Sunday, September 30, 2007

A sad little confession


My dad makes better cornbread than me. There I said it. Dad's is moist and yummy in all its just-rightness. Mine is always too dry and crumbly and lacking in flavor.

What a sad thing for a daughter to admit, that her dad can cook something better than she can. Unless of course Anthony Bourdin or Emeril Lagasse is your father.



PS. That is not my cornbread pic. I got it from some Wikipedia page.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Don't you just hate it

I was wiped out yesterday. Wiped. Out. Told the manwhore we were eating out because I wasn't cooking. I fully intended to order some booze with my meal, and I was so tired I forgot. Who the hell forgets booze?

So, I thought I would just fall into bed and be out like a light. I did fall into bed. And then I laid there. And laid there. And. Laid. There. Then I finally dozed off, and the buddy boy started crying. Manwhore was dead to the world, so off I went to settle the buddy back down. Crawled back to bed to lay there for a long time again before finally drifting off.

Then buddy boy climbed in bed with us about 5:30am and never went back to sleep. I managed to doze until about 6:30, and then I was up.

I skipped my walk today, and I'm just all around tired on whiny. I am going to sit on my chair-shaped ass today. Yay me!

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

I'm tired of being hot!

Its too hot. It is 95F here. That is too hot. I am ready for cool weather. That is all.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Dammit, I'm tired of being hot

I think that is my theme lately. I'm ready for fall, for the cooler weather, since it is technically fall now.

Saturday was the manwhore's company picnic. This year it was at the zoo, so we got in the zoo for free and got tokens for the carousel. It was so hot that I told the manwhore that we would see the elephants and giraffes and then stay in the historic farm, because it is all in the shade (These two areas are next to each other. It is like a half mile walk to get to the next nearest animal.The Nashville Zoo is lovely, for animals. It is big and spread out and too much walking for little kids.) It worked out well because they were having a Harvest Days festival in the historic farm. There were lots of crafty things for the kids to do. Candlemaking, churning butter, an old style washboard, painting "quilt squares" and all sorts of stuff. It was fun and a bit educational, too.

I got to talking to one of the women doing needlecrafts and apparently I know enough about them that she thought I was working the festival, too. You would think the lack of costume would have clued her in. In a way, it is a sad commentary, because I really don't know that much about needlecrafts. I am only an expert at crochet. Despite the revival of interest in knitting, I think too many other skills are falling by the wayside. Tatting is one that very few people seem to do these days. And the lady I was talking to was making a bed rug (pre-quilting era bed covering) and that is another fading art.

I am glad there are groups of people with enough interest in these things to be involved in reenactment or even just in preserving history arts and sciences.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Ramblings about a wanna be writer

My house is trashed, and I haven't even written that much this week. Not in a OMG somebody call CPS trashed sense. Just in a piles of laundry to do, haven't washed sheets in way too long, toys in the floor, need to run the vacuum sense. And, I haven't tidied my room if forever.

Oddly enough, having kids in school sometimes results in more running around. Trips to the grocery store and Target are so much easier without them underfoot. And so is writing. So, do I run errands, clean my house or try to write? I have not yet achieved balance in these three areas.


Also, I ran across something in an MSN romance writing tips group that gave a breakdown of the publishers that handle romance and the average first advance, subsequent advance, etc. There are a good handful that pretty much give you squat, e-publishers mostly. The Harlequin lines run in the $5000 range. Avon and a couple of other publishers run more like $13,000 for a first advance. *swoons* I want to be published by Avon!* There was even one that had first advances averaging something like $50,000 but it had a sample size of only about 5 or 6 authors, so who knows who and what they were.





*I realize that this info came from the internets and could totally be the workings of some freak, but a girl can dream, can't she?

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

If you can't marry a man with money,

marry one with Mr. Fix-it skills. Otherwise, you will find yourself having to do all the little things like fixing leaky faucets and replacing shower heads and stripping wallpaper and all that fun stuff.

I love my manwhore, truly, madly, deeply I do, but I do wish he had a smidgen of handyman skills. Just a few. Or, I wish that he could cook.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Thank you so much for telling me the shower was broken.

What a considerate manwhore I have. He broke the showerhead, and instead of telling me that he broke it and just shoved it back up there, he just shoved it back up there. I got a face full of water and a showerhead flying at my face this morning when I went to adjust the thing.

And what does the manwhore say when I call him to tell him about it? Oh just stick it back up there. No, no I will not. I will go and buy a new one and most likely install said new one, too.

Friday, September 14, 2007

The force of gravity exerted by a freshly mopped floor.

There is something about mopping a floor. Running a mop over a floor seems to enact a subtle change in the force of gravity. It can't be measured and it can't be felt my mere humans. In fact, witnesses claim that it even seems to fluctuate.
But, there is no denying that the force of gravity exerted by a freshly mopped floor is not the same as it was before it was mopped. You could go without mopping for days and days, leaving spots and splatters, or wiping them up with a sponge and would be unable to observe this phenomenon.

But, as soon as you pull out the mop and clean from one side of the floor to the other, scrubbing all the dirt off, the gravity field changes. Children sitting at the table with food and drinks will suddenly find themselves dropping utensils full of food. Messy bites of food will leap off of forks before they make it to mouths and splatter on the floor. Cups full of sticky lemonade or chocolate milk will be pulled from little hands to land with a splash to spreads sticky liquids all under the table. Even sippy cups with a lid are not immune. Just this morning I watched as the lid was pulled from a sippy cup upturned in mid-drink, and orange juice spilled down the front of my child, down the stool, on the table, but mostly all over the floor. All because I had mopped the floor after supper last night.


Mopping the floor pulls the ice cream right out of an ice cream sandwich and straight to the floor. Sometimes it takes some of the cookie part, too. I have seen with my own eyes that the pull of gravity from a clean floor will cause popsicles to break in half, leaving a sticky puddle of melted goo to be cleaned up.

Strangely, this phenomenon can be stopped, or at least greatly reduced by allowing the floor to become sufficiently dirty. If I make a mess cooking supper and leave a few splatters on the floor to be cleaned up after supper, like magic, no one will spill their drink at dinner. No child will drop his or her fork full of spaghetti. No sippy cups will lose their tops. Ice cream will not drip from its sandwich and popsicles will not break before being consumed.

It doesn't take much. Just a few little splatters, maybe even a dropped bit of tomato or onion. A drift of lettuce that escaped from a salad. That's enough to break the spell on the floor and the force of gravity will return to normal. Even sweeping or wiping up the mess with a cloth doesn't restore the spell. All will be well.

That is, until the mop is pulled out once more, and pushed across the floor, cleaning the dirt from all the corners and leaving the floor shiny clean in its wake. Only then will the force of gravity once more begin to fluctuate and once again forks and cups will fall, popsicles will snap in two until enough dirt has accumulated on the floor to break the spell yet again.

This I truly believe.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

A great day in the Piece household!

So, Ellie has vesicouretareal reflux, or urinary reflux. Her pee flows back up towards her kidney on one side when she pees. She had her yearly test to see if it is improving today. There were much tears on her part, since the test involves a cath and radioactive stuff in the bladder, etc. I would probably cry, too. Hell, it makes me want to cry when she had to have these tests. But, today will probably be the last one, because the urologist told us he sees no sign of reflux in her films from today! Yay!
I was blinking back tears in the office. No more tests, no more daily antibiotics, and hopefully just one more trip to Children's Hospital to see him in 6 months. I am over the moon, and so glad that my child no longer has a "condition."

Also, we were able to walk right into the Dept of Vital Records and get the kids' birth certificates in less than 10 mins. 3 months waiting on them in the mail and calling the office to be told they aren't in the system, blah blah blah, and today the lady said it must have gotten lost in the mail. Why she couldn't have told me that over the phone, I have no clue, but now we have them, the school has copies and all it good with that.

And, on Sunday last, we dropped by J and L's house to see if they had any money for it. It was an awkward visit, (on the manwhore's and my part, they seemed oblivious) but we walked away with $150. Not much, but it is better than nothing. And, it restored some good feelings on my part.

One more and, the manwhore left his first "sample" to see if he's shooting blanks yet. Hot and heavy baby batter free loving might be in my near future.

Monday, September 10, 2007

Pissants and Fattybelle

The ants are back. The ants go in, the ants go out, the ants go marching round about.
Now, I don't mind them so much. Mostly they are just a hassle. But, I have two delicate daughters that freak the fuck out over bugs, so we have to get out the bug spray and soak the floors and all.
This time, they were after a half of a peanut butter bagel that Em must have dropped on the floor on Sat.
We've been gone since Sat. You can imagine the swarm of ants we discovered this morning in the kitchen floor.
So, the kitchen as been de-anted, at least temporarily. Who knows how long they will stay gone.

Several months ago, my parents' neighbors had a house/trailer fire. They are still living in a hotel and the burned out shell of a trailer is still sitting there. Supposedly they are waiting on the insurance people.

When they left, they went off and left their cat. Somehow she figured out that mother and dad have food and would feed her. She showed up at the door asking to be fed. So, mother and dad have a new cat.

We think she is a sweet little thing, and all she does is eat, eat, sleep, eat, sleep, sleep, have a snack, sleep, snack, nap, eat. You get the idea. She doesn't even get up to go potty. She does that when she gets put out at night. And she loves to be petted. Very sweet.

My young cousin is friends with the cat's teenager former owner, and told mother and dad the cat's name is Tinkerbell. Well, as you can imagine, all that eating and sleeping and sleeping and eating has had an effect on the cat, and I said, "She isn't a Tinkerbelle, she's a Fattybelle!" So, that's what I've been calling her, and she actually responds to Fattybelle. lol

Now, cousin K and her friend have said that Fattybelle is mean and they hate her and she scratches and stuff. When mother told me this I went WTF? "Fattybelle? That cat right there laying on the floor in a food coma?"

Because let me tell you, this cat would have to wake up long enough to be mean, and it's just not happening. When she does actually wake up, she will come up to you and ask to be petted, if she's not eating.

So, I'm thinking that maybe they weren't feeding poor Fattybelle enough and she was mean because she was hungry. I'd be mean too if I didn't get fed on a regular basis. Come to think of it, I'm a bit of a Fattybelle, myself.

Saturday, September 08, 2007

My husband is clearly not a man.

In all the consignment sale madness, we took one of the cribs to try and sell it (the other one is at my parents' house). The sale people make you put it together, which is a good idea. They can make sure all the parts and pieces are there.

So, the manwhore loads the crib up in the truck, along with some other stuff, then says to me, "Where are my tools?" Now, no self respecting man has to ask where his tools are. He should know these things at all times. But, my manwhore doesn't know where his tools are since he tends to leave them laying around when he gets done with them. So, I have to look at them laying on the dresser or whatnot until I'm sick of looking at them, and I put them up myself.

So, the tools are in the toolbox or the tool drawer and the manwhore doesn't know where they are, and I have to go and find his tools for him. Clearly, he is not a man.

Friday, September 07, 2007

Consignment sale madness

I have a love/hate relationship with consignment sales. I mean, on the one hand, who doesn't mind getting rid of old and outgrown kid clothes and toys and getting some money for them in return? On the other hand, it's a buttload of work to sort and tag stuff. And then you have to haul it to the sale and stand there while some chick goes through it all and decides if it's good enough to put in the sale. I mean, I totally understand that they have to have standards, and they did find a few stains that I had missed. But they sent back a toy because it was missing part of a sticker. I mean WTF? If they want it to look new, maybe they should buy something new.

I still have stuff to sort, too. I ran out of hangers and have some baby clothes to get gone, too. Plus, if I want to put forth the effort, I can try and de-stain the stuff they rejected.

I get to go pick up everything that didn't sell in a week. Then, I will resort and retag anything that needs it and put it in another sale a week later. There is usually one more sale in November for Xmas crap, too. yay.

But, I do usually make money, sometimes over $100 at them.

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Luciano Pavoratti

Died today at the age of 71 of pancreatic cancer. I was fortunate enough to see him in concert one time, in 2000. A fabulous tenor and a great loss to the musical world. Peace to him and to his family.

His last performance in 2006 at the Olympics in Turin:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZaufjDVYivc

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

The sound of silence

My house is strangely quiet today. The tv is off, no one is asking me for a snack. The only sound I hear is the typing of the my fingers on the keyboard. It's amazing. It's a bit disconcerting.

Today is Buddy Boy's first day of Mother's Day Out (MDO) or preschool or what ever they call it for 2 yr olds. He was totally fine. We walked right in, and he started to go downstairs where the girls went last year, and I told him "No, your class is this way," and away we went. He totally ignored the one kid that was screaming bloody murder (in what was quite clearly a tantrum, since he wasn't actually crying, just screaming) and the little girl that was sympathy crying. He had a truck, and he was set.

They have the oddest tables for the little ones. It is a big, dark brown table with seats built into it for little kids, like a group high chair. Very odd. I wish I had thought to take a picture of it. I'll have to do that at some point.

But, at the same time, a genius idea for kids that little, because that way they can make them all sit when they need to, like at lunch time.

My silence will be short lived today, though, because the manwhore called and asked me to come have lunch with him. I don't know if we will know how to act without the kids underfoot.