I'd gift everyone a butt warmer if I could

So.

Feels like so much happens between blog posts these days and I want to blog about it, yet when I sit down and open my blog editor, well, I wind up going off in other directions. I think it's me feeling my age in a more pronounced way. I turned 39 a couple weeks back but I think some of my joints turned 87.

Anyway, let's start with a spin on the Murphy thing. Wonderboy wrecked our Tahoe in January, right? Last Friday I got a call from him mid morning.

"Mom, we're ok. We're ok. Band Director wrecked her car. But we're ok."

"Oh no! Was anyone hurt?"

"I got a charlie horse but we're fine other than that."

"Wait, how did you get a charlie horse when she wrecked her car?"

"I was in it. And so was *Giggler."

"What were y'all doing in her car?"

"Mom, you know we're going to the State Honor band. Giggler and I both got accepted. I know you know this."

"I did but I thought the entire band was going and you'd be in a bus or school vehicle or something."

"Well more people tried out but we were the only ones accepted. This is state."

"Oh. Ok. Is Band Director ok? Is she still pregnant?"

"She's upset and screamed when she lost control, but she's ok. She's going to have her baby in a month or two."


And they were ok. She went into a spin on a bridge (roads were really bad), lost control and ditched the vehicle. This time he wasn't driving but he was quick to point out how two months into the year and he's been in two accidents, one each month.

So when he asked if he could take our new (to us) Tahoe out for a drive last night, Mike and I collectively hollered, "NO!". Wonderboy went on to explain the first accident was on the 6th of the month and the second on the 5th of the month. So he was good to go until the 4th of March. That logic didn't get him very far and so now he's upset that we won't let him drive it. He did finally ask if he could take his date to the prom in the Tahoe. That we'll consider. I think.

Lest you think I'm changing the subject or steering away, I'm not.

I drove our new Tahoe home yesterday. Let me tell you, I'm forever in love with seat warmers!!! I'd never experienced one before and had no idea my bum needed to be warmed until, well, until it'd been warmed! My butt was nice and toasty the WHOLE WAY HOME! Wheee!!!!!!!! That fact right there made me excited to take Mike back to work this morning as, hey, butt warmers rock!

I drove home in a Chevy 3/4 ton some-kind-of-truck, though. A truck that didn't have seat warmers. A truck that didn't make my buns feel nice and toasty. At all. As a matter of fact, my buns were sad and suffering separation anxiety as their lovely friend, our Tahoe with the seat warmers, is in the shop.

That's right. Just picked it up yesterday and took it back this morning.

It took Mike forever to get her to crank up this morning because the starter is bad. He called the dealer we bought her from and he said to bring the Tahoe back and he'd give us a loaner and then bring the Tahoe back to us. 'Cuz, they mighta known the starter was bad and just forgot about it.



On the bright side, they aren't charging anything to fix it so that's good.

I can't wait to get my butt warmer Tahoe back. It rides so smoothly, feels divine and is so freaking clean I'm afraid to let my kids ride in it. The lady who originally bought our Tahoe brand new traded her back for a newer vehicle so it's a **one-owner vehicle. From the looks and feel of it, I'd say it was a ***one-lovingly-owned-owner vehicle.

School was closed yesterday due to snow and blowing snow but, thankmyluckystars, they were open today. I've got about four hours of quiet left before Babygirl comes home. Speedy got to ride in the Tahoe last night but I didn't tell her as she hasn't yet. I'm sure he'll tell her though as he was stoked beyond belief and just loved it. And I'm sure she's going to have a few choice words for me as she asked if we'd take her for a drive so she could be the first one to ride in it, a request we turned down. (meaning, before any of her brothers)

Fun fun.

* I'm calling him Giggler as I could hear him giggling like a school girl when Wonderboy called to tell me about the accident. Nerves I guess.



** I know there's a better way to say it but, well, brain fart.



*** Didn't know how to say that one either.

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Favorite Super Bowl 44 Commercial series

This is funny.




So is this one.




But this one was my favorite! Love the screaming chickens!

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Found on my phone

I don't know the story on this, or when this was taken, just that I found it on my phone the other day. Mike forwarded it to me. I love looking at how innocent she looks in this picture, googly-eyes and all. This, in a nutshell, is Babygirl.

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Rerun: Would you like some toast with that butter?

-This was originally published on my old blog, Quack This, on 11/12/07.


Yesterday morning Mike fixed sausage gravy and toast for breakfast. Speedy was here and Baby Girl asked if he could eat with us. He sat down beside me and immediately said he didn't like sausage gravy. After his refusal to try it, I offered him a piece of toast.

"Hon, you want some butter for your toast?", I asked.

"I have some.", he replied proudly.

"Yeah, Mom, he brought his own butter.", said Baby Girl.

"You brought butter?", I asked, halfway expecting him to pull out a tiny pat of plastic butter.

"Yep. I like butter.", he exclaimed.

And with that, he flipped the top on the peach colored canister he'd pulled from his bag. Sure enough, he had an entire stick of Blue Bonnet Regular margarine. His face lit up as he started to peel back the foil wrapper.

"Speedy, does you mom know you have that butter?"

"Yes."

"If you use our butter you can save that. Your mom could use it for Thanksgiving cooking."

"No. She'll buy more."

I looked at Mike for help. He shrugged and ate another spoonful of sausage gravy. I turned my attention back to Speedy.

"Oh honey, here, let me help you. You don't want that much butter on your toast."

"Yes I do, hon-eee. I can do it.", he nearly snarled through clenched teeth.

"Awww, you've never called me honey before. That's sweet."

"I didn't mean it for sweet."

"I figured, but was hoping anyway."

"Tewesa! I'm doing my butter! Stop talking!"

He gobbed so much butter on that piece of toast it made my stomach flip. I prefer dry toast most of the time and just the thought of biting into such thick cold butter....umph. I decided to pay attention to my plate and just block it out of my mind. Which, worked pretty good until I realized he was eating butter off the stick with his fork.

"Speedy, want some more toast with that butter?"

"Yes."

I gave him a second piece of toast.

"Hey, how about some jelly? We have peach, apple butter and grape jelly."

"No. I just like butter."

"Ok."

Again, he gobbed the butter on his toast. It was cute hearing him 'mmmmm' with every bite, but... wow! Mike and I sat there talking while the kids finished their breakfast. Mike lowered his eyebrows and started looking at me, then Speedy, and back again. I glanced over and saw that Speedy had finished his toast and was now holding that stick of butter in one hand and eating off it with his fork. That's when I excused myself and went to my office. I heard Mike telling Speedy that he should save the butter for later. Ha.

Once everyone was done I went back into the dining room to clear the table. The empty foil wrapper that had held Speedy's stick of joy was on his plate. He'd eaten the entire stick!! He walked up to me and said,

"Mmmmmm. That was so good!", as he rubbed his tummy.

I wanted to say that I was glad he enjoyed it, but didn't think to in time before he ran off. I pulled Baby Girl close and told her that if he wanted to bring more butter over again, she should ask his mom if it's ok. That's when she produced a stick of Speedy's Blue Bonnet from her pocket.

"He brought me one, too."

She was supposed to have returned the unopened stick yesterday but I found it in the fridge this morning as I was making her peanut butter toast for breakfast. It's going back this afternoon.

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Crockpot steel cut oat groats

I started some steel cut oatmeal in the crockpot last night before bed and finally gave and decided to try it myself. I've never really been an oatmeal fan, to the point that I've flat skipped breakfast when serving oatmeal. A lot. When the kids were little we bought a lot of the boxes of instant flavored oatmeal and they *loved* it, but we found it wasn't really cost effective giving you had to fix two packets at a time to make a decent bowl of the stuff. So we switched to the big tubs of quick oats and, at some point, then on to the old fashioned oats that take a little bit longer to cook. Wonderboy doesn't like oatmeal anymore but Babygirl still swoons over a bowl of bananas and cream oatmeal, brown sugar and cinnamon, apple and brown sugar, ... come to think of it, the only time she hasn't really liked my oatmeal is when I've added frozen blueberries.

Anyway, this past fall I made the switch to steel cut oats as they have the whole grain on them and are supposed to be better for you than the other stuff. The first batch I made was hard. Steel cut oats take a LOT longer to soften and I ran out of time that morning and tried to speed up the process to keep her from being late for school. She told me she'd rather just be late from now on than have to eat hard oatmeal again. My next attempt was better but she couldn't get the 'crunch' out of her mind. That's when I decided to hit up my old buddy Google to see if I could find a tried and true recipe for steel cut oatmeal that would bring her back around to loving one of her favorite breakfasts.

Enter my good friend the crockpot.

The one I've used with the best results is simple. You take a cup of steel cut oats, about 4 1/2 cups of water, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 3 Tablespoons of butter (I use the unsalted sticks of real butter) and a teaspoon or so of cinnamon and cook it on low for at least 6 hours. If I have bananas and milk on hand I skip the cinnamon. This makes enough for 3-4 servings, depending. I spray the crock with vegetable spray everytime but it always sticks a little around the edges and on the bottom. When I serve it to her, I sweeten it with either brown sugar, granulated sugar or honey, depending on what's in the pantry mostly. She's loving her oatmeal again as this method guarantees a softer chewy oat.

I won't say I'm a fan yet but they aren't so bad. They don't taste like paste, which is how I remember them tasting from when I was little. I put a cereal spoons worth of regular sugar in mine though so maybe that's why. I was going to try them straight out of the crockpot, no sugar, as I'm trying to cut as much excess sugar from my food as possible. But I just couldn't handle the thought of it. I figure if I'm going to transition into being able to eat oatmeal then I should make it as easy as possible on myself.

Because I'm much prefer a bowl of steaming hot buttery grits!

Oh how I love grits! I wish I hadn't thought of grits now because I'm suddenly wanting them, even though I'm not hungry. Bah!

They say it takes around two weeks to train/retrain your taste buds so I'm planning on eating oatmeal every morning for the next two weeks. Wish me luck! That's not to say I'm giving up grits as that's just blasphemous! Speaking of, want to see something that's absolute heaven on a plate? Paula Deen's Tomato Grits are like mana from heaven!!! OhmywordsweetJesus! Grits are one of the ultimate comfort foods for me. I could eat them day and night!

Oh. I did it again. This post is about oatmeal.

'Sigh.

I want grits.

This crockpot oatmeal isn't bad though, as I said above. Hopefully in a couple of weeks I'll even say it's really good like Mike and Babygirl do.

Look, the little grit is jumping into a bowl of fellow grits and splashing the butter around. Mmmm!

'Sigh.

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It's February! Woo-hoot!

I'm offering a reward of 10,000 happy points to anyone who nails Murphy's hide to the walls of reform school, where he belongs. Either he's gotten a gazillion brownie points with his boss for causing things to domino on us, or I seriously pissed someone off in a previous life!

That's not to say I'm not grateful things haven't been majorly bad, as they haven't. Even with the seemingly unending cosmic string of mishaps we had in January, we came out pretty good. We only lost our car when Wonderboy hit a semi and for that I'm eternally thankful! We never went without heat, food or water during the recent power outages in NW Iowa thanks to our generator. Even though Wonderboy thought I was spouting silly stuff when I told him the Jeep sounded like it was seriously low on oil and then refused to check, Mike came up behind me (without even knowing) and made him check the oil. It was down by, IIRC, three quarts. So no 'Bear and the Jeep' sequel of killing the engine by running it with no oil. Babygirl made it through her surgery and, although it took her a bit longer than expected, is doing awesomely now.

January, now and forever known as the 'Month of Murphy', however, couldn't quietly fade into February. Last Friday found Mike and I at our breaking points. We had an extremely childish argument over absolutely nothing that, I think, stemmed from stress over our finances. Money's going out a lot faster than it's coming in and, well, that hurts. Anyway, Friday's feuding ended with me kicking the bathroom door out of my way. It wasn't a kick kick but more of a 'I need to get through here and the dumb door is blocking my path' kinda kick. Thing is, I hit it just right with the top of my foot (still not sure how I did that) and managed to bruise the joints of all three of my middle toes. No lie. Again, still not sure how I did that.

It hurt, too. I stood at the sink, across the kitchen from the bathroom door, wondering if once the shock pain wore off I'd have that all too familiar hot crazy throbbing that only comes from broken bones. I didn't, but it was questionable for awhile there. Serves me right, I suppose, for not pushing it out of the walkway with my hand. No? And the whole time I stood there staring at my foot, watching the top of my joints turn purple, I tried to remember what started the argument we'd just had. That's how silly the whole thing was. Still don't know.

So anyway, that was Friday. That night Mike went to lock the back door and noticed something off in the basement. Something that smelled off. He came upstairs to our room where I had "Hoffa" in the dvd player and ready to go, to tell me that first thing Saturday morning we needed to call Roto-Rooter out. Yeah, the sewage was backing up in the basement. Oh joy. Know what Roto-Rooter found when they unclogged the sewage pipe? A big wad of baby wipes (or something that looked just like them). How poetic!

Thing is, we don't even buy baby wipes, let alone throw them in the toilet.

Our neighbor, the one who's sewage pipe tees into ours, babysits. Babygirl adores going over there after school to play with the baby. Just last week I wrote checks to pay for the repair on the heating system at our NC house, the repair for the one at Bear's house (we own the house) and, on Saturday, wrote one to cover the removal of the wad of baby wipes caught up in the tree roots in the sewage pipes. That was over $800 to pay for repairs that didn't have to happen, though the one on the NC house is questionable. Some of the times we've had to pay the repairman on that one have been very preventable. This one? I really don't know. Either way, when Mike asked for a grocery list I simply told him to just get milk and eggs. We can't afford anything else, BUT, I still have plenty of dried beans, tinned tomatoes, pasta, .... could probably cook for two weeks out of my pantry as long as we have milk, butter and maybe eggs. Not to mention I have, I think, four roasts and three or four whole chickens in the basement freezer.

Which brings me back to being thankful. The last time the sewage backed up in the basement coincided with a spring melting of a TON of snow. So much snow that it flooded our basement with 10-12 inches of water and sewage. We lost everything down there, including a well stocked freezer. Mike caught this one early and although we had to disinfect the basement with bleach this weekend, the sewage didn't get more than a few feet around the pipe. So maybe the mysterious baby wipes did some good as there's a literal crap-ton of snow around our house. I'll try and remember to take a picture of our backyard tomorrow to show you how you almost can't see our neighbor's chain link fence anymore. I'd do so today but it's snowing again and Nugget watered my snow boots this weekend.

Hopefully the forecast is correct and we're only getting three or so inches of snow. And very little freezing rain.

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Awww

Facebook has a game called Petville, one of Zynga's games. It's cute and not too time demanding, though I think I'm nearing the end of playing it as there isn't much to work towards achieving anymore. Anyway, I went into Mike's Facebook and made him a pet to match mine. Once in a blue moon I'll go into his and change his clothes to match mine (basically, if I change my pet's clothes, I go change his, too).

Yesterday, after putting them both in matching jammies complete with cute little red bunny slippers, I had my pet, Dingle, visit Mike's pet, Berry. (get that? Dingle Berry? heh). Sometimes your pet will do things on their own like, jumping on the bed or cartwheels, or sitting in a chair. Both our pets decided to sit in chairs beside each other so I took a screenie.


Aren't we just the cutest?

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