Chocolate Wallets and Fancy Chili

Alright, I hate going so long without a post. The people around me suffer greatest when I don’t post regularly, because I jabber on even more than normal.

What’s been happening? First of all, my blog has acquired a number of new followers and “likers” whom I don’t know in real life. That’s kind of cool and scary at the same time. Though, strangers are just friends we haven’t yet met, isn’t that what they say? Course, strangers sometimes stalk and murder us too, but I’m sure that’s over-thinking it.

Let’s talk about why I haven’t been on the computer writing blog posts:

Remember when I told you our desktop computer wouldn’t turn on after the power went out? Well that was a whole thing where my incredibly computer savvy husband had to order a part and fix it, and as a result “the big computer”, as I call it, was out of service. I can blog from the WordPress app on my phone, but really, it’s a beating to work from such a small screen. With the recent death of our laptop, that leaves only the tablet. I try only to use the tablet sporadically because it hates my guts. We do not work well together, and it almost never does what I want it to. I fat-finger everything; it’s like I’m wearing oven mitts. I tried to post from the tablet once before, and when I hit “Publish”, it acted like I hit “Move to Trash”. I also learned the hard way not to try to use Facebook’s “poke” feature on the tablet (my husband and I have a fierce and long-standing Facebook poke war). Things can get awkward real fast when you accidentally poke the wrong person. Trust me.

So anyway, I haven’t really had the means to post for a couple of weeks. Here are some other reasons I’ve been away:

Life’s been busy, ok? It’s been a busy month. Plus the kids were sick. Don’t you hate how people with young kids blame everything on their kids being sick? Like at work, it’s a total get-out-of-jail-free card. Man that used to irritate me before I had kids.

A fair amount of any computer time I do get is devoted to the Etsy shop my mom and I have launched, and reading about how to operate an Etsy shop. I’m not that good at it yet.

My 15-month old has a new penchant for throwing important items away, and a good part of my life is spent cleaning trash remnants off of stuff. We are 99.3% sure she tossed the old iPhone my son uses for games sometime this summer, which was the last time any of us can remember seeing it. Last week she secretly threw away her Daddy’s wallet shortly before I decided to dump a container of old baking cocoa into the trash can. I’ve had that cocoa in the back of my pantry for the last 5 years and I chose that moment to decide to pitch it. Coincidence, Irony, or Murphy’s Law?

Chocolate Wallet

I still like to set aside time to play Draw Something.  By the way, what’s a “Zacefron”? Is he from Transformers?

Also, we’re working on getting our wills drafted. It’s a huge bummer and forces me to think about a bunch of stuff that I’d prefer not to dwell on. So that’s a downer. Looking forward to getting them done and filed away.

Anyway, that’s what’s up. Also, I made Trisha Yearwood’s Fancy Chili for dinner last night. I love her, largely because she’s married to Garth Brooks, whom I adore. I figure if I make Trisha’s chili and serve it to my family, then we are all one Kevin Bacon step closer to Garth. It was good! I couldn’t decide whether to serve it over rice or cornbread, so I made both. For the record, we all agreed we preferred the cornbread.

Fancy Chili

a baddish kind of day

Earlier this week I had kind of a bad day from start to finish. Maybe it was that post I did about how I really don’t have “bad days” since I get to spend them with my kids. Is that Murphy’s Law?
My husband and I have a game called “Murphy’s Law, Irony, or Coincidence” in which we evaluate scenarios and decide which label fits best. Some are easy, but others have gotten us into some pretty heavy debates. This game is rivaled only by our people-watching favorite “Freak or Geek?”
Anyway, so I had a bad day. It started that morning when I forgot to bring my water to the gym. I powered through because I am NOT purchasing another bottle of water for $3 from their vending machine.
Came home and threw a load of dirty diapers in the wash. Now, I can’t remember if I put this in my Cloth Diaper post or not, but it’s common knowledge within the cloth diapering community that as soon as you get your diapers most of the way through the wash process, your baby WILL have the largest, messiest poo they’ve had in days (Murphy’s Law, Irony, or Coincidence?). Only a slightly less well known adage is “15 minutes after you start a load of dirty diapers, your electricity will go out for 5 hours”. I managed to fulfill both that day. So with my baby’s diapers sitting in my washer like the world’s grossest stew, I faced no lights, no air, and that ultimate of fears – what if my phone dies and I have no way to charge it!?!?

There was this whole thing in there before I figured out it was a neighborhood outage, where I decided to flip the main switch on the fuse box to see if it was tripped or whatever. I ended up flipping it off and not being able to get it back on again. So for about 30 minutes we had double negative no electricity. Texting my husband about this, he offered to come home and help, but there was no way I was gonna let him leave work, drive home, waltz over, flip that switch in two seconds, then look at me like “really?”
I eventually had to manually lift the garage door so I could see, put on both my garden gloves, and push that switch with all my might. There are so few moments in life when you accomplish something that truly makes you feel powerful. After that switch slid into the ON position, I pranced back in the house thinking I got this.
Thankfully the children engaged in nap scenario #3, where they both sleep at the same time. After they woke up we spent the rest of the black-out in my daughter’s room with the window open, so they never really knew what was going on.

The next batch of fun came at about 5pm, when the power finally came back on. I breathed a sigh of relief as the washer full of diapers resumed where it had left off. I immediately started cooking dinner.
Yes, I was going too quickly. Yes, was using my mandolin cutter without the finger guard. Yes, I have a tendency toward injury in the kitchen. I sliced my thumb, bled profusely, and rendered my right hand completely useless for the immediate future. It wasn’t an option to call my husband and cry for help. Not after conquering the fuse box. And besides, I had already used the “come home now, and bring food…I’m cut!” plea when I julienned my index finger two weeks ago.
It took me forever, but I finished cooking one-handed. And no I didn’t bleed in the food, if that’s what you’re thinking.

Four days later we’re still suffering the effects from that day. For some reason, our desktop computer never turned back on after the outage. It currently works about as well as a painted cinder block. Also our tablet wouldn’t connect to our Wi-Fi for days. All the bookmarks on my iPhone got mysteriously erased, reappeared, and disappeared again. Weird, right?

The Hardest Job in the World?

I’m a stay-at-home mom, by the way.  My primary job responsibilities are to keep my children alive, acquire and serve food, and generally try to make sure my house doesn’t end up on Hoarders.

I’ve never done anything like this before. Ever since I was 15 years old I’ve been an employee who reported to a boss. I know you’re wondering, so I’ll tell you that my first real job was sloshing mashed potatoes at Kenny Rogers Roasters. I saved enough to purchase a 1984 Dodge Omni and then quit (My parents made me go apologize to my boss and ask for my job back). I’ve had lots of jobs over the years. I’ve been a hostess, a waitress, a cashier, a receptionist, a Disney Cast Member, a telephone survey girl, a perfume seller, and 5 different kinds of customer service coordinator. I once had a job in which my title could only have been described as “envelope un-stuffer”. I’ve been embarrassingly underpaid. I’ve been the coffee runner far more than I’ve been the project manager. I’ve brought work home, I’ve stressed out, I’ve cried over cruel bosses.

But no, I’ve never done anything like this before.

People say being a stay-at-home mom is the hardest job there is. True, it’s not easy by any stretch. It’s certainly not popping kettle corn on the couch all day (not if you’re doing it right, anyway). Most days I don’t sit down until dinner is on the table. Are there frustrations and stresses in my day? Oh yea. But is it hard? Maybe it’s hard like when you’re on vacation at the beach and your sandal breaks. You’re still on vacation, man. You know what the real hardest job is? Talk to a mom who works outside of her home. Ask her if she feels like she’s doing a bang up job on either front.

No matter what my frustrations are at the end of the day, I’ve still gotten to spend it with my children. The honor of that is not lost on me.

Anyway, my children are currently on totally opposite nap schedules.

This has happened very slowly and without my consent. Not even one minute of overlap. On a good day it goes something like this:

1 year old, morning nap, 10:30 – 12:00

4 year old, nap, 1:00-3:29

1 year old, afternoon nap, 3:30-5:00

I think like this schedule most because I get to spend one-on-one time with each child while the other is napping, and each child allows me to accomplish different tasks. My 4 year old will sit still and color long enough to allow me to mop the kitchen floor, where my 1 year old would turn the entire kitchen into a Swiffer slip and slide in about 3 minutes. On the flip side, my 1 year old is perfectly content to sit in the office with me while I do computer stuff, but my 4 year old starts throwing a fit if I spend more than 15 consecutive minutes in the office.

Maybe once a month I’m granted a special freebie day that goes like this:

1 year old misses morning nap, and I try to hold her off until after lunch. She starts falling asleep in her green beans so I move her to her crib at 1:00.

4 year old falls asleep at 1:03

Both children sleep until 4 year old wakes up at 3:29 and begins shout-singing Love Shack throughout the house (not being completely sure of the lyrics to the song, what he actually sings is “Leg Shop, baby, Leeeeg Shop…”), which in turn wakes up the 1 year old.

While these days are nice for me because I get 2.5 uninterrupted hours to myself in the middle of the day, we all pay dearly around dinnertime when the 1 year old starts to get mean-sleepy.

Then there’s the occasional nightmare day where nobody naps. These are usually days in which I’m texting my husband at 4PM wondering if he could maybe please just go ahead and come home now because I’m seriously about to lock myself in the basement to hide from these monster children. Actually I wouldn’t really do that, mostly because we don’t have a basement. But seriously, those days are bad.

But then bedtime comes and my angels go to sleep, and again none of it seems so bad anymore. Anyway, if all those ladies in the grocery store lines are right, this part goes by in the blink of an eye and I’ll long for it all back. Not so hard to believe at all.