What a Life!

Yes, I’m back. Life has simply been moving too fast. I start to write one day, get interruppted, and then by the time I get back to what I was writing, there is a major update. And to be quite honest, life has been so crazy I haven’t even had time to read my favorite blogs…so you can well imagine that I wouldn’t have time to write either.

Some of the rather exciting things that have been taking place (just off the top of my head)…

Ben is taking baths now (previously he took showers with me)

Ben is being potty trained (well, theoretically, at least)

It took me all week to make cherry pie for Steve for Valentine’s Day…and I still haven’t gotten a chance to taste it

Did I mention that making cherry pie – it isn’t a real cherry pie if it isn’t lattice top – is a royal pain in the butt?

I’m hosting play group today. We got enough snow to half-hide the grass yesterday – the tall, couragous blades are still showing through, and it was supposed to be one degree last night (haven’t checked the temp yet this morning – quite frankly, I don’t want to know!) The house is clean except for cobwebs and the kitchen, which didn’t get cleaned yesterday after piemaking because I had to run the self-clean thing on the oven. Did I mention that cherry pies are a royal pain in the butt? Self-cleaning the oven took all afternoon, and this morning when I made my chai, I noticed the kitchen was starting to smell bad. And I’m expecting company. Perhaps the weather will keep everyone away.

Steve will make fun of me if I eat cherry pie for breakfast, but I really am wondering if it turned out okay. I drained the cherries and cooked the juice with sugar and cornstarch until it was thick, but yesterday evening when I thought it was cool enough to cut (it had been out of the oven for five hours and you would think that would be long enough), it was one big lake. So I put it in the refrigerator. I know I forgot to put the almond flarvoring in it. Something about being preoccupied with having to do a lattice top crust, I think. I told Steve if cherry pies didn’t have to be lattice top, he would get them more often. Cherry pie is his favorite, by the way.

But I might have some cherry pie for breakfast anyway. I can eat cereal for supper or something.

Did you know that it takes three hours (or more) just to make the crust for a lattice top pie? First, you have to cut the butter and shortening into 1/4-inch pieces and chill them for one hour. Then you mix up the dough using a food processor, divide it into two circles, press them flat and chill them for one hour. You roll out the dough, which is hard as a rock and tears the wax paper, and then you put the bottom one in the pie plate. The top one, you cut into lattice strips which you freeze for 30 minutes so they are easier to handle. I skipped the last step, which probably wasn’t a good idea. The pie had a slow leak when I put it in the oven, so you can only imagine what it looked like after an hour.

And why it took all week? Well, the first time I cut up the fat, I was supposed to use 7 tablespoons of butter and ten tablespoons of shortening. I dedided to use eight of each since that was easier because they come in sticks with 8 tablespoons in them. Except that the shortening stick has 16 tablespoons in it so when I mixed up the dough it was really gooey. I couldn’t figure out why, so I went for a walk, and while I was walking down 143rd Street, it dawned on me that I had put twice as much shortening in as I should have.

So Tuesday I was too tired to make pie. Wednesday I used a cup of shortening instead of only 8 tablespoons. And Thursday I finally got through the recipe with no disastrous mishaps. Note the disastrous preceding mishaps. Cherry pie juice on the bottom of the oven and lattice top that is not worthy of an award are not disastrous. Nor is forgetting to put in the almond flavoring or the pie still being one big lake five hours after you take it out of the oven. When I taste it, that is when it may be ruled disastrous, but I spent too much on those darn cherries and it doesn’t look burned to me so we’re eating it.

The things I do for love…

Quick, hurry, while the internet is up, write an entry on my blog…or at least that’s what I’m trying to do. All week, we have been having connectivity issues. It’s really bad in the morning, then supposedly it gets better during the day, then in the evening it gets bad again. Steve has been going to the library to post his assignments after work, which means only more time with Ben during Happy Hour, if you know what I mean. Yeah, my child has that time of day too when he is completely sick and tired of being around me and the only thing that will possibly make him happy is to do ALL of the things he knows he is not supposed to do. Yes, ALL of them. That’s when Daddy comes home and gives Ben something new to think about…except when the internet is down and Daddy goes to the library after work instead.

So I am trying to write something while I have the chance to write, but my mind is too much in a flurry to have much to say. So please forgive me for such a short post. Perhaps I will come back later with a semi-coherent post if the internet stays up long enough. How attached we get to our modern conveniences!

Doesn’t that bread look yummy? It’s so soft and nice – see how the slices bend rather than falling like stiff boards? If you think it looks nice, you should taste it. I made it using one of the recipes in my new cookbook:

I love cooking, but it has kind of faded as a hobby. I’d tried all the recipes I was interested in from my Betty Crocker cookbook. While I could always depend on Betty Crocker recipes to come out nice, so many of them call for prepared foods sold at the grocery store. I have a friend who cooks like that – she makes cherry pie using the canned cherry pie filling but she “doctors it up” like those types of recipes tell you to do. But in my opinion, the doctoring doesn’t really help much, and I always want to at least know how to make things from scratch so I can if I want to.

Well, this new cookbook is fabulous. Not only are the recipes for normal food (one of the things I always liked about Betty Crocker), they also tell you how to make things from scratch if you wish. Yeah, things like chicken broth and homemade pasta. They also review store brands – both food and equipment – and tell you what they think is the best. So if you want to buy pasta or chicken broth, they have their favorites that they recommend.

They tell you not just how to skillet-fry meat, but how to make different sauces with the bits left in the pan after you take the meat out. That was one of the things that really frustrated me with my Christmas dinner – I wanted to serve roasted chicken, but I wanted something beyond the usual gravy to serve with it. I hunted high and low but to no avail. Steve always thinks that skillet-fried steaks are no good. Well, I followed the recipe from this cookbook the other night and they were the best steak I have ever had. That’s right – better than restaurant steak.

I made homemade pizza the other night. I usually buy the crust and the sauce and just add the toppings. Steve always complains if there is too much pizza sauce, whether we’re at home or at a restaurant. He’s happy as long as he doesn’t know it’s there. I tried their pizza sauce, which made 3 1/2 cups to be used on three 12-inch pizzas. I was sure I would have tons leftover, but I used all of it and it was the best pizza sauce we have ever had. Made from scratch…very easy.

Let’s just say I’m spending a lot of time in the kitchen again. For New Year’s Eve, I made Spicy Wings, Baked Potatoe Skins, and Chef’s Salad. Steve walked through the kitchen while I was preparing the food and said, “It smells like a restaurant in here.” That would be the ultimate compliment! We don’t eat out much, but I think we’ll be eating out even less. I mean, why pay twice as much for food when you have things that taste twice as good at home?

Since Steve got his new Notebook computer for Christmas, I’ve taken back ownership of our office. When we shared the computer, I felt his opinion on how things should be arranged should be considered. Now I’ve taken to moving things without asking.

Here is a picture of our office last summer:

The computer faced the wall – which is what Steve liked. The problem with that was that Ben would get into things while I was on the computer because I couldn’t see him. I liked the computer better on the other desk, but Steve thought there wasn’t enough space for it.

Then the desk was always cluttered because, well, I had a lot of clutter. Over the past six months I’ve gotten quite good at keeping the desk cleared off and available for use. The rule is that it has to be cleared off once a day. Sometimes it goes for two days, but generally I stick to “the rule.” You can’t cook very well in a messy kitchen with dirty dishes – I’ve found that an office is the same way. Needless to say, I’ve been getting a lot more done. But that didn’t solve the problem of Ben getting into things while I was working at the computer.

The other day, I read in someone’s blog where they had re-arranged their office and made it a place where they wanted to be rather than a place they dreaded having to spend time in. I thought about my office, and I decided I wanted the computer moved back over to the other desk so I could watch Ben while I worked.

Our office is at the end of a long room which takes up half the basement in our house. At the opposite end of the room is one of our tv’s with the loveseat Steve had before we got married. In the middle of the room is Ben’s toybox, desk and little table with chairs. Here’s the view from my desk:

As you can tell, I now should be able to monitor what Ben is doing when I’m in the office. We shouldn’t have any more problems with Steve coming home and finding things Ben got into and then asking me what I was doing when he got into that only to hear me say “I don’t know.”

Here is the picture of the entire workspace:

You can see my planner on the corner of the desk. It’s so much easier to write in it when I’m sitting at the desk (vs. sitting on the couch). There are bookshelves behind the desk where I keep my favorite inspirational books. Now when I get up at 5:00 a.m., I go straight to my office where I review my plans for the day and spend time in quiet reflection. I don’t have to run downstairs anymore to get the book I want to read on that particular day – I have them all at my fingertips.

And did I say that Ben doesn’t get into things behind my back anymore? If he even looks at the bookshelves, I see it, and I stop him before he starts taking books off the shelves and “reading” them as toddlers like to do. I think my books are relieved too.

I’m thinking some of the data entry I need to do for my business won’t be so miserable now that I can watch tv while working at the computer. Taxes are going to be a breeze. I’m just so in love with my new office! [It’s okay – you can laugh if you want…]

Ben is funny when he wakes up in the morning. If you go in to get him as soon as you hear him, he is grumpy because you went in too quickly and he didn’t have time to “wake up.” But if you give him too much time to “wake up,” he is grumpy because you didn’t come in and get him soon enough.

He’s 2 1/2 now, and I’ve simply gotten tired of this routine. We bought the mattress for the crib at a garage sale and it was sold with a toddler bed, which was taking up space in the closet. I’ve been threatening to assemble it in hopes that since he could get himself out of bed, we would solve our morning routine problem. But I just hadn’t gotten around to it…

Last week, I decided it was time. I got the frame out and assembled it. I moved the mattress from the crib over to the toddler bed. Then I explain to Ben that this was his new bed. Here he is, checking it out:

They have a very clear warning on the bed frame that children should not be allowed to jump on the bed. Well, a few moments after the blissful checking-it-out process pictured above began, Ben decided that he was very excited to have a new bed. And what do you do when you’re a toddler and you’re excited? You jump up and down…on your new bed. Gracious!

When he is bad, we always send him to his room and explain to him that he can come out when he is ready to be cheerful (aka not crying) and [fill in whatever he was supposed to be doing, like listening to Mommy and playing with his cars on the floor and not the walls]. It works very well…except when the naughtiness is happening in the room to which he is sent. Not good.

After the initial exercise, though, he stopped jumping on the bed and we haven’t had any trouble since. We also haven’t had any trouble putting him to bed.

But in the morning when he gets up, I’m not sure if he has quite figured out yet that he can get himself up and come find me when he’s ready to get up. Seriously. He will literally spend an hour lying on his bed singing when he wakes up. If I ever left him in bed that long in his crib, I paid for it by having to deal with a very grumpy child.

The first morning, I heard the singing move so I went up to investigate and he was on his hands and knees in front of the Christmas tree, singing, of course. He saw me and immediately went crawling back to his bed where he stayed and sang for another half hour. He’s had the new bed for about a week now, and he never gets up until I come up and open up his door and peek in, even though the door is set so he can open it and come down and find me whenever he wants. I simply do not understand it.

Here is a picture of the crib now without a mattress. It doesn’t look too bad because I made a skirt for it to coordinate with the curtains before he was born. Just the same, it is rather empty and lonely.

Yes, Christmas is over, and we got some really nice gifts.

A quick disclaimer: we appreciated all of our gifts, and just because something you gave us isn’t mentioned on this list doesn’t mean we didn’t like it.

Steve got a nice Christmas bonus from work, which we used part of to buy him a notebook computer. We talked about getting a notebook and sharing it, but he hates having to ask me to get off the computer when he wants to study…so the new computer will be just for him and I will continue to use the old one. I agreed to that arrangement with just one request: could I have a new chair at the desk?

Here is a picture of our desk with the old chair:

Steve said something about that chair being from the kitchen table his parents had when he was growing up. We have two chairs like that. The little piece at the bottom of the leg on that one kept falling off, and the other one has some kind of screw in the seat that came up to far and pokes you when you sit on it. Incidentally, we also have two chairs left from the table my parents had when I was growing up. They are equally as ugly and have their problems, but I won’t post a picture of them here too because I might exceed my whining limit for the day.

So here is the new desk chair:

The floor mat is new too, even though you also see it in the picture of the old desk chair. In the other picture, you can see the chair, and that’s all that matter – I didn’t want to go to the trouble of removing the floor mat just for the picture – sorry.

But isn’t my new chair nice?

Steve likes desk chairs with arms, but as a mother who spent many hours nursing her baby and surfing the web, I will tell you that a chair without arms is much easier to nurse in than a chair with arms. Since I am the one using the old computer, we bought a chair without arms.

Moving on now…

We opened gifts for just our family on Christmas Eve. We really haven’t had much trouble with Ben wanting to get into the gifts. Perhaps that was because he didn’t really know what they were or, more importantly, that at some point we were going to unwrap them. So when it came time to unwrap them, we’d give him a gift and tell him to unwrap it and he’d just look at us funny, like “Why did you give me this?”

Eventually, he started to get into it a little more. But, we must confess that we were glad we hadn’t wrapped many gifts for him.

The gift he was unwrapping there was a little 1940’s F-150 pickup I found at Kohl’s. The other gift he unwrapped that evening was a set of storybooks which Daddy read him right before he went to bed.

I made Steve Fuzzyfeet. Of course, they were huge because they hadn’t been felted yet, but he tried them on anyway just to see if they fit.

He also liked the sweater I made him, though the sleeves were definitely too long. I was going to take the extra off the end and just re-do the ribbing, but the sleeves are actually bigger around that I would like so I’m thinking of taking another approach, though I do not yet know what that approach will be. It may have something to do with taking the sleeve off the sweater and frogging (knitting term for ripping out stitches…rip-it, rip-it) down to where I want the sleeve to hit the armpit and then re-knitting the sleeve cap. We shall see…

I was going to put the hybrid mittens in his stocking on Christmas morning, but I decided that I was too anxious to see if they fit so I gave them to him Christmas Eve as well. They fit, and he really likes them.

Sorry…no pictures of the sweater or the gloves. I was to worried about whether they’d fit to think to take a picture, and I hate to bother Steve now and ask him to model them just so I can have a picture. My apologies…

Steve gave me a red Nebraska shirt so I have something to wear when we go to games – can you believe I have lived here five years and I haven’t had a Nebraska shirt? Oh my! Then he gave me a roasting pan with a V-rack like I wanted.

The funny thing was, I am the one who keeps track of our finances, and I go online to reconcile our checkbook more than once a week. Just a silly little habit of mine… Anyway. But that means that I saw how much money he spent and where he spent it. Well, he got the shirt at the mall at a store named Steve & Barry’s which I could have sworn was a restaurant but actually sells shirts for various sports teams. The the roasting pan he got at Linens and Things for a mere $5-something – I had no idea they sold pans, and obviously he got a good deal on it because what can you buy for just $5-something? And the rack for the roasting pan he got at this store called “Habitat” which I had never heard of, but I envisioned some little waterfall deal to set on display in the living room from a store with a name like that. So yes, he surprised me even though I saw how much he spent and where he spent it. And I was very happy with my gifts.

Here is a picture of my roasting pan along with the remnants of the Shoefly Pie I made for Christmas dinner, the pie server I treated myself to when I bought a gift for someone else at Wiliams and Sonoma, and the butter dish I didn’t realize I had until I decided to go through our wedding presents to see if I had gotten any pretty dishes I could use to serve Christmas dinner. You can also see my new Tupperware canisters that I got when we were in Oklahoma in the background – the large canister holds a whole 5 lb. bag of flour, the third largest one holds an entire 4 lb bag of sugar – that’s right, folks, no partial bags of flour and sugar taking up valuable real estate in the pantry anymore. This picture, of course, was taken today.

And that’s all for now. This entry is long enough. I wouldn’t want to tire my happy readers. More about Christmas Day later.