True confession, #269

I can't make JELL-O.






Isn't that the saddest thing to hear from a stay-at-home mom?





Well, not the SADDEST THING, but pretty pathetic.


And please, please, please don't feel compelled to leave your best JELL-O hints and pointers, or to write to me with your Sure-Jell tips from 1953 that are tried and true through three generations.  I can almost guarantee I've tried them all, including using the freezer for 24 hours.

I can make a lot of things in the kitchen...lasagna, homemade cinnamon rolls, technical soups (ratatoille), souffles....but JELL-O fails everytime.  I'm starting to think I have sort of a body chemical that prevents it from working, sort of like people who magnetize watches. I've tried using less water; it turns rubbery and you can't stab it for anything, to get it to your mouth...and that's really kind of funny to watch people try to eat it, especially people who are unaware of my disability with the substance. I've tried adding frozen fruit, which sinks to the bottom and gels the lower half of the bowl while the top remains runny.  The freezer didn't work, because when JELL-O thaws, it's back to the water state, and then you can't get the platter back to the counter, and wonder if everyone had straws and sipped it, if it wouldn't get it to a managable puddle. (I've never had the nerve to try this.)

The only thing harder than making JELL-O is making layered JELL-O.

You'd think someone who can't manage the whole "Add 1 cup boiling water to powder, stir until dissolved, then add 1 cup cold water, chill until firm" process would shy away from any sort of layers, but heaven help me, I keep thinking a little cream cheese and Cool-Whip should somehow add loft and form. 

It pretty much just makes the puddle creamy.  And a little, well, curdled. And no-one wants a straw for THAT.

And I desperately want to conquer the JELL-O, so I make it for every special potluck occasion, hoping beyond hope that God will look upon my efforts with favor and grant me one perfect quivering red mold. 

Thus far, to date.....He's kept me pretty humble.  I would give Him all the glory, if that were to happen, and I'm pretty sure my potluck people would, too.  There'd probably be a revival, right there at the Cohagen Gymnasium and Community Center. 

Tonight is Bookclub, and I'm taking.......





Pretzel Salad!  It's layered. It has cream cheese AND Cool-Whip. And yes, the crowning glory of the dish is

JELL-O!

As of right now, it's looking promising.  The pretzel layer didn't burn.  The cream cheese and Cool-Whip layer held together nicely. The jury's still out on the red layer with raspberries.

Along with your prayers for world peace, a cure for cancer, the end of hunger and thirst in Africa, and everything, would you please take a moment to pray for the Bookclub women and the JELL-O salad?

Thank you.

"Dear God,

..PopPops gives da coo-kies,
Grandmas gives da coo-kies,
And the house goes down a'the water.
Amen."

Every prayer from Angus sounds exactly like this, which is not surprising, really, since PopPops and Grandmas DO give da coo-kies, and he's very grateful for that particular blessing. But the house goes down a'the water makes me a little nervous.

And to go along with the funny prayer, Maggie just blessed me after a sneeze, by saying, "A-ZOOM-tight, Mommy."  That's a little ways from the German version, but still nice!

Our Hero, Campguy

*This post is thoroughly and completely saturated with Texas Tech Red Raider-ness.  If you are remotely allergic to scarlett and black, or anything Texan, back away from the computer. Of course, if you ARE that sensitive, you probably quit reading this blog a few months ago.

When we picked up our mail on Friday, amongst the bills and farm papers was a package from our friend, Campguy. (That's his blog name.)

In the package was this really great Texas Tech birdhouse that he'd made for us!

Now, I believe he's a Longhorns fan, but we won't hold that against him. It probably pained him to have to manufacture a Red Raiders birdhouse, and we love him all the more for having gone through that for us.

Here's the family, after a big fight over who got to hold the birdhouse.

Angus won.

Can you see the unvarnished envy in HRH's eyes?

Guns Up!!!

I just love it!

We aren't going to be able to put it out until spring, so it will have an exalted place in the farmhouse until then. Maybe Campguy can come North and help us hang it, in April.

GO RED RAIDERS!

There was another object in the box, and we will be talking about that in a future post. You'll just have to wait, breathlessly, until I get my camera memory card cleared off.

Trying something to see if it will work; Take 1

Make a Smilebox slideshow

The Stunk

*Brace yourself for another exciting installment of events from Cohagen, Eastern Montana's Happening Place.  The account you are about to read is true. Names have not been changed to protect the reputation of those involved. 





Yesterday morning began like any other morning at the Farmhouse.  Kids were fighting, snarling and hitting each other with foam swords, the kittens were scrambling under the couch and dragging out dust bunnies the size of slippers, the Farmer's Wife clutching her cooling coffee with the desperation of a women condemned and the Farmer trying in vain to escape the house to go to "work". (I'm starting to wonder about his insane devotion to his job....)

I asked the Farmer to please burn the garbage in the barrels, because they were disgracefully full and I had more to take out.  He grudgingly consented to do so, and stuck his head in the back door after living through that death-defying chore and asked me to meet him around front with the blue Marksalot pen he'd swiped from his mom. (Swiped, borrowed...whatever.)

I located the pen and dutifully went to the front door where I stood waiting for the Farmer and my goodbye kiss.  I heard him coming up the steps, so I opened the door and nearly got shoved over. 
"MOVE!", he hollered as he ran through the porch and frantically rummaged through the storage cupboard.  I thought he'd caught something on fire, so I was going for the fire extinguisher.
"NO!", he yells, "BIG SKUNK!"
Well, that certainly changes things.

He grabbed the shotgun and dashed out the door, loading it as he went.  I locked the door behind him and gathered all the kittens into the house again, then went to Maggie's room to watch the action. 

The "stunk" (as Maggie and Angus call them) was trotting up the hill toward the cattleguard at a pretty good clip. He was, without exaggerating, the biggest stunk I've ever seen.  I don't know if he was just fluffy with winter hair, poofy because he was angry, or just well-fed from all the catfood he'd been consuming in the last month, but he was a trophy stunk. 

The Farmer took his stance and started shooting.  Nothing happened.  I mean, the stunk kept trotting, and paused after every blast.  After three blasts, he got mad, turned his bulk around and started heading back down the hill at a pretty good clip, TOWARD the Farmer! At this point I was thinking a couple of things. 1. The Farmer is a really horrible shot with the shotgun. OR 2. That stunk is not only huge, he's wearing body armor. OR 3. He was coming back home to die.  None of those thoughts were reassuring. 

The Farmer ran back to the house with the shotgun, and rummaged once again through the cupboard until he found the perfect shell, and headed back out to eliminate Super Stunk. Once again, he took his stance and shot, and this time it was good, and the stunk died right there in the middle of the road about 10 yards from the house.  What a shot! I wish I'd had a movie camera. (Blackmail purposes...)

When asked why the first shots didn't work and why the stunk started heading back, he claims that he was shooting light loads, and it was just stinging the stunk and making him mad.  Well, I wasn't going to examine the carcass to see if he was telling the truth, so we'll just go with that story.  He says the stunk had been living under the wading pool in the garage for some time. 

Molly, my dog, to show her admiration of the Great Hunter, found the spot of the battle and rolled in it.  And the Farmer must've gotten some eau de' ick on him, because this morning he remarked that every room in the house smelled like stunk. You think?

The REALLY awful thing is that we are going to have company from Missouri later this week, bringing our new dog Twilla, and they were going to set up in their little camper about three feet from where the battle and subsequent death took place.  I've already written to warn them.  I hope they are understanding, but I guess if it's too much, they'll make a swingthrough in the yard, tossing the dog out with best wishes for a happy life, and race for the mountains of Western Montana.

When Daddy's at work, and Maggie's at school...

...this is what's kickin at the Farmhouse.
And before you take up a collection to buy the child clothing and toys, let me tell you he has an abundance of both. There's just no substitute for a cardboard box and a pile of kittens. AND apparently clothing hampers the ability to stuff cats in a box.  There's nothing for them to get their little claws into.

Yep. All four are still in there.

Are they napping?

No!

A daring attempt at escape, while the jailer is in the potty...

Really?

Of the seven respondants on my poll, 4 readers think Cohagen is a happening place! You've obviously never visited our fair post office in person. And I really, really, really have to wonder about people who come back time and again to a blog that discusses primitive insect eradication rituals and has super-model cows. I appreciate your dedication, and one day will write something that has some cultural and/or spiritual significance.  I DO have those thoughts, but when I sit down to write, the deep thoughts vaporize and I end up writing nonsense.

And, the remaining 3 voters actually admitted that they didn't mean to start reading the Chronicles, but now they can't stop.  Sort of like journalistic M&M's. 

I'm a little surprised no one reads for the cow pictures or beauty tips.  AND none of my relatives are reading the Chronicles! At least none that will admit it.  That stings.

Thanks for stopping by, and for those loyal seven who took precious seconds out of your day to vote, there's a special place in my heart for you, and if you ever mistakenly end up in Cohagen, do come by the house for really good coffee and the dessert of the day.


(Oh, and I have to tell you all this funny and embarrassing thing...I check the little map at the bottom of my blog to see where readers are checking in from. Don't worry, I have no idea what your identity is, just where you come from.  Anyway, there was this reader that appeared to be stalking me from Joliet, Montana.  Like, it was showing up on the MapLoco 4 or 5 times a day! It was starting to get a little scary. Until, one day, I had a little spark of intelligent thought and realized that, yes, they checked in nearly as often as I checked in, and yes, it was about the same time of day as I was checking in. I was stalking myself. Go ahead and laugh...I did!)

Goodbye, dear friend...

This week, Conde' Nast announced that it was shutting down Gourmet Magazine.  The last issue will be the November 2009....*SOB!*  Some of you know this is my favorite magazine, the one I hide away when it comes in the mail, for a special cup of coffee and a quiet afternoon with no interruptions.  I read the travel, note interesting food combinations to ambush my bookclub with, gasp at ingredients, drool over kitchens and appliances I see in it's pages.  It's my virtual vacation, once a month. 

I also recieve Bon Appetite, and it's a decent little magazine, but it lacks the elegance and style Gourmet exudes.  Bon tries to present itself as more of a mainstream cooking magazine, but it almost always misses the mark.  The ingredients listed are impossible to procure, outside a large city, and the steps to create the dishes are intricate and confusing.  Gourmet uses more general ingredients, and employs imagination with the cookery without being outlandish.  Gourmet is Audrey Hepburn, Bon Appetite is Julia Roberts.  They both have their fans.

Now I'm going to have to either get to know Bon a little bit better, or throw myself at Paula Deen and hope  for some inspiration.  It's really not the same, though.  Paula's cute and all, but you don't get the respect when it's her homey little face on your coffee table, instead of the venerable Gourmet....

(That is, if anyone ever came to my house, fought the kids off, dug through about 2 layers of toys and THEN found Gourmet on the coffee table....)

Laws of Attraction

How To Be A Total Man-Magnet...

I happened to see this on the sidebar of my Hotmail this morning.  These little "girlfriend, let's talk" things amuse me and horrify me, equally, so I took a chance and looked.  You know, when you are an old married woman with kids, and you read "6 Sly Ways to Get a Man to Look at You", it has a totally different context. (The question that immediately pops to mind is: why the heck would I want to attract another man? It's all I can do to keep up with the current man's laundry, food and corral work!)

I submit, for your amusement, something that brought me to tears laughing...

Tip #1: Go out in groups of no bigger than three.
This I already do... myself and the two kids....AND one of them is no bigger than three, chronologically, which is a fun play on words. So far, I haven't noticed any additional male attention.  In fact, we can clear aisles in the grocery store of any Y chromosomes, faster than you can say "Captain Crunch".  (Which, incidentally, is usually the topic of our conversation in my group of three.)

Tip #2: Hold a drink in your hand.
Does a Sippy Cup count?

Tip #3: Smile genuinely.
I will only smile genuinely, when travelling in my group of three, holding a Sippy Cup, if someone offers me coffee or a nanny. Do not mistake my grimace for a smile...genuine or otherwise.

Tip #4: Work the eye contact.
This is where I started to laugh, until I had tears! I make eye-contact with the kid in the drivethrough at McDonalds, only because I want him to know that if he didn't put the exact same toy in each Happy Meal, I will park the car and come in after his lacksidasical little self.  I will make eye contact with the man in the Notbohm Motors service department when he says the repair will take 5-12 hours and there really isn't a loaner car available for me and my two travelling companions.  Oh, I make eye contact, all right, but it's not alluring, that's for sure.  It would be more along the lines of threatening.  Which is in direct opposition to the "genuine smile", referred to in Tip #3.

Tip #5: Don't immediately ask him what he does.
For instance, questions like..." Do you do laundry?", "Do you do dishes?", "Do you do groundskeeping?" and "Do you do windows?" apparently are off-putting to men, at least at the beginning of the conversation, according to this little gem of a tip.  It would appear I would need to put down the Sippy Cup, work the eye contact, smile genuinely, and tell him his hands look like they've been soaking in Palmolive, which would lead to the question.  Tricky.

Tip #6: Make positive small talk.
Isn't ALL my small talk positive?
"Oh, honey! You really colored that picture nicely! Now can you pick up your crayons before your brother feeds them to the cat?"
"You went potty in the big boy potty! YAAAY! I'm so proud of you!"
What about that talk is not positive, I ask you? And still I'm not attracting men like the flies I so despise...

I hope this has helped those of you who wish to be total man-magnets.  I know it clarified a lot for me.*


*Thank you, God, that I am married. Thank you, God, that I have a family. Countless blessings, everyday!
**I am NOT, I repeat, NOT SEEKING A MAN!!

Field Trip

On Saturday, the Farmer was in a rare, good mood...

...so he took the family to put out saltnmin'ral, and drain some water tanks for the winter.

(Maggie dressed herself. Nothing says "Farm Fashion" like animal print leggings, yellow mud boots, and Mom's John Deere sweatshirt. It's a blessing she's wearing warm clothes. Actually, it's just a blessing she's wearing ANY clothes...)

Another beautiful cow picture!

(The cows are beautiful, not necessarily the picture.)

Racing back to the pickup.

Do you see that little point on the butte behind the kids?

You'll get a closer look later in the post.

A good representation of the Class of '09! 

They really think we are crazy, and if they had digital cameras, they'd be taking pictures right back.

Ah, here we go; this is a sheepherder's monument.

Back when there weren't fences, sheepherders would go out with their bands of sheep and herd them to good grass and water.  Their days got really long, so they'd build these little towers of sandstone.  They range anywhere from 3 1/2-4 1/2 feet tall, usually, and they are stacked so meticulously and so well, that they are pretty much intact, even after 80-90 years.  You will usually see them near sources of water. 

As a child, I was always fascinated by these little monuments, and looked for them as landmarks in the pastures. 

Alright. What is wrong with this picture?

Yes, he dressed himself, as well, and the back pockets are in front.  What you can't see is that his t-shirt is inside out, under that jacket, and so are his big boy britches, under the backwards pants.

Here are some of the apples on the trees in the orchard at the Jacobson Place.  There are TONS! And they are wonderful eating, sort of sweet-tart and gloriously crisp.  They are little; only about the size of a hen's egg, at the largest, so it takes quite a few to make a meal.  The deer love them, and are getting fat and sassy.

Here are a couple little bucks we saw on our way home.  I couldn't tell if they were dumb or brave, but they let me take quite a few pictures of them, seeming to pose to show off their antlers.  This picture was taken about 75 yards or so, away, and out of a running pickup with two kids trying to climb through the window beside me. It's miraculous I was able to get anything SORT of clear...

We had such a fun time! It's always such a treat to get to go with Daddy, and the day was bright and cool, just like an October day should be.

Wayland's Day to Cook

Today is Wayland's Day to Cook!
Early in our marriage, when I was teaching and he was driving to work at the ranch, we decided Sunday was Wayland's day to cook.  And yes, it was a mutual agreement!  Sometimes he wanted to try something crazy, like stuffed hamburgers, and he knew that on Sundays, he could get all artsy in the kitchen.

We usually have hamburgers, because the man adores hamburgers.  And there are a bazillion ways to make hamburgers! And for goodness sake, if we have anything in the house, it's hamburger. If he doesn't want to cook, or we are in town for church, he takes us out to lunch.  Either way, I get a nice break from the kitchen and the age-old question, "What should we have to eat?". 

This morning, for breakfast, we had eggs, bacon and toast....mmmmm! 

Wayland's Day to Cook doesn't always extend to Wayland's Day to Do the Dishes, but I really don't mind cleaning up, because I haven't been handling those same dishes for an hour prior to cleanup.  And he's pretty good about swabbing up as he goes.

Isn't this a cool policy?  And it's not such a horrible thing, because there are many days when it's Mary's Day to Work Cows. 

L.M. of the U.

My friend Anne commented in the Lewistown post that Mike Waterman also goes by the title "Lord Master of the Universe", which is true, but only for a couple people, and I feel I should explain here, lest you think he has delusions of omniscience, or drinks heavily, or something like that....

I met Mike at a New Clerk's Workshop in Helena, where he gave a presentation on how to code everything in school bookkeeping to about 60 terrified new clerks.  All I remember about the presentation was that he used famous T.V. bars and the only one we got was "Cheers".  The codes were like Swahili, and I must confess, are only slightly better today. I flunked the workshop, but learned to knit.  That's another story entirely...

The next time I saw him was in Miles City, where again, he was trying to impart his love for and knowledge of school finance to a room full of jaded, middle aged clerks who REALLY came to the workshop to get away from the office and go to Walmart.  And (this is my theory alone) because I think Mike flirts a little with them, and they all secretly have a crush on him.  (You must realize that 99.999998% of school clerks are female.  He stands an easy 6 foot 2 inches, and when you walk into a room of school clerks, there's always a cluster of women around him. He can't help it...there's no one else to talk to. That, and he knows the Swahili of School Finance.)

Anyway, he walked up with his 3lb OPI badge that stated his name and title...it was impressive.  I don't know what possessed me to do it, but I read the badge and asked him who he thought he was, Master of Time, Space and Dimension? and he replied that, no, actually he was Lord Master of the Universe.  And I remembered it, and have referred to him as such, ever since.

Incidentally, he has a nameplate in his office with the title emblazoned on it; a gift from grateful rural clerks that he's helped with all school accounting aspects.  We still don't know the 13 digit codes, but we have his office phone number memorized and it's our lifeline when we can't figure out the Swahili on the computer screen in front of us. 

I'm going to get in big trouble for posting the picture of L.M. of the U., but that's a chance I'm going to have to take....it's just too good not to!  This is a Spirit Week photo from last year. At least that's what he tells me.  This may be how he dresses on Casual Fridays....

But wait! There's more!

I ALSO finished Les Miserables night before last!!!
I've been working on that tome since last spring....February, I think.
It's a magnificent book, and I wish I could pick it for a bookclub selection, but alas, it has 1260 pages of fine print, and I would be kick-ed out of my own club. 
Anyway, I just had to broadcast that, because it was quite a literary accomplishment, and worthy of a celebration.

Woohoo!

After that last post, I thought I should tell you about other things that happened this week, besides pest control. I really HAVE been doing more than trying to kill flies.

Yesterday, I drove to Lewistown for a mentoring session with my friend Mike Waterman, the Lewistown Public School's Business Manager and Financial Wizard.  We were setting up my school accounting system on Quickbooks, and he assured me that he had worked the finer details and awfulness out.  It would be a piece of cake.  No problemo.

When I got to Lewistown, the man was headed out the door to do a radio broadcast with his superintendant on the local airwaves.  I set up my computer and tuned in to hear the show.  Local, small town radio talk shows are difficult to describe.  You want to shut it off, but you can't, because sure as you do, the one big community shocker will occur and you will have missed it.  Little old ladies will be clucking, store clerks talking as they "straighten" the racks, the coffee bunch at the local greasy spoon shaking their heads and you won't have the faintest idea what happened on the radio at 10:23 a.m. because you impatiently shut the dang thing off.

Nothing of the sort happened, sadly, and when Mike got back, we got busy with the Quickbooks. Mike loves school finance. He's weird that way.  I  like him, but  it's still quite strange.  Most people tolerate school finance, some are rather interested, others have nightmares about it; Mike loves it.  I would say I fall somewhere between tolerance and nightmare, depending on the time of year. Mike has the same sort of humor I do, which is rare, and we laugh a lot through the torture, so that makes it a leetle more tolerable.

We had lunch, after a couple of hours of slavery, at Lola's, a little sandwich shop on Main Street.  They make crepes instead of tortillas, and about 20 different types of gelato.  Mike's wife, Lisa Waterman joined us for lunch.  Let me tell you a little about Lisa Waterman.  She's the healthiest person I know. She puts spinach in macaroni and cheese.  And I'm pretty sure she uses whole wheat macaroni, but I can't prove it.  Last year, when I visited them in Lewistown, she confided that she was doing two Beth Moore Bible studies simultaneously, but that neither group knew about the other group.  I find that hilarious! Would that be an infidelity? Or just a secret?

Mike bet me that I couldn't eat my whole crepe wrap with my hands without spilling. (Like eating a soft-shell taco) He said if I could do that, he'd buy my gelato.  Oh, YEAH, I got the gelato! There's no way I'd lose a food bet, with more food as pay-up. 

I won't bore you with the details of the afternoon. (Unless you, like Mike, love school finance...if so, I can email you the finer points.) We got Quickbooks where I need it to be, with the exception of being able to reconcile with the county Treasurer.  That's a little detail we need to work out.  Reconciliation is rather essential, I think.  Big Problemo. 

I finally left Lewistown around 6 p.m. and drove home, my head aswirl with numbers and codes and accounting nonsense.  Driving is good therapy, some days, and it was nice to have the time to unpack my brain before I got home.  Two hours of unpacking the brain can get down to some things that should be better left packed, but by the time I hit that, I was too busy dodging deer on the road to really start scraping the corners.

Most of this week has been consumed with school finance, and I'll be glad to be done with it for the weekend. So now you know, I do other things besides destroy spider webs in household appliances and scare flies!

A deep, meaningful post for your contemplation...

"She wouldn't hurt a fly..."

How many times have you heard that old phrase, and thought it meant the person was meek and gentle? Well, I'm here to suggest that perhaps it's not that she wouldn't hurt a fly, it's that she can't.

She's not coordinated enough.

I've been trying to put a hurting on the flies moving into our house for the winter. And it's pathetic, let me tell you. I don't know if it's my old lady no-line bifocals, my cheap (free gift from the insurance agent for spending $7900/yr) flyswatter, or my general clumsiness, but it's nearly impossible for me to actually get a fly killed.

They die laughing. That's about my only weapon...

The kids have been in and out of the house all week, with the warm weather and kittens, and each time the door opens, the force of it sucks about 5 flies in to our home.  These flies have come to Insect-opia, because there are more crumbs and spills in our day than June Cleaver saw in her entire life. They are happy. They sit around on my counters having little fly-parties over the Teddy Graham remains. They stick their nasty little fly-tongues out at me, when I go for the swatter. Apparently word has hit the streets that this is a safe place, except for the wind my swatter makes as it swooshes through the air over their heads.

The Farmer is a crack shot, and just like the Little Tailor in that Mickey Mouse movie, he can "kill seven in one blow".  There's no messing around, with him.  It's over, when he gets the swatter. Or even a magazine! But I can't wait for him to come home every evening, greet him at the door with a beer and a flyswatter, and request carnage.  He's had a long day; the last thing he wants to do is prove what a man he is by eliminating the bugs from our house....

So, I work at this every day, darn it, and eventually, I think, the flies will die of old age, or there will be a couple stupid ones that sit 25 seconds too long and I'll gain some advantage and confidence.

*Can you believe how pathetic my life is? I'm writing about killing flies, for pete's sake, on my blog.  And that's as exciting as my week gets, folks.  Stay tuned.  Next week, we'll explore why the Old Lady swallowed the fly....a question that has mystified generations of preschoolers. *Groan*

Wanted!

The Cocoa Kid

May be armed with dimples.

Height: Approx. 2 1/2 feet

Weight: Depends on what is in his pockets

Eyes: Green and twinkly

Hair: Sandy blonde (and when we say 'sand', we mean actual sand.)

May be traveling with small cats, assorted trucks and unidentified objects in the aforementioned pockets.

Recently potty-trained!!!

This hombre gravitates toward grandparents in possession of sugary treats.

Lock up your cookies, candy and frosting.

Reward!

(If you keep him, that is...)

"I'm just crackers for cheese!"

If you recognize that line, then you're probably a Wallace and Gromit fan, too. We adore this little claymation creation, in the Farmhouse, but it occured to me that not many, if ANY of our friends watch these movies, too!

We recently bought the DVD, "Wallace and Gromit and the Case of the WereRabbit", and have laughed our way through it twice or four times, now. I love all the British humor, the gentle pokes of fun at UK stereotypes, and the expressions on the character's faces.  In "WereRabbit" there's also a lot of gardening humor, which I laugh at, but that my family doesn't catch. Wayland likes all the gizmos and gadgets, and the kids like Gromit, the dog, who is the only one who really knows what's going on throughout the movie.

The next W&G movie due to come out is "A Matter of Loaf and Death" in which they run a bakery.  Gardening, baking, gadgets, British humor....how can I not love this?!

Lessons learned in Kindergarten

A lot of kind people have been inquiring as to how Kindergarten is going for Maggie. And we ask that question ourselves, because she doesn't really say much about the whole deal.  After much prodding and thinking back on the last couple of weeks, here are some of the things she's learned:

1. Boys don't really like to be kissed. Even if they are nice boys, they don't like kisses. (Whew!)
2. How to count backwards. (She demonstrated, and by golly, she's got it! I was just worried about the whole counting forwards thing.  I never thought of backwards.)
3. What to do if there's a fire or tornado at school. (Another thing I hadn't thought about, but will now lay in bed with my head racing at the possiblity of such disasters.)
4. You don't learn to read on the first day of Kindergarten. Or even the second day. Everyone keeps telling her she's going to learn to read at school, but so far, no dice. 
5. She has Hot Pocket envy.  A little girl who rides the bus with her has Hot Pockets for lunch every day.  Maggie has a lunchbox full of delicacies, but nothing to put in the microwave.
6. How to play baseball. It's her favorite part of school, she tells me.
7. Her least favorite part of school is the stretches they do first thing in the morning.  I think she's frustrated that she can't do them perfectly.  At least, I'm guessing that's what it is, after watching her try to show us here at home. 
8. Threes, fours and twos are easy to write. Fives are nearly impossible.  So many turns and lines and curves!
9. Homework? What homework? Her teacher sends a paper home to work on with the parents, which we do, then we send it back. But she never actually takes the paper out of her backpack and hands it in.  I just found 4 homework papers in her backpack, neat as a pin.  Perhaps I can mail them.  Or paste them to her sweet little forehead in the morning. 
10. And if you want a playdate with your friends from school, just invite them! Mom will get out of the corral sometime around 3 p.m. and whip up some milk and cookies for the gang! (Fortunately, my friend Heather called and alerted me that this was the rumble at school amongst the younger set. That could've really been ugly, except that all the parents would have to drive their kids 12 or more miles to get to the playdate, and perhaps that would've deterred them.)

End of the bloomers...

...speaking, of course, of the summer flowers! What were you thinking I was talking about?

I'm sure you noticed they are all close up shots.  That would be because there are only about 3 sorry little stalks of flowers left, and I didn't want to show you the dead ones.  This post is mostly for Fontie, because we are garden nerds, and I haven't posted anything for her since the hoppers hit, in June. (Doesn't that sound like an old-timer? "Back in '09, when the hoppers hit...")

Tortilla time!

Tortilla rolling pin, getting ready to flatten some dough.

It's hard to capture the whole picture...

Here's a tortilla ready to go, one in the pan, and flour everywhere.

There's no way to make tortillas without flour everywhere. If you had a picture of the cook, there's flour from nose to toes.

A few summers ago, when Angus was just a baby, my Aunt Bert taught me how to make homemade flour tortillas.  There is just no comparison, between the homemade ones, and those you buy in plastic packages in the store....once I started making them at home, the store tortillas seemed very flabby and bland, rather like North Dakotans on a Brazilian beach. (I'll give you a minute for that mental picture...)

My Dad made me this tortilla rolling pin, that I just love! He really, really dislikes working with wood, so it's a precious gift, and I smile everytime I use it.  His father, my Gramps, made me a big handled rolling pin that I use for cookies and piecrusts, but it didn't work so hot with tortillas.  This little rolling pin has more movement, and creates a more even pressure.  And it's just cute!

Here's the deal: some of my readers LOVE recipes, but true to my flaky fashion, I didn't really learn a measurement recipe for these.  (Bad luck for those of you collecting farm recipes.)  I'm sure you can find one on the net, or in a good cookbook.  Aunt Bert showed me about how much of each ingredient to use, about how much to mix it, and about how long to cook them.  And they turn out about right.  If you come visit me, I can show you about how much, how long and so forth.  But no sneaking off to write it down!

While I'm making the tortillas, on the back burner of the stove is a pot with pork sausage, chopped onion and red spuds, chili powder, cayenne pepper, garlic, cumin, salt and whatever else I can think to throw in.  It's different every time, but starts the same!  When it's time to roll them in the shells, we usually top the mixture with sour cream and sometimes salsa. Wayland likes shredded cheese, too.  They're pretty rich this way, and if you want something lighter, try butter and cinnamon sugar. (I have no idea how many Weight Watcher points that is, but it has to be lighter than the sausage filling, wouldn't you think?)

I've already started training on Maggie, and she's getting pretty good at rolling them out. Her's turn out a wee bit thick, but they are pretty good.  I always think of my Dad and Aunt Bert when I'm making these, and wish they could be here to share and laugh and tell stories and tease.  And eat piles of homemade flour tortillas.