In the Dailies

Prepare for a random stream of consciousness. A lot of things have been floating through this brain of mine, but none cohesive enough to make a full blog post. This is my mental goulash.

What is the lifespan of appliances? Within the past week I’ve started fires in two appliances: the microwave and the toaster. The toaster I can’t explain. It is ten years old, but I couldn’t find a cause of the sparks, and it worked fine after the fire was put out. (Yes, I did use it after the fire.) The microwave, however, I understand. I attempted a cool new trick from my friend Karen who suggested putting store-bought frosting into the microwave then pouring it over cakes to get a fondant-like smoothness. I didn’t exactly get all the foil off the top of the canister before nuking it, thus the sparks. A bit of frosting burnt, but that was easily remedied. I just scooped it out and continued with our project. I can’t exactly scoop out the section of countertop now singed from the toaster.

How long do you think my kids will be obsessed with Christmas? When do the in-home pageants stop? Not that I mind, but the stories grow more bizarre with each passing day. Today the baby Jesus was played by Eve (from WALL-E). A very hiccup-y Ellie delivered the babe while a sunglasses-clad Zach ran around with ribbons shouting “I’ll marry Jesus!” I also overheard a discussion about how babies don’t have wheels and moms can’t be shepherds.

Two people have tagged me on Facebook for a 25 Things meme. I’m supposed to make a list of twenty-five lesser-known facts about me. I can’t think of any except my French fry OCD: I only eat the perfectly shaped ones. I can’t eat a French fry with a pointed end. It needs to be rectangular with ninety-degree corners forming a perfect square on each end. Weird, I know. I also can’t eat mushy or cold French fries. Friends tell me I exude quirks, so why can’t I think of any?

Last Friday morning I met Angie Shaghaghi. She spoke at our MOMS group at church. She’s very cool, and I would love to be her friend. I’m trying one of her recipes tonight. She made it for us on Friday. It was fabulous! I hope my version turns out just as well. I realized that morning that I have a TON of very cool kitchen gadgets like a mandolin, creme brulee torch, and immersion blender, but I don’t have a food processor. Isn’t that weird? (Hmmm … maybe that could be one of my 25 things?) I also realized I don’t use all my cool gadgets often enough. Maybe that’s because I have to store much of it in the basement. Someday I’ll have a huge gourmet kitchen and then y’all will be so impressed with my culinary expertise!

Ellie loves tea parties, but she doesn’t like tea. Instead she just adds a ton of sugar to lukewarm water. This piggybacks well on my nutritional apathy of blueberry pancake days, doesn’t it, Dale? *grin* For the record, I use the 80/20 diet. We eat healthy 80% of the time and refuse to feel guilty the other 20%.

Speaking of Ellie, she has recently decided that is her name. If you don’t know me personally, you may not realize Ellie is not our daughter’s given name. It’s what we’ve called her since birth, but it’s not her name. When she turned three, she insisted we call her by her “real” name. If we wanted to use her nickname (Ellie), we must preface it with the proper title of “Princess.” Well, in a new development, she has embraced her nickname and, as of last week, even introduced herself as “Ellie.” Interesting – huh?

Children will play nicely together and independently for hours if you ask them to clean their rooms. My kids have occupied themselves all day because of that one simple request. Their rooms aren’t clean, but they’re quiet and happy. And I’m okay with that.