Tuesday, September 27, 2011

...with just a dash of... what's that stuff in the shaker-thingy?

Hannah's first grade class was learning about Johnny Appleseed today. Part of their lesson included making apple sauce.  She was raving about it:

Hannah: You should have tasted it, mama!  It was so good!
Me: Why didn't you save me some?
Hannah: There just wasn't enough. But you should try applesauce that you bake!

[She interchanges the words bake and make when talking about any cooking process.]

Me: Well, I don't really know how to make it.  How long did you cook it?
Hannah: How long is P.E.?
Me: I don't know.  Thirty minutes?
Hannah: It's really easy.  You just take out the seeds, cut up the apples, put them in the cooking machine, and after P.E. it's ready!
Me: Whaddya mean cooking machine?
Hannah: I don't know.  It's a circle, and it has a lid.  If you don't have one, you could just bake it in the oven.
Me: You should really write a cookbook.

My further attempts to figure out what she meant by Cooking Machine have also proved unsuccessful.  My best guess is that it was a small crockpot.  She might not have recognized it as one, since mine is oval-shaped and built to hold half an ox. It would probably be too big to cook applesauce for 18 children.  The time frame is a little harder for me to estimate.  I have no idea what time P.E. starts or ends, nor what time the whole project commenced.

There's probably an easier way to figure out how to make applesauce, but this recipe seems sound enough to me.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

This is why they make sedatives. And wood storks.

My child.  The light of my eyes.  The joy of my life.  The bane of my weekday mornings.  This little bundle of love drives me right to the edge of insanity, and then gets excited about identifying the wading birds that wander into our neighborhood, and I feel bad for getting upset with her.

This morning Hannah took issue with the Beatles song I was singing.  Can't remember which one it was by  now, but how bad could it be, really?  What she hates is when I sing in a silly voice.  Or an opera voice.  Or with any voice some mornings. But after I'd sung the same 3 half-lines of this song 27 times, I was getting bored with it, so just sort of mutated into Yoda or some other voice.  The next thing I know, Hannah goes into her room, closes the door rather pointedly, and launches into some monologue about how terrible of a person I am, and possibly something about running away to join the circus.  I think she could tell when I was standing outside her room to eavesdrop, because she started getting kind of ambiguous about it.

I mean, maybe.  It's hard to decide.  I might. But I might not.


She might have been planning to murder me in my sleep, too. I have got to remember to stand so she can't see my feet under the door when I eavesdrop.

It got worse from there, and the biggest challenge for me is to maintain the same tone of voice while instructing her that she must finish getting ready, because she's walking to school, whether it makes her late or not.  She needs that walk to school.  It's where she turns back into Dr Jekyl.  She talks about the shape and color of the cactus flowers down the street, wants to know why cacti have flowers, and how they bloom.  She wants to make sure the ducks know when the traffic is too heavy to waddle into the road. She wants to speculate on where the pigeon poop may fall as they sit on the power lines overhead.

By the time we got to school, she was calm, loving, and looking forward to her day. Maybe I should start sending her on a 10 minute walk as soon as she wakes up in the mornings.

Monday, September 12, 2011

Get in here right now, and I meme it!

So I've been meme-ed.  That's right. I made up a word, the very thing I have cautioned you all against in the past.  Apparently, it's only okay if I do it. What's inconsistent about that?

Anyway, in the great tradition of stuff recently made up on the internet, one of my blog-friends has tagged me in a post as a blogger to read, which I find amazing and gratifying.  Plus, it explains the couple of new followers I have who aren't personal friends.  Here are the rules:

1) Blogger is nominated to take part
 2) Blogger publishes his/her 7 links on his/her blog– 1 link for each category.
 -- Your most beautiful post
– Your most popular post
– Your most controversial post
 – Your most helpful post
– A post whose success surprised you
– A post you feel didn’t got the attention it deserved
– The post that you are most proud of
3) Blogger nominates up to 5 more bloggers to take part.
4) These bloggers publish their 7 links and nominate up to 5 more bloggers


After looking at the word over and over, I want to replace Blogger with Booger or some other such nonsense.  Now if only I can figure out how to add a link in here without it actually spelling out the whole web address I'll be cool.  Please refer to my most recent post. 


single exploratory click, tongue sticking out from the corner of mouth.


Ooh. Turns out it's monkey-simple. Thanks, Blogspot, and sorry, folks, I'll now be bludgeoning you regularly with cleverly-worded links to stuff you may not want.


My most beautiful post: gotta be Welcome to Friday, because it's one where I'm not complaining about anything.  Enjoy it. The list deteriorates from here.
My most popular post: bearing in mind that only Jodee, and once my sister, comments, I'll just guess that it's this one. My mom actually commented on this one. Admittedly, not on my blog, so you'll have to take my word for it.
My most controversial post: Does meanest count? If so, it's got to be this one.  I'm not sure if it's funny to anyone other than Rebecca, but there it is.
Most helpful.  Hmm.  How about here, where I act like I'm smart.
The post whose success surprised me must have been the first one Not-Jodee commented on.  You're still my bestest blog-friend, Jodee.  I'll always love you most.
The post that didn't get the attention it deserved might have been here. Because of my awesome parenting tips.  I usually charge over $100 an hour for this stuff, people.
The post I'm proudest of must be the one about the Dad jokes. It still makes me cry. And I know how it ends.

Now for the hard part. I say it's the hard part because I'm relatively new to the blogosphere (I didn't make that one up), so I don't follow all that many other blogs yet, but here are the awesome ones I do follow, so check them out:
You three who don't already, check out Jodee because she makes me laugh out loud every day.
I also love Becky's blog, but don't read it while your kids are around, because you can't be safe from pencil drawings or actual photos of scrota.
Here's a cool cake blog that is completely appropriate for your kids.  Especially if they like Starwars Cakes.
And I still laugh out loud when I even think of the Hyperbole and a Half story of how Kenny Loggins ruined Christmas. Please read it at work.  Everyone will think you're nuts.

Thanks for reading my inane stuff.  I love you guys.  So write me some comments.  I need validation sometimes.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

The internet makes me feel uncool, kinda like high school.

I am the most musically illiterate musician on earth.  I mean, relatively speaking.  I know stuff about classical music, although I no longer perform any of it.  I know some stuff about jazz music, because my husband is a fiend about it, and I absorb some of his reams and reams of knowledge occasionally.  But I know nothing whatever about pop music of any kind.  I hear some stuff, and I think "That's annoying," or "that's fun," but I feel too far behind the curve to ever catch up, and I don't even try to pay attention.

Except in the area of Kindie music.  I'm down with that scene.  I'm totally in the loop about when the next Randy Kaplan album will hit the internet.

When I was in high school and college I spent every extra dime on music: back then it was cassette tapes.  I could have built a very fragile house out of my collection of cassette tapes.  WhenI was in college, we started transitioning to CDs, but I felt hopeless about the prospect of actually duplicating my entire music collection on CD.  I could have bought a house if I'd had that kind of money.  A year after college I got married and we didn't have any extra dimes, so my music-buying went on, uh, Permanent Vacation.

I never watch American Idol; it's not just because the performers made me sad the ONE time I did see it, but because I don't recognize most of the songs, and don't really know if I should be sad for the singer or the original artist.  I don't watch Glee, because I don't get it for the same reasons. I wouldn't recognize Katy Perry if she sat on my lap.  Although if some chick sits on my lap now, I'll be sure to ask if it's her.  I don't really feel too sad about the whole thing.  I'm a grown up, and the first question people ask me when I meet them is no longer "So, what kind of music do you listen to?"  I haven't felt left out for the past 20 years.

Now I've got a Spotify account, and I feel overwhelmed by my options.  I find myself just listening to stuff that sounds like old New Order and Cure songs.  So I guess I haven't really come that far; and neither has pop music.  So maybe I'm more current than I think.

Oooh!  Look! I just caught up!

Friday, September 9, 2011

Here's why my life is awesome.

Me: Tomorrow is picture day, Hannah, what do you want to wear?
Dave: How about a gorilla mask?
Hannah: No way!
Dave: A Nixon mask?
Hannah: What's a Nixon?