Rich Poor Food

My kids are sitting down to plates of leftovers right now. Steaming, huge plates of reheated lasagna, risotto, leftover veggies sauteed with garlic.

And they are HOUSING them. MissAngelLittleGirl is not really putting down her fork, except to pick up her wine glass, at the tiny bistro table I've set up for them.

Yes. Her wine glass. Because we are not having 'leftovers', we are EXPERIENCING a tour of Italy.

Yes, the popular Olive Garden dish. I've got grape juice in wine glasses, a fab assortment of dishes to sample, and three happy little girls.

Happy little angels= happy Mommy. Oh, and Garfield is showing- you can't have a fancy dinner without a show! And what better show, than a cat that loves lasagna!
I am a parenting genius (and a modest one!) Or, I have far too much time on my hands. But it brings me to another point.

You can do things one of two ways. You can stretch your grocery dollars by eating every bit of leftovers in the fridge....(Awwwww, Mooooooommmmmm, can't we have something else?) Or you can have a little fun with it... You can make a fabulous Vegas Buffet by layering objects under a tablecloth (like boxes or bowls turned upside down to create steps). Place the dishes of food on the steps...and honey, that's art.

You can have scrambled eggs for dinner because you're broke-or you can make a fabulous cheese souffle. The choice is up to you. But the attitude you do it with...that's what the kids reflect.

Oh, and by the way, leftovers usually suck because they get dry. You need to moisten them prior to heating. A bit of milk for lasagna, a bit of broth for risotto, a bit of gravy or broth or even water goes a long way.

Make sure they get heated to 165, and serve it with panache. Your kids won't know what hit them. It's all about the packaging, right?

What are your leftover tips?

Oh. My. Gosh. King Aurthur's Flour sells STUFF

Not just STUFF.

Baking STUFF.

Powdered cheese. Really. The kind to sprinkle on top of freshly baked cheddar crackers to give you the I've-just-eaten-a-snack-food coating on your fingers and here's the very best part, the most utterly fabulous news in the whole world: You can actually read and understand the ingredients.

Pain au chocolate sticks.  Perfectly shaped little sticks of chocolate to wrap homemade croissant dough around.  Baker's special dry milk...to make your loaves rise higher... The English muffin rings I've been looking EVERYWHERE for. I knew they sold FLOUR...I didn't know they sold STUFF. I should probably block the site right now and for at least two months after Christmas since my husband actually threatened to wrap flour up and give it to me as a gift...but it's a testament to my self control that I haven't loaded up a hundred dollar cart..or any cart at all.

I stumbled across this site looking for a decent recipe for goldfish...as in, to make them, not make something out of them, and well, I'm still looking. I've seen several...some call for baker's ammonia (eh?) some look kind of long, and some call for a food processor, which I don't have. So I'm still looking for a decent recipe, and marveling at the fact that I now find cooking tools as exciting as shoes.

Ok, maybe a little more exciting than shoes.

Why my house will never be clean

I'm a busy girl.

One could possibly argue that point with success...in fact, I rarely leave the house, unless you count the trips to the backyard, or the trails behind our house, so it seems to the untrained eye that I am a hermit.

And possibly a bored, under stimulated hermit.

I am not. In fact, I often lament the lack of hours in the day...the fact that for some odd reason, there are only sixty seconds in a minute, and the same in an hour. There's rarely enough time to sleep, very little down time, and I can't honestly remember the last time I watched something on TV just for me from start to finish.

I did listen to the first episode of season 8 of top chef while I made tonight's red pepper and pea risotto. Maybe that counts. I'm not sure.

Today, Santa came to the neighbor's house in a firetruck, so I dutifully washed, dried, lotioned, and dragged the kids across the way, to the dismay of the large black dog.

The dog then dutifully stole the hot dog rolls, a half a loaf of fresh baked bread, and two pairs of underwear from the dirty laundry. She then tipped over the CLEAN laundry, buried in two of the hot dog rolls, and pawed the clean laundry, together with the rolls, until she had managed to distribute bread crumbs all through out every one's socks.

I wanted those hot dog rolls.

That's two more loads of laundry that need redoing. This on the heels of the shitty towel incident.

That happened Thursday. As I'm trying, desperately, to get the laundry caught up, I place a stack of clean, fresh, white towels on the back of the toilet, and note that there is no toilet paper.

A fact that is promptly forgotten, by everyone in the household. Except Miss Angel Little Girl. She, as bright as she is, solved the problem of the missing "wiper towels" by dropping the stack of clean bath towels on the floor, and using each one to wipe her bottom a single time before dropping it on the other side of the toilet.

I failed to make the connection as to why she wanted to use the upstairs bathroom- because she liked the "wiper towels upstairs better."

Yeah, it's my fault.

 Maybe someday I'll make past laundry and dishes on to cleaning my floors. Maybe.

 In the mean time, I'll just hope my under stimulated brain doesn't dribble out my ears before the two young little monsters hit preschool. One can only hope.

Working has its pitfalls...

I'm tired.

Picking up an extra shift this week seemed nothing short of a dream going into the holidays. And it was busy. The kind of busy that inspires dreams/nightmares depending on the day... both days I got there early and both days required early clocking in. My section was full immediately and stayed that way till way past dinner.

 Like I said, heaven or hell depending on the day.

 Both last night and this morning, I'm paying the price in toddler beatings. The tiny one will not let me out of her sight for eight seconds, and that includes bathroom and/or sleep time, and the middle one has implanted herself so thoroughly on my lap that I'm typing this one handed at points. Should I choose to extract myself from the mass of limbs, and say, get a cup of coffee, I'll endure screams of anger and frustration, and then the thundering of *tiny* feet chasing me through the house. That's okay, this coffee sucks anyway.

One night to go...different grandparents watching the little monsters. I wish them all the luck in the world. Right now, I'm going to attempt to clean up the kitchen from last night's midnight soup supper while two children ride my feet like horses.

 Why my legs aren't thinner, I'll never know.

Damn you, wonderful neighbors!

I asked the dreaded question of my middle daughter today.

I had asked the same question over a month ago. The question that strikes dread in the heart of parents everywhere.

 What should Santa bring you this year?

The middle child is the real wild card. The oldest has a list as long as I am tall and as wide as the Mississippi, most of which hell will freeze over before I will purchase. It's a game with her, an exercise in parental manipulation...she knows I will instantly rip the list in half and hand the lower half back to her for another day, then knock seven or eight things off the remainder as completely outlandish. Her game is to try and get me to pick what she really wants...my game is to make her think I didn't, until the day of. So far, Mommy's ahead 11 years. We'll see how I do this year.

The youngest doesn't give a damn.

So I asked, the middle child, that dreaded question, because these next two years are the magic years. The years Santa isn't Daddy and the Santa's sled is not a bright blue sedan. The thought of Christmas lights the child from within, and she wants....(drum roll.....please!)

A car. A car she can really ride in, to be exact. A car like the sweet, wonderful little boy across the way has. A car that will likely eat my entire budget for her up, and doesn't deal with the fact that there is already a sack of toys purchased in July for the child. A car that is very similar to the car I wanted at that age. I remember the look of shock on my mother's face, as she snapped, "no, that's too expensive."

A car.

Do I even try to pull this one off?

What are we teaching our children?

The President of the United States gave a speech this week. A speech about bullying. He's very sensitive, this President, to small issues that plague the country. It was a nice speech, and I liked the part where he said, "It gets better."

 It was well said. It DOES get better. As a former victim of bullying, I can say that with the utmost assurance. One day, you wake up, an adult, not really ready to face the world, and you learn to tease back. I have to say, with all my challenges, killing myself never really crossed my mind. I will not pretend to know the heartache that these kids went through in their final hours, because my bullying had an off switch.

 I went home. Yes, in some cases, that was a technicolor land of badness, but there was no internet, no cell phones, no instant messaging, one phone in the middle of the house that I wasn't really allowed to use. I was allowed one television show a day, and that was, drum roll please, the Patty Duke show. In other words, my house was like a fortress against all things school. No bullies got in, (thank goodness, because one of them was a teacher) and I had sixteen hours a day to regroup. (and often, in my young mind, to plan the social demise of whatever evil monster child had tormented me earlier in the day.)

 There were no Hannah Montanahs, no iCarlys, no Sonny with a Chances. Lyndsey Lohan wasn't a victim of Mean Girls yet.

 Fast forward twenty years, and chances are, your child's favorite character,  no matter the age group, is a sarcastic little brat. Delivered in a light and joking manner, and followed up by the requisite happy ending, the characters often show little in the way of hurt feelings. It's not in the the script. No one would watch a sitcom where the odd man out attempted suicide. If Disney aired it, parents would be screaming and it would be blogged about  by Moms from here to China. No one thinks twice about a pop princess who mouths off to her Daddy, treats her best friend like so much trash, and at the end of the story, faces no consequences.

Life doesn't follow a script, and kids don't have screen writers making sure that they don't cross the parent friendly line. They lack the filter that says...this is too much. I'm literally crushing this person's spirit. No, William Golding had it right. Children can have a really mean spirit about them, especially in a group. Left alone, they will murder the weak.

Maybe we shouldn't let them spend an hour or so a day watching people treat each other like dirt.

If you think, just for one minute, that these things haven't played a part, that life isn't exaggerating art, let me ask you this. Who picks the clothes your child is wearing? What show are they on?

Maybe we should keep the computers, and the cell phones, and all the technology where we can see it. In the living room, where we can see by the looks on our children's faces whether or not some little jerk is invading our fortress via instant messenger.

Maybe we should stop being cool long enough to be parents.

Psycho, revisited, in my very own shower.

The baby stayed up till six.

 I should say, I stayed up till six. Six am, when I entered the bed room and told Mr. Lovinangels that it was now his turn to care for the little monster. I ignored her wails as I handed her over- (not the mama, not the mama, NOT THE MAMA) and attempted sleep. It took a little bit, she (and he) fell back asleep before I managed to.

 All things considered, today went fairly well. The baby arose from her four and a half hour sleep fully refreshed and ready to do some damage, and I managed to complete a few household chores without setting up a caffeine IV.

 Four cups isn't too bad, right?

 Until tonight, when it started to catch up to me. MissAngelLittleGirl for some reason seemed determined to make the most noise ever in the history of the world. MissAngelBaby spent most of the evening scaling the table and chattering angrily at me when I removed her. Eventually I determined by my foul mood that bed time was at hand, and dashed upstairs to start a bath for the mud and food covered children.

 And therein, lies tonight's story, which I will tell quickly before rushing into bed myself, hopefully for more than twelve minutes.

 Now, I have about forty five seconds to complete any given task before one of my dear children will do irreparable harm to the other. SO, I literally jumped the gate, ran up the stairs, switched the water on, and ran down to grab jammies out of the little ladies' dressers.

 I almost ran over a three year old, who was clapping with delight at the thought of a warm bubble bath, and stripping down to her undies in the middle of the hallway.

 She'd taken the gate down.
  
The full realization of that didn't dawn on me. I simply barked, "I'm washing the baby first, put your clothes back on." as I ran past her.

She told me that was acceptable. Exact words. That kid is too much.

I'm on a mission for clean towels, and heading back to the bathroom, I realize the gate is down. The baby is halfway up the stairs, sans spotter, and is teetering on the edge of a midpoint step,  squealing.  The kid was laughing her little butt off.

 Post panic attack, baby quickly washed, buffed, lotioned, dried and dressed, and Little Miss hopped into the tub.
I had to use the bathroom. Couldn't wait ONE MORE MINUTE.
Thank God it was in the same room, and she was was just singing her little heart out. I ducked behind the bathtub to the toilet and sat.

 She screamed, and I jumped across the room, shorts around my ankles, heart in my throat, to find my little girl and a good portion of the white walls covered in bright red blood.

She was grinning at me. My barely functional brain struggled to make sense of the happy, bloody child as I searched for a cut.

 No cut. No, she'd bootlegged in a red Crayola bath marker, and in less than eight seconds had done a masterful interpretation of Marion Crane's famed death scene. I KNOW I threw that darned thing out.

 I'm thinking Crayola should pay for therapy.

I feel so virtuous when I apply heat to food.

Why is that?

It doesn't make it healthier. It doesn't make it less fattening. In almost every case, it both leeches nutrients and adds fat. Last night, I decided to make Mr.Lovinangels a snack, and could have easily sliced some fruit and whole grain bread, and he would have been very happy.

Instead, I added a stick of butter, a mess of sugar, and an unquantified amount of white flour and made the perfectly healthy fruit into a crisp.

 And yes, Mr. Lovinangels was very happy.

I felt like wifey of the year, until I ran the recipe through Calorie Count, and now I'm left wondering when my subconscious decided it was time to murder my husband of five years via arterial blockage.Today, same situation, but evidently I haven't learned my lesson.

 The kids would have been perfectly happy with fresh bread, fruit and cheese for lunch, but it's cold and wet outside, so I feel like something warm is the way to go. Serving the kids bread, fruit, and cheese is lazy.  If I grill the bread and cheese, suddenly I feel like a good mom, and the reality is, all I've done is added two or three hundred calories worth of saturated fat.

 There's a crustless quiche in the oven right now. Because I couldn't have heated up the leftover vegetable soup. (That would have been too easy, don't they deserve better?)

 To make this even more ironic, it's likely that later on this afternoon, I will complain loudly about the amount of dishes I have to wash. Rather than napping to make up for last night's impromptu toddler-party-like-a-rock star all night event, I will bitch and moan and whine like a certain eleven year old denied  a trip to the opening night of Eclipse.

 Seriously, who made this mess? Me. By choice. The kids would have loved a pb and j. Loved it. Eaten it well, and gone to be bed happy with full little bellies. Instead, I'm fighting with a fussy three year old over a truly gorgeous spinach and bacon quiche.

 I blame the new house. Clearly my inability to control my culinary impulses is the fault of this new kitchen, with it's shiny  floors and newly redone cabinets. This kitchen that doesn't make me feel like an extra on Green Acres. (Like my last kitchen.)

Oh, look at me! I've mastered the American dream! You know, when you do something stupid, blame someone else.

I gave birth to the Devil.

It's not the first one. Although she and I only speak the same language every second Thursday, and on days that involve something she REALLY WANTS TO DO, she's genuinely probably the sweetest tween on the planet.

It's not the second one. No. While, if left alone with an empty shampoo bottle, two paper clips and a My Little Pony, she could probably build an atom bomb and solve world hunger, she's okay, too. Because she doesn't have a subtle, or quiet, bone in her body, you KNOW when she is up to something, and her plots are fairly easy to foil. Like, when she was trying to flood the upstairs bathroom, I knew it, without stepping up the stairs.

She's not quiet.

 Nope.

 The real wild one is, by far, the quietest. She's built, solidly, like her marginally older sister, and that provides me some advantage, since if she were mouse like, I'd probably never be able to find her except when she wanted to eat. She can cause mass destruction in the blink of an eye, and you will NEVER HEAR IT COMING.  I just came back from warming up my coffee, to find that she had sidled her way past my homemade barricade, slipped behind the couch, took out the end table, and was attempting to rewire the lamp.

She did this in the time it took me to walk out to the kitchen and pour coffee. No cream, no sugar, because I'm alone with her and I know I don't have time for bells and whistles. Caught, she gave me an angelic smile, and slipped back behind the couch again.

So she could come and give me a huge snuggle, with sweet smiles and giggles. How can I even scold her? She's too freaking cute!

See? The Devil.

It's a universal truth.

When you want them to sleep, they remain wide awake, loud, and needing randomly ridiculous amounts of attention.

Granted, I was awake for a whopping seven hours yesterday, and I spent five of those at work, and the other two nursing little monster number three. Evidently, not enough.

She's determined to MAKE ME PAY for my absentee parenting. I'm not allowed to use the restroom. I'm not allowed to wash the dishes, that have multiplied at an alarming rate and are threatening to take over my next door neighbor's back yard. One day of momma being lazy equals roughly seventeen hours worth of back logged dishes. Her eyes, rimmed with red from sheer exhaustion, are defiant. She's staring at me from a precarious perch that involves one leg thrown haphazardly off the side of my wobbly green rocker, the other foot balance precariously on tiny toes while rocking back and forth as hard as she can.

She's squeaking at me like an angry chipmunk.

I've taken up the demeanor of one negotiating the lives of several dozen hostages.

 If I approach her too quickly, surely she will tip forward, and break not only her head, but also the still unmopped floor.

 Well, that game got boring. With lightning quickness and ignoring the laws of gravity, she has literally FLOWN across the room with a loud squeal...and ....there she goes with my blackberry. All I want to do is get a work out in and take a shower to get ready for tonight's open house, but I've had enough alone time according to MissAngelBaby.

She was even kind enough to let me know by breaking TWO Corell dishes in five minutes. The ones that are supposed to be unbreakable. The laws of science mean nothing to an angry toddler.

Yes, my dear child, I'm sorry I went to work last night.  And I'm doubly sorry I took my sniffly, exhausted, cold infested rear to bed yesterday afternoon when I should have been baby worshipping.

 Can I please keep the rest of my china?

Nighttime parenting really isn't my bag.

I have a theory, completely unproven by science or anyone else in the parenting industry.


Wanna hear it? OK!

I think parents are the ones who need to learn to sleep through the night after they have a baby.  I mean, sure, you bring the little one home, and for the first couple of days, they sleep like, well, a baby. Suddenly, post partum day three rolls around, and the little monster's doing somersaults at five am, tiny face screwed up, red as a lobster, and you have honestly no idea what to do.

Inevitably, if you bring this topic up to any parent, any one at all, and they will tell you EXACTLY how they fixed this problem. Some solutions involve hour long semi-neurotic rituals including stuffed animals, books, bathing, massages, and that guy from the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous reading a lullaby in French. Others involve attempting to keep a baby up for an entire day, period, no naps. In theory this is great. Unless your little bugger decides to get a second wind. Then, there is my personal favorite, the "Sleep Begets Sleep" theory. I actually put the most stock in that one, because it's closest to my own theory. And it's the one that's most difficult, because bright babies don't want to go to sleep. They want to learn.

So here's my theory. Your child doesn't learn to sleep through the night, until one day, from sheer exhaustion, you simply pass out into a stupor so cold, you don't hear him.

Then, he gets bored from non attention, and passes back out on his own.
 What do you think?

I think it happened with at least three children that I know of.

Past meets Present

Today was a beautiful day.

The sky was perfect, the sun golden, the wind light and delicious.

My children were almost half as wild as they can be. Actually that's not true, they were perfectly well behaved and remarkably kind to each other.

It was a perfect day.

Except, I miss my grandparents, and their ghosts were following me all around the land of make believe. I could see my grandma standing outside the haunted house (yes, the same haunted house they took me to when I was three.) I'm fairly sure no one has dusted it in the last thirty or so years.

My grandfather standing back and watching me in the field of candy canes. The maze I used to run through as fast as I could. The train ride that I thought was hours long when I was younger was really just a couple of short minutes.

It seemed like every time I turned the corner I was fighting back tears. Sad tears, as I know I missed the ends of my grandparents lives, and happy tears as I watched my own children play with their great grandfather. I get so caught up in every day moments of what I need to get done that we don't visit with people as much as we should. We do the dishes and the laundry and the cleaning and the packing instead.

Oh, it was such a perfect, bittersweet, wonderful day. A day I will hold on to till I'm taking my own grandchildren to visit the same park.

Another minute I want to hold, shining in front of me, and watch it in my mind time and again and again and again.

Box mixes: The enemy of frugal cooks every where

I remember the first time I ever cooked.

Ever.

My mother had made her famous meltaway meat. Of this, I still quiver in fear. The lumpy, tasteless mass of protein quivered like jello, the texture resembled canned dog food. I'm not entirely sure what she did to it that made it taste so...tasteless, but I do know it often involved me scrubbing out the crockpot for sometimes days on end, only to have her repeat the mess the moment I had managed to chip the remains from the walls of her ceramic petri dish, I mean, crockpot. Ugh.

My moment...she had come down with a "migraine" and needed to lay down. She needed me to "finish off dinner."

I was happier than a pig in, well, you know.

Laying on the counter, a packet of lipton alfredo noodles.

I put on my serious face. This was the big leagues. The moment that everyone tasted MY noodles. Oh, I could hardly wait.

I read the directions, then reread them. I followed them EXACTLY. Measuring the margarine, milk, and water as though my life depended on it.

Did you see my mistake? Because to this day, I don't. I followed the directions on the package, only to have my mother have a panic attack because I used margarine. Evidently, it was optional, (in those days, that was NOT printed on the directions.) and EXPENSIVE

As a (much) older cook, I wonder why we even had those packets. Even on sale they are ridiculously priced for what they are. A little bullion, a couple of seasonings, a four hundred percent mark up. It's scary what people will pay good money for.

On one of my favorite sites there is a certain amount of devotion to a certain meal product hawked by a four fingered hand. There are whole threads devoted to a favorite flavor...and again, I wonder why. Especially when I see "Italian Shells" ranks around the most popular flavors.

Seriously?

Ok, besides the ick factor, (have you READ the ingredients) and the price factor, (upwards of two dollars for barely three portions), Italian Shells? The easiest thing on the the planet, and, possibly the cheapest.

Check out my remake:

pasta
1 lb ground beef or sausage
1/2 lb whole wheat short pasta
2 C premade pasta sauce, or season a 16 oz can of tomato puree to taste.
2 C water

Brown beef or sausage and drain. Add sauce and water, bring to a boil, add the pasta. Return to a boil, simmering for 7 minutes. Do not cover. Let stand five minutes.

At this point, I usually sprinkle some shredded cheese on it and call it a day. However, I have the feeling the cheese sauce makes it for some people, so...

take 1/2 C milk and blend with 1 tsp cornstarch until smooth. Add 1/2 teaspoon garlic, bring to a boil. Stir in two to four tablespoons of parmesan cheese. Taste and add salt and pepper as desired. Drizzle over pasta.

Serve as you would your favorite box mix. Gloat in the fact that it cost less than half the price. Yay, YOU!

Do you have a favorite box mix you'd like a cheaper alternative to? Let me know in the comments!

How to Get Your Man to Cook...Every Day of the Week.

My Husband and I spent the better part of the first five years of our relationship fighting.

About chores.

I love to cook, love it... but I hated that the entire burden of nourishing our two bodies was placed squarely on my shoulders.

Literally. He would eat "snack stuff" all day long.

Snack stuff. I still don't know what that actually means. In my head, it means my daughter perched on the chair next to him, while they both pig out on chips and soda.

*sigh....or flat out *curse depending on my mood.

Later on, much later on, it occured to me that he and I...we don't speak the same language. I say, "you need to have lunch before I come home."

He hears, "there are five drive thrus in between where we have to go and home. Sweet!"

The constant nudging made me feel like a control freak. In reality, though, I didn't tell him what was in the kitchen, I expected him to go out, poke around, find something he wanted to eat, and fix it.

The male brain hears "Drive thru! Much easier. Saves five steps."

So, we've compromised. I no longer leave him to plan a meal for himself or the kids, and we cut our drive thru budget by 7/8ths. Now, it's a fun treat, not a panicked stop to fill bellies for lack of better planning.

And, it turns out, he is perfectly willing to cook. I used to joke that meant spaghetti or tacos, but the man is really accomplished at man food.
As in, grilled food.

Therein, lies my rescue. I simply pick up large packages of simple meat, and let him have his way with them on the grill. Usually that just means salt and pepper, which is perfect, because the rest of the week, the leftovers are easy to work with. Yesterday, he fired up the grill and made sausages and corn, and I'll take the leftovers today and make spaghetti, along with a breakfast casserole for tomorrow. (We leave for the beach bright and early.) I make french dips out of leftover steak, and grilled chicken just has so many uses it isn't funny. It doesn't require a lot of supervision from me when I have a stack of grilled meat to work with, and (I think) he enjoys it.

Win, win!

So, I guess he's not technically cooking every day of the week, but it feels that way since I have such a head start on things. Plus fighting with that grill is not my thing, and I've been more than guilty of ordering takeout on hot days to avoid turning the stove on.
Of course, the other option is marry someone who likes to cook all the time

Do you have a strategy to get your man to cook?

My Ugly Green Monster rears it's head, does yours?

Well, I'm off to the post office this morning, on the way to visit my dad. I sold not one, but two items on ebay this week, with at least two more to sell today. I'm up... ten bucks. It seems a little effort heavy, for only ten dollars, since I do have to run to the post office to ship, and I can't stop grabbing the computer to see how my auctions are doing. It's like waiting for water to boil. Ugh. Still, ladies who have been doing this longer than I have tell me the initial fascination fades. I hope so.

For father's day, MissAngelBaby took her first steps in front of her great-grandpa. And only her great grandpa. She did it multilple times in front of him, but I don't have an exact count, because the stubborn little thing waited till I turned around EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Still, if I was going to miss the event, I couldn't be happier that he got to see it.

This morning Mr. Lovinangels told me he has a friend who has a baby MissAngelBaby's age, that took five steps the other day. "He's ahead of her?"I practically shouted. My husband gave me an odd look. "Other people have smart babies, too, you know," he laughed at me.

Yes, but my baby is supposed to be the smartest and the best.

Do you ever fall into this trap? Pushing your child towards a milestone simply because her peers have reached it? I thought I was above such nonsense, but there it is. My gut reaction is, my baby should be first. Wow. I've got some soul searching to do. I should just be grateful my kids are progressing normally, that God has given me three healthy, beautiful girls.

Oh, well, perfection as a mother has not been achieved by anyone to date. I'll work on it.

In the meantime, crawling over stacks of boxes is getting to be quite an adventure. And I'm up ten bucks in my goal to make money, bringing it to -140. Yay me!

In Praise of the Men Who Choose Their Children

I have a father. That is, I have a man who contributed to my birthing process. A nameless, faceless stranger who would, in Law and Order fashion, share 50 percent of my DNA. This man is much less a part of me than the average person I pass on the street, for I may at least have a slight recollection of the individual on the street. This man, through very little fault of his own, will never know his grandchildren, never see their sweet little faces, never know what he is missing.

I have a DAD- a man that chose to marry my mother, not in spite of me, but BECAUSE of me. A man that looked at me, as a small child, and wanted to protect me. He had no idea the ride that would take him on, and I often wonder if he'd known what a nutcase she was, if he would have made the same decision. I like to think he would have. I like to think that he looks at his other children, the wonderful products of that disastrous union, and has no regrets. I really hope so...

My Dad has always been amazing. He's always been a constant, I usually know what he's going to say before he says it, because he doesn't change. He's right 99.9% of the time, and it took me 32 years to admit that. He taught me the value of a dollar, and of a penny, and how to work hard and keep a job. I have many wonderful childhood memories, many good thoughts and happy places, and this is largely because of the man that married my mother, and her stepfather.

Every year for Valentine's Day, my Dad would place a box of chocolates on my bed. In those days, a box of chocolate was a full pound of goodness, none of this 12 ounce nonsense you see now. My mother would complain that I was getting fat (I wasn't) and that he shouldn't do this. Every year, like clockwork, the box would appear on my bed after he got home from work, and I would try to contain myself from running in as soon as he slipped off. I was so upset the year I had braces, sure I wasn't going to get my gift. That year, I found a box of "all soft centers" on my bed. Perfect.

Every year at Christmas, we got special stockings from my dad. An orange, an apple, and a box of lifesavers that looked like a storybook. Constant.

He took me to Disneyland. He got up with me at night when I was sick, even on vacation when I had an allergic reaction to rice (who's allergic to rice???), and put up with my random year long disappearances when I got so involved with my career I had time for little else. In short, he's amazing.

He's in good company. My father-in-law has an equally amazing relationship with his stepdaughter. I remember how my heart caught in my throat when my sister in law told me how he always got her chocolate covered strawberries for Valentine's Day. The story was so...familiar. Their relationship is as bittersweet as any father daughter pair.

My husband and I have a markedly similar story. It was not his love for me, but his love for my daughter that drew us (and kept us) together. Regardless of the situation, watching him with MissTweenAngel has always melted my heart. "We've" gotten pretty good in the process, too. The two of them, they did it naturally.

All of this makes me think of these great men, the men who tuck other men's children into their lives as their own, forever condemned to live slightly in the shadow of another man whose crowning achievement is the ability to procreate, and my heart aches slightly at the bitterness of it. For it isn't in the sweet times of youth, or in the midst of teenage angst when you realize their contribution, when it would be sweet and endearing. It's in the aging process, the hair graying, child rearing hecticness of adulthood that you begin to wonder how they did it. How they managed to deal with the thanklessness and bitterness of a youth that didn't even belong to them.

I'm not sure how they do it. But I'm so grateful that they do. Today, on Father's Day, I'm ever so much more thankful for the men who aren't accidental parents, for the man that chose me, and the man that chose my daughter.

Busy, Busy, Busy!

This week I've decided to take my decision to make money off this move seriously. I've posted on ebay, and craigslist, and have more to put up. The yard sale is tentatively scheduled for the end of July, and I can say, I just can't wait. I'm seriously considering having a pre- Yard sale, so we can cart less across town to a better location.

Mail call this week was phenominal, I got two father's day cards just in time with my swagbucks, samples of pantene for curly hair, dove, and aveeno shampoo and conditioner, a Shrek poster evidently Mr. Lovinangels won in my name, a sample of crackerfuls, my free collage from snapfish, along with my 50 free prints and free 8X10, and have finished testing about half of my free sunscreen.(Which is a really great product by the way)

Today I'm ordering a free snikkekidy kids pack, here. I find most of my freebies, here.

Well, wish me high ebay auctions, I'm off to sell more stuff! Moving balance is currently -140 dollars!

Fathers Everywhere

Dear Fathers/Men Everywhere,

I beg of you, please, please, please do not attempt this on your children. I can guarantee you your wife/girlfriend/child's mother will not like it.

But since it's not MY child, it's pretty freakin amazing, isn't it?

Found Money! Don't forget to request a refund for overpayed utilities!

Last night I had the strangest dream. I dreamt the "other" from Lost season 1 turned into a vampire, got invited into our home, and turned my nephew and my friends son into vampires. We locked ourselves in an upstairs room, and I lowered my wild child first to the ground. She took off, of course. I jumped out the window, landed on my feet, and ran after her. Having caught up to her, it appears that her hair has been cut off, and she has a large bite mark on her neck. I realize her hair is simply tied back, and am utterly relieved, and unconcerned with the large bruise on her neck, which isn't bleeding.

My good friends over at http://www.cafemom.com/ seem to think it means that I'm nervous about our upcoming move, but feel that I can handle it. I like that.

Yesterday, it occurred to me that we needed to order propane for our stove. You can only purchase it a full tank at a time, and it takes me 4-5 months to use it up. The move is 85 days away. Either I can bake like mad, or lose about $70 in propane, or try to stretch what I have an extra, say, 24 days. I spent the majority of the afternoon pondering solutions, since my gas company was closed.

I called first thing this morning-and was told to go ahead and fill it, all I have to do is request a refund. This is GREAT news, since I LOVE to bake our bread, but I may just try to stretch it out anyway, since it's hot out and requesting a refund is one more thing I'll have to remember to do in the post move mess. However, the lady at the gas company said many people NEVER leave an address to forward a refund check to, so I'm counting this check as a drop in the bucket toward my goal of making money.
Score one for the cheap girl.


Did you remember to check for overpaid utilities on your last move?

Day 2: One box and one bag from each room per day.

Let me tell you, I have been a ball of fire today! I'm not even through my second cup of coffee, and I've gotten a whole SLEW of moving goodness accomplished. Yippee for me! My goal is to pack up one box for a yard sale, and one bag for either trash, freecycle, or donation per room per day. I've completed the goal for two rooms already! Of course, my goal to make money is being severely compromised by the fact that my moving budget is currently -$150. I'm hoping to change that by adding some goodies to craigslist later today. We have a nice brass coat rack I can't see moving, a baby carrier Miss AngelBaby outgrew three minutes after she was born, and an excersaucer that can go on. I'm betting these will fetch far more dough on Craigslist than at the yard sale, so I've got a busy day ahead of me! Wish me money!