Nothing personal

While Rachel and Miriam have been "across the pond," we've been having a fine time here at home.

On Monday morning last week, Zoë came home from swim team practice and immediately began making cookies. She's determined to learn how to bake...and whipped up some delicious oatmeal raisin cookies...while wearing an apron over her still-damp swimming suit. 

Cool pool days and graham crackers

It has been so cold and rainy this week that they even cancelled swim practice for the youngest swimmers on the team yesterday. Zoë suffered through her session until she was told to get out of the pool to warm up before she went hypothermic (reminding me of my youth and being sent to the hot showers in the middle of practice...except that our current pool doesn't have a row of hot showers to retreat to).

This morning I took the kids to practice. 

It was cold and rainy. 

Calamities of various proportions

Nothing untoward happened on Monday...except that several of us got a little too much sun. But Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday have certainly had their moments of excitement!

On Saturday, Grandpa bent over to get something out of the fridge and when he stood up he bumped a shelf with his shoulder and sent a jug of orange juice crashing down to the floor. It split open and went all over the floor. It took two full bath-sized towels to mop it up (and then some). 

I was just glad it wasn't my kids who made the mess. 

On Sunday, Darla went to get a bowl out of the cupboard and the shelf—which was missing one of its pegs—tilted and an entire set of dishes came crashing down. Honestly, I'm a little vague on the details here because I was in the bathroom when I heard the crash. 

My first thought was, "I hope that wasn't my kids!"*

*Technically my first thought was, "I hope no one is hurt!" But that thought quickly passed because there wasn't any associated screaming. So it was clear that something had broken and not someone. So my more permanent thought was, "I hope that wasn't my kids!"

Tales from the garden

My garden has been neglected this spring. 

A very wise mentor of mine recently told me to leave myself room to fail—and I have! I have approximately 72 square feet of failure in the front yard (plus, you know, the rest of the yard)!

Sure, the annuals we planted have been pulling their weight. And little bits of zombified compost have popped up through the soil, reanimated tendrils lurching toward trellises—they're sure to offer us a surprise harvest of sorts. And friend who started too many tomatoes offered me her leggy cast-offs.

So it's all chaos out there, but that's okay because it's a beautiful, wild failure.

*****

The same friend who gave me the tomatoes gave me some clustered mountain mint last year.

When I say friend, you should know that this friend and I met on the Buy Nothing Group and our entire friendship is just...the exchange of plants and advice. And it's mostly me taking because—let's face it—my garden is pathetic and I need all the advice I can get.

She's been trying to increase the number of local plants in her garden—mountain mint being one of them. 

Like most mints, mountain mint is a prolific spreader, but it's less of a problem because the shoots it sends out tend to not root very deeply, so it's controllable. Also, it's native, not invasive. 

That mountain mint took to our hillside like it was coming home after a long day and has spread significantly since I planted it at the end of last summer. And that's fine by me. Bees love it—wasps and butterflies, too. It smells delicious.

"Is it edible?" Rachel wanted to know.

"I don't know," I told her. "Most varieties of mountain mint are, from what I've researched. But some aren't and..."

Long story short, Rachel picked a leaf and ate it. 

And she didn't die. And she didn't get sick. 

The-lone-orphan

By the time I rolled out of bed this morning we'd:

(1) been hit by the atmospheric river, which is apparently a thing—it's still raining

(2) experienced an earthquake, kind of—technically it was in Tennessee

(3) arranged for Rachel to babysit for a friend whose car was totaled earlier in the week, and who wanted to go look for new cars without her twin preschoolers in tow

Busy morning. 

But, Alexander and Zoë had taken Phoebe downstairs, pulled the baby gate (the international symbol for "don't go upstairs," typically used during meetings but also for needed naps), got her breakfast, and then started a game with her using the magnatiles and teddy bear counters.

It was very nice to have a sleep in. 

When I went downstairs the kids rushed over to meet me at the bottom of the stairs, telling me about some "weird pink milk" in the fridge.

"Weird pink milk?" I repeated.

"Yeah! We tasted it and it was disgusting!"

"Well, was it very...old?" I asked.

"No! Come and see! Come and see!"

Lavender/Lilac

Phoebe wanted to make soup for dinner, using some rosemary she picked in the garden. She even got out a pot and put it on the stove with the rosemary in it, but I got out a bigger pot and started dinner in that. We had a head of cauliflower that we hadn't gotten to yet, so I decided on cauliflower soup and even found a recipe for rosemary cauliflower soup...which I loosely followed.

We decided on a whim to add some red cabbage to the soup. Quite a lot, actually. Because one head of cauliflower isn't going to feed a family of seven and we had some red cabbage in the fridge. 

Plus, it was bound to turn the soup a delightful pinkish-purple, which felt very springy, very Easter-y. 

Phoebe was very pleased with the light purple we ended up with after everything was blended together. But then I decided that it could use a little more acidity. So I grabbed a lemon and squeezed it into the pot and...

Dinner on Thursday

Last night we made Hawaiian Haystacks for dinner, something we haven't eaten (I think) since very soon after Karen's death in 2018, when someone in our ward brought it over for dinner. 

I wasn't really sure what to make for dinner...except that we had a fresh pineapple to use...and time was ticking so I decided to just start a pot of rice cooking and then brainstorm about what to have with the rice while it was cooking.

My three ideas were:

1. Something Mexican (we have leftover taco meat in the fridge)
2. Stir fry of sorts
3. Hawaiian Haystacks

I settled on Hawaiian Haystacks because (a) we hadn't had that in so many years that the kids couldn't even recall what it was and (b) we'd had "Ultimate Salad Bar" earlier in the week and had a lot of leftover toppings that also qualify as Hawaiian Haystacks toppings. 

All I had to do was make some chicken gravy and cut up a pineapple...and a bunch of vegetables. 

Often the gravy is made from a can of cream of chicken soup, but we don't usually have that stocked in our pantry, so I had made it from scratch, which really is not so difficult except that Phoebe wanted to help. She pulled out every single stool in our house and set them all up in the kitchen, forming an obstacle course of sorts (but allowing her to reach any given counter surface...as well as leaving a few in the middle of the kitchen floor to trip over). Then she demanded that she help and help and help.

"Phoebe," I sighed, wish that Andrew was home to be cooking with her instead of...me...having to do it. "I am not as confident about cooking as Daddy is, so I'm not as confident about allowing you to help. This is a step that Mommy has to do on her own, okay? You can have a turn stirring soon..."

So I browned the onions and I blended the water and flour and I made the base of the gravy and then I added the milk, whisked things together briefly, and handed Phoebe the whisk. 

"Finally!" she growl exasperatedly. "I tan tuut!"

YOYO*...oh, no.

Our dishwasher broke this week (because...why not?). 

Was I grateful for that dishwasher? Immensely. 

Was it my favourite dishwasher in the world? Not remotely. 

So when we got an estimate for how much it would cost to fix it versus how much it would cost to simply get a new machine...guess what we went with. 

Is that environmentally friendly? I honestly don't think so. 

Do I know why manufacturers make machines that aren't easily repairable? Absolutely not.

I mean, I understand that it ultimately means more money for them, but it really feels like it would be better for everybody if these things were simply...easy to repair. 

*****

We're about a month into the semester and things are heating up. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday is once again an absolute marathon. 

The dishwasher broke on Monday—and for once not after I had touched it last (both the stove and the washing machine died after I touched them last but the dishwasher is not on me!). 

On Tuesday (my long day on campus), Andrew ordered pizza for dinner.

On Wednesday we had leftovers.

On Thursday we had leftovers.

On Friday our new dishwasher was delivered and installed and...we had leftovers.

O Tupperware, O Tupperware...

There's this meme setup that goes "if I ever won the lottery, I wouldn't tell anyone...but there would be signs," and the accompanying picture is...whatever the sign would be. 

I feel like this is my kitchen right now, only it's "if my marriage was approaching two decades, I wouldn't tell anyone [or would tell everyone]...but there would be signs." And this would be the accompanying image:

It's a spatula/flipper (as opposed to a spatula/scraper; we tend to clarify at our house because I grew up calling both these things "spatulas" and didn't everybody? Apparently not) that we've had for nearly two decades now. The handle was melted at one point. And a couple inches of it broke off a few years ago. But we kept it around because we liked it. 

We've accumulated several others over the years, but this spatula was different.

This was a good spatula. It was the spatula, if you know what I mean. 

There are other spatulas and then there is the spatula.

It's rather met its demise now, I think. 

I'm sure a new favourite will surface, but for now we're keenly feelings its loss.

*****

We were gifted some take'n'toss Tupperware for our wedding.

Jack-o-Lantern Carving

Halloween morning got a little rough at our house, with me losing my temper because I have so much to do, so many balls to juggle, and some of us (who shall remain anonymous) have been difficult to motivate to complete their schoolwork. It was...a frustrating morning...and Halloween, too, so I'm sure that contributed to the general chaos of the day. 

Also, a neighbour was having some trees removed in their yard so we were hearing chainsaws all day and...I should have been aware of how that was affecting me so I could have put earplugs in or something (too much ambient noise tends to make me really tense), but I didn't. Instead I just lost my temper in a huge way.

See this pumpkin? That's a little bit how our morning felt.

Math and Brownies

Alexander was so excited to start his Beast Academy (math) training online this year. I ordered the workbooks for him last year because I wanted him to work on his handwriting skills. But this year I signed him up for the online platform so I could—more or less—take something off my plate.

*****

We had a linger longer on Sunday, which Zoë baked brownies for. 

She left a rather threatening note for Rachel in the kitchen, informing her that Zoë was going to be the one to bake brownies for the linger longer and—importantly—she did not need Rachel's help with that task.

So Zoë baked some brownies. And they were fairly popular. 

When I was in line at the dessert table, a couple of women in the ward were like, "And what came from your house? 'Cuz I know I want a slice of that!"

I explained that the brownies came from our house, but that Zoë had claimed baking rights and had kicked Rachel out of the kitchen. The ladies were hoping for some of Rachel's sugar cookies that she's made for a couple of youth activities lately.

Rachel is a phenomenal baker.

Freudian slips: Dishwashing edition (and a cake story for dessert)

We were finishing up dinner this evening...relatively late...because we had things like swimming and music lessons...and we were reminding the kids about their "dinner jobs." One child is in charge of clearing the table, one child is in charge of doing the dishes, one child is in charge of tidying up the floors, and one child is in charge of taking care of the cat (and garbage, if needed). Alexander helps out here and there or helps keep Phoebe entertained and out of the way. 

It sounds like a well-oiled machine, doesn't it? 

After all, we're pretty experienced parents now. We have systems and things like that...

Alas, systems are always better in theory than they are in practice (at least from our experience), so it really works like a rusty, piece-of-junk machine. 

But it's working (I guess), so that's all that matters.

Particularly Pungent Pineapple

Andrew made chicken tikka masala for dinner. It was delicious but was a little spicier than he intended, the little kids suffered through a few bites of the sauce, but mostly ate plain rice and naan. Spicy bites were alternated with bites of fresh pineapple, to quell some of the heat. 

Everything was fine and dandy until I looked over at Phoebe and noticed her lips were bleeding. 

"Phoebe!" I said. "Why are your lips bleeding?!"

I dabbed them off with a napkin, trying to remember if she'd tried to get down at some point and bumped her face on the table or something. Because why would she be bleeding?

And then Benjamin said something, so I turned to look at him and his lips were bleeding.

"Benjamin!" I said. "Your mouth is bleeding, too!"

"Wait, what?" he asked, wiping his mouth with his napkin. 

"He's bleeding, too?!!" Andrew asked.

We started frantically scanning faces: "Alexander's mouth is bleeding, too!" Andrew announced.

"Is mine?" cried Zoë, who hadn't really touched much of her dinner.

Zoë was fine. 

"My mouth burns a little, but I think it's fine," Rachel said. 

Same answer for me and Miriam, both.

Andrew volunteered to be the constant for our study. "I didn't have any pineapple," he said, which launched a long discussion of which fruit he'd prefer in any given pair of fruits because he doesn't often choose to eat pineapple, apparently. 

And with good reason!!

Now, we already knew about bromelaine in pineapples, and have often joked that it's a fruit that you have to digest before it digests you, but we have never had one quite as pungent as this one!

There were a few panicky moments where we weren't sure why everyone was suddenly bleeding, but it only took us a few minutes to clue in to what was wrong. Still—so weird!

Cooking up some colloids

This morning we made a couple of gallons of chocolate milk for the youth to consume after their temple trip this evening. Evidently buying milk at Costco (because it's much cheaper there than other places) and some Nesquik powder is more cost effective than buying ready-made gallons of chocolate milk. It just requires a little bit of preparation. 

So Andrew had Miriam dump a gallon of milk into a big mixing bowl and add 262 grams of powder (equivalent to 1 cup or so) and give it a few rounds with the immersion blender before pouring it back into the milk jug. This last step required Andrew's assistance because a gallon of chocolate milk sloshing around in a bowl was a little heavy and precarious for Miriam or I to handle.

(I, like, tweaked my back the other day. I could hardly move at all yesterday—was on the brink of tears for most of the day because it was so painful—but woke up feeling a bit better this morning...but not able to handle a sloshing gallon of chocolate milk).

Andrew poured the milk while I held the funnel. 

"I dunno," I said as I observed how full the jug was getting and how much milk was still left to pour in it. "Does the volume of milk increase when you add the powder?"

"Nah," Andrew said. "It just dissolves."

"Sure," I said. "But...does it though? Like, it just doesn't seem like this jug is going to hold all of this..."

"But if it dissolves then it doesn't add to the volume, right?"

"Are you sure about that? I just still don't think it's going fit..."

"Oh, it'll fit," he said confidently, dumping the rest of the milk into the funnel. 

On a scale of one to ten...

I will write about our evening out soon! In the meantime, while we have all tested "negative" from COVID-19 and have been improving, we have not been having a fun time at our house. For whatever reason, both Andrew and I developed a post-COVID cough, and it's a doozy. It's possible Zoë and Phoebe have the same cough, but theirs isn't as bad. This cough is seriously no fun. 

And it's not like I didn't have a cough when I was sick with COVID. Because I did! 

I coughed so hard—I kid you not!—I pulled a muscle in my back (or something...must be getting old). I could hardly bend or twist and coughing was so painful! But I got over that cough. And my nose stopped being stuffy. And my back started to feel better. And I tested negative for COVID...and then I developed another nasty—and very productive (medically speaking)—cough. 

I am so tired of coughing. 

But I didn't start writing to complain...at least...not about coughing. 

We're getting better all the time...

Tomorrow Miriam is supposed to be a page at the state senate, but she's been a little nervous about riding downtown with Andrew (who has been down with COVID). He's been taking Paxlovid for about four days now, though, and woke up feeling great this morning, so he took a test this afternoon and...it was negative!

"Wow! You won the COVID race!" I said.

"That's true!" he said. "I was positive for the least amount of time. Of course, I'm taking performance-enhancing drugs."

Which...is true.

So, Zoë is negative, Phoebe is negative, Andrew is negative. 

Benjamin took a test yesterday and it was ever-so-faintly positive, but we let him downstairs to play in the basement anyway...for the first time in over a week...to play LEGO. 

I'm still sick and am scared to test because I'm afraid it's going to be "more" positive than I'd like it to be at this point. While designed to be solely an indication of disease, and are no approved to show how much of the disease is present, the rapid-tests can actually offer an indication of how many virus antibodies are active in your body: "The line that you see on a test 'is actually made up of millions and millions of little antibodies holding onto a dye...so the more virus, the more little dye molecules are going to line up on the line.'" Thus, the tests offer more than a binary (yes/no) answer to the question of whether or not you have COVID; rather, "the intensity of the line does tend to correlate with the amount of antigen in the sample."

So I'm hoping for a faint, faint line. We'll see...if in a few days...when I get brave enough to take a test...

Let's see...

Alexander is still pretty freshly sick, but he's feeling pretty okay. 

Here's a picture of him and Zoë with a puzzle they worked on together yesterday evening:

Botulism at the Iron Rod

On Sunday the youth speaker brought a can of beans up on the stand with him, specifically black-eyed peas. I wasn't sure what he was going to speak about per se, but when he held up the can and said, "I just have a can of black-eyed peas here," and set it down beside the microphone, assuring the congregation that "those are for later," I figured that...maybe he was going to talk about New Year's Day. Setting goals, welcoming new opportunities, things like that. 

After all, down in the south, eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day is said to bring good luck. The speaker himself was raised in the south, but his parents were/are Mexican immigrants, though, so I wasn't sure if he would have grown up with the tradition of eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day. My own children are of non-southern heritage themselves and we haven't adopted the tradition of eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day. Many in our congregation are transplants to the south. But maybe there's, like, a Mexican New Year's tradition surrounding black-eyed peas...or beans in general...it's possible.

I spent quite a lot of time speculating about those beans, but everything I hypothesized was way off.

He spoke about the Vision of the Tree of Life and the importance of holding to the iron rod, which, in Lehi's vision, symbolizes the word of God.

"So imagine this Book of Mormon is the iron rod," he said, placing one hand on the book and lifting the can high into the air with his other hand. "And this can of beans represents temptations and things. But if I just hold fast to the iron rod..."

And with that he brought that can of beans down onto his hand. *BAM!*

It was...shocking.

"I'm just fine," he said. "But the can, you can see, is dented. Actually, my pinky hurts a little bit. But, like, only a little bit. It's fine, really. My hand is fine. Because I was holding to iron rod, see?"

I mean...I don't think it's a sacrament talk that we'll soon forget...that's for sure and certain.

And when we got home we had to see whether, in fact, this was an actual thing that people can do to themselves and emerge unscathed. So we watched a few YouTube videos (like this one) and then we went through several cans of pears. 

But evidently it's a thing you can do (it's physics!); we all did it and lived to tell the tale (though evidently it's better to use one finger than it is to use all your fingers like we did).

Here's a video of Andrew and Rachel trying it:

Wet the drys, dry the wets...

Andrew made some delicious pretzels for dinner this evening. 

There's a meme about how making pasta is all about wetting the dry stuff and then drying the wet stuff over and over again. We make pasta from scratch enough for this to be quite funny: wet the drys, dry the wets, wet the drys, dry the wets, wet the drys...

Pretzel making follows a similar pattern—you wet the flour to make the dough, then you form the pretzels and let them rise, then you boil the pretzels, then you bake the pretzels... I guess that pattern is more of a wet, rest, wet, dry. 

Cookies, cookies, cookies!

I have done zero holiday baking, but that's been okay because Rachel baked gingerbread and spritz cookies and Andrew made sugar cookies. I didn't have to lift a finger (until it came time for decorating)!

But to start off this post, here's a picture of Phoebe and Alexander helping me make dinner on Sunday. We made a French toast casserole and they were such proud helpers!

Thanksgiving day

Thanksgiving! We had it! Don't worry! We had it!

I'm just slow about writing about it because...thesis. But that's okay! 

We'd planned to have dinner around 3:00 in the afternoon. Josie, Rachel, and Miriam played games at Grandpa's house all morning and cooked the turkey breasts (which no one ate very much of, though the kids seemed to love after I turned it into turkey à la king last week for one of our leftover nights). The little kids and I spent the morning raking leaves. Andrew spent the morning bustling about the kitchen.

Here's how our spread ended up: