Another Thursday Five

1. My new favorite recipe (which only Uno and I will eat, but whatever):

Awesome Black Beans & Rice

* 1 TBSP olive oil
* 3/4 cup onion, chopped fine
* 1/2 cup green pepper, chopped fine
* 1 cup (or 1 small can) diced tomatoes
* 1 can Bush's Seasoned Recipe Black Beans; drain & reserve juice
* 1/2 TSP thyme
* 1 TSP garlic salt
* 3 TBSP cider vinegar
* 1/2 TSP hot pepper sauce
* 1 cup cooked rice
* Meat of your choice (if you want any) (I've used ground beef or cubed pork tenderloin)

In a large skillet, heat olive oil. Cook onion and green pepper until tender. (If your meat isn't cooked, throw it in too; if I'm using leftovers I add it at the end.) Stir in tomatoes, beans, thyme, and garlic salt, and cook for 3 minutes. Add vinegar, pepper sauce, and reserved juice, and continue to cook for 5 minutes. Serve over rice.

(Sometimes I leave out the tomatoes because Uno isn't a fan -- I think when I do, I ought to use slightly less cider vinegar. They work well together, but the vinegar seems to take over without the tomatoes.)

2. I think it is too easy for me to disconnect from life. From people, more specifically. I don't blame technology; pundits and other talky types love to fault the internet for depersonalizing our society, making us all antisocial behind our little flickering screens.... But I was antisocial before the internet was born. I actually connect with real live people more frequently thanks to blogs (hey family, blog more!) (says the girl who averaged one post a month before this 5/day experiment) and Facebook and a private message board I belong to. Anyway, none of that is my point. Technology bla bla never mind.

It is too easy for me to disconnect. I am too comfortable in my own head. I love my family and BFFs, and when I'm physically near them I never want us to be apart; I want to always have them with me to talk and laugh and debate and commiserate with. And yet.... I go weeks (sometimes more) without talking to any of them. Part of it has to do with my phone aversion, sure, but also I am just too easily sucked into my own stream of consciousness as I bob and float through the days. I think I'm growing more introverted (if such a thing is possible) as I get older.

Or maybe I'm just completely self absorbed.

3. Our town has a weather vane store. Isn't that a crazy specific niche for a small town business? Maybe if we lived somewhere touristy that had lots of chic design / houseware boutiques and gift stores a weather vane shop would seem like a natural fit, but here it's just ... a crazy specific niche. Odd. Every time I pass it, I think, "You're so vane I bet you think that store is about you" (which is how item 2 segued into item 3, thank you very much).

4. Tres and I had preschool today! We learned about elephants at her request: We read Grandma Elephant's in Charge, learned how to make the letter E in both upper and lower case (lower case will need more practice), and then turned a few simple shapes (circles, a rectangle, and two crescents) into an elephant paper bag puppet.



We also practiced spelling her name, read another book (Pickle-Chiffon Pie), ate a snack (jello), sang the alphabet song a couple times, and of course we went out for recess. Cuatro, whom Tres elected on Tuesday to be Principal Baby, napped through the whole thing.

5. I need a passport. Not that I plan on going anywhere, sadly, but it would be nice to have in case I had to flee the country at a moment's notice. ;-) I used to have one (I've had two, actually) but it was in my maiden name. And then it expired. The girls (Uno especially) love to hear stories of my previous adventures, but it sure would be nice to add some new ones. *Sigh!*


~RCH~

Quickly, because I am exhausted.

1. I never sleep well the night before the first day of school -- I didn't as a student, and I don't as a parent. I'm not nervous; I have no concerns, no negative feelings at all; I simply feel restless. And so I rest less. Ha. Yeah, I'm tired. I fell asleep last night around 3am and got up at 6:30. I hate mornings.

2. Morning drop off was a complete nightmare! I had to take all four kids with me because DH hadn't come home from his night shift yet. We dropped Uno off first at the intermediate school. I parked two blocks away and had to speed walk with a baby on my hip and a dawdly 3yo trailing behind. When we got to the school I tried walking Uno to her class room, but a random teacher stopped me; apparently the new 3rd graders had to go to an assembly in the cafeteria first. So I didn't get to see her room, but whatever. Dos, Tres, Cuatro and I speed walked back out and down two blocks, waited for a break in traffic so I could turn left, and made it to the primary school just in time -- though of course with nowhere to park. Grrr. It's a miracle Dos wasn't late. I imagine they weren't terribly strict about punctuality today, but still. UGH.

I'm hoping the rest of the year will be easier -- today was unusual in that I had to park and go in with them. Most days I'll slow the car just enough for them to jump out, LOL.

3. Tres and I had our first day of home preschool today. All we did was talk about how we wanted the year to go: We made a list of rules -- things like raise your hand before asking a question, be kind and (at Tres's insistence) have recess. We made a schedule, deciding that we would meet twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, for an hour and a half. And then we brainstormed subjects Tres wants to learn about! The first thing? Pinecones. "Okay," I said, "let's write that down as Nature." She shook her head. "No, pinecones." So I guess I need to brush up on conifers! ;-)

I'm excited. I think we'll both have fun with this, and I think we will really benefit from more structured days.

4. Uno was waiting with her best friend when we picked her up after school. I asked O which teacher she had (they aren't in the same class this year, boo). "Mrs. XYZ," she said. "She's old." For some reason, that cracked me up.

5. How in the world are we half way through August already? That makes no sense.


ZZZzzzzzz....


~RCH~

Five Random Ramblings of a Procrastinator

1. I'm in the office looking for our 3-hole punch. The 3rd grade school supply list stated specifically that Uno must have four 2-pocket paper folders with three holes NOT prongs. Walmart had non-prong folders, but none with holes. I know we have a hole punch around here somewhere, but why don't I just sit down for a minute to blog and/or play Bejeweled Blitz...?

Ahhh, yes! :: Cracks open a Dr. Pepper ::

2. I think there ought to be a law to stop currently elected officials from campaigning for another position during their term. During the last presidential election, while John & Barack gallivanted around the country shaking hands and kissing babies, who was looking out for the interests of Arizona and Illinois, respectively? They were each hired to do a job -- and they each got paid for that job -- but spent all their time trying to get a different one. From my experience in the business world (it's been a while, but this seems like a no-brainer), that sort of behavior usually gets people fired pretty quickly and without the shiny references they'd need to keep climbing up the ladder. Everybody kvetches about incumbents and career politicians anyway -- a law like this would at least ensure they had to take turns, one term off and one term on.

Who's with me? :: Insert Howard Dean-style "Yeeeaaahhh!" here ::

3. Ensure vs. insure: Excluding industry usage (i.e., health insurance or auto insurance), the two words seem practically interchangeable; my online dictionary search says that they both mean to guarantee or protect (though the protecting seems more strongly associated with insure). I wonder why we have two distinct words that sound almost alike and have almost the exact same meaning? You'd think one or the other would have dropped out of usage by now. When one does, I'm guessing it will be ensure -- which is why I prefer to use it when I can. Save the redundant words! (I'm such a language nerd.)

4. The older girls start school tomorrow. Sort of. They only have to go until 11:30am. What's the point of that, I wonder? This is the first year I have students at different schools -- our elementary school goes from K-2; intermediate school is 3-5; middle school is 6-8; high school is 9-12. This year Dos will be in 2nd grade at one school and Uno will be in 3rd grade at another.... I'm feeling some anxiety about logistics, but I'm sure it will work out somehow.

In 2017 -- if I did my math right -- I'll have one kid in every place: Uno will be a high school freshman; Dos will be in her final year of middle school; Tres will be a 4th grader at the intermediate school and Cuatro will be in 1st grade. That will be a logistical challenge.

5. I think Facebook doesn't like me, and wants to let me know. A year or so ago I made a friend request to someone I knew in high school, and that person never responded. Which is fine -- I didn't expect to really reconnect anyway, just snoop around to see how his life had turned out and how time had changed him. I'm kind of nosy like that. So the friendship request is still pending, which means I am not privy to any of his deeply personal thoughts or what he had for lunch, but suddenly I'm getting status updates from him every time he accepts someone else as a friend. Is Facebook trying to rub this passive rejection in my face?

So weird.

Sigh. I ought to hunt up that 3-hole punch, I guess.


~RCH~

Family Photos

1. I don't remember how this came to me, but somehow I ended up with a digital version of a slide my grandpa took in the '70s (maybe from him? maybe from my sister?). The baby isn't named, but the photo is dated October 1975 -- which doesn't make any sense, because my sister, at 14 months, didn't have that much hair and I (although precocious in many ways) would not have been crawling at only two months old. I'm pretty sure the picture is of me in 1976; I don't have many (any?) baby pictures to compare it to, but the crazy hair looks familiar:



2. Everybody says Cuatro looks just like me. I tried to test the theory this afternoon by getting a similar shot of her, but she refused to pose correctly. Still, I got some cute shots. Such as:



3. Or this one (please note the crazy hair):



4. Or this one, in which she is reading Columbia, a Roman Catholic magazine we get because of DH's former membership in the Knights of Columbus (I don't think they know he converted). Is this my kid or what?



5. I was going to round out this post with side-by-side photos of DH as a kid and Dos; that child is 100% his, without a bit of me in her. (Uno and Tres tend more toward my side of the family, I think, but without looking like me in particular.) But the photos DH's aunt gave me when we first got married -- a jackpot of shots of him as an adorable baby and toddler on through his awkwardly skinny teenage years and culminating in the most fabulous '80s prom photo EVER -- aren't where I thought they were and I don't want to hunt them up at this hour. Oh well. That will give me something to show you in a future post. :-)


[Note: I may or may not be able to post in the next few days, so if you don't hear from me before Monday it's not because I'm blazy or forgetful or dead (I hope). It's a good thing I'm not obsessive about goals, because my 5/Day plan is already pretty spotty! :-P]


~RCH~

Wherein I figure out how to embed a YouTube clip (I'm so advanced)

1. That darn baby gave me her cold. *Bachoo!*

2. I can't remember why I didn't write yesterday.... Honestly, I don't really remember yesterday.... All my days run together. :-P

3. Uno is too big for the bicycle she got for Christmas the year before last, which is sad because she only just barely learned to ride without training wheels. It's kind of funny to watch her try -- her knees go nearly up to her ears as she tries to pedal -- but she keeps getting hurt, which is definitely not funny. Poor kid. She needs a new one.

4. I took all the girls to Goodwill this morning, both to look for a larger bike and to get them out of the house (DH worked a night shift and no amount of shushing keeps them quiet enough to let him sleep the day away). Goodwill had no bikes, but we did manage to get a fancy dress for Tres, two pairs of shoes, and a bunch of nice school clothes for the older two (plus a golf visor for Dos, who has always wanted a hat all her life and please, please, Mommy, can it be this one?) for $27.

5. A week from today will be the girls' first full day of school (they get out early on Tuesday, the first day). This is my favorite back-to-school commercial:



So much glitter! And on that note, goodnight. :-)


~RCH~

Eeeeeew.

1. Dos has a loose tooth -- several, actually, but one that's pretty serious about coming out, I guess. She keeps wiggling it at me and threatening to pull it out right in front of me and just now she and Uno came tromping in with a piece of string and asked me to tie it around the tooth so that Uno could yank it out with added force. I kicked them out of the room.

2. I am so creeped out, I can't even tell you. DISGUSTING. Teeth are DISGUSTING. Especially bloody, recently disembodied teeth. ::Shudder::

3. My children know about my aversion (hence all the teasing and taunting). When Uno lost her first tooth, she laughed and said, "Wouldn't it be hilarious if you had to be a tooth fairy?" I screwed up my face in disgust. "Noooooo!" I said. "I could never have that job! Gross!"

4. *** Breaking news! *** The tooth is out. Dos reports that she pulled it the old fashioned way, not with string. Is that any consolation? Nope, still creepy.

5. Voila!



~RCH~

I'm 36 now!

1. Today is my birthday. I told the girls I wanted a clean house and happy children; I'm not sure they believed me.

2. Poor Cuatro is sick. Nothing more nefarious than a summer cold, but the poor thing has a terribly gloopy nose that she won't let me suction or wipe and she can't breathe and eat at the same time. :-(

3. Uno suggested we all have a spa day before school begins next week. I tried to tell her we are not "spa people" (or at least I'm not). Tres tried to convince me of the benefits of a good spa treatment, too ("I saw it on Phineas & Ferm! They made a spa for Candace and she put vegetables on she's eyes to feel better!") but I will hold my ground. I'm sure it would be lovely to be pampered, but I'd feel so ... I don't know, like a poser. I'm just not fancy.

4. DH had to work today so we began my birthday celebration last night with a trip to O'Charley's (with kids) and then to see The Smurf's. Tomorrow we will have the ILs over for ice cream and cake.

5. Today, and for the next few weeks, I am the same age as my awesome sister. I loved growing up so close with her (in all senses of the word close). I'm grateful to be close with all my brothers and sisters, actually (though sadly no longer in the geographical sense). My family is the coolest. :-)

[Secret 6: I was going to post a full 10 tonight since I missed writing anything yesterday, but Cuatro is in my lap crying and squirming and being overall very pitiful, so I won't. Poor little Smooch.]


~RCH~