Cleaned out the miscellaneous cabinet

in the kitchen. It's where I keep the juicer and the blender and big Christmas platters and jello molds and assorted other odds and ends that I hardly ever (or never) use. I thought I might find my old Tupperware rolling-out-dough mat in there, but I didn't. I did, however, find a rolling pin, nearly identical to the one I just bought.

(**sigh**)

Britt pooped in the bathtub

the other night. She'd done it once before, a long time ago, but it was more solid and easier to deal with that time. This time the bath water instantly turned into poop soup.

It was everywhere -- all over her legs, her safety seat and her bath toys, and then she stuck her hands in it and was trying to touch her face. Way too much to cope with alone so I had to holler for backup. Mikey came and held her up while I hosed her off with the hand-held shower thingy. She was flailin' and a-wailin', and so was I.

I am not the person you want to have on hand in a poop emergency. I can handle poop in a diaper, because it's (usually) neatly contained and I can make it go away quickly. But when it's scattered all over tarnation and covering the baby from head to toe and I have to disinfect everything in sight, I tend to lose my shit (no pun intended).

Holy cow

It's Mikey's birthday, so we went over to his folks' house to celebrate. They had Italian beef sandwiches shipped in from Portillo's in Chicago.

I made it almost two years without eating any non-organic beef, due to madcowaphobia, but in the last month I've had it four times. Man, the things we do for family.

Of course I ate the beef. In fact, I had two. They were pretty darn good. I prayed first, though, trying to remember what Romans 14 said, and whether or not it applied to this situation. I had look it up when we got home:

If your brother (or mother-in-law) is distressed because of what you eat (or do not eat), you are no longer acting in love...

Same thing over at Chris & Sherri's. How could I not eat Cathy's lasagna?

If your brother (or sister) is distressed because of what you eat (or do not eat), you are no longer acting in love...

And Chris's damn-near-midnight steaks:

If your brother (or nephew-in-law) is distressed because of what you eat (or do not eat), you are no longer acting in love...

Those were the second, third and fourth times. The first time was at my mother-in-law's birthday party right after Christmas -- I was so freaked out that the party wasn't a family-only affair that I ate a meatball and a half before I realized what I was doing.

Anyway, please don't invite me over for dinner for a while, unless you're serving chicken.

Been trying to

get interested in cooking again, but it's not working. Didn't think it would, but I did find two or three new recipes to add to my repertoire so it wasn't a complete waste of time.

Finished reading through all my cookbooks, and the one I found the most useless was The Cook's Encyclopedia of Four Ingredient Cooking. Sounded like a winner when I bought it, but a more apt title might be The Cook's Encyclopedia of Ingredients You'll Never Find in This Town. Dude, I live in Oklahoma! Where the hell am I going to find Halloumi cheese? Or strained sheep's yogurt? Oh, and it included this bit of helpful advice:

Mealy varieties of potato, such as Pentland Squire, King Edward, or Marfona are best for mashing as they produce a light fluffy result. Waxy potatoes are more suitable for baking, or for salads, as they produce a dense, rather starchy mash.

Uh, right. Around here, we get to choose from the five-pound bag, the ten-pound bag, or baking potatoes by the pound. That's pretty much it.

Finally went and spent my Bed, Bath & Beyond gift card that Bridgie gave me for Christmas a year ago (thank you, Bridgie!). Got a new shower curtain and liner (that drafty old green thing is gone so Mom, Phil and Jamie, you can come back now and shower in comfort), a double boiler (never had a one before and always thought I ought to), and a new rolling pin.

I've never in my life been able to roll out dough without it wrapping itself terminally around the rolling pin, causing me to throw the whole mess across the room, so I don't really know what I'm going to do with the damned thing. Maybe I'll bake a pie or something.

If I do, no one will be more surprised than me.

Communication breakdown

Been trying to get Sissy to speak English. She won't, much.

For instance, I keep trying to get her to tell me what she wants instead of pointing at it and going "uh, uh, uh." I say, "You want some cheese? Can you say cheese?" and she keeps pointing and going "uh, uh, uh." She has said "chaze" once or twice. Well, once.

Anyway, we're still working on it.

When I was giving Sis her bath this evening, her towel slid off the counter and onto the floor, contaminating it so that I had to run across the hall to the linen closet to grab a fresh one, and I hate to leave Sis alone in the tub for even a second. So I said, "Shit."

Sis grinned up at me and said, clear as a bell, "Shit!"

Shit.

Ice Princess

Britt's new favorite snack is crushed ice. Hey, it works for me -- she can spill it all over herself or the carpet and it'll just evaporate. No messy cleanup! No stains! Woo-hoo!



She carries it around in this little bowl; I keep refilling it until her little fingers turn pink and then we give it a rest. She'll also sit in her high chair happily munching away on ice while I'm cooking, which is fan-freakin'-tastic because otherwise she's wrapped around my legs like Velcro.

Britt held her first gallery showing of original art today. This one is called "Orange Crayon on Dishwasher":



Her other major work on display today was "Orange Crayon on Kitchen Floor." Her Grampa and I are so proud.

Went and bought myself

an 8x8 Pyrex baking dish, because I haven't had one in a long time and when Mikey does the grocery shopping for me he always comes home with the brownie mix that you have to bake in an 8x8 baking dish.

I decided to make brownies from scratch to inaugurate my new 8x8 baking dish, so I searched my cookbooks, found a likely recipe, whipped it up and waited eagerly for the finished result, and was crushed to find that the first brownies ever baked in my new 8x8 baking dish tasted more or less like dryer lint with nuts in it.

Speaking of brownies, I made some one night (from a mix, so they were good) and Mikey sneaked one to Brittany, her first ever. When we went outside the next day, Britt marched straight over to one of my flowerbeds and popped a dirt clod into her mouth. She spit it right out again, but up to this point she'd always been pretty good about not eating dirt, so I could only surmise that for a few glorious moments she had imagined that the ground under her feet was made of brownies, and that she could pick some up and eat it whenever she wanted. What a letdown that must've been!

I'm trying to get interested

in cooking again. I used to have a rep as a pretty good cook but after doing it most days for more than 25 years it's more of a chore than a pleasure. My heart hasn't been in it for a long time and even I don't want to eat my cooking anymore.

So I've been reading through my cookbook collection while sitting out in the Smoke Hole (a.k.a. the garage), trying to get inspired. My big hardback Southern Living cookbooks are the most interesting, full of all kinds of stuff I'd like to eat -- if somebody else did the cooking. There's lots of handy tricks and tips sprinkled throughout their pages, and one of them was a reminder that baking powder and baking soda don't keep forever, so I dutifully went and checked my containers for expiration dates. The baking soda wasn't so bad -- it expired in 2004. My baking powder, however, expired in 1999.

And there was a reminder that herbs and spices don't keep forever, either, but they're not usually marked with expiration dates. My little can of allspice was one of the few that was marked -- it expired in 1987.

Can you tell I haven't done much baking lately?

The recipes tempting me the most right now are the ones for slushy, fruity, rummy beverages. And I don't even drink, aside from champagne at New Year's and a very occasional bottle of wine. Haven't touched liquor in years, but now I'm getting an itch to whomp up a blenderful of Red Roosters or maybe some Lady Birds. Might go on a wee bender sometime soon -- you never know.

Britt experiences snow

up close and personal for the very first time ever:



Shortly after this picture was taken, Britt experienced a mud puddle up close and personal for the very first time ever. Didn't get a picture of that, though -- I had to get busy cleaning her off.

Little Big Sis

Sixteen months old and wearing "high heels" already:



She has a mouthful of teeth (eleven at last count) but the novelty's worn off the tooth-brushing thing and she's so over it. I do my best to do it anyway, but it's not fun.

She's learned how to "gimme five" and "high five."

She can almost say "butterfly" (buh-by) and "paper" (peh-pa).

She discovered her nose during her recent bout with a cold, and now she usually has a finger in it. Caught her trying to shove green beans up into it, too.

Meanwhile, her education in the classics continues -- tonight she danced to Grampa's Stevie Ray Vaughan DVD.

I'm not taking my Christmas shit down

because I didn't put any up this year. Last year it stayed up until March.

You think that's slackin'? Well, my Christmas present from 2004 -- my big beautiful upright freezer -- is still sitting in the middle of the garage. It's never been plugged in. It hasn't been scooted up against the wall to be plugged in yet because Mikey's friggin' weight bench is still in the way. The weight bench that he parks his ashtray and Coke cans on.

(***sigh***)

Peaceful

Spent the weekend with a few of my favorite people -- Mom, Phil and Jamie came down to visit us. Bridget, Chris and Sherri came over, too, but didn't stay to ring in the New Year with us.

Mom brought and cooked enough food to keep us going all week. She gave my kitchen a good scrub, too (thanks, Ma!). We finally ate some of her black-eyed peas for dinner, which were pretty darn good but now I have terrible garlic breath and need to go brush my teeth but I don't feel like standing up that long.

We downed our annual bottle (or two) of Moët at midnight, then watched Steve McQueen and Andy Griffith's girlfriend in The Blob before going to bed.

Yeah, we live big, I'm tellin' ya.

They left (relatively) early this morning, and I forgot to send Jamie's new mop and vacuum cleaner home with her. I'll send 'em with Mom if she comes back next weekend.

It's been a blissfully quiet day -- as quiet as it can be with an energetic toddler in the house. Now the baby's sleeping, I'm playing on the computer and Mikey's reading his Big Book o' Beatles.

Ah, my happiness is complete: Mikey just told me he brought home a fresh tub of Bluebell ice cream when he went out for milk earlier. I b'lieve I can get on my feet long enough to get me some of that!