Cheers!

I really have been enjoying blogging, it's helped jump start my tired brain cells.
I am raising my kids alone while my husband is deployed. He's been deployed since April, with a short break in October. If you do the math, that means he has not been present for several holidays and will be absent for even more. I begin the day running and end it the same way. I really thought I was losing it and needed to read about other people's lives and maybe talk myself through mine (I didn't care if anybody was reading it, I just needed to put in words what I couldn't share with a four-year old).
But something happened yesterday. I woke up and first thing I did after getting the kids off to school was check my email for any news from my husband. Instead, there was a comment to my other blog and I went out to see what it was. It was a writer's critique. I don't remember applying for a job as an author, so I really didn't understand why someone felt the need to correct me publicly for my spelling. But that's not all, she was kind enough to write a whole blog on how she found my mistake and then linked back to my blog! I thought I was being oversensitive, but when I discussed it with my husband later, he said "Holy crap, what kind of person would do that?" It ate at me all day. Not the fact that I misspelled something (who kares?), but that she felt the need to humiliate someone she didn't even know. And the point is, I AM over sensitive right now and I deserve to be.
I have mentioned on my blog that I am In The Gutter trying to look back up at the stars (maybe you missed that while you were busy checking out my punctuation), maybe this is just NOT the place to do it. I can't see stars if I'm staring at a computer screen.
author's note: In the time it took to type this blog, my child unpacked her diaper bag and began eating her Desitin. Maybe this is not the best time to explore my creativity.
So, I am saying "Cheers" for a while, and if you want great reading, check out the blog that inspired me to start this whole process . GetInTheCar

What I learned today.... again

I spent the morning grumbling about how busy I am and how I am so tired of people (who aren't surrounded by earth-dwelling sea monkeys) that want to schedule my days with some 'unimportant' thing or another. Today's 'unimportant' thing was going to visit a young mother from my church with two young children (living in an unfinished home). The night before, instead of putting away my dinner dishes, I baked brownies (always a big hit over here).
So this morning when I woke up late (Thing 3 said, "I've been up since 6:35." "You didn't think it was strange that I wasn't out here?" "no"), the school bus was out of the question.
I packed lunches--oh yeah, another something I probably should've done before baking brownies-- dressed kids, bundled the baby and off we went, driving quickly down our little country roads.
Our little roads.... I want you to imagine the narrow little one-way street near your own home. Now cover it with deposits left by tractors (mud, rocks and fertilizer), line both sides with irrigation ditches or hedges of blackberry bushes (nice firm, thorny branches that stick out every which way and love car paint). Expect this to be used as a two-way road.
When you meet another car/tractor/horse-- whatever, one of you needs to back up to the last area you saw that was semi-safe to pull off. Sometimes that means into the blackberry bush that has the most give--oh, and both of you have somewhere equally important to be (there's a dark blue van that I hate and one day I am going to sit there until it backs up). Six miles take about 15 minutes.
When I get back home from this relaxing drive through the country, I am about an hour behind on my day and due to make this dreaded visit in an hour. Miss Ky says "no way" to nap time which really fuels my pity party. My dishes are multiplying in my sink, the daily cereal explosion has already occurred, and the laundry hangs in every doorway of my house and the tornado is still spinning (envision my daughter the Energizer Bunny--she just keeps going and going...).
When this (far-more-than-I) altruistic woman arrives to pick me up for the visit, I stand with my tired daughter, a plate of brownies and a pasted smile.
What I learned today came next.
She sat down at my kitchen table and told me how she's amazed that I baked and how she can't even seem to drag herself to do the things she needs to be doing, much less show any thought to bake something for the woman we're visiting. She proceeds to tell me some of the things she's struggled with for the last few months and how glad she is to be going out with me today to get her mind off of herself. (ouch). The young mother we visited, fed us lunch and kept thanking us for coming over and telling us how she loves visitors and wants to keep them over as long as possible. (ouch again). I had a really nice time and still managed to stay as behind on my day as I usually am-- no more, no less.
So did you miss what I learned? First: it's really true that when you put your self aside, sacrifice a little of your time, everything else works out. Second: you have no idea what is going on in another person's life-- especially those smiling, happy people you see at church. You have no idea of the life challenges they've faced or are facing now. Third: if it's not painful, it's not really a sacrifice is it? I mean, how much of a sacrifice is it to sit down and eat a bag of oreos? But now give that bag of oreos that you've thought about all day to a hungry kid...oh wait, now I've gone too far.

Tis the Season

Sugar Plums

Background

This recipe appeared in an issue of Saveur Magazine. I did a search and came across a blog that had the recipe. I want to try sugar plums this year!

Recipe

2 cups whole almonds
1/4 cup honey
2 tsp grated orange zest
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 cup finely chopped dried apricots
1 cup finely chopped pitted dates
1 cup confectioners' sugar

Preheat oven to 400. Arrange almonds on a baking sheet in a single layer and toast in oven for ten minutes. Set aside to cool and then finely chop. Meanwhile, combine honey, orange zest, cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg in a medium mixing bowl. Add almonds, apricots, and dates and mix well. Pinch off rounded teaspoon sized pieces of the mixture and roll into balls. Roll balls in sugar and refrigerate in single layers between sheets of wax paper in airtight containers for up to one month.

Pudding

All blog sites hate me today. Is it the wind up of Nov blogging keeping sites from loading?
I just wanted to upload a picture and call it done, but now you get to hear (see) me winge instead.

Ok, maybe I won't whinge. Maybe I'll share.
I made proper Yorkshire pudding for dinner tonight. When I was younger and devouring any books set in the UK, I would salivate when "tea" was mentioned. Ahhh, crumpets, cakes and puddings. Visions of lovely sweets adorning dainty china plates. I guess I was envisioning petit fours and layer cakes... wow, now I'm hungry.

Anyway, that is NOT the case.

The first thing I tried to pick up in the store that resembled the pudding I'm used to (picture Bill Cosby saying "yum"), was actually pretty nasty. Pudding here is a bread, in every form you can imagine. There's Christmas pudding, which is a lot like our fruit cake, but add every kind of alcohol and let it cure for a year or so. There's Spotted Dick (I joke you not), that even though I didn't care for the taste, I have bought it for every American that has come to visit. But I regress, the subject of today's post is Yorkshire pudding (wait 'till I bend your ear (eye?) about clotted cream...).
I had some (pudding--my, you get lost easily) in a restaurant. It was a little bread-ish bowl with steaming roast beef and loads of dark, rich gravy. I decided this was one thing I needed to learn how to make. So, I got out my handy British cookbook and there was a recipe! But it was only for the bread part, that's no good. So I asked a friend, "Do you make Yorkshire pudding?" "Oh, no!" she replied like I was daft, "I buy them at Tesco's and pop them in the oven."
Well, I'm liking this more all of the time.
She told me the brand she uses (Aunt Bessie's) and off I went. Well, Tesco's carries LOTS of brands of Yorkshire pudding, but they have no meat, no gravy, nada. What the heck?
So I ask another friend (I can't look too stupid to the same person), "What is yorkshire pudding?"
I discover it's the batter/bread thing (like an American pop-over I'm told), you add what you want to it.
So tonight, I popped in the Aunt Bessie's and topped it with my own beef and gravy. Delicious. I LOVE this country!

handbook?

I think I was ripped off when I became a mom. I never received my free guidebook on how to parent Things One thru Five. So my question for anyone out there is: Is it written anywhere that it will be detrimental to my children's mental well-being if I leave socks in the hamper until they're worn? It just seems like a lot of bother to separate them, match them, put them away etc.. when they are just going to be worn again and will end back up in said hamper.
Just a thought.