Good news for clumsy people everywhere

Where have I been, and where is my brain? Firstly, celebrating the great good news that the 5 second rule for eating food off the floor is indeed valid. H is clumsy, given her lack of right sided motor skills, but then again, C and I drop our fair share of food on the floor. When both kids were still at Kids Kampus, I agreed with the 5 second rule wholeheartedly since my blessed daycare seemed to mop the floors once an hour or so. Since I was often there I was in the know about their cleaning efforts, as I came at random times to either meet an Early Intervention caseworker or to pickup and return my child. My house, though, has rarely been cleaned as frequently. OK, never. Whatever. And now, thanks to PTSD (thank you MCADD and Lord Honey, not) my house is never clean enough that I would think eating off my floors a great idea. So news reports this week of a study testing the five second rule and finding it valid were welcome here. Check NPR or Google it, the news is in, picking up food quickly really does make it safer.  Hooray for us! H has absolutely no fear of eating food she drops, and since we became dog free a couple years ago when Sophie went to Dog  Heaven, I stopped being quite so worried about what the floor might harbor that could sicken or kill a person who might eat the odd unwrapped chocolate or piece of cheese that dropped. Let's skip right over the deer poo in my yard, literally and figuratively, OK? Like in the Lego movie, Everything is Awesome! We can retrieve each Samoa and jelly bean and stuff it in, provided we are quick about it. Is it wrong to feel so happy about being slovenly and clumsy? I say no. In my never ending quest for affirming optimism, I say ... Yay!

Secondly, I have been internet sleuthing literacy and Common Core and related stuff, not because my kids are failing, but because the homework they get just makes me ... wonder.

Thirdly, the time just gets away from me. When I ask aloud where the time goes, C generally says that an old man takes it and almost never gives it back. I think this goes back to me telling her something random about Father Time, and maybe her seeing weirdly drawn cartoons of the new year as a baby and such. Lawyers sometimes file a Motion to Enlarge Time, which I have always wanted to file but I could never figure out on whom I might serve the motion. Maybe later this week . . .

Time. Marching on. Thank all that is holy.

By golly, is that the time?  Time to sit down and consume all my remaining outlandishly overpriced and calorically overdense foods before reentry into reality tomorrow morning?  Yes, it is time, apparently, since I sat down to blog with a crusty roll (less crusty than a few days ago) the last wad of pâté (I am so hoping Blogger can read pâté as pâté and not pate because, ooooh, ICK!) small slices of dilled Havarti, half a cheese danish and a chocolate caramel nut thingie (name of which escapes me but this goody will NOT escape me).  And an eggnog with rum, natch.  Sadly, this year I couldn't even keep up with my previously set standards for eggnog consumption because this year I was too busy to drink.  Yes, strange but true, we haven't restocked our eggnog from Costco for three weeks, and that is not like us.  Over the past few weeks I have countless times found myself failing to urinate when the urge occurred, only to realize that hours have passed before I finally decided I could pull that off.  Now you may hate me for this, and I do apologize, but I lost four pounds in December.  Before you throw something heavy at my post, do remember I am actually overweight, and fair is fair - someone has to lose pounds in any social circle because the number of pounds compounded between any group of people is a constant, shifting back and forth between the folk according to a fairly complex mathematical statement that if I revealed, you'd have to kill me, so my lips are sealed.  Will you feel better when I tell you that not one person set foot in my house over the holiday season?  Not one?  Not my sister, my niece, my aging parents, my bestie, my other lesser but still beloved friends, not even a neighbor (they left their shit on the doorstep and ran).   So I have to eat the food now, before the break ends, because no one else did.  I don't think people meant to ignore us, I think I only invited people who were unavailable, or so I like to think.  My bestie was in Puerto Rico, my aging parents are too decrepit to climb three stairs to my front door and so prefer we gather as a family at my sister's house, and everyone knows people with kids don't actually have friends. 

So what did we do from that point about three weeks ago until now, when I finally did three loads of laundry and put it away in the same 36 hour span rather than allowing it to mound on the window seat amongst the toys and handmade, glitter saturated Christmas decorations (glitter, as you may know, is Satan's dandruff, and remember the Satan / Santa conundrum, then add laundry and I think you'll see what I mean).   Well there was the shopping, and the wrapping, and the sickness, and the illness, and the wrapping, and the shopping, and the unwellness which delayed the shopping and the wrapping.  Anyway, the aging parents decided to go for broke and check into a nursing home and a hospital simultaneously two days after we had a child with a serious illness which requires the maintaining of a constant normal blood sugar barf her way through the night, Christmas night (bringing our percentage of children who barfed on Christmas to a respectable 50% of the four children in the household).  If it were me, and I were three years old, I'd be pretty upset to find vomit in my hair and my naked parents running around rapidly doing laundry and making me bathe in the middle of the night, but she handled it with all the grace a three year old can muster when she hears "good job, honey, you got it in the bucket!!" 

We did have fun.  We did have lovely gifts, some loud and some not, and some that brought great joy to their new owners.   We fully and finally realized just how much work my dear departed dog was doing to keep the floors clean - having now noticed that the rate of increased mopping is causing the kitchen floor tiles to buckle and rise up (the sort of uprising which leads to an all out revolution, eventually.  I know other parts of the house are planning insurgencies and I am turning a blind eye to the rebels, like many a colonialist before me).

The de rigueur photo post is coming . . . the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future are coming . . . and possibly so will I when you tell me this whole rigmarole going on repeat is at least nearly one year away. 

The one that got away, and other domestic failures

Observe, the tri-tip roast.  Notice the extra sparkles, glinting on the surface of the carefully prepared meat, perfect for a Sunday dinner?  No, those sprinkles are not a new take on an old theme (glazing) or I guess maybe they are, but not intentionally.   While this roasted at a fairly high heat, per a carefully chosen recipe from the Internet, natch, the Pyrex pan exploded.  I wish I hadn't been out shopping, as it purportedly gave out quite an unexpected BOOM when it went, which had followed a few sessions of the smoke alarms going off as the olive oil burned off the roasted root vegetables also being prepared.  Sigh.  Yes, I am that good.  I stayed away long enough to ensure my husband could get the oven cleaned up and order in pizza.  Happy Anniversary, Lord Honey!  We had actually celebrated with a date night the previous evening, so it wasn't too likely to cause marital devastation, even though we courted each other with me preparing food for him while he worked on my house for free, thus generating a perpetual expectation that I can provide a decent meal every night.  Not so, but whatevs. 

I don't have my tree.  I took last year's Christmas cards off the mantel today.  I have yet to complete the long threatened toy purge although I did at least begin.  But the middle of that project leaves things in a muddle, rather, as the 17 pieces of 17 toy sets are sorted back into a harmonious grouping of like things alike, leaving roughly 1900 pieces of toys on the floor waiting to be grouped.  I have not completed my Christmas shopping, and I have baked nary a treat for my neighbors. 

Eggnog, it's time.  Come to Mama.  Bring Captain Morgan's spiced rum, please. 

Hello my lovelies!

I owe you guys, big time.  I have been a bad, bad blogger.  A good blogger may be many things, but most importantly - she blogs.  At least she shows up and posts appealing pictures.  A few of you have kindly, as requested, sent me the post that got away (it was very big, very juicy, really outstanding in every way - just like the fish that got away . . . except I didn't see it skipping off into the sunset waving the finger) and the nice thing to do would have been to say thank you by actually putting the post back up.  But since the last time I posted I have attended many weddings (three), had work keep me in the office until after 10:30 one night last week, I have taken the girls out for fun and wholesome activities involving fresh air, live music, and food from many cultures of the world  (we had one meal with food from the cuisine of El Salvador, Thailand, Vietnam, and Sudan) and we became so unfortunately full that we had to skip the churros (Basque churros, not Mexican churros) and the baklava of Bosnia (that really and truly was unfortunate as Bosnians really do know something very special about pastry).  So I have excuses, and they are many and varied.  But you didn't come here for excuses.   Let's give give you a look at what you really came here for.

How Now, Butter Cow? Nearly Wordless Wednesday

Butter sculptures . . .



Pig racing . . .



A sea lion show, homemade fabric arts on display, funnel cake, Navajo tacos, fresh lemonade, and old style fudge and lollipops, a showing of the best of cocks and hens (poultry!!), plus a walk through the cattle barns to see Dairy cows with their "nursies" completed the outing. And a good time was had by all.

Friday haiku - Pie and Beer Day

Utah's holiday
to praise the birth of statehood
and Brigham Young's find.

Mormons celebrate
and call it Pioneer Day
I pick Pie and Beer

The real pioneers
pushed handcarts across the plains
I'll be pushing peas

In chicken pot pie
follow it with chocolate cream
and Hefeweizen

Wordless Wednesday, Cheeto style

Friday haiku - have I pleased the internet Gods?

Now I'm trying hard
to gain back Blogger's respect.
Let the movies play!

I spilled olive oil
with a touch of balsamic
from my caprese

Sandwich to touchpad
a ritual sacrifice
will it be enough?

cake a looza

Cakewrecks came to town.








We came. We saw. We ate cake. We left with a souvenir naked Mohawk carrot jockey each. And fixed our own little Claire caused wreckiness.




Experience the love at cakewrecks.com

Nuts, I say

I have to thank you all, once again, for assisting me in sorting out my madness. Thinking about what I'll write helps me enormously in the let's get it all sorted out process.

Wee Hannah has been in her crib and out of our bedroom now for eight nights, all nights in which she lived until the morning, so I am delighted. Four of those nights she slept from the time we gave her the midnight milk snack until I woke her or she woke on her own at the time we get up. So I am now officially delighted but slightly wiggy, especially when I walk past her old bassinet and see it empty, which is unnerving. At Hannah's current weight, she can now go eight hours of fasting before she should burn up all her glycogen and have a metabolic crisis. But I am paralyzed by fear: what if I sleep in? What if she is having a growth spurt and has extra caloric needs? What if a fever comes upon her and that amps her rate up but the grogginess keeps her from waking herself up as she normally would if hungry?

Imagine you are Keanu Reeves in Speed, and Dennis Hopper narrates your situation and says WHAT DO YOU DO?? WHAT DO YOU DO?? You have a sleeping baby with a weird metabolic disorder. She is sleeping. You think she should eat. What do you do? This has weighed on my mind since we brought her home from the hospital and started setting the alarm for three hour feedings. She is at the day care. A new person is in the nursery today. She doesn't understand the MCADD diagnosis. What do you do? And it colors my view of the future. She goes to school having refused to eat much because she has to do her hair. She skips lunch because that is what skinny girls do. The dinner I make disappoints her. What do you do? You want her to sleep all night without dying so you pump milk right before bed and have the bottle handy, because breast milk can sit out for a while and be served room temp when the baby squawks. Now the nutritionists and docs want her on more calories because her growth has bottomed out. What do you do?? Do you take away the food source she is familiar with and hope she takes to liver and onions?

I am quite certain I have often said "don't borrow trouble" to my friends and family when they want to worry themselves into a state. I've said it to myself. I've said it many times since we had Hannah. I'm not very good at following this advice.

I've now been pumping milk for her for seventeen months. I loved it when she still breastfed but she is a smart cookie and knew bottles were easier. Devastated by her choice, I nonetheless continued to make milk. I am winding down and planning to stop fairly soon, but I am loaded with guilt over my choice to stop. Loads of breast milk is not enough for a person of her age, so she is now anemic and needs supplements. Iron based formula would help out here, but if I have a personal belief that Nestle scientists can't possibly do a better job than me in making Hannah designed milk, should I really switch her over when I have months worth of milk stored in my my extra large freezer? And yet I am so excited to throw away the last remaining milk stained nursing bras, the hands free pumping bras, and get that time back in my days. I'm tired of how much it hurts to have largish sensitive body parts pulled on for hours a day. I'm ready to be done. I feel no small amount of joy in believing I've suffered the pumping to give her something Enfamil can't. And a normally developing breastfed baby would at this age be just at the low end of normal in not falling in love with food, and many toddlers are said to exist on two noodles and a kiss. We are not alone in this, we just also have CP kicking up the burn rate and MCADD telling us to have a bottle of milk handy for whenever we might slip some in. I can't really have a waffle and two strips of bacon on the bedside table for midnight snack. Well, I could, but that would be for me.

Or, perhaps, nuts.

When the turkey has a bun in the oven

Don't tell the guests until the bird is showing. There will be a pregnant pause. Someone will want a cigar and naming rights. Tu-corn-hen, anyone?



The guests will keep a watchful eye for any other surprises.



And then they will eat stuffing.

The eatin' of the beast commences soon

Let's talk about food. Roast beast! Fit for a Grinch himself to carve. Yorkshire pudding! Mashed potatoes! Gravy! Steamed vegetables with butter. Creamed spinach. Dinner at Chez Ginger. I am going to admit this right now: I will eat a bit of the crispy fat from the skin of my roast beast. Yes, I will. I am in training for trepidation day later this week. Use it or lose it, they say.