April Madness

For all of you who don't live in the US, and who bow at the altar of different sports - please indulge me with this post. Because we are very, very happy right about now.


And words are kind of escaping me.

None Monday

For the first time ever, I'm having to bail on Fun Monday. My wireless is still doing weird things, even though I had one of Sasquatch's friends spend a fair amount of time with it on Sunday. Of course, it worked perfectly for him. I came home from work and got all teary eyed at the sight of the Mozilla Firefox start page. (Is there a more beautiful sight? Or do I need a life?) My bliss ended about sixty seconds later when it booted me off, which it has done three times since. I hate computers.


And it just kicked me off again. I give.


Where the hell is my cuss-o-meter??

you don't see the relation?

My wireless is dead again. I came home from work yesterday and tried for hours to make it work, with no luck. So...I'm on the downstairs computer that may possibly be older than my stretch marks and that SD had to log me onto. What a perfect time for this:



Created by OnePlusYou


Shit. (It could be worse. If I had been able to post last night after screwing with the computer, my percentage would be much higher).

I first saw this on A Spot of T, but don't have my bookmarks to link. Sorry!!


And to prove my point about having three boys (and make myself laugh really, really hard)...

You Have Your PhD in Men

You understand men almost better than anyone. You accept that guys are very different, and you read signals well. Work what you know about men, and your relationships will be blissful.

How Well Do You Understand Men?

Uh, oh. Do you think it's possible to know them too well? Could that be part of my problem?

baby got back

Thirty six hours.


My mom gets here in thirty six hours.


I'm a tough chick. I've been hanging strong, being mama cub to my babies and keeping heads above water as much as possible. On top of the ongoing angst, there's been more drama in our house this week. One of the pet rats (we're still not completely sure if it was Zack or Cody) died on Tuesday and set Surfer Dude off big time. He shrieked and railed and hurled chairs and crawled into the big rubbermaid dog food container, before yelling for everyone to go away and leave him alone. It didn't take a rocket scientist to see that this was about far more than the rat, and it was excruciating to witness. He laid down on the living room sofa and wept. Later, much later, when he curled up next to me to sleep, I matched him tear for tear.


That mama cub instinct is a pretty darn strong one. That urge to protect and comfort and coddle your baby doesn't seem to diminish, even when they get tall and smelly, or teenaged and mouthy...or grown up and reeling.


I'm a tough chick. I know that the Steel Magnolias gene runs deep through my soul, know that my strength will only grow by the day, know that I can keep it absolutely together. I know that I can turn into a lean, mean maternal machine on a dime.


But in thirty six hours I can revert into that little cub for a while and let someone else snarl and protect the den. And I'm not too tough to admit that I can't wait.

The Thursday Three

Let's go with Angela's idea and talk about


What to save if the house is on fire?


Given that all living things - two and four legged - are out safely, what would I pull out of that burning building? Alright, here's my list. I do want to say though, that I would have a really hard time narrowing this down to just three, so here are the ones that pop into my head immediately.


#1. My laptop. Duh.


#2. Three pictures. The only two pictures I have of me with both my mom and dad. One is an 8x10 color studio photograph taken when I was about five(??) and the other is a faded black and white candid polaroid of us all on a couch when I was two and a half. And the third is another black and white polaroid of my maternal grandmother and I fishing when I was about seven. I have lots of other pictures of her, but this one is my very favorite.


My grandma died in 1999 and my dad in 2002 - so I have to hold on to what I've got.



#3. A book. A cookbook to be exact. But not just any cookbook - a very, very personal one. (I don't know why I'm on a theme with my dad, but here I go again). I've briefly touched on this before, but my dad was Iraqi. Both his ethnic background and his religion (Catholicism) were in the definite minority, and a huge percentage of them left the country and came to the US, where they promptly invaded Detroit. (And I do mean invaded. You can't fling a falafel without hitting a slew of them).


I grew up on the food and cannot get enough of it. But it's impossible to get in a restaurant unless you're in Detroit (and it's not all that easy there either, since they're all eating mama's cooking at home). When I was a teenager, one of the women wrote a cookbook that I think had about a hundred copies printed and my step-mother, who was tired of cooking for me, got me one, complete with the author's signature.


It's one of my greatest treasures.


What are some of yours?

secret ingredient

There's no such thing as a secret in my house. No fact is too small, too insignificant, too petty to blab to the entire zip code. Or worse yet, to your brothers, ensuring that the news travels to the entire tri-state area. (I don't live in the tri-state area, but I'm still reading the Stephanie Plum mystery series set in New Jersey, and it's a little hard to get my head back into Kansas at the moment. I can almost smell the cannolis).


We had chili for dinner, and as usual Surfer Dude helped me get it ready. He pulled out his personal red IKEA cutting mat and the paring knife he's dubbed Knifey, and got to work on the veggies. Meanwhile, I opened cans of beans and tomatoes and assembled all the usual chili spices. When everything was in the pot he stirred it up and asked what else he could do. I said you can choose between biscuits and garlic toast and he chose garlic toast and I said that's pretty much it for the time being then. I was trying to keep a low profile, but the truth was that I needed him out of the kitchen so I could put my secret chili ingredient into the pot ASAP and I didn't want him to see me.


Several months ago he caught me putting silken tofu into lasagna and I've never heard the end of it. All of the kids used to snarf up the lasagna before, but once he spilled the soy beans I have a UN contingent in the kitchen each time I cook it to make sure no contraband makes it into the pan. (And for the record, I put in plenty of ricotta and mozzarella and it really is good lasagna. Hey, my hot flashes need their soy, okay?)


But ever since then I've been a little more careful about what he sees in the kitchen, because I've learned a very important lesson. The kid has a big mouth. And he cannot keep a secret to save his life. Oh, he thinks he can, but he really can't. (You want scarier? He's the most secretive of the three). So I shooed him out and, looking over my shoulder the whole time, dumped my secret ingredient in the pot. Reached over for the wooden spoon to stir it and...


Busted.


He wrinkled up his nose as he peered in the pot. "Do you always put that in chili?" he asked dubiously. "Seriously?"


"You know how you always say I make the best chili in the world?" I shot back. "Well, this is why. Now creep back out on those little cat feet of yours and keep your trap shut. Or I'll put tofu in your lunch box tomorrow."


He smiled sweetly and left.


At dinner he asked each of his brothers in turn if they noticed anything unusual about the chili. Since it's the same recipe they always eat, they didn't find anything different. He turned to me and gleefully said, " They didn't even notice your secret ingredient!" and, visions of bean curd dancing in their heads, I all of a sudden had their full attention. For the next ten minutes we played Name That Ingredient until Surfer Dude couldn't stand it for one more minute and shouted it to the rooftops. Four eyes slid over to me, then down to their chili bowls, their spoons hanging in mid-air. After a long pause, they kept eating. Yes, it's that good.


Way better than SD's secret keeping powers.

************************************************************************************
Anybody want to guess? It's a spicy Mexican chili, with chipotles and cocoa powder. What do you think the secret ingredient is?
*************************************************************************************
And the answer is...pumpkin. Canned pumpkin to be exact. It adds a richness and sweetness that has to be tasted to be believed. (of course I have a house full of pumpkin fanatics, so that helps). It balances the chipotles beautifully and cuts the heat a bit. De-lish.

wired and tired

Due to a combination of factors we can only use one computer at a time in our house right now. Never mind that we have two laptops and three regular computers (do I speak the tech lingo or what?), we can only fire up the internet on one at a time. Something is weird with our router, for starters, so it's letting one of the regular computers think it's alpha dog on the laptops and stealing the wireless away from them, and then the power cord on Gumby's laptop is busted so he can't use his computer unless I let him use my power cord, because neither one of our batteries works but then I don't have a power cord myself, not that it matters since I can't get on-line. (You still with me? Quiz to follow).


To add to the intrigue, the wireless hogging only happens when Sasquatch is on the regular computer - not anyone else - and his computer geek friend who was here this weekend trying to figure it out is ready to jump out of a Window because he can't figure out why. (On the plus side it is kind of nice to see a teenager baffled by something an adult is trying to explain rather than the other way around).


The bottom line for me is that Sasquatch needs the computer for homework and he needs it now. I'm trying to get this written as fast as possible, but I've made a fatal mistake. I've told Gumby and Surfer Dude that I need about five uninterrupted minutes to get something written before I get booted off of my own computer. (Well, not booted exactly, but kicked off the wireless,which for blogging purposes is pretty much the same thing).


Since I've said that I've heard a condensed oral history of each of their school years, gotten asked a boatload of questions ranging from who Ponce de Leon is to why our sofa looks so ragged, stopped two people from juggling the same pencil into the air over the dog's head seventy three times, argued with Sasquatch about the unlikelihood of his snack dishes walking downstairs into the sink by themselves, watched a light saber fly over my head and into the window blinds and broken up three verbal arguments and one kickfight.


I give up. I'm not ignoring any of you (or your blogs)...I'm just outnumbered.

P.S. And now that I've gone through all of this and posted hours early and gotten my blood pressure up in the process...everything is working exactly the way it's supposed to. Can anything go the way you expect it to??