A word about pumpkin rolls...

This past weekend, a passel of junior-senior moms got together to make 180 of these tasty treats as a fundraiser for our after-prom event. And while SOME people might have accused me of socializing a tad too much throughout the two-day baking spree, those that are honest know I did my fair share of measuring, dumping, mixing, flipping, rolling, unrolling, powdered-sugaring, wrapping, labeling AND dishwashing. The only duties I truly shirked were the filling-spreading, the pecan-sprinkling, and the cake baking…but I did not feel my skills were up to those tasks.

And may I just say that these pumpkin-roll-making ladies are perhaps some of the greatest women of all time…well, except for maybe Joan of Arc, Mother Teresa and Florence Nightingale. But still, for modern times, our junior-senior moms are an exceptional group of ladies, with sunny dispositions, warm hearts and (most importantly) willing hands, when it comes to projects such as these.

So I almost feel petty in pointing out the one major flaw of this group. But I’m going to do it anyway. Apparently they are MATHEMATICALLY-CHALLENGED…at least when it comes to bulk recipes and the buying of ingredients. I was able to detect this small problem when we came to the end of the line on Saturday and realized we were 34 pumpkins rolls short of a full load, so to speak. We quickly surmised that if we didn’t fill all of our orders, our reputation in the pumpkin-roll-fundraising-business would suffer greatly. So we decided to meet again on Sunday and whip out the extra rolls. But then our math skills failed us again, because we somehow managed to over-buy on our cans of pumpkin. Unfortunately, we didn’t discover this fact until after we had efficiently OPENED those 40 extra cans of pumpkin. And so that was fun.

And now a word about our basement. Still no staircase…but we did see the whites of the eyes of the carpenter last week, who came by and installed the windows. So now we can’t get into the basement from the outside, but Dave put an extension ladder down the old stairwell, so we were able to climb down and check to see if anyone was living down there. Which I wasn’t worried about until Dave mentioned to me something about the possibility of men sleeping on cots down there. Why would he say that to me? I will never understand that man. But thankfully, we saw no cots and no men. Just a lot of cement and some debris.

And now a brief update on the children.

Emily made the crust for a no-bake jello cheesecake three days ago and has yet to make the filling. Proving once again that the apple does not fall far from the tree. Last night she met with a group of her fellow physics students to “study” but she reported that mostly they just played ping-pong. I guess if physics is the study of objects in motion, this was probably a good study method. Incidentally, my sister plays ping-pong at the YMCA every morning for “exercise”. I took ping-pong in college and even won some tournaments, but never thought of it as more than just a silly game. Oh, how times have changed.

Rachel is still spending most of her spare time at the dance studio, preparing for her role as the Snow Queen. Meanwhile, her adventures with Shark Boy continue. They are “official” now, and while she’s happy with this development, she’s also feeling guilty because he’s in the middle of two-a-days for basketball, and has to attend Nutcracker practices as well. Because did I tell you that Shark Boy is the Snow King? And she’s afraid that he’ll associate her with all this work and the cheesy white and silver costume he has to wear. But he has been a very good sport about the whole thing and so I keep telling her to relax. But relaxing is not her strong suit, poor thing.

David is busy with basketball and organizing his music on his Ipod. He can’t seem to find any of his jackets so he wears this old hoodie of mine everywhere, and even wore it to church Sunday morning. I think he might need some attention from me.

Dave got a haircut and only Emily noticed.

I am wearing blue socks with black pants and hoping no one will notice.

And I had a turkey sandwich and leftover fruit salad for lunch.

A Deafening Silence

The title of today’s post refers to what I am hearing from our basement these days. Yes, Fidel and his crew have not graced us with their presence for over a week now. Which isn’t so bad since when they’re working it’s messy, smelly and/or noisy around the house. But the problem is they still haven’t installed the staircase, so the only way we can get to our new basement is to go outside, cross a ramp, climb down a ladder, and then crawl in a window. This may be a bit inconvenient for our guests if we never hear from Fidel again. But most of our visitors don’t expect normal comforts (like heat, beds and bathroom privacy) at our house. In fact, they expect just the opposite. I think of these people as WEEKEND WARRIORS...and I just appreciate the fact that they are willing to suffer many hardships and extreme discomfort in order to spend time with us.

Our weekend was bittersweet. The girls cheered together for the last time (sweet) but our football team finally met their match against a school twice our size (bitter). And since we were undefeated up to that point, I couldn’t remember how I was supposed to act after the loss. Should I tell the boys “good game”? Should I tell their parents “I’m sorry”? Most importantly, should I take a bunch of pictures and post them on Facebook? In the end I didn’t do anything. I cowered over by the fence until the girls were ready to go and then ducked out of there...fast. I’m such a chicken...always scared of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

So then on the way home the next day, the girls were looking at my camera and they said, “Mom, you didn’t get any pictures of our last game to cheer together.” And I said rather huffily, “Don’t you think the 3,751 pictures I have of you cheerleading are enough?” And that shut them up. But then I started sobbing uncontrollably…because normally I am all about EXCESS when it comes to pictures. I take pictures of TOTALLY insignificant stuff, at TOTALLY insignificant events. Seriously. I mean, I took about 100 pictures of David at his last middle school dance...and that was about 99 pictures too many. I am over-the-top obnoxious when it comes to taking pictures and anyone who knows me, knows that.

So what was I thinking? I should have run the gauntlet. I should have gone through that intimidating crowd in order to take some pictures of my girls on their last night to be together in their skimpy cheerleading uniforms under the “Friday night lights” (even though this was a Saturday). And I probably could have cried for a long time over that spilt milk, but then I heard David in the back seat mumbling something that sounded like “mood swing” and fortunately that snapped me out of it.

Speaking of David, he had a role in our weekend entertainment as well. He sang in a district honor choir on Saturday afternoon, along with 200 other “honorees”. Unfortunately, one of those other honorees stood directly in front of David during the entire concert, so we could only see one of David’s shoulders while he sang. But yes, I did get a picture of that shoulder during the concert and will soon be posting it on Facebook.

In other David news, I feel I’ve been remiss in not telling you about the recent happenings in his health class. Because apparently they’re in the middle of a sex education unit right now, and I’m hearing some pretty interesting reports. One day he told me he had to “play” the part of a boy who had sex with a girl named Betty. And then Betty went and slept with one of this buddies. And as if that weren’t bad enough, he contracted an STD. Or something like that. I tuned him out after I realized none of this had actually happened. But anyway, he now seems to know a lot about STDs because I was talking to Dave the other day about someone with that virus thing and David pops up and asks me if the person was “asymptomatic”. And I’m thinking, should my 14-year-old son be this knowledgeable about this stuff? I just don’t know.

Rachel reports that the Nutcracker practices are going as well as can be expected. She thinks her dance teacher might have been more ready than anyone else for football season to end, because the girls’ partners are on the team and during the season they didn’t appear to be making dance practices a priority. But now they should be really focused. HAHAHAHAHA. I crack myself up sometimes. Rachel also reports being somewhat disappointed because the really good lifts are being done this year by one of the other dancers (because she’s a senior), leaving the less impressive lifts for Rachel and her dance partner. Still, she is making the best of things and is consoled somewhat by the fact that as the Snow Queen, she gets to wear a tiara during the performance.

In her spare time, Rachel sometimes hangs out at this guy’s house (we’ll call him Shark Boy) where there is usually a pack of other kids hanging out, and they watch movies and sometimes play cards. I hold Shark Boy’s parents in high esteem for their hospitality to teenagers. They are either the very best parents in the world, or just plain crazy people. Either way, Shark Boy’s family has been very considerate of Rachel’s “standards” and they always refrain from putting on R rated movies when she’s there. But more importantly, they let her hold the remote control...because they know we don’t have TV and apparently they feel sorry for the poor deprived little thing. And I have to say that’s just about the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.

Last night, she and Emily both went over to Shark Boy’s house to watch a movie with a bunch of kids, but Rachel reported that it was more like Couples’ Central, with the boy-girl ratio being an even 1:1. And all the boys were football boys to boot. I’m not sure if there’s much of a difference between a pack of youth rally boys and a pack of football boys, except that football boys seem to like to shave their heads and other people’s too. What I do know is that my girls have been highly successful at scaring off both species. But they had a good time and got home early enough, so I guess I’ll try not to worry about it overly much.

And just a snippet for you on Emily. Yesterday afternoon, she put on the old musical Showboat and while we were watching Kathryn Grayson, Ava Gardner, and Howard Keel sing and dance their little hearts out, Emily says to us, “This would be a really great movie if it was about World War II”. Folks, I could not make this stuff up.

Dave just finished assisting David with crafting an electric generator for his science fair project. After much trial and error, and much wringing of the hands, they managed to get a 0.5 volt light bulb to burn for a few seconds. But in order to get the magnets to spin fast enough to light up the bulb, they had to use an electric drill. I found this interesting…and disappointing because obviously we won’t be able to use the contraption next time we have a power outage. Because we won’t have electricity to run it.

In other Dave news, he came in from a road trip the other day and told us he thinks he had an encounter with an angel at Walmart. She came to him in the form of a lady in one of those motorized scooters and she was in the reduced item aisle. She about ran into him as she entered the aisle and he was exiting the aisle. But before he got to the next aisle he heard her calling, “Sir, sir!” He turned around and there were other people in the aisle but she was looking at him. And then she said to him, “Do you like chips?” And he said, “Yes.” So she shows him a bag of Chex Mix that she’s holding and she says, “These are $1.15 and they’re really good!” And Dave looks confused, because he’s wondering how in the world this lady knows how much he loves reduced stuff. And then she says pointing to some writing on the bag, “And look! They’re 70% less fat. This is a great deal!” So Dave is then rather stunned because the only thing he loves better than getting a great deal, is getting a great deal on low fat stuff. So he thanks the lady for the tip, and takes two bags (because the angel took most of the rest), and he gets back on the road. And it’s late at night and he munches on the Chex Mix to stay awake, and the Chex Mix turns out to be quite delicious (heavenly, in fact), and he’s pretty sure it saved his life because he didn’t fall asleep on the road. So that’s the story…exactly as he told it to me.

And with that, I must go.

I had a bowl of Lucky Charms for lunch today…but it was really just a late breakfast.

HEAT, GLORIOUS HEAT!

Yes folks...on Thursday last, our heating stars finally re-aligned and/or Fidel and his crew finally re-attached our heating vents. Either way, we now have a warm house and I am still in celebration mode. There may come a day when I will once again take a warm house for granted, but that is not this day. And so I’ve written a short poem for you:

ODE TO A WARM HOUSE

There once was a family all cozy,
with cheeks so pink and rosy;
They frolicked about
and never had gout;
In their warm little house, they were toasty.

But one day an evil came lurking,
disguised as a crew of men working.
Vents were ripped out,
of this there’s no doubt;
And in came the cold air, a’smirking.

Oh my! Mother cried,
Oh dear! Father sighed;
Whatever shall we do?
But the children were tough,
they wore blankets and stuff;
And never got in a stew.

Many a cold and frosty day passed,
With the family growing frailer, alas;
But before hypothermia set in,
The vents were installed again;
And the family cried, "Heat! At last!"

So if you are trying to weather a storm,
or find yourself sad and forlorn;
Stop your stressing,
and count just one blessing,
the fact that your house is warm!

You probably didn't know I was a poet, eh? And I can tell you're still not sure. But that's okay, because I'm pretty sure even Longfellow and Frost had their share of doubters.

I have a lot of family news for you...very interesting stuff...but it'll have to wait. Writing poetry really takes it out of me.

I had two beef and bean burritos from the convenience store for lunch. These burritos are only available on Wednesdays and are "homemade" and very tasty. They come with a little container of homemade salsa, but you have to ask for it.