One-Upsmanship, Kindergarten Style

A conversation overheard while substitute teaching in kindergarten!

Child #1: My mom is going to have a baby next month!

Child #2: Oh yeah? Well, my Dad is pregnant.  He's going to have twins!

Child #1: I say your Dad this morning, and those babies look like they're going to pop out any day now!

Monday Musings

Graduations!
 It's happened!  Two kids graduated!  Youngest child graduated from the Community College, and Middle Child graduated from his 4 year school.  That deep sigh that you hear from me is a sigh of deep contentment.  Two kids now have 4 year degrees!  Only one left to go!  Daughter is transferring to a four year school in the fall.  She's going to continue to live at home and commute.  The school is about 40 minutes away from home.

One thing hasn't changed - college graduation ceremonies are very long, day long events.  We spent close to 5 hours tied up at Middle Child's ceremony.  The doors opened at 11:30, and the ceremony started at 12:30.  We got out at 4:00.  By the time we found the car, got out of the parking garage, and got my Mother In Law Safely delivered home, it was after 6.  Exhausting but exhilarating day! 


A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Growing Up
When he was little, middle child was appalled that I used to bring home made things to school for events.  Home made cookies and cupcakes were packed in his lunch, and his sandwiches were frequently wrapped in home made tortillas.  I would send in home made goodies for events at school, and one particularly memorable sleepover, we had make your own pizzas that featured dough that I had prepared in advance of the evening.  He was mortified that I was making stuff that didn't look as nice as what you could find in the store.  He told me it was embarrassing.  I kept doing it anyway, because that's what I did to cut down on expenses.

Fast forward many years.  Yesterday, middle child was getting ready to go over to a friends house for a night of Dungeons and Dragons.  How did he spend his afternoon?  Making a huge batch of soft pretzels to take with him.

(Oh, by the way, his pretzels are amazing.  He makes them gluten full when he takes them out, but he makes the gluten free for me! He made me a mini batch of gluten free before he began his gluten filled batch to take with him.)

Tiger's Memorial Garden
We finished Tiger's garden.  We wanted to make it into a place a cat would love to hang out, so we've planted berry bushes (holly bushes), a rhododendron, and a couple of azaleas.  He loved hanging outside under the bushes, so we made sure we had big bushes along the back of the garden.  We put Hostas in the middle ground, and big New Guinea Impatiens in the front.  Daughter has bought a couple of solar powered lanterns that she placed in the garden.  One is a very small tree like thing, and the other is a glass bird.  We finished the area with a stepping stone that daughter and I made for him.

Unintended Consequences
Finally fixing the bathroom has led to an unintended consequence: more deep cleaning.  I had to empty the linen closet by the bathroom so the workmen could get into the plumbing for the bathtub.  I just pulled everything out of the closet and tossed it into the living room when they were coming.  Moving everything back into the closet has led to some serious cleaning and tossing.  I found toothpaste that expired in 2001, ya'll.  Think about that for a minute.  2001.  We didn't even live here at that time.  It was a brand of toothpaste I never use because I am allergic to one of the ingredients.  That means my in-laws left it here when they moved out, and I never dealt with it at the time.  I've been living in the house for 11 years now.  It does make me wonder exactly why I was avoiding that closet for the last 11 years, though.  I'm going to have to go through an inventory with you one day soon.... it's an eye opener!  (I don't want to out the toothpaste company, though.  I threw out 3 tubes of toothpaste today.  I'd like to think I would have used it if I could have!)

Quick and Easy Dinner
We've been trying to make food from other cultures. I'm also looking to find foods that are easy to make on the evenings that I work long hours.  Anything that makes our evenings easier when I get home late is heaven sent.

I found a recipe for Slow Cooker Banh Mi Bowls on the Skinnytaste blog.  I tried it this past Friday night.  It was amazing.  All told, I spent less than 15 minutes on prep for this delicious dish!  I bought the shredded carrots and matchstick radishes at the salad bar, and set them to marinate before I went to work.  When husband came home, he cooked the brown rice and shredded the red cabbage.

When I walked in the door, the smell was absolutely sublime.  It tasted even better.

You can find the recipe here: Banh Mi Rice Bowls

Graduations!!!

My middle child is graduating from college later this week.

Youngest child is graduating from the community college today.

I've got family literally crawling all over the house!

Oldest child has been home for a week now, and I have been the happiest of mommies!

I'm taking a break this week - I'll start posting again after Memorial Day.

Believe me, I've got a ton of things to say and share, but for now - I want to spend my time and energies with my kiddoes!  They'll all be off and back to their own adventures soon enough.

If you've got the time this week, please keep little Coquito from Life in Amy's World in your prayers.  He's been in the hospital for almost a month now with chemo treatments, secondary infections, low blood counts, low platelets... the list just goes on.  To top it all off, his Daddy was admitted to the hospital with pneumonia.  Please keep them all in your prayers.  It's been a rough couple of months for them.

Spoiler Alert

I was helping a young man find a movie about Samson and Delilah at work the other day.  It was a movie he had seen before, so finding the exact match was a little tricky.

Once we finally found the movie, he began telling me about the story...  Almost word for word, here as his words as I remember them:

Samson was this like, really strong guy.  Like stronger than the Rock.

He got all of his strength from his hair, so he never cut it.

And then he met this woman who was bad for him.  Her name was Delilah.  Samson loved her but she was like, seriously bad.  She tricked him and found out that he got all of his strength from his long hair.  So she cut it. 

But then, his hair grew back, and he was strong again.

And then, he was in this building and he went to push the building and

*SPOILER ALERT*

The building fell down!  Can you believe it?

(Yes, he really did shout spoiler alert!  I smile every time I think about it!)

Mothers Day

Most women get candy or flowers for Mother's Day.  How many people can claim that they get their very own throne?  #spoiled

Busy Morning

Years ago, I wrote this piece from the point of view of Tiger. Enjoy!

2002-2017


This has been a particularly busy day for me today.  The morning began when I gently sat upon the chest of my human.  When she refused to open her eyes, I gently batted her face with my paws.  She rolled over and knocked me to the floor.  Silly human!  As if throwing me to the floor could prevent me from stalking her! 
Since patting her on the face didn't seem to work out so well, I had to resort to other, less civilized (but much more effective) means of waking her up.  I bit her toes.

Once she was out of bed, I moved on to the next of my victims.  Humans number two and three were still snoozing gently in their beds.  I love these two boy humans.  They feed me, they scratch me, and every once in a while, they will get me my favorite treats.  I was so excited at the prospect of them playing with me before they caught the ride in the large yellow limousine at the corner, I jumped on top of each one of them until they began moving. 

After I woke everyone in the house up, I insisted that they let me outside.  I stood by the kitchen door, scratching and meowing until they opened the door.  Once the door was open, I stood and sniffed the breeze.  Since it was rather chilly out this morning, I quickly turned around and went back inside.  My young girl human had just moved out of her bed, so I quickly slid into the warm place under the covers that she had left just for me.  Ahhh... it was so nice and warm, I quickly fell back asleep.

When the two boys left for the big yellow limousine, I followed after them.  I went outside and walked with them just to the edge of the driveway.  They went to the left to walk to the corner of the street.  I turned to the right and quickly darted into the special slot in the street made just for us cats.  You know, there are several of them along the sidewalks.  They are about 3 feet wide, and several inches high.  There is a big slab of white rock over the top with a hole like a circle in the top, covered with another brown circle.

I stood on the ledge just inside of the fort and waited until the yellow limousine safely picked up my boys, and then I proceeded furthur underground into the maze that is the fort. 

My girl goes to the right at the end of the driveway to catch her yellow limousine.  You see, I go through the maze and wait for her near her waiting place.  While she is standing and waiting with her friends, I reach out with my lightning fast paw and grab shoelaces.  My goal for the morning is to untie all of the laces without being seen before the yellow thing comes.  It was a good morning for me.  I untied all 10 pairs of laces without being detected!  Boo-Yah!

Bathroom Tile

The tile formerly known as yellow.

Disclosure Notice: This post contains Affiliate Links.

While I really wanted to have the old yellow tile ripped off the walls of the bathroom, it cost more
than we had in our budget.  After doing a lot of research, we decided to try painting the bathroom tile - to re-enamel it - so that it still looked like ceramic tile.  White ceramic tile, but ceramic tile.  Our thought was that if it looked horrible, we were giving ourselves enough time to rip out the tile ourselves and replace the wall with bead board paneling or ceramic tile.

Thankfully, the experiment worked!

Here's how we did this:

1) We used this product:



2) Husband spent time following the directions to the letter.  He cleaned the tile with Comet, cleaned it again using Lime Away, and then lightly sanded the tile.  Keep in mind, we're talking a LOT of tile here.  This is the tile on the walls surrounding the entire bathroom.  The tile came a little over halfway up the walls.

3) After the first coat, the walls looked like this.  (And the house smelled HORRIBLE.)

4) Since we had the time, we waited a week before we painted on the second coat.  The walls looked like this when we finished:

5) We still have time to add another coat if we want.  We've got another week or so before the installation of the floor begins!  What do you think, should we go for a third coat?

Look at that snazzy new baseboard heater!!

So, even without the help of the Property Brothers, HGTV, or This Old House, this project is getting done!!!   I don't want to discourage anyone from HGTV from helping us out here.  Believe me, we've got MORE big projects that need to be done.  This is just the first of many.