Dinner Tonight

Photo courtesy Twicefivemiles on www.thepioneerwoman.com/tasty-kitchen

Tonight dinner had me in a quandary. First, I thought I would take it easy and just order pizza. But really... What kind of mother am I? So I turned to my favorite gal, the Pioneer Woman, for inspiration. She has this fabulous site (see my "most excellent links" at right), and among other things there is a sibsite called The Tasty Kitchen.

I had a toss-up between pork chops (from the site) with three-cheese risotto (me) or spaghetti lasagna (also from the site)... The Italian won! I've never made it before. The author/contributor promises that it is loved by all, so I'm counting on it. I didn't have a green pepper fit for cooking (and T wouldn't have eaten it anyway), so I left it out, and I added black pepper and Garlic Garlic seasoning to the cheese stuff. Can't wait to taste it.





In the meantime, I'm headed out to watch Netflix movies via my Roku box with the boys. Looks like tonight it's The Toy. Haven't seen that in about 30 years!

Chasing that White Rabbit

Here's what I've done since I got home from work:
1. Listened to my latest Jack Reacher novel, "The Enemy", while sketching/doodling on the sofa.
2. Ate a hot dog.
3. Talked with my mom, telling her I am too tired to go to dinner -- forgot I had just eaten a hot dog and that's why I wasn't hungry, really.
4. Decided that a hot dog wasn't a nutritious dinner and had some grapes.
5. Wondered about my taxes.
6. Continued to listen to Jack Reacher defy The Man. Whoops - the iPod is running low, so I have to plug it in. Crap. Now it's automatically syncing (hate typing that word) and I've lost my book. Maybe I'll go and...
7. Read my Yahoo news, which took me down the rabbit hole...
8. Went to iTunes to look up Kanye West stuff (due to Yahoo reading), and ended up downloading Kanye as well as Kelly Clarkson, Jason Mraz, Glee soundrack vol. 1, John Mayer, Lady Antebellum, and P!nk. Couldn't bear to even think about poor Britney - what a train wreck. And that voice... that horrible, tinybaby voice.
9. Read posts about American Idol from 2008 and 2009. Learned what Danny Gokey's been up to.
10. Learned all about The Runaways, including Lita Ford's Twittered sex life (ewww), Joan Jett's undeclared sexuality, Sandy West's unfortunate demise, and Micki Steele's inability to deal.
11. Learned that Leather Tuscadero was really Suzi Quatro, and that she had a real live rocker career, and that she sang "Stumblin' In".
12. Had to do a double-take at Jim Gillette's package -- good Lord, jeans were tight in the '80's.
13. Found a blog, "Soup is Not a Finger Food", which looks mildly interesting. So far it's no Pioneer Woman or Manic Mommies...
14. Remembered that I had a blog, too!

You're welcome.

Gaaahhhhhlitter!

Will post later the pics of the ginormous mountain Dean and I are creating. It's a geography project he's doing for school.

He's pretty handy with a glue bottle and a pair of scissors and my styrofoam carving skills are likely to make any 4th grade teacher stop and go "hmmm..." (and then likely question just how much of this project was done by her student). But really, Dean did all the research, came up with the design, the concept, the idea of the little snowboarding dude (very awesome), and laid down all the grass and most of the shrubbery. He created all the signs, came up with the general concept of how to get all the required elements onto this crazy project... I handled the sharp objects and the stuff likely to spill and ruin my carpets. (Please note irony, below)

And at the end, I thought it would be super to sprinkle just a little fairy dust glitter over the top so it sparkled like actual snow does. (Look, I have two boys and I need a little glitter in a project from time to time and this was a perfectly justifiable use of it. So don't question the glitter!) The only problem is that when I opened the package, I ran into a little bit of a design flaw on the big 3 oz jar of fairy dust. See, the top works like a sprinkle dealie: you twist it and shake fairy dust into a satisfyingly invisible sparkly aura. But on the bottom, when you take it out of the package it's hung in, the damned thing pops off and dumps everything in your lap and subsequently onto the carpet.

And now I had to take off my pants in the dining room because otherwise I was tracking enormous amounts of glitter through the house. But I didn't want to add to the glitter problem in the carpet, so I reached over and grabbed the clean sheets (why are there clean sheets in the dining room? Come over to my house sometime and it will become immediately apparent...) so that when I stood up, the bulk floated down to the navy sheets.

The vacuum was awesome. It's mostly plugged up with the vacuumed remnants of the mountain carving, so the glitter was coming up, but slowly. And you know that little draft that puffs out ahead of the vacuum? It was softly blowing fairy dust all over my dining and living rooms. Beautiful in daytime, I'm sure.

Long story short: Now my house has a trail of fairy dust from the dining room to the back door (where I took the pants & sheets to shake them out), and I suspect that all the laundry done in the house for the next week or so will come out with sparkly glittery fabulosity all over. Which is not great if you're a 4th grade boy. Or a kindergartener boy.

But my socks are kind of awesome to watch here in the light.