Clink. Cough. Chomp. Slurp.

I don't know why. Maybe it's the way I was raised. But noises at the dinner table really bother me.

I seem to be the table warden of the family, telling the kids to

-take reasonable bites
-don't wipe your hands on your clothes
-excuse yourself to blow your nose
-don't pound your plate with a knife or fork
-don't slurp your drink
-take one bite of your food and then put the rest down (like with grilled cheese) instead of sitting there and picking bites off and playing with it
-say please instead of reaching across people and the table for something
-no singing
-no drawing
-no reading
-no tv
-no games
-no yelling
-don't spill....

Gosh, sounds like dinner at my place isn't fun.

The one thing that gets on Man's nerves is elbows on the table. And that's the one thing I'm always getting caught at. I guess it's only fair for me to get caught at something.

Not eating as a family is by far the exception and usually happens if a parent is sick or I'm making surprise dinner -- which means that even I'm surprised to find what I come up with that night. (this dinner is more common toward the end of the month. you'd be amazed what you can come up with involving a single chicken thigh, 3 different bags of frozen veggies with only 1/2 cup left in each, a handful of cheese, 4 different kinds of pasta, and your last cans of mushrooms and tomato paste) And yet we manage to struggle with some appalling prandial atrocities.

Oh well. At least they're statistically less likely to do drugs when they get older, right? Who cares about a slurp in the face of them odds?

Would you rather have it all at once?

I don't know if you can tell in this pic, but this poor child has the flu and pink eye. It started with Pebbles more than two weeks ago, moved on to the older kids, then me and Frieda, then Man, and now pink eye is doing reverse rounds back through the family. Would you rahter have everyone have all of it all at once, or spaced out like this over an entire month?

A Tagger

A: So, your birthday is coming up.
T: Yeah, that's ok.
A: What do you want for your birthday meals?
T: Macaroni and cheese.
A: Really? You can have anything you want and you want macaroni and cheese?
T: Yep, for lunch.
A: Ok, what do you want for dinner?
T: Leftovers.
A: [stunned] Really? Like what?
T: Do we have any leftover hoisin chicken?
A: No, but do you want me to make you new hoisin chicken?
T: No, what leftovers do we have?
A: Um, beans from soft taco night, maybe some rice... Are you sure you don't want pizza?
T: Oh, alright. That'd be ok.

And thus is begins. I don't know a single man who is easy to shop for and now my little stinker won't hardly give me any clues about his birthday meals.

Pebbles moment

Sometimes when the kids are taking their dear precious time walking down the hallway I'll walk behind them, lightly kicking their rear ends. Yes, annoying for sure but it gets the job done without me having to yell at them.

Anyway, the older ones will sometimes say "hey! stop kicking my butt!" (I should note that I'm the crude spouse. Many is the time I've heard a little chipmunk voice say "oh, cwap". It's all my fault. Man never even says things like "oh my goodness". His language is pure, and no he didn't ask me to explain this to you all. I'm just proud of him.)

Then there's Pebbles. When we change her diaper she likes to find her "butt-en-en", which is her version of "belly button."

So, imagine my surprise when I hear a little chipmunk yell out one day "dop kidding my butt-en-en!"

-sigh- I love baby talk.

A Tagger

We were watching Enchanted yesterday. There's one part where the wicked queen uses much light, evil incantations, and hand waving to open an elevator door.

T: Doesn't she know that she could have just pushed the button?

lol I'll make a practical young person out of him yet.

Count down counters

Such an interesting thing, count down counters. What's the point of them? I used to think about the relief I'd feel when a certain phase of my life would be over. In high school, that relief was real, relevant, and guaranteed -- each count down to Christmas break, summer break, end of semester and my time with a disliked teacher, and later on the countdown to graduation.

The thing is, as I've moved through life I've found that few count downs tell the truth. A count down to a due date for pregnancy is a joke, sometimes even if you're getting a c-section. I've managed to fudge every single due date I've had, even the planned ones. Then we had count downs to when Man would graduate college. None of them came to fruition. We've had countdowns to when we'd be moving only to have the date moved, sometimes at the last minute. We've had situations we didn't want to end or perpetuate but with no hope (or dread) of a real count down to let us know when to expect the change. We had a count down for how long we'd spend in our current location but (surprise!) it's been set back anywhere from 3 to 9 months, or maybe even longer.

I've looked with fascination upon countdowns for one friend who expected to come home from Iraq on a given day. The final minutes of his online counter came and went, and he was still there. My brother has a counter until his graduation (congrats, Romeo!!) but then he goes on to graduate school this fall (congrats, again, for getting in with flying colors!!) Someone else I know was engaged and there was a tentative countdown until marriage but that date was pushed back a couple of times until those plans simply evaporated.

I'm so impressed by people who have the raw determination to establish a count down and then make sure that it's honored. Of course there are some that are inexorable: New Year's Eve , the count down until Christmas morning, the time that ticks by when you're completing a test; or, in other words, the passage of time itself. (good luck trying to stall that one, unless you're Hiro Nakamura or maybe you'd give it a try if you were Tesla)

I have faith in the fact that those countdowns will eventually be realized. That passage of time, with a beginning and and end, will be fulfilled and time will still flow along afterward, to our relief and occasionally our chagrin. However, whatever has been accomplished during that scheduled allotment usually makes me smile. Did we do it this time? What stopped us or helped us along? Movies like to drag it out a bit, you know the ticking bomb that has one or two seconds left before detonating before Our Hero stops it. In truth, a perfect schedule we create for ourselves whether measured by days or years isn't terribly realistic. After all, depending on a perfect schedule means that you have to depend on the consistency and dependability of our fellow man. And I have yet to meet any mortal upon whom I'd depend to that degree.

Maybe what I'm learning is patience. Maybe what I'm learning is that a goal is not an end. Maybe I'm learning that relief is not all it's cracked up to be since it is inevitably followed by one thing or another that soils it after too short a time.

Anne Marie made a really good point in a recent blog entry. I'm sure I've heard a wise saying that ended up meaning "the journey is more important than the goal". Not that the goal or its accomplishment is insignificant. But it's all too easy to let the journey render the accomplishment of the goal a mere Pyrrhic victory.

And no one wants that.

So huzzah for today and what it may bring, and where it may lead us in the future.

(why do I type this post? because I need the reminding, too. Things 1 and 2 are still sick, I'm sleep deprived, and I need to get off my rear end and enjoy my day. it's gorgeous outside)

I don't remembering growing older...

...when did they?

How to do stuff

I like websites that show how to do stuff.

My latest fav:

Instructables.


Dinner tonight:

Costco has huge pork shoulders for a really great price. Right now I've got a smallish slab in the oven that has slow roasted with a rub on the outside consisting of a cinnamon-chipotle rub with added paprika, cumin, allspice, and coriander. It was misted with water a few times during its cooking. Tender and flavorful -- we'll serve with shredded cabbage, cheese, and salsa in soft tacos.

All the kids are dealing with one thing or another today. Tag is ill:

Frieda is upset with me for taking pictures of her instead of feeding her some more:


Pebbles is still getting over being sick all last week:
And Princess, though sick, has taken advantage of her day off by doing her hair over and over:



Not a bad day, over all.

New chore system and dinner

Part ?? in a series: Figuring this stinking homemaking stuff out.

I have a real problem with schedules. We have a couple of semi routines which usually end up being batches of tasks which must be accomplished by a given time in our day. For instance:

Princess must have her hair and teeth and clothing ready, breakfasted, and shoes on by the time we need to take her to school. I don't care what order it's done in as long as it happens. Same general idea for bedtime.

The thing is, my kids are too young or I'm too weak-willed to stick with a hard and fast schedule. Frieda will get hungry, we'll have days like today when all four kids are messily sick in some way or another, or what the heck ever. Since I couldn't keep a perfect schedule I never kept any schedule at all. Which of course didn't work well for me.

Another factor to consider when designing my own accountability system was my learning style: kinesthetic with a chewy crust of visual.

A cheap magnetic dry erase board, a roll of magnetic tape, scissors, a permanent marker, and an hour resulted in this:



Why did this simple thing take a whole hour? Because I wrote up the chore list only to encounter a power failure, hard reset of the computer, and stinking Office wouldn't restore my document. Grrr.

Anyway, the idea is this: I have groups of things on the board which must be accomplished by a given time each day, as well as weekly and monthly groups. The hardest part was taking a realistic look at what I felt I could accomplish by 10 in the morning since the price I pay for only having one feeding at night is a very hungry baby in the morning who makes up for her fast with a frightening level of driven focus. I'm able to add tasks as I need to and likewise leave some out. Today I've markered in things I've accomplished to acknowledge a few of the larger "extras" that crop up. As things are accomplished they are moved to the right side of the board and then shifted back in the morning.

It's entirely practical and therefore plain, but pertinent to my need for a loose schedule, accountability, and a kinesthetic yet long term solution (ie, a paper check list just hasn't worked well for me... to easy to lose or tear. additionally, computer spread sheets just mean more computer time. since I usually nurse during computer time as it is, I didn't need one more thing bringing me back to face my addiction every few mins)

As my ability to efficiently care for a brood of four whipersnappers increases, I can move some things from monthly to weekly and flesh out some of the tasks I sort of skimp on.

Things that must be done daily on weekends will be bordered in black so things don't take their usual terminal nosedive during those "days off."

(short story: I took a day off yesterday. It was a disaster. The end.)

Anyway, those menus I talked about around a month ago? They work. I've got three full weeks of menu planning done and they work. Really!! Using Recipezaar's menu planning thingy as well as my Mom's approach to menu planning, I can say that I've built a system that finally brings me success.

Here's tonight's dinner:
Million Dollar Chicken

It's inexpensive, delicious, and easy. Those are my favorite adjectives to apply to any meal. It's in my crockpot simmering as we speak. Using flash frozen chicken it took under a minute to put together. Yay! I have a spaghetti squash I'm going to halve and roast which is another super easy thing to do.