A Better Way

Tomorrow is the last day of school, therefore I have only one more chance to send in teacher gifts, unless I want to surprise the teachers on Tuesday - no wait I have to work on Tuesday - on Wednesday, their last after-school's-out work-day, with a visit from my kids and even if we are bringing cookies, I think they'd like a longer break before seeing them again, you know, to miss them some, so I decide we will make No Bake cookies, but wait, we are out of cocoa, okay, chocolate chip it is, even though the thought of turning on the oven in this heat (heat, this is hardly bad, just wait till July when even the over night low is in the 80's, okay maybe not really, but close) makes me ill, which is why I had opted for No BAKE cookies plus they only take 10 minutes rather than the 45 it will take me to bake 4 dozen cookies (no I can't put two trays in the oven at once then the tray on the bottom doesn't cook properly and even if I'm not going to be the one eating them they must conform to my rigid standards, and yes I am a cookie snob), but chocolate chip it is, at least C can make those with very little assistance, but wait, we only have one egg, we need two and while I could borrow from the neighbor, I just borrowed a couple of cups of milk from them and even though I am still on the plus side of the neighbor-borrowing scale I hate to look like I'm so scatter-brained that I can't even manage to keep the basics in the house, although the neighbor does love No Bakes and would gladly trade a bit of cocoa for a few cookies or I can call The Husband with a request for eggs and cocoa and put off the baking of cookies for teacher gifts until later, but who knows what might happen later and I have a small window of opportunity left to get this done . . .

Really there must be a better way.

Letting Go

I use to be a mystery shopper.  Technically I still am.  I get emails and phone calls from schedulers, I'm still signed up with many companies.  But I haven't completed a shop this year.  I don't really plan on "shopping" again, but I just can't seem to take my name off the lists.

 

It is possible to be a full time shopper and make decent money doing it.  I've met people who do.  But when the thought of completing even one more shop at the store you've been to a dozen times in a month looking for things you have no intention of buying or hearing the sales pitch and asking questions about a product you probably  know more about than the sales person brings you to tears, it's time to take a break. 

 

And with gas prices as high as they are and shop fees not increasing, the distance you are willing to drive for a job decreases which means to keep working you have to keep shopping the same stores over and over and you begin to fear that the store has you picture hanging in the break room with the caption "known mystery shopper" like the wanted posters of the Old West.

 

I don't want to be a mystery shopper anymore, not really.  Sometimes it's tempting, but the work/pay ratio just doesn't make the effort worth it.  But it was a lot of work to get signed up and it'll take just as much effort to remove my name from the lists. And what if I change my mind and decide to be a shopper again? 

Kitchen Experiments (or I Am the Coolest Mom Ever)

Last week J started pulling things from the baking cabinet - flour, sugar, Crisco, salt, baking soda, oil etc.) and declared that he was going to make something. When I inquired as to what he was making he explained that he did not know, but would just put things and see what it made. (This is where I had a mini panic attack). I managed to convince him that we should make brownies from a mix and he could add chocolate chips.

But yesterday he began the same process again and would not be shaken on his quest see what he could make. I gave him a measuring cup and let him go, with only a few hints (the smaller the container, the smaller amount he'd want to use - good advice for the way things are contained in my kitchen - so the 1/4 cup of baking soda he was holding over the bowl probably wasn't a good idea.) When his recipe was complete, he declared them to be brownies and we baked them as such. J's brownies were deemed a success by C and are nearly gone.

Today when he arrived home, J declared he was making cookies and once again began pulling things from the cabinets. Again I allowed it and the cookies are cooling, waiting to be tasted, but if the dough is any hint, they aren't too bad. I'd have used more sugar and more cocoa, less olive oil, but at least he had the sense to not include the rock salt in today's recipe.

Maybe I can get him to whip up dinner tonight, too.

OOOOOHHHHH

I have . . .
in my house . . .
at this very moment . . .
a . . .

MacBook Air!!!

(insert angels singing here)

Unfortunately it must return to work with the Hubby in the morning.

Bliss

As I type the, first of 5 rooms is getting it's second coat of reddish (okay, really dark pink, but don't tell P, she wants red) paint.  And all I have to do is write the check.

 

The very thought of painting was making me cry and the thought of painting 4 rooms in some shade of red, which seems to be an insanely difficult color with which to get good coverage, was making me think it would be easier to move rather than paint, but moving would probably require painting and, well that leads back to tears.

 

So I called a friend of my brother's to get a quote, knowing that I probably really couldn't afford to have someone else paint, but I could dream and then her quote was so extrordinarly reasonable that I asked how soon she could start and here we are getting the first room done and I don't have to to anything.

 

I may never paint again - yup, her prices are that good.

 

 

The Great Move

Saturday was The Great Move. 6 people live in the 4 upstairs bedrooms of my house and not one of them went to bed in the same room in which they woke up that morning.  3 bags of trash and 2 bags for donation later, the boys are in the lime green room, using the pink bathroom and the girls are in the blue rooms using the blue bathroom and eveyone (except my mother who is quite happy to be back in the purple room she moved out of less than a year ago) is begging for paint.  Strangely enough 4 of the 5 children would like red walls) but that's another weekend or two or three or four.

Maybe It's the Hair

Today I took P to the doctor, although he was booked so we actually saw the nurse practitioner, whom we rarely see (maybe only once before) so I'll give her a little lee way for not being familiar with my family, who asked as she walked into the room, "Are you the child's grandmother (slight pause as she took in the horror in my expression) or mother?"

 

Now I do live in the Deep South and I will admit that my appearance was more pre-Stacy-and-Clinton-makeover than post, but I am only 34!  (Ack, maybe I really to be on "Ten Years Younger!")

 

Now had I had my first child when I was 16 (rather than 23), and that child had chosen to procreate at the same age, it is possible that I could be a grandmother to a 2 year old (but P is 3 and my youngest).

 

Either way I am mortified.