[Edited to add: I love Sue. I am also insanely jealous of her popularity and her funniness. This post is meant to make fun of my jealousy, not of Sue. Apparently I don't write well enough to get that point across without hitting you over the head with it. Got it? Good.]
Okay, I've got a slight problem. You see, Sue over at Navel Gazing has never really forgiven me for winning that Imperfect Parent contest. She has spent the last few months thinking of ways to get me back. And here is her latest ploy: begging readers to favorite her on Technorati. Yeah, begging...as in groveling...just to raise her "authority," whatever that is.
You know, Sue, I'm worried about you. Blogging can be a dangerous thing. At first you're just another homemaker with kids who thinks, "Gee, I'll start a blog. It'll be fun!" And then, before you know it, you're practically prostituting yourself around the worldwide web just to keep your numbers up. It's sort of like those people who go to Vegas (ooh, sorry, Sue, didn't mean to bring up your sleazy lover!) to do a little gambling for the weekend; but 2 weeks later you find these same people sleeping in a Vegas gutter, wearing week-old clothes and clutching a Big Mac that some pitying passerby tossed their way.
The siren call of blog stats is a slippery slope, if you don't mind a mixed metaphor.
That's why you will never find me begging people to favorite me on Technorati - not even when it is really easy to do, by just clicking on that little green and white button over there to the right. You know, like this one - right here.
(Are you back yet? I mean, you did test the link, right?)
Nope, I would never do that, Sue; because it probably wouldn't make much difference. So I'll just have to pretend to be satisfied with my pathetic 25-comment average per post. At least I know that the people who comment here aren't just doing it for the cold, hard cash. Because I don't have any.
P.S. Let me know if I win that 50 bucks. The kids are whining that they're hungry again. P.P.S. I can send you that Imperfect Parent trophy, as you are apparently desperate for positive feedback. Why don't you scratch out the name of my blog and write "Navel Gazing" on it with a Sharpie or something? P.P.P.S. Mom always liked you better.
Well! Things are looking up. I'm feeling better, no one has thrown up (yet), and my husband is still speaking to me, despite our fun weekend of sick wife - jetlagged husband interactions. Of course, what Larry said when he spoke to me was that he is going away on yet another management retreat next week; so now I'm not speaking to him. He'll be coming back on his birthday, and I'm going to be all Cake? What cake? Who are you again?
I wonder if I can send back his birthday present. I'll tell him it went on a permanent retreat.
Because, did I mention, he is going away again after that. Yeah. I really think he doesn't like me anymore.
But, hey, I get to go out tonight, because I am driving the orchestra carpool this week. That translates into 2 and a half hours of sitting around and knitting in peace and quiet while I wait to bring the orchestra kids back home. And I am still immature enough to hope that, if our young ones are going to get sick, they start throwing up while I'm out.
But enough about my petty little problems - how about that Congress, eh? Suddenly we are in the middle of a combination Civics and Economics unit study here (homeschooling-wise), and we are learning more than we ever wanted to know about how a lack of corporate accountability combined with a political stalemate can bring down our economy.
Time for a compromise, fellas! Get to work! It's what we pay you the big bucks for.
My weekend has been full of sickness (me and the kids), jetlag (Larry), ridiculous marital spats (due to the sickness and jetlag), and news from a friend I visited last week that her kids all started throwing up a few hours after we left. So we're operating under Code Vomit right now, catching up on laundry, stocking up on ginger ale, crackers, and pretzels, and generally battening down the hatches for what we know is coming.
Oh, and lack of sleep - did I mention that? Yeah.
I just cannot find any funnies here today. I'm still busy editing photos in case of my untimely demise, ignoring my husband who is absolutely no fun when he is tired (not me, though - I'm a barrel of laughs right now), and trying to remember which kid I gave the Motrin to and when. They are all in various stages of a headache/sore throat type of thing which is apparently only there to soften them up for the stomach virus's knockout blow.
I'm whining. It's pathetic. Why don't you go over to MidCenturyModernMoms and tell me if you ever had to play that lifeboat/nuclear shelter game I describe there? Because so far the commenters all sound as though they think I had a strange childhood. Maybe it was just a Jewish thing, that game? Beats me.
Well! Where has the time gone? Larry got home Thursday late, but I didn't even get to talk to him until this morning; by the time he got home from work yesterday, I was in bed suffering from the gallstones that I don't have. Or maybe it's not gallstones, maybe it's pancreatic cancer and it's spreading and soon my children will be motherless...at least, that's what I spent the evening thinking.
Yeah, it's rough being a hypochondriac.
So, I dragged myself out of bed this morning to buy a bushel of apples at the local farmers' market; and then I came home and lay down some more (all the while wondering if my prognosis would give me enough time to catch up on all the scrapbooking) and then I got up and ironed all the summer clothes I haven't ironed in 3 weeks because someone told me it's getting warm again this week, and even if I am dying, I don't want to look like it.
Especially if I'm dying...I don't want to spend my last weeks hearing everyone whispering, "She looks awful." I want everyone to be saying, "But she looks great! I can't believe it's terminal!"
Ah, vanity - thy name is woman.
Well, Larry is tapping his foot, waiting for me to go out on a lunch date. I don't really see the point to strengthening our marriage right now, as I am apparently not long for this world; but maybe if I do what he wants, he won't remarry too quickly after my demise.
A year - he's got to wait at least a year, don't you think?
All you folks linking over from SpinDyeKnit, the post you are looking for is here. But feel free to stick around for the fridge follies. Or type in "knitting" in the search bar up there to the left.
[If you don't understand why I am showing you pictures of moldy food, please read the post that explains it all. After you read it, you still might not understand why I'm doing this (my husband sure doesn't); but at least you can say you tried.]
Okay, let's get started already. You know, that avatar of mine is haunting me. It makes me think, what would Laura Petrie blog? And then things get really weird...
For sure, Laura wouldn't be showing you the inside of her refrigerator, now would she? But today is Wednesday, and I have an obligation to my fan(s) to catalog what is being thrown in the trash this week. So, here we go:
On the left, there, in the Pyrex container (which I love, love, love because it comes with a storage lid) are the remains of our crockpot basil chicken (a recipe I got from Saving Dinner, I believe), which I served with bowtie noodles smothered in homemade pesto. See? Sometimes I cook my family a real meal. And Larry wasn't even here! I cannot figure out how we had any left over, as I served this for dinner 2 nights in a row (as I said, Larry hasn't been here) and then for lunch the day following.
And everyone liked it! Strange, but true.
Atop the container is the bagged carcass of a store-bought roasted chicken (look, Larry hasn't been here for over a week, all right?) that I saved to make into chicken soup. But I forgot. So much for assuaging my guilt over spending 5 dollars for less than 3 pounds of chicken (I weighed it on the produce scale in the store, because I wanted to see exactly how much money I was wasting).
Where were we? Oh, yes - here is the weekly Gladware stack. The bottom container has some leftover scrambled eggs (from the weekend when my parents were here); the next one up is filled with leftover dough for apple dumplings (David was a little overzealous and doubled the recipe). Above that is a bowl (that should have a plastic storage lid, but why use the matching lid when you can waste some saran wrap instead?) with leftover apple-dumpling filling. Sayonara!
Wait - does "sayonara" mean good-bye? Or hello? I don't know. Oh, well.
In the middle (front) is some unwanted hummus - it's texture was off, and so was the flavor. We're not buying this brand again. I'm giving you a close-up so that none of you make the same mistake. I am sure you regulars are not at all surprised to see the half an egg sandwich wrapped in blue saran wrap on top of the hummus. What can I say? We love our traditions.
Finally, the big bag in the center back is filled with apple peels and apple cores. I bought a bushel of apples (only 35 dollars - that comes to less than 80 cents a pound) at the Farmer's Market, so we've been busy all week making apple dumplings and apple crisp. But I hate to see all these healthy, unwaxed peels and cores go to waste.
Luckily for me, I have a friend here in the middle of suburbia whose husband insists on raising a few pigs each year. So I've been meaning to get over to her house and let my kids feed the apple remnants to her livestock. It's like a petting zoo, only admission is free and you don't have to pay for special food to feed to the animals. She has chickens, too.
Of course, raising livestock has its complications, like the time she came home with the kids from a play date and saw that the pigs had gotten loose and were running across the road. Have I mentioned that she doesn't really like the pigs? If it were me, I would have been all "Pigs? What pigs? I haven't seen any pigs" when my husband got home that evening. But, no, she chose to enable her husband's livestock addiction by chasing after the creatures and herding them all back into their pen.
Recalling this incident suggests to me a new book idea: Men Who Raise Livestock, And The Women Who Let Them. It would be a must-read for any woman who has ever found herself feeding chickens on her way to Target or defending her husband's pig-raising proclivities to a suburban homeowner's association. Every wife who has found herself inexplicably experiencing a suburban livestock lifestyle would find solace in its message that she is not alone, that there are others out there like her, struggling to lead normal suburban lives despite her mate's insistence that Green Acres is indeed the place to be.
