Why Me?

Tuesday evening I was driving home with Jonathan from Everette's parents house. I was chatting with Everette on the phone (we were doing our family bedtime ritual when Daddy is away). Jonathan had just returned the phone to me... Then all of a sudden. Out of NOWHERE! My son vomits. Everything he had eaten that day.
Everything.
I told Everette I would call him back.
Then I debated whether to pull over or keep driving. We were about half way finished with the 15 minute trip. Ultimately I decided to keep driving, because really, what was I going to do on the side of the highway in the dark. Spread it everywhere and get it all over me. That's what I would do.
Poor Jonathan was a super trooper. He made these pitiful cries every once in a while. Who could blame him. It was all over his hands.
It was only a few seconds later when the smell invaded. 
I have to say, I can handle all sorts of blood and guts. Exposed bone, etc. But I have two kryptonites: puke and large amounts of snot.They make me a little weak in the knees.
Needless to say I rolled down all the windows.
When we got home, I had to figure out the best way to remove the offender and the offended car seat.
I opted for one fell swoop. I very carefully reached around Jonathan to unlatch the cursed car seat latch system. Lifted the whole thing up and set it on the garage floor.
I took a deep breath and began to unbuckle Jonathan.  Then I looked at him, and looked at myself. How was I going to get him upstairs...
I didn't trust him to walk it. But I sure as heck didn't want to hold him!
I grabbed the towel I spread under his carseat (Best mommy idea I EVER had-- that sucker has saved me more than once... last minute carseat removal to carry an adult passenger, gasp in horror at the crumbly crud collected under the seat-- pick up corners of the towel, and flick the crud on the ground. The seat is clean and crumb free!--and you don't have to apologize profusely for the seat they are about to sit in, the floor, however, is another matter). I wrapped him up like a burrito in the towel and carried him upstairs.
Then I stripped his clothes, I thought about calling for the jaws of life to remove his shirt... since it was a t-shirt and my son has a HUGE head,  (Like Father like son) it seemed like too much to attempt. But we braved the neck hole. 
Then into the tub, where I sent up a prayer of thanks for the detachable sprayer. Jonathan played in the tub while I went down to tackle the car seat. I will spare you the details, but I will say, the next car seat I buy, I will be taking that sucker apart before I purchase. Why on earth are there deep pockets in the plastic base?! Do you know what collects down there? Puke, that's what.
I will be making sure EVERY buckle and latch comes off.

The rest of the week has been full of more bodily fluids. Jonathan woke up the next morning with a super full poopy diaper. That kid has had his quota of tubbies for the month.
On the bright side... I have been meaning to clean Jonathan's car seat for a while.
I just want to know why all this crap happens when Everette is out of town?

Pancakes!

so this most is as much for me as anyone else. Making pancakes is not as easy as it seems.I made some tonight and they were pretty amazing. So I'm gonna write
it here so I can remember later.

1 batch makes 10 medium sized pancakes.

1 1/2 cups of SELF-RISING flour (this is very important).
1 T sugar
1/4 t of salt
1t of baking powder
1/4 t baking soda

4T of cold butter
1 egg, beaten
1c buttermilk
1T vanilla

mix dry ingredients together.
cut in cold butter with pastry cutter til crumbly
add buttermilk, egg and vanilla

heat griddle and melt butter.
cook pancakes at 375

VARIATION: banana pancakes... make as above, slice banana, and pour thin layer of batter onto griddle add slices of banana and cover with more pancake batter.. make sure bananas are not exposed as they will burn and taste yucky!

If you don't have self rising flour I would suggest doubling the baking powder.

Freak Show

The circus has come to town, and they are staying at our house.
Actually it's more like a dog and pony show... without the ponies... ponies would be nice.

We are dog sitting Everette's parents dogs for a few days. And  this is how my day started.

7:15 AM the alarm went off. Actually all three alarms went off. The battery operated alarm, the radio in the bathroom, and the fail safe alarm in the next room. Unfortunately, that alarm doesn't have a snooze, and it is one of those annoying alarms that only gets louder with time.

7:25 AM (yes I said 7:25 don't judge me).I went to retrieve the sounding alarm. Brought it into bed and turned it off with PBS and milk. Yes again. don't judge me.

8:10 AM begin to rouse.  Everette and I begin to alternate trips to the bathroom. Think about old we are getting.

8:20 AM Everette's dad arrives with the dogs. A flurry of wagging tails and butt sniffing ensues.

8:40 AM We herd all the dogs upstairs and hop back into bed for some more snuggle time. We are big snugglers over here.

9 AM go downstairs with all three dogs to make breakfast. Let dogs outside and enjoy relative peace and quiet.

9:10 AM peek outside to check on dogs. Things are fine. Continue making breakfast

9:20  Go outside with jonathan in my bare feet to collect dogs. Realize two of the dogs have escaped the electric fence and have wandered into the neighboring yards and one found a petrified marshmallow to chew on. Attempt to call them.
Quickly realize the whole power balance of this dog pack is off. My dog suddenly doesn't think he has to listen to me. The others are too fascinated with all of the new smells to notice me. Not to mention that one is almost completely blind and largely deaf. However I am in my bare feet and we haven't scooped poop since August and I am not going out there. So I begin to call more loudly and more impatiently. I finally get two dogs in (along with Jonathan) and stomp my feet to get the blind one to follow the sound of my feet to the door.
Meanwhile, my dog tries to slip past me in a desperate attempt to retreive his marshmallow.
In a fit of rage I grab him by the collar and drag him into the house while he coughs and hacks from his restricted airway. While this may sound cruel-and it probably is... please believe me that this is an incredible exercise in restraint on my part.

9:30 AM Continue to herd the dogs and my son up the stairs to Everette's office in hopes to take a shower in peace. Cursing the layout of my house.
You see... my house is a figure 8 with my stairs right at the cross, which means the dogs have two other escape routes in addition to the stairs. Three if they can manage a 360 and slip past me.
At this point I am shouting both out of anger and so blind/deaf dog can hear me and stop wandering aimlessly around the house. Cursing myself for letting the situation get so totally out of control and making it worse as the dogs sense my frustration.
At one point my dog defiantly ran away from me.  which brought me to a boiling point and I am sad to say that I smacked my dog hard on his rump.
As I herd them chaotically up the stairs and down the hall to the office pounding on the wall so blind/deaf dog will follow along, I open the office door and Everette yells at me, because... he is... working....on the phone... in his office... where he works... and I am screaming like a possessed woman in the hallway.
So I turn the dogs around and take them into the bedroom.

9:40 AM With child and dogs trapped in the bedroom I turn on the shower. All along I had planned to take Jonathan in the shower with me (it had been a while people, and it wasn't going to happen that night either). Quickly began to regret this decision. Jonathan became a clingy whiny baby (imagine that... what audacity). He likes the shower, but he likes you to hold him in the water.. so much for cleaning.

10 AM I open the shower door and step on blind/deaf dog (because he didn't hear/see the door open and I was holding whiny/clingy baby).
Try to get dressed in my bedroom that has become a labyrinth of doggie beds. Remember when you were little and you used to hop around on things pretending the floor was burning hot lava? You could have a great time doing that in my bedroom.

10:20 everyone is mostly decent and mostly calm and I herd the dogs down the hallway back to Everette's office. I apologize for screaming like a wild banshee and the dogs get settled.

10:30AM  I go down to make sack lunches for the park.

11:00 AM Jonathan and I head out to the garage to load up. I open Jonathan's door for him to climb in, run in realizing I forgot something. Head back to the car, hop in, hit the auto door close, turn on the car. As I reach to put the car in reverse, I gasp as I realize I never actually buckled jonathan in. I look back and realize he isn't in his seat! I punch the auto door button and it changes directions. I turn off the car and run around to see my son halfway into the car, totally unphased.
Send up repeated prayers of thanks. buckle my son in, and head back to the drivers seat.
Stop. take a breath. try to slow my pulse and regain the strength in my knees as I reel from the prospect of both squishing my son in the door or running him over.
Realize I am WAY too stressed out mostly of my own making and I need to get a grip!

11:13 AM pull out of the drive way headed to our 11 AM play date.
welcome to the Freak Show that is my life... mostly me.
****************************************
some of you might read this and think I am being a little crazy about the dogs. And I would just like to say:
1. you are right I am and largely for no good reason--I have issues.
2. I am not a dog person.. and I am definitely not a multiple dog person.
3. Everette's parents dogs are getting along in years, and have a history of relieving themselves of... whatever, in some dark corner of your house when you aren't looking. So I am obsessed with letting them out often and keeping them in eyesight at all times.

On that note: Mary and WL if you are reading... we are ending day two and your dogs have been really good. I am starting to relax a little. and I think we'll all make it! And don't feel bad about leaving your dogs with me-- it is really mostly me being psycho, and I am sooooooooooooooooooooooooo indebted to you. I already have years of backlogged babysitting and dog-sitting hours. We are getting a system and it is working fine. I promise.

Irony

In my last post I mentioned my mom's self-acknowledged disdain for cooking. My mom has made some... interesting food for us through the years. Her biggest problem aside from the psychological pains of being in the kitchen period, is her troublesome theory, that she knows better than the recipe.  She can take a recipe and completely disregard critical ingredients. Substituting them for things like applesauce or omitting them all together
It would be impossible to list all of her concoctions, but let's do a few eh?

1. Soy ice cream--this she made for desert on Father's day. A real treat. Now we have some family that occasionally abstain from dairy products when this might be acceptable. But Father's Day was not such an occasion.
2.Sumo wrestling yeast rolls. Yeast rolls that mom has allowed to rise too long and their fat bellies lop over the side of the muffin tin.
3. cottage cheese and (insert your least favorite flavor of )jello.
4. Lasagna with tofu.
5. pudding with tofu. ( I could spend a whole day on tufu and the gross things my mom has done with it).
6. brownies made with applesauce (while I realize many of these may seem like my mother's unappreciated attempts at making us eat healthy--I assure that is not completely the case-for some reason these are what come to mind--I have issues).
7.There is only one way to eat steak in my mom's kitchen. Extra crispy.
At any moment in time you can open up my mom's fridge and find some dark, slimy something.  Pick it up in order to dump it, assuming it was something old and forgotten, and my mom will say, "wait, don't get rid of that, that is such and such. I am eating it for lunch.

There are a few things that I remember mom making really well.
1. Pizza from the Battle Ground pizza king  (hey-somebody had to place the order).
2. Ham and bean soup (even as a really young kid, I remember loving it.)
3. Pot roast. I remember my mom making killer pot roast. Eating it on Sundays after church.

So here's the irony. After posting about how I am becoming like my mom... I made a pot roast.
It was not good.
I can't really say what happened. It was some bizarre combination of over and under cooked. I followed the recipe, and it still turned out whack. Not inedible, but not melt in your mouth delicious.
So I have decided to make it my personal mission to make an awesome pot roast. Good thing I have about four down in my freezer. (you get lots of roasts when you buy a quarter of a cow).
I'll let you know how it turns out.

My mother has a hex on her.

You may have read this in my previous posts (if not.... what they heck is your problem?), and thought it was a joke. But it is not.
My mom is cursed.

Before I go any further I need to explain a couple of things.
1. I am 28 (ack!) I realized when I was 20 that I am slowly (or quickly) turning into my mother. My mom is a lot like her mom and has spent several decades denying it. I am taking a different approach. I am embracing it head on.  Shortly after I had the aforementioned epiphany, I realized that although there are lots of things that drive me batty about my mom, when it comes right down to it.. she is pretty awesome. And there are, in fact, a lot of qualities I would like to have from her. So if, in order to obtain the good, I have to take with them all the bad, I willingly succumb to the transformation, and consider myself the better for it. The other advantage to this approach, is that since I know that I already do and will continue to have them as life goes on, I believe it gives me full license to tease my mother mercilessly. And she, in good spirit, takes what she so often invites.

2. the other important fact is, one way in which we differ. My mother does not cook. I would say cannot, but I think it is more of a disdain than an ability issue. I may not be the most gourmet of chefs, but it is something I really enjoy.

My mother does however, love to make drinks.  No, not the adult kind, although more than once I found a funny tasting Sprite can laying around the kitchen counter, in my youth.  Whenever we have a family get together, mom is in charge of the drinks. She has a famous punch recipe, requested by anyone who knows her.
She loves to experiment with mixing different flavors and trying bizzare new beverages.
In fact I will end this post with her fantastic no calorie Kool-Aid recipe.

Just to keep you hanging on.

  I think this drink mixing obsession is getting a little carried away.
A few days ago, I opened my fridge after my mom had visited and found this.

That's right folks, three opened cans of soda.

Allow me to explain. They were opened, because my mom made herself a suicide (you know when you mix all the soda at the soda fountain together in your giant 789 oz cup). Only she made it in a glass at my house with canned pop.

The Coke Zero is to maintain the original coke flavor with few calories and to avoid the evil Aspartame.
The Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi is because in my mom's old age she is a little sensitive to caffeine... and lettuce (ironically, not cabbage... homegirl can eat cabbage by the bag-- love ya mom!). And finally the cherry coke, for the cherry flavor, because my ma loves cherry!

And because she probably hasn't discovered that Coca Cola makes Cherry Coke Zero too.

But I still haven't gotten to the hex.
In my mother's quest for hydration she carries her beverages with her. She has a collection of bottles and cups for her every beverage needs. She has
water bottles,

McDonalds coffee cups,

Family Express fountain drink cups.... And she likes to carry these cups... in her purse. Her problem is, she repeatedly, fails to properly seal these cups. And they spill... all the time..in her purse! All the time!!!!
Her purses smell like coffee and Soarin' Roarin' Strawberry Lemonade.

 Seriously, this is my future here. I do not make this stuff up.

This has been going on for many years, my mom has shown me important papers wrinkled with coffee stains. I myself, have been the recipient of birthday cards, checks and cold hard cash, sweet smelling and pale pink. This curse has even parlayed into the occasional soup dump. If it is liquid, it has been in the bottom of my mom's bag.

Most recently my mom and I were embarking on a great adventure. We were headed east to visit my aunt in Cleveland.                                    (sorry Nancy, I couldn't resist!)

It was just the two of us and Jonathan. I picked her up and we were headed out the door with the final load of her stuff (you would be amazed at the amount of stuff two adults and a toddler can generate). I had her bags and she had Jonathan. I watched as she stuck her Big chug into her purse.

My subconscious said "mom, is the lid on?" But I thought surely, she would have put the lid on, surely she has learned her lesson. So I kept my mouth shut. Giving her the benefit of the doubt.

She put her bag down to buckle Jonathan in the back seat. I went around to start the car. My mom picked up her purse and eased her self into her seat, as she was pulling the door closed, I heard an expletive escape her mouth. Now in my mom's defense, she rarely swears.  So I knew it must be something bad.
Then I watched as she leaned back out the door, pinched her bag closed the way you strain a pot so as not to lose the contents, tipped her purse and poured 32 ounces of Soarin' Roarin' Strawberry lemonade goodness out of her mercifully red purse onto the driveway.

At this point there was nothing to do except for both of us to erupt into hysterical laughter. Gut-busting, eye-watering, head-rearing laughter. The laughter continued for miles as my mom proceeded to empty the contents of her purse, asses the damage and pitifully blot them with paper towels. Which she tried to refuse when I first offered them.
The laughter reprised at every rest stop as my mom attepmted to sort through her pile to find money only to find it pink and wet, and finally when we reached her destination and her purse contents were sprawled out in the bedroom drying by fan.

The important lesson learned here is to never offer to carry my mom's drink in your bag. Please, I beg you.
And if this ever happens to me even once.... please someone slap me. Hard.

See you thought I forgot....
Soarin' Roarin' Strawberry No Calorie Kool-Aid
1 gallon jug
2 pckts SR Strawberry Lemonade
9 pkts Raw Stevia
3-4 pkts of Splenda
water

Heat 1 c of water in microwave and mix in all powders to dissolve. add to rest of water, taste, add splenda if necessary.
Other variations... sometimes my mom adds a little diet Hawaiian Punch or Ocean Spray cranberry juice, just to keep it interesting.
However, I must warn you to imbibe at your own risk... I am not sure if the hex is contagious!

Bow to my awesomeness!

I promise to get back to the "my mother has a Hex on her" story... but I just had to post this.

Honey,
you would be so proud.
Seriously... if there was ever a moment in your life when you should be proud of me (in addition to the time I allowed my self to be strapped to a table and in order for the doctor to bring, by force, our son into the world) this is it!

So I just embedded a video from Youtube on a previous post. No big deal. everybody does it right?
Right.
Except after I posted it I realized that the video was significantly larger than my blog column. So what did I do????
I clicked "Edit HTML", I read the code, found the line that determined the video width. and changed it and it worked.
That is right. I read computer code, and I edited it. All by myself. Everette isn't even home for backup!
Suhweet!

You may all take a moment to marvel in my awesomeness.

Seriously, I'm waiting...

just a little more.

in other news.... look at the video!

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming...

For this special announcement...
So there is this blog that I drop in on occasionally, and he is currently on a Compassion BLogging trip... which is GENIUS by the way!!!!

I have been hopping around to some of hte other blogs and found this video that seems worth sharing.... it is long but worth the watch.
You can say what you want about Compassion, but the truth is they are taking Christ where a Lot of us would not dare to go.

an amalgamation

1 a : the action or process of amalgamating : uniting b : the state of being amalgamated

 I am going to take several different completely unrelated topics and unite them in one blog post. Because I can...

First of all... Everette's grandmother is in the hospital. First first of all.... I have mentioned this before,  but since it can be confusing,  Everette has an uncle Everette. He is his mother's brother, and lives with his family in lafayette, You may remember his eldest was the hiker lost in the woods in Washington. just wanted to clarify so you know who I am referring to when I say Uncle Everette. also on that note, he has a mother Mary, a grandmother Mary, an aunt Mary Lain, which he also shares the middle name Lain with his father and one cousin. Who's with me now. Oh and his uncle Everette is John Everette which John was his father's name.  Thursday, I got a call from Everette's wife Sharon, telling me that Grandmommie was in the hostpital and she couldn't get a hold of Mary (Everette's mom)  or Uncle Everette (who was in Atlanta at the time). She told me Grandmommie had congestive heart failure. Which to me sounds really bad. Anything with the words heart and failure together sounds pretty bad. Thankfully my mom was with me when I received the call. She explained that while it was seroius, it was also pretty common and pretty treatable. So after several phone calls everybody who needed to know, knew, and I went back to waiting.  Everette's mom is in Alabama (where his grandmother's live) and she and uncle Everette are dealing with things as they come. The Doctors seem pretty hopeful.  The biggest issue is up until now, Everette's 90 year old grandmother has been living alone, and that just doesn't seem safe any more. So figuring all of those details out now will be difficult.

On another note... February is gone! Spring is coming whether it wants to or not.
We have ordered our seeds and we are setting up our makeshift greenhouse!

In other news... Jonathan drew his first unassisted circle this month.

and  I invented a new kind of pizza. It's Peanut Butter Pizza and it's delicious!

take a flatbread pita, toast it. Spread your favorite peanut butter (crunchy foor me). top with Bananas and matchstick carrots (or any other fruit veggie combo--the carrots are important because they look like cheese) and drizzle with honey!!!

and coming soon....

my mom has a hex on her. details to follow.