Testing [AGAIN] the photo tool….

Isn’t this thing pretty?  I miss doing papercutting.

Running

So, on Friday, I finished my very first marathon ever. It only took me....three weeks.

Which is not so bad, considering before that I'd probably one the equivalent of one marathon in the entire rest of my life. Three weeks is pretty good.

My buddy Sarah got me started going to the gym, which I didn't want to do because (a) it means driving somewhere, (b) it means leaving V somewhere, and (c) it means going to the gym. Buuuuut she convinced me, and we went, and it has turned out to be a good thing for V. He enjoys going, and I get to know that he's interacting with other children. He does pretty well--he's an evil demon at home (stiff-armed a little girl into the wall last night because she tried to take the toy he had) but out at the gym playroom he gets along well. Plays, imitates, follows. All kinds of good stuff. So that's a success story. The drive still irritates me, but oh well. It's 25 minutes, which equals 50 minutes, which feels like a total waste of an hour of my day. I might get over it. I might not.

As for the third thing, I still hate running. Hate, hate, hate it.

Pesto-Parmesan Breadsticks

This is what I do when I'm invited somewhere and I have nothing to bring. I toss together what's in the fridge. In this particular instance, I tossed about a quarter cup of this:
And 2 tablespoons of this:
Onto a package of these, while they were still all connected in that flat dough square:
I then pulled them apart, twisted them into twisties as directed on the outside of the package. Then I laid them on the pizza stone I bought from them:
And baked for the 12-14 minutes recommended by him:

And I'm done.
Then I take them to the friend's house, and it turns out she's all carb-free so I ate the whole darn bunch of them.

Country Music

This is what long trips will do to me—get thoughts going in my head, whether or not that’s a safe prospect. This time, it was all that chance to listen to the radio and think about, well, country music. Because that’s what I was listening to. Three different stations’ worth of down-home, good-time, yee-haw music. Also a Raleigh station, but it gets pretty lousy reception everywhere around home except the bypass between the bridge and 258. Go figure.

ANYhow.

I’m listning to this music, and realizing several things about it. First of all, as popular music goes, it’s a much more “Godly” alternative to the crap that’s on the rock, pop, R&B, rap, and alternative stations. There are country songs about God. About family. About soldiers. About love. About getting married. About being happy with what you have. About Jesus. You gonna hear this stuff anywhere else? I think not. (This is leaving aside the Christian station. That’s another post. Also, Christian music is almost wholly a subset of Country music, so let’s not go there today.)

These are people who care about their country, who appreciate the sacrifices the military makes, who understand that commitment in family and marriage is a thing to be striven for—and people who hold and respect a long tradition of music making that has felt the same way for over fifty years. I love it.

Also the words are usually hysterical.

What's been on Jennifer's phone for the last three months?

Quite a bit of stuff. Because I have a StupidPhone (as opposed to a Smart one), I have to go and take the little card out, and find the adapter, and put it in the computer, and copy and paste. Yeah. It takes time. Which I never have. And effort. Which I rarely put out. But whatev. Here's some things for you, many of which actually were taken with putting them on the blog in mind. But I forget. And things from four months ago are...well, not as interesting as they would have been, uh, four months ago:

Six men carrying a baby grand. MUCH easier than when Joe and the seller moved it into the house alone. Also, obviously, V watching the progress. He sat there for like a half hour.


Me at the governor's palace at Williamsburg (this is from Thanksgiving--seriously, things stay on my phone forever!)


One of my RCIA students being received into the Church on the feast of the Immaculate Conception.


Giving Baby Jesus some sugar.


Pesto-Parmesan breadsticks. Which I ate.


Pop tart + car seat = Silence. (aka "totally worth the horrible and disgusting mess")


I swear, this cat...


We drove all the way to the beach last week so we could "wave" at Daddy. There was more splashing than waving done. Did I mention it was 46 degrees?


Saturday morning's hair--before mommy shaved it all off with a #4.


I looked for these for over two hours. Please don't laugh.

LAST Weekend

Sorry for the long break there, fans. It's been...well, regular life. I'm just lazy with da bloggie.

Anyway. I have sooooooooo many wonderful pictures from my trip last weekend, but I know Blogger is going to be all retarded and not let me post things like I want, so I'm picking my top ten faves (still a lot of pictures...where is their server, anyway, Nairobi?) and letting them set the tone. Maybe I'll post sequel sets of pictures every weekend for the next, oh, ten years or so until I get them all up. Maybe not. Here goes the Top Ten from Janaury 29ths' "First LEGO League North Carolina State Tournament:"

The MIGHTY MARSHMALLOWS!


We are talking about some serious firepower in the 9-14 age range. Plus their parents. Plus the college students who were working the event.


The Bot!


Big Brother--definitely key in the whole process. I wish I had better pictures of them switching out attachments on the robot...so very cool.


It took lots of concentration.


And looking to Mom for hints and help--she wasn't allowed within a certain foot radius of the tables.


We needed a scorekeeper.


And a fan section. With posters. No painted stomachs, though.


Breaks are also very key.


There were disappointing moments. (A clear winner emerged in the "expressive face" category, though.)


And heartwarming teamwork--people came to our spot in the pit to congratulate and encourage the homeschool team. They were impressed by what one family was able to do. And we were all like totally "well, duh!" and, like, right? It was neat to watch the kids work together.


And this pretty much sums up how we all felt at the end of the day. Pretty much.

Snapshot

For those of you who complain that my blog "doesn't show what's going on in my life," I present a little snapshot. This is my Saturday morning:

Cat hunting birds.

Boy eating banana (unaided!).
My new book that I want to read. And probably won't.
My breakfast! Yes, on a Star Wars plate. It's the little things in life...

Thankful for a blessing.

A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter; he who finds one finds a treasure.
A faithful friend is beyond price, no sum can balance his worth.

Things Babies Love the Heck Out Of

(Don’t worry.  This is done totally in loving jest.  You know who you are out there…)

So, back along about a decade ago, while I was growing large with child and simultaneously racking up the frequent flier miles between here and Oklahoma, il mio sponso decided to begin a conversation about whether buying “the best” for baby was ok to do, provided you had the means.  Along with that conversation (which, as I recall, got some really heated responses out of the internetz) was a side question about what kinds of things were, well, okay to skimp on.  I, of course, make no such sort of studied inquiry.  I never have.  I probably never will.  Amazon reviews, registries, and rich relatives are the way of life.  I want the best for my child that my grandmother’s money can buy.  So, some things I totally recommend:

1. Swing: Who doesn’t like that relaxed feeling they after tripping for a while, right?  Rainbows and puppies and a gentle, rhythmic rock.  No people to bother you.  Just you and the swing.  (Ours came from the neighbor, who was giving it away as her uterine-use days were evidently over, and it got me through the first three months of teaching piano.  Price of swing: $0.  Money earned because swing freed my hands: $380.)

2. Infant Carseat: Because one sleeps better at night knowing that the carseat (which we put over 25,000 miles on before it was outgrown) we bought was crash tested, legal for use in the United States, and kept baby safe.  So what if he couldn’t use it until he’s five.  Hell, they’ll redesign cars before then and the seat will be unusable anyhow.  Also, goes with the uber-expensive stroller that great-grandma bought.  (Cost of seat + stroller: $280.  Money saved on gym membership because I carried that thing around at a whopping 32lbs for eleven months: $210.  And I’m still using the stroller.)

3. Millions of Clothes: Being able to change him four times a day, if necessary, and still have a complete matching outfit in the drawer—shirt, pants, vest, socks, and hat—is the kind of couture that a self-respecting mother should strive for.  After all, just because I wear the same clothes for days at a time and don’t brush my hair doesn’t mean that baby has to live that way.  Also, it comes in handy for when you got busy doing things and put pants on baby but not diaper.  Voila!  Extra pants in the dresser!  (Cost of clothes: $0, they came from the all-done neighbor.  Money saved on the water bill because I could just change baby’s clothes instead of washing his little body off all the time because I make him eat naked because I don’t want to wash so many clothes: $50-80.  Money saved on moisturizing lotion also from fewer washings: $30.)

4. Plates, Bowls, Spoons, Forks, Sippy Cups: Makes baby feel like a “big boy.”  This way, when he gets to be two or so and I want him to develop homo sapiens manners, he’s used to trying to act like an adult by using utensils and dinnerware.  After all, if I’m going to get the child a stinkin’ broom for Montessori sweeping—a broom his size, for those of you in Rio Linda—I can sure as heck get him a spoon that’s baby-mouth-sized, and a plate that sticks to the table/tray so he can’t projectile it at me.  Also, if he hates the sippy cup, get him a straw.  Put the straw in a sippy cup.  Put the straw in your beer.  Put beer in the sippy cup.  Whatever it takes.  (Cost of baby dinnerware: $25.  Money saved on carpet cleaning, no broken adult dishes, and valium for when preschooler still insists on eating with his hands: $500+.)

5.  Baby Bath Tub:  How else can I tell if the water is warm enough?  The tub has the little turns-white-when-too-hot ducky on it!

6. Crib: Ours turns in to a toddler bed, which is the way we’re using it now, and a full-size bed, which we probably won’t ever use.  Again, a great opportunity for little man to feel grown up, transition gradually into adulthood, and start saving for college.  What child in his own grown-up bed doesn’t want to start saving for college?  Interestingly enough, we did co-sleep with our guy for the first year, completely by serendipity and not by design.  He hated the crib.  So I converted it to a toddler bed.  Slept in it almost every night since.  (Crib cost: $200.  Peace of mind from having a no-drop-side crib that matches the furniture: priceless.)

That’s probably it for now.  I can think of other things to post, but my mobile and active son is sleeping.  Which means I’m supposed to be reading Scharnhorst or Machiavelli or Sun Tzu.

Monday, continued.

Because, even though I did a full day's worth of driving (6.5 hours) and a full day’s worth of teaching (3 hours), yesterday was technically part of the holiday.  And I didn’t do any school yesterday.  I went to bed instead.  So here is a post, as I go into hour 36 of my “Monday.”

Something is amiss with my child.  I might be his teeth.  It might be his tummy.  It might be his head.  But I think it’s his attitude.  Because he shore does have one.  And I’m going to go insane dealing with him.  I can’t take the climbing, writhing, crying, difficult little boy much longer.  Argh!

Pictures of Aforementioned Snow

Snow, Snow, Snow!!

I haven’t taken any good pictures yet, and blogger is being a pill so it doesn’t matter what kind of pictures I take they still won’t post, but there’s SNOW outside!  I think we’re probably pushing 2 inches out there, which is pretty impressive for the southern end of the North Carolina coast.  Wowie.  V was so excited, crawling all over my head and banging on the window at the snow.  It’s so pretty, too.  Nice big flakes, so soft and peaceful and quiet outside.  I love it.  Just don’t ask me to get out in it, at all.

Other than that, feeling really good about school this week.  I got everything that ought to be turned in, turned in last night, and also participated in two of the non-mandatory boards for the “third” class on my schedule.  It’s the standout favorite for the new semester, too.  “Great Military Philosophers.”   Right up my alley.  I still have two major assignments to turn in, but both have had their page limits reduced dramatically, such that the TOTAL due pages due by Thursday night is only 14.  Which is like, ppppsh.  Nothin.

Progress

Manged to complete over half of the reading for one of my classes. That's good. That means that 1/8th of the total assignments due Sunday at midnight are now complete.

Aaaaand I realized that the assignments due the NEXT weekend are going to have to be completed by, uh, Thursday. Because I'm sure as heck not working on school while traveling to and from a wedding. Nope. No sir.

A New Year

So, here's V enjoying the snow at my grandparents' over the Christmas holiday. It was a wild ride, as usual, complete with trips to bookstore and long drives to science museums. After all, I hardly ever get to ride in the car. Right?

Today is the first "real" day back home, as family is gone for good now, and even dear friends :) who stopped in on their way back home have moved on down the road. Now it really is just me and the kid. This nice part about this is that I'm nearly halfway done with the week's lessons already (halfway is actually at 3pm today), so I have only a half week of work left to do. The not nice part is that my new classes started on Monday and I'm still behind on the old ones. So. Oops.

And here's mah boy with his Gramma New Year's Day:

And furthermore

It’s funny, so many years after I had started the blog (and named it, at the time mainly just because it sounded cool, even though the psalm in my title bar lends it some credence), I’ve turned out to actually have a little “midnight radio” all of my own.  Because of the time difference, if I stay up reeeeeeeeeeeeeally late, some nights I get to gchat (or skype chat) with Joseph for a little while before he begins his day.  This is such a blessing.  There’s a long list of people, too, who would probably come and eat my bones for snacks if they found out how lucky I am—most people are feeling good if they get a one line email every two weeks.  Most people’s husbands are living in 2-man tents and the nearest internet is 45 miles away.

So yes.  If I stay up good and late, I might get to “talk” with my best friend.  :)  Totally worth it.

A Bit Dull

Yes, the blog is sleeping. But you see, I'm actually getting my READING for CLASS done here. Along with many family-and-friend related things. So, every time you come and see that no blog things have happened, you may think, "Oh, that's so wonderful for Jen. She's getting her school and family things done. She's feeling accomplished. I'm so happy for her."

So, be happy.

Not nice

Not a great start to this Fourth Week of Advent (aka “last week before the good stuff”).  The Senate went the next step toward a DADT repeal, which isn’t particularly nice of them.  Bunch of spineless…bad words.  Anyway, I’m just completely depressed and put off by that.  Not sure what it bodes for our life, future, livelihood, etc.  The whole thing is so dishonest from start to finish, the rhetoric is malicious and skewed, etc etc etc.  I could write for a long time about, and not make a heck of a lot of sense, but I won’t.  Too t’d off to do so, anyway.

Also, patrol cycle starts/started today.  So that’ll ruin my next ten days or so.  Nothing like waking up every morning wondering whether you’re still married to anybody.

Also having irritating misgivings about all manner of life decisions, including but not limited to the way I raise my kid, make my food, spend my money, etc.

Oh, and they are trying to repeal DADT.  My buddy Danny (good ol, Danny) says not to worry, they’ll reinstate it on January 21st.  It’ll be fine.  Just don’t worry.  But I have a hard time feeling it will be that easy.  Can you imagine the backlash from the left?  It’s awfully freaking hard to roll back something that the entire world is gushing about being a “great civil rights victory.”

Finally, all this has totally sapped my interest in and motivation to work on my school stuff.  And I have a big discussion board due tonight.  On World War II.  And I haven’t done the reading.  And right now I’m supposed to be motivated to be reading all like 115 pages of the relevant chapters.

Yeah.  Not happening.  Stupid Senate.  Merry Christmas to you, too.

Small Successes -- Winning the Germ War

(This came from something Tea & Co. do every week. I decided to steal.)

It's important for moms to realize that all those small successes add up to one big triumph. So on Thursday of each week, we do exactly that! My skirmishes for the week:

1. Christmas cards are all addressed and the Christmas letter is written. Must now inscribe and stuff them...

2. Kept V from the worst of the cold, I think, by stuffing him full of oatmeal and vitamins. Don't tell the pediatrician.

3. Did all but the last 2 items on my 76-item "To Do" list from the fridge. Now I get to make a new list! :D

BBC’s 100 Books

I got this list from Facebook, then via Matt’s blog.  I totally agree with his assessment that some “books” are on here twice, once as part of a collection and once on their own, and this is annoying.  He’s so right.  But anyway.  Below are “the rules” (you don’t have to play), plus I liked Matt’s addition, so I’m also underlining a book that I read specifically for school, and not because I’m a nutball.

The Rules

• Copy this into your NOTES.
• Bold those books you've read in their entirety.
• Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read only an excerpt.
• Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses!
• The BBC says that most people average about 6 of the following, -- Let's see how well I do!

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling [read a little of the first one and HATED it]

5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6. The Bible [Yes.  I did.  One Lent.]

7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell [One day. . . ]

9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller [Yuck.]

14. Complete Works of Shakespeare [One day, when I have money and time]

15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19. The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger [And never will.  Too sad!  But I know the story, and not from watching the movie.]

20. Middlemarch - George Eliot

21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh [Top 3 favorite books]

27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll [Again, yuck.]

30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33. Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis

34. Emma -Jane Austen

35. Persuasion - Jane Austen

36. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini [But it is upstairs on the shelf…]

38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres [GREAT movie!]

39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden [Met the author once…]

40. Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne

41. Animal Farm - George Orwell

42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown [Nevah!  Fr. Jose says I should, though, so I can discount it to my students.]

43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50. Atonement - Ian McEwan

51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52. Dune - Frank Herbert

53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley [fun times]

59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville [I swear I’ve read the first page like 100 times, but I just can’t get past it.]

71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72. Dracula - Bram Stoker

73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett [Booooooriiiiiiiing.]

74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75. Ulysses - James Joyce

76. The Inferno - Dante

77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78. Germinal - Emile Zola

79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80. Possession - AS Byatt

81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87. Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White

88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom [My family made me read it so I could explain to my Grandmother what all was wrong with it.]

89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery [First “long” book I ever read.]

93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94. Watership Down - Richard Adams

95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98. Hamlet - Shakespeare

99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Other Things

Also trying to get rid of: fantastically large number of matches, over a dozen candles, hair products of various descriptions, accumulated Christmas cards from sales of Christmas Past (making real progress on that one), and the many many many legal and letter-sized pads that we collected during the cleaning out of the professors’ building that one summer that I worked at the college…

I’m getting there.

It has been an interesting week, though.  Fo sho.  Like, I had never expected that the smell of a newly-opened bag of Tostitos would remind my of my husband.  Who knew?  Wow, though, man, I opened up that bag and all my reflexes went, “WHAT?  You went to the store and bought CHIPS AGAIN?  I COOKED food for you!  REAL food!”  And then I ate an entire batch of guacamole by myself.

Which reminds me of another reminder.  Who knew that I would actually want to go out for a run, just because it reminded me of Joe?  That’s power, right there.  Something that makes me want to go out and be miserable.  Not that its an option, anyway, because it has gotten so BLEEPING COLD around here all of a sudden.  (Whence cometh this new typing in all caps habit?  I think reading others’ blogs is rubbing off on me.  And I used to be so good with italics, too.  Sad.)  I mean, seriously, like in the 30s all day.  So cold that the ice I dumped out of the recycle bin did not thaw after a full day of sitting in the grass, half of which was sitting in the grass in the sunshine time.  That’s too darn cold for this clime.  One of the selling points, in my head, was that we wouldn’t have to endure another Virginia winter.

So much for selling points.

Holly Jolly Rodent

Yes, I know that he is not a rodent. He is a feline. But I don't care. He's a PEST. (This photo was taken at eye level, btw.)

Unaccustomed Presence of Routine

Sooooooo some of my goals during the deployment are, shall we say, less lofty than others. Pray for Joseph, lose some weight, get V sleeping in his own bed. Those are the lofty goals. So far, V sleeps in his bed the whole night exept for the part he sleeps in the floor with me. I'm unsure at what point the transfer takes place. Lose weight...bah humbug. And praying for Joseph is (a) ongoing and (b) a total sucess. So I'm doing well there.

The less lofty goals are odd. One of them was to "use up some of the lotion and other hygiene-related products that I've got laying around." I'm a scented-thing fiend, so these articles pile up, you know? So I'm going through and trying to use up things, mostly by remembering as part of my daily regimen to put moisturizing product on my peeling, itchy, poor, sad skin. This is something I've always needed to do, but never remembered before. I never had time to remember it. I never had time to wait patiently in my robe for the lotion to become unsticky so I could get dressed. Now I have time, or at least I'm making time. I feel a little triumph every time I toss an empty container out. (Yay! More space to put new lotion! Except that part of the deal was a vow not to buy more of the stuff until more than half of the existing inhabitants had bought the farm.)

Another goal was "clear out the pantry." Somehow this also translated into "clear out the vitamin shelf." Every M.D. that I saw during my entire pregnancy was convinced they had to prescribe prenatal vitamins to me--and I never realized the vitamins were in amongst the other medications until I got home and opened my pharmacy sack. Sooooooo there's ye piles of prenatals (and iron, which I'm terrified V is going to get into even though they're in a child-proof container at the back on the top shelf of an above-the-counter cupboard over the dishwasher and there are no climbable furniture pieces within six feet) in my cabinet which I wanted out. And rather than toss all but one (wasteful) I decided to just take the things, one per day. Which I never did before or during natalness, so what the heck. I'll do it now. Nothing like planning ahead. And I'm taking Vitamin C. And I feel soooooooooo proud. Again, a little triumph every time an empty container leaves my shelves that much less full.

As far as the real pantry goes, that's another story. I could easily not shop for groceries until February and not go hungry (and I wouldn't get scurvy, because I'm taking Vitamin C!!), but there would be a total lack of meat, dairy or vegetable products (except for frozen veggies). So I still go grocery shopping, some, but basically I only buy things from the three categories listed above. I cook LOTS more when Joseph is gone anyway, so the food that is sitting on the shelves for months and months always leaves faster when he is away, but lately I've been trying to be good about cooking veggies for V (because Macaroni is not really a food group) so there's just more cooking all around.

Granted, I'm sitting here in my jammies after a day of teaching with two bottles of water and a ham sandwich and some mini snickers. But who says you have to be perfect?