and then there were four…

I don’t want to be a jerk of a parent. I don’t. But, I fully intend to read all books before the girls do as they get older. Or, in the very least, read reviews, plot points, etc.

Don’t think I will tell them they can’t read something if I find it questionable (because, let’s face it, they’ll just read it behind my back anyway if they want to bad enough), BUT I want to know what they are reading. So I can be a guide, and possibly answer questions if they are confused about something.

Let’s just say that my stance has a LOT to do with the fact that I read many things at a young age that I didn’t necessarily understand. (I read Forever when I was in 5th or 6th grade, ya’ll). I don’t think I’m worse for it, but I also feel that if I had been given some kind of guidance when reading, someone could have told me that book (for example) wasn’t the same kind of book as all of the other Judy Blume books I loved.

So, imagine my surprise, when after taking Olivia to the library (where she decided she needed TEN books this time), we sat down to read Madeline in London. I’m happily reading aloud, when I reach this passage:

“And when they went to the place, they found A horse that was gentle, strong, and sound. Some poor old dobbins are made into glue…
but not this one–”

WTF? Um…really? This is a celebrated children’s series. I did not, for one minute, think I needed to read CHILDREN’S picture books before sharing them with my children.

However, after my second strike, I’m thinking I should.

So I skipped over the making him into glue part, stumbled a bit, but managed to get over it without drawing any questions. After we finished, Olivia wanted to read “Miss Spider’s Wedding”. For those of you not familiar, Miss Spider is a series that was made into a Nick Jr. show. It’s beautifully illustrated, and we’ve read many of the books without any issues. However, THIS one, was obviously written for the adults.

I paused when I started reading and got to this passage:
“Then Holley held Miss Spider’s hand…I’ll say no more, you understand. For private moments between spiders should not be witnessed by outsiders.”
I paused, but did not stop (I should have).

I didn’t stop reading the book until I got to the part where Miss Spider’s friends were discussing her date with Holley, a smaller, bespectacled spider who is “kind and wise”.

“That pantywaist will never do. What difference if he’s kind and wise, He isn’t half Miss Spider’s size.”

SERIOUSLY?

The book was written in 1995, so it isn’t like there is another old fashioned definition that we don’t know about. The whole book puts a whole lot of emphasis on how important it is for a woman to settle down with a man. When Miss Spider talks of having a date, her friend says “Well Finally”.

They talk about spiders who “drink so much petunia wine, he’s hardly fit to crawl.”

Then when Spiderus comes along to woo Miss Spider he gets pretty violent with her, and the pictures are actually kind of scary. Of course, there is a happy ending, but at what cost?

*shakes her fist*

At what cost?

So I suppose now I have to preread even the most classic of tales.

But, in case you need some help, we successfully read the following books:

Lost and Found By Oliver Jeffers:  A penguin shows up on a boy’s doorstep one day. The boy tries to help him find his way home, only to discover something really profound. Olivia loved this one. We’ve read it at least three times since she got it from the library on Friday, and she’s read it solo more than I can probably count.

No Biting, Louise By Margie Palatini: Louise is a pigtailed alligator who loves to bite. Everyone tells her to knock it off except for her beloved Grandmama who says she will outgrow it. Sophia absolutely loved this one and laughs so hard every time we read it. I think we will be buying it for her collection.

Miss Spider’s Tea Party By David Kirk: Neither Bill and I have been requested to read this one yet…but Olivia has read it and likes it. The illustrations are gorgeous, and I’m sure before the week is over I will be able to report more fully on the content.

Miss Spider’s New Car By David Kirk: Cute! Not at all scary like the wedding book. The illustrations are (again) gorgeous.

Little Miss Spider By David Kirk: Very sweet book with the same gorgeous illustrations. I do understand how many adoptive parents are hesitant to share this one with their adopted children, as there is a passage that states “For finding your mother, there’s one certain test. You must look for the creature who loves you the best.” At face value, I found it sweet, but I get it. You don’t want your children to think that their birth parents do not love them. Maybe that helps? The only part I didn’t like (and perhaps it is because I’m reading it to such small children) is when the spider almost got eaten by a nest of hungry baby birds.

Kate, the Cat and the Moon By David Almond and Stephen Lambert: A little girl dreams she turns into a cat during the night, and turns back into a girl the next morning. Very nice illustrations, Olivia liked this one a lot. Very simple and easy to read. Both girls liked the “meowing” that I did.

The Cat in the Hat Comes Back & One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish By Dr. Seuss: We’re pretty much Seuss-a-holics in this house. Both girls LOVED these two and they have been read at least five times by Bill and I since Friday. Olivia has read them both at least as much on her own.

It is supposed to rain this weekend. I had to cancel my planned yard sale, so it damned well better rain.

We went to the library to stock up on books for the girls, since we anticipate not being able to go outside for the next couple of days. Olivia said she thought she needed more than five books this time, so we chose ten. After a trip to the grocery store we are hunkered down, the girls are in bed and Bill and I are catching up on our DVR queue.

I also realized I hadn’t listed any FLINKS in awhile.

So. Whether it is raining in your neck of the woods this weekend or not, enjoy this list of FLINKS.

Etiquette Hell I may or may not have listed this before, but the site has been updated and upgraded. Much easier to read and navigate. A lot of hilarious stories, also a great way to brush up on your own etiquette. Plus she posts cute stories every “Feel Good Friday”.

Friends of Irony Real irony. Not the series of unfortunate events that Ms. Morrisette sings about.

Lamebook Real facebook status fails. Some NSFW stuff, language, etc. Totally worth it.

Regretsy “Where DIY meets WTF” Some NSFW things are posted, but the writer does try to warn you. Making fun of the crap people try to sell on Etsy. It’s marvelous. (Sorry, it’s the girls’ favorite new word, we’ve been saying it a lot around here).

Enjoy.

That was February. I visited my family for a week and a half and the girls got really sick. I flew back home with two extremely sick girls, who stayed that way until just recently. Me, along with them.

Not sure if I mentioned it, but for Christmas, Bill enrolled me in a photography class which started two weeks ago. I never seem to have a minute, but I will attempt to take them when I can.

My first photography assignment was to photograph what we thought beauty was. All images were not to be altered in any way. No photoshop! Here are a few that I submitted:

Here’s hoping March sees more postings!

I only bought the girls a pair of shoes apiece. I could have gotten them so much more, but I abstained.

For myself, I stayed practical: 2 comfy thermal shirts (thermal is apparently back?), 2 soft hoodies, 1 cute sweater, 1 thin super-soft long sleeved t-shirt. Total spent on myself: $60.

I wanted jeans. I tried on at least 20 different styles and brands of jeans.

I’m in between sizes so I refuse to buy up a size, since I currently have those sizes at home, and they sag really low off of my butt and, which prompts Bill to look at me and say “You need clothes that fit”. However, I am also not going to buy the other size if it is so tight my tummy is forming a shelf on which to sit my children. There were a few contenders, but I also refused to spend $40 on a pair of jeans that I was only lukewarm about.

I’m going to try again tomorrow when we go through the town that houses the GAP outlet on the way to visit Bill’s mom and grandparents.

A special thanks to Rachel for the Gap/OldNavy/Banana Republic coupon–I got that same email AND my good friend works at GapKids, so she hooked me up with one of those 30% coupons for the whole weekend–which means I have lots to spare. If anyone is interested, leave a comment and I’ll email the coupon to you. :o)

One of my favorite things to do with Olivia and Sophia is to bake cookies. It is probably the messiest project we take on (aside from finger painting), but they get such a kick out of being able to eat their creations, that I can’t refuse a request to bake.

Every time Olivia finds out our afternoon activity is baking, she runs to her room and proclaims: “I need my chef’s hat and my apron, so I can be a chef!” Both girls have hats and aprons, and they wear them every time–it’s adorable.

This time, I decided to try my hand at Snickerdoodles. I’ve never made them before. Since I had no chocolate chips in the house, and we had JUST made sugar cookies with royal icing, I thought this would be an easy cookie to make.

Plus it would be an awesome way to break in my new beautiful early Christmas present from my Mother-in-Law:

Isn't it BEEEUUUTEEEFUL?

I searched for a good recipe, and came across the Perfect Snickerdoodles recipe. It had good reviews, so I decided to give it a try. Of course, I changed it up (that’s just what I do, okay?) and did half butter/half shortening and used baking powder instead of the cream of tartar and baking soda (thank you Alton Brown!) because I didn’t have any cream of tartar.

I allowed it to sit in the fridge for a few days because…well, because I was lazy (and no, I didn’t promise the girls we were making the cookies that day–I try to always follow through on promises of cookie baking). But when we finally got around to making the cookies, the dough looked like this:

MMM...cookie dough.

So I started rolling the dough into balls. No exact measurement, just good sized balls of dough.

Balls of dough. Nothing exciting.

At this point I had been handing some of the balls to the girls and they were rolling (or, in Sophia’s case, destroying) them into a tiny bowl of cinnamon sugar. This is why some of the dough balls look like they have cinnamon sugar on them–Olivia got handsy with the dough balls.

After lots of rolling in a cinnamon sugar mixture, I put them on a baking sheet and did something I won’t do again.

I squashed the balls.

DON'T try this at home.

The recipe doesn’t tell you to smoosh them down, but in my infinite wisdom, I assumed that you would need to. Olivia kept asking me “Why are you pushing them down, mama? Why do they need to be smooshed?” And I kept saying “Well, I want them to cook all the way through, sweetie.”

I should have listened to Olivia.

Yours should look like the last one...not all the other ones.

I regret that I did not take photos of the finished product. They were delicious. Had I not smooshed them down, they would have probably been much softer, but even as crispy cookies, they were yummy. A lot like a cookie version of a churro.

Mmmm churros.

A huge mess was made, but it was totally worth it to hear Olivia call them “SNEAKERDOODLES” and then have Sophia call them “snick dooles” (and later “snick-er…..doodle”).

I have my Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism (emphasis in print Journalism) and a minor in English (emphasis in Creative Writing). To say I am anal about grammar would be an understatement.

However, even with all of the years I’ve spent editing, writing, and learning, I KNOW that if I were to drag out my old grammar and/or style books, I would be guilty of many crimes against grammar. I’m not perfect, but at least I know this. So it is a little ridiculous for me to become so enraged when I see incorrect grammar that (to me, anyway) is obvious.

I overuse commas. I love ellipses. I use made-up words. I like to use caps to emphasize things. I use both run-on and fragment sentences. I really like dashes and probably use them inappropriately. I’m especially fond of prepositional phrases, as much as I try to phase them out. (HA!) I use parenthesis a lot and I am so guilty of changing point-of-view mid-stream it isn’t even funny.

I edit my posts, re-reading each entry to make sure things are spelled correctly, trying to make it as grammatically inoffensive as possible. If something sounds weird to me, I attempt to find out the rules so I may make it right. I welcome constructive criticism, and appreciate being told when things are incorrect, lest I be a grammar offender.

I just hope my grammatical errors aren’t causing people to cringe and run away screaming the way the people showcased in the following sites did for me. I hope you truly appreciate how much pain and embarrassment I suffered in the name of today’s FLINK. I’m extremely empathetic and I have a hard time watching or seeing things when people make fools of themselves unknowingly. So, without further ado, I give you:

The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotes

Apostrophe Abuse

and

The Perplexikon

Both Bill and I are huge Alton Brown fans, and subscribe to many of his culinary philosophies. The main philosophy being that the only unitasker you should have in your kitchen is a fire extinguisher. It’s something we live by. We have a small-ish kitchen and getting the most for our money is a high priority of ours (as I’ve mentioned time and time again).

Bill (and now, I) are fans of this website, Unclutterer, which is: “a blog about getting and staying organized”. It offers amazing information and tips and does it in an un-boring way. However, your Flink lies in their weekly feature, that never fails to have me shaking my head in disappointment in the human race.

Unitasker Wednesday offers a new weekly unitasker that is offered for sale somewhere on the interwebs (usually). You can buy this stuff, but it will only do one thing–one ridiculous thing. They even offer a disclaimer before each Unitasker item:

“All Unitasker Wednesday posts are jokes — we don’t want you to buy these items, we want you to laugh at their ridiculousness. Enjoy!”

So for the love of all that is holy, please don’t come back to me and tell me you’ve bought a Garbage Bowl, or a Chompr…I may have to go all Dwight Schrute on you.

I hate the phrase “The customer is always right”. HATE it. Even before I started working retail at the age of 16, I would always sympathize with the employees when those situations arose and a customer acted the fool.

I worked retail for the better part of high school and college. Even when I had my first “real” job, I dealt with rude clients all the time. I had a long list of them. Some days I would have to retreat to the bathroom to have a good cry. It was hard for me, as a teenager and young adult, to separate their misdirected anger and really determine if I caused any problems or if they were being jackasses.

I have a bunch of stories I could share. I could probably start my own blog just with my own customer service stories. BUT seeing as how there are a plethora of them out there, I’ll just direct you to the one that I’ve been currently reading.

I like Not Always Right because you don’t have to read in any order, you can just read when you need a laugh or, if you are like me, you can go back through the archives and read every.single.story. The site is pretty tame, expletives are sprinkled throughout, but nothing vulgar (that I could find).

I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you, but people are stupid. Don’t be a  jackass just because YOU are having a bad day.

At parties past, Bill and I have done burgers and hot dogs on the grill or deli platters along with an assortment of dips, chips, veggies and the like. We always have our parties in the afternoons: After lunch, and before dinner. So, people aren’t usually hungry for a meal. Which means we have a TON of leftover food.

However, I am of the school that when you have a party, no matter how small, you provide refreshments for your guests. I’m a very good Southern girl.

After brainstorming ideas, I decided that hors d’oeuvres were the way to go. So, I started researching ideas and I found two that I had never tried before, and settled on a family favorite for the third. I also decided on making both a hot and a cold dip, along with a veggie platter and assortment of chips.

Yes. I overdid it, and we did have leftovers, but I still like the idea, and will just choose fewer recipes for Sophia’s party next July.

I made our family favorite, Lil’ Smokies in a Blanket. Yes, they are similar to “pigs in a blanket” but we use Beef  Lil’ Smokies, so it feels wrong to call them “pigs” in a blanket, but “cows in a blanket” doesn’t sound as cute. We usually just call them “Lil’ Smokies” and everyone knows that they will be wrapped in crescent rolls. However, I do NOT use Parmesan cheese or garlic salt. I’m not saying it wouldn’t taste right, I’ve just never used it before. We usually serve with BBQ sauce for dipping, but ketchup and mustard would be tasty also. So simple, and very kid friendly.

The hot dip is one a roommate introduced me to in college. We would make this and eat it for dinner. It was simply called “The Dip”, but after research, I have found it is also called Chili Cheese Dip. (Thank you, Captain Obvious) You can make this in the slow cooker so your oven is free for other things. It is REALLY good with Fritos (which is how we ate it in college) but I have found it is yummy with regular corn tortilla chips also. Admittedly, the ingredient list may sound unappetizing, but it is SO yummy.

I also made our favorite sour cream dip using Laura Scudder’s Green Onion dip mix.

After I had those familiar recipes down, I settled on TWO new ones:

Stuffed Mushrooms, Baby!

&

Bacon Wrapped Pineapple Bites!

It was only after I typed them out that I realized they are both very excited recipes.

I swear to all that is good in this world, both of them are delicious and I will definitely be making them again. I didn’t have white wine for the mushrooms, so we used sake. With the other recipe, I used fresh pineapple and center cut bacon. Word to the wise: use a deep pan or a roasting pan with room for drippings with the bacon wrapped pineapple. My bacon dripped off of my cookie sheet and caused the smoke detector to go off. Luckily I was working on these right before the party, and not the night before like some of the other stuff.

Stuffed mushrooms, on the move.

Remember me? mmm...I am cake. And I am delicious.

For the delicious cake, I used Pioneer Woman’s The Best Chocolate Sheet Cake. Ever

I doubled the recipe and did not making the frosting she makes for this cake. I did a basic buttercream frosting (times two). However, I like my buttercream more buttery, so I use a bit of butter extract (in addition to the vanilla) to help the flavor (since I like the consistency of it with the shortening). Olivia requested a “blue cake” so I emptied an entire bottle of blue food coloring into a third of the icing. I mixed a third of the icing with a jar of hazelnut spread for the cake’s filling and the other third I mixed with yellow food coloring for an accent color.

I forgot to buy a tube to stabilize the cake, so I used a slurpee straw. I still can't remember if we washed it first. Oh well.

I also made homemade ice cream to go along with the cake using a recipe from the Ben & Jerry’s cookbook Bill got me for Christmas last year. Someone was kind enough to repost it here. The recipe book is fantastic, if you have an ice cream maker, you MUST invest in this book.

Olivia also requested the ice cream to be yellow.

Looks weird, tastes gooooood

And no, the lopsidedness of the cake was not planned. I was using this cake leveler. Being that it is from Ikea and the whole little “decorating kit” cost me only $5, I can’t complain, but it was user error, not utensil malfunction. The leveler is a piece of thick wire (think piano wire or guitar string) strung across the bottom of the tool. You can move the wire up and down each side of the tool to get the desired size. Unfortunately I forgot to hook one side of the wire to the correct peg, so I ended up with a lopsided shave on the bottom layers. My mom (bless her) pointed it out to me so I was able to get (relatively) even layers for the other two tiers.

It still looked cute for a novice–but more importantly, it was SCRUMPTIOUS (Olivia’s new favorite word, thank you Jessica Alba!)

I’m guilty of oversharing. I’ve gotten better as time goes by, but I was always one who laid it all out there for everyone to see. Don’t get me wrong, everyone has their secrets, as they should, but for the most part, I am an open book.

One of the main reasons for this is because of how my father’s illness was treated. The situation always seemed to be hushed, the truth swept under the rug because it was awkward and uncomfortable to talk about. Besides, you just don’t talk about such things in mixed company. I don’t blame them for being that way. I understand.

But I can’t be that way. I always felt that had we been more open about the truth, as uncomfortable as it was, we would have been better able to work on it, fix it, make it easier for the world to understand. Then maybe I wouldn’t be sitting her, typing about how I still haven’t figured out my feelings on my father’s death…Over 8 months later.

He really was an enigma to me. Which means, ultimately, half of who I am is a mystery. I think part of what bothers me is that it was such a fucking waste. That gets thrown around a lot, whenever someone dies young. My dad wasn’t young, but he wasn’t old and he could have had a lot of years ahead of him. I also feel like he just took 10 years to die, because what he was doing after his attempted suicide certainly wasn’t living. I get really angry, but then feel relief at the same time.

Angry because I was never able to really tell him how I felt, but relieved I’ll never have to tell him. Angry that he hurt me and my sister and was never ever held accountable for it, but relief that he will never have the opportunity to apologize. Angry because he will never know his granddaughters, but really relieved that he will never know his granddaughters. Because now I don’t have to explain to them what’s wrong with him. Although on the flip side, when they ask, I’ll have to explain anyway (one day).

I’m angry that people treated us like trash because of something we had no fucking control over. Angry that they looked down on my mother when she didn’t create me out of thin air. Just fucking angry.

But I can’t let that bring me down. I can’t wallow in the deep end of poor-pitiful me. I’m an adult and should have moved on. It’s hard to reconcile, though. No matter how many times I try to remember that what has happened to me has made me who I am, I still get angry because no child should have to deal with that. Then, I just get sad.