did not."

"But why do you want to go there?"

"Because it's quiet and none of the children there are my responsibility."

"Oh. Ok, have a good time!"

I did. I did a lesson in my Beth Moore study, in which I'm dreadfully behind, then promptly fell asleep (yeah, I think I need to exercise more so I'm not napping through the day). I woke after a short power nap and decided against knitting in favor of searching the stacks for new (and old) books that I wanted to read. After I did that and read a few magazines, I figured it was time to head back to the hacienda.

We ended up having a nice little dinner and I watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban with Doug and whichever of the children were in there at one time or another. This is a noteworthy event as I am generally not one to watch videos, but I had just finished the book so it sounded interesting to watch. And it was.

While watching that, I was also finishing up the challah, which came out of the oven 3 hours after dinner (oops). It was every bit as good as Ahava said. We snarfed down one loaf last night and another for breakfast this morning. Yummers.

So now it's back to the dailies: laundry, cooking, cleaning, teaching. I do feel refreshed from yesterday...I hope it sticks with me. I did notice something interesting while Friend Husband was gone. When he was gone, I was a lot more mellow about everything, including the twins, than when he's here. Now, I didn't get anything done either but I did notice that when they came back, I felt like I had to be doing a million things at once and producing. It's a weird and unfortunate phenomenon. I need to figure out a way to get things done but still be mellow. I wonder if it's at all possible.

Well, I'm off...have a super Monday er Tuesday!