Mousers

What are these two up to?
They're probably just messing with my brain... something Lester (the little guy) particularly enjoys.
He likes to sit outside the bathroom door and cry. And cry. And yowl.
Finally, unable to take it anymore, I climb out of the tub to let him in.
And he sits there.
Just sits there.
Now that he can come in, well, you see, he's just not all that sure he really wants to.
I close the door.
The yowling begins.
Open it... and Lester shoots off like "striped lightning" down the hall.
Lather, rinse repeat.



So the other morning when Lester and Fannie became preoccupied with something under the stove, I initially chalked it up to cat shenanigans.
Then I began to wonder... there isn't really something under there, is there?
Surely nothing more than a fur forest and maybe a grape?


Then on Saturday, Fannie continued the beneath-the-stove obsession. Fortunately, Michael had not yet left for Hawaii, so I asked him to pull the stove out to check for... gasp! ... mice.


For some reason, Michael didn't take the situation quite as seriously as the girls and me, insisting on, of all things. finishing our taxes before checking on the rodent situation.
Men.

Fannie stayed on guard...



ever vigilant.
All doubt disappeared when she started making hunting noises... clicking... clicking ... clicking...
Finally, taxes done, Michael and Stephen pulled out the stove to reveal... mouse droppings and the bewhiskered nose of our winter invader.
I quickly called the exterminator, my voice quavering just a little as I requested service as soon as possible. Yes, anytime Monday is fine. Anytime.
God, just please hurry!
This isn't the first time we've had unwanted wildlife in the house. We once had a mouse nest in the TV cupboard, we've had chipmunks invade our basement, and of course, my favorite, the bat invasion of 2005.
You'd think I'd be somewhat used to it by now, wouldn't you?
Since the exterminator apparently doesn't work on weekends - the nerve! - Michael bought a couple of traps. The girls were concerned about whether they were humane traps, how they worked exactly, and couldn't we just catch and release?
Um. No.
As far as trap construction and efficacy, I encouraged a don't ask - don't tell approach.
I don't know whether the traps caught anyone, since Michael left in the predawn hours yesterday. I don't even know where he placed the traps.
Fortunately, the cavalry should arrive sometime today.

But it's 9:36 right now and the exterminator has yet to call.
To say I'm a little on-edge would be an understatement.
Every time a cat's gaze lasts a little too long or one of the dogs becomes too interested in what's under a couch, I cringe.




Meanwhile, Fannie and I just wait and watch. One of us is excited. The other, ridiculously freaked out.
I let you decide which is which...

Crafty

Melissa has a tradition.
She always makes the gifts she gives.
Over the past few years she's given altered-book style photo albums, crocheted purses and throws, handmade scarves, books of poems and Haiku, photo calendars and felted ornaments.
Last fall, she made a wet-felted scarf for a friends' birthday present.
We had never wet-felted before, so the task was a little daunting.
For me at least.
I remember when I was in first grade. I used to get Highlights magazine. Oh, I loved that magazine! I used to read the crafts pages and I remember yearning, yes yearning, to make the crafts.
But I was too afraid.
I don't remember whether I asked for help and it wasn't forthcoming, or whether I kept my desires to myself, but I never once worked up the nerve to make one of those crafts.
This somewhat irrational fear - okay, let's be honest, it's totally irrational - still plagues me to this day.
Fortunately I have Melissa to prod me along and push me through my mental hurdles.
Poor child.
Can you say "burden?"
Anyway, I managed to conquer my fear and the two of us embarked on a wet-felting journey together.
I must admit, it is a little less scary with company.




First we laid the silk scarf out on towels.

Next, Melissa took wool roving and laid it on top of the scarf.

Once the roving was in place, we laid a piece of plastic netting over the top.



Then sprayed the whole scarf with water.

Next we rubbed ivory soap over the whole scarf, beginning the felting process. This was hard work!

As usual, we had plenty of extra help...

We then further wetted the whole mess and began rolling and unrolling the scarf felt the roving to the silk ...


We rolled and rolled and rolled. Since we didn't really know what we were doing, we almost over-felted. It was really difficult to extract the scarf from the netting.

A quick soak in some vinegar water to remove the soap and behold...

the finished product!

While this was fun, it was a lot more work than machine felting crocheted projects.

But I can see us deciding to try more wet-felting in the future.

Dickensian

So yesterday I took my two girls to the doctor's office.
Actually, I wasn't planning on going anywhere yesterday, so my darling husband didn't dig my car out from under our latest 8 or so inches of snow. Oh, and the snow plow, which actually came to my neighborhood in a timely fashion, piled up a mini-mountain at the end of the driveway, effectively trapping me in my home.
Sort of.
You see, I don't do snow.
Oh, I enjoy how pretty it is, love snow days, really love wearing my warm woolen sweaters and sipping hot chocolate in front of the fire.
But I don't shovel.
Snow-blow?
No-go.
I have many excuses reasons for avoiding this particular winter toil, all of them excellent in my opinion.
Bad back?
Check.
Lack of strength?
Check.
Prone to exhaustion from extreme physical exercise?
Double check. (I like to blame this one on fibromyalgia and hypothyroidism issues. Works for me.)
Unlike a very dear friend of mine who delights in showing off her shoveling prowess - she regularly shovels her crazy-long driveway faster than her neighbors can snow-blow theirs - I leave the hard physical work to others.
Which usually translates into "husband."
So when I became alarmed at Sarah's week-long stomach distress and pain - visions of appendicitis dancing in my head - I made a doctor's appointment.
And, despite the sage advice my mother gave me when the children were little, "You can't expect Michael to stay home from work when you're sick. Sometimes you just have to hang your head over the toilet and suffer," I called my taxi service darling husband and asked if he could take us.
Boy, doesn't that sound right out of the 1950s? And to think I used to subscribe to Ms.
Now, to be clear, I have spent my fair share of days with my head hung over the toilet, caring for four little ones, four medium-sized ones, and, to be honest, four large ones. Oh, the stories I could tell....
Suffice it to say, asking my husband to miss work is not something I regularly do, nor am I comfortable with.
Sweet man that he is, he readily agreed to zoom home to help me out. It probably doesn't hurt that he's scheduled to go to Hawaii next week, followed shortly thereafter by a trip to Chile.
Guilt can be a wonderful thing.
So, since we were taking Sarah anyway, I called back to see if they could see Melissa, too. Her toes have been bothering her for a month or more - they're sore, inflamed, red-ish purple and itchy. Nothing seems to help, so a two-fer was in order.
Now, just the day before, I got to thinking about Melissa's toes and pondered whether she could have chilblains. We looked it up on-line, and lo and behold, her symptoms fit. We joked around a bit about it and she finally agreed to wear socks.
So after Sarah's diagnosis - a likely side-effect from her migraine medicine - I told the doctor I thought Melissa had chilblains.
You'd have though I'd performed a miracle by her reaction. How in the world did I know about chilblains? In nearly 4 years of practice, she had never seen a case until just the week before, and now here was her likely second case.
Victorian novels.
What the Dickens?
Yes, I told her, it seems the gatekeeper or some other poor soul in Victorian novels always suffered from chilblains. Or gout. Or pleurisy. The flux. You name it, those Victorians seemed to have it.
As she walked out of the door, the doctor chuckled, "Harleqin Romances, huh?"
You could have knocked me over with a feather.
Harlequin Romances? Me? This accusation was almost as bad as the time I had to request a copy of a Louis L' Amour novel at the book store. It was a gift for my husband, something I made perfectly clear to the sales clerk, who could have cared less what I was buying. The embarrassment nearly killed me.
Apparently, my faced turned beet red as I fumbled to explain that I didn't know about chilblains from trashy novels but from the author of, um, David Copperfield, you know, what's his name?
Fortunately, Sarah's young and nimble brain recalled his name. Yes, I read the Victorian novels of Charles Dickens.
So much more respectable.
So much less embarrassing.
What followed was a trip to the lab for blood work to ensure the diagnosis. We should find out sometime today.
So while my life seems to have taken on a slightly Dickensian flavor, I prefer think of it as "grotesquely comic" rather than due to "squalid and poverty-stricken working conditions." (a la Collins dictionary)
Melissa, however, might not agree.
This week alone she's had to scoop the litter boxes, help fold laundry, gather the eggs, and bundle-up to bring in wood for the fire.
Unregulated, strenuous, often cruel child labor.
The little dickens.

Thanks, Betty

Potato Buns.
Need I say more?
These delectable, slightly-sweet dinner rolls are a family favorite.
And who do I have to thank for this fantastic recipe?
Betty, of course.
Betty Crocker.
Yes, thanks to Betty's 1956 cookbook, I have fabulous recipes for cakes, pies, and good-old-standbys like raspberry shrub and tuna casserole.
But that's not all Betty had to offer. The book is chock-full of helpful hints for the happy housewife, such as "Wear comfortable clothes and properly fitted shoes while working around the house."
No more high heels and skirts for me!
And this helpful hint for a good personal outlook: "Every morning before breakfast, comb hair, apply make-up, a dash of cologne, and perhaps some simple earrings. Does wonders for your morale."
I don't think Betty would want to experience my morale before my morning coffee.
But most of Betty's recipes are just the bees knees, especially potato buns, which are actually called "Potato Refrigerator Rolls."
Yes, that's right, the dough for these rolls, and most other breads, for that matter, can be made in advance and kept refrigerated. I often make a batch of bread dough and stick it in the fridge overnight for baking later the next day. The cold of the refrigerator inhibits the growth of the yeast. Once you bring the dough back to room temperature, it will continue to rise.
The great thing about these rolls, however, is their versatility and that they only need 2 hours out of the refrigerator to come to room temperature.
When I made this batch of rolls, I doubled the recipe and ended up with enough dinner rolls for two meals (one for that night, one for later) and enough dough for a Swedish Tea Ring.



So, without further adieu, I present Betty Crocker's Potato Refrigerator Rolls.

Measure into mixing bowl: 1 1/2 cups warm water and 1 package active dry yeast, stir to dissolve
Stir in: 2/3 cup sugar, 1 1/2 tsp. salt, 2/3 cup shortening, 2 eggs, 1 cup lukewarm mashed potatoes
Mix in by hand until dough is easy to handle: 7 to 7 1/2 cups white flour

Turn onto lightly floured board, knead until smooth and elastic. Placed greased-side-up in greased bowl.. Cover with damp cloth; place in refrigerator for 3-5 days. About 2 hours before baking, shape dough into rolls, coffee cakes, etc. Cover and let rise until double, about 1 1/2-2 hours. Bake in 400 oven for 12-15 minutes.
Makes about 4 dozen rolls.

Oh, and they also make great fake McMuffins!

Rule breaker

Now, that is a title I never would have thought applied to me.
In school, I was always the good girl - good grades, polite, well-behaved. If I ever broke a rule, I did it on the sly, always knowing how to cover my trail so I didn't get caught. Not that I did this often, but I do remember pulling a fast one on my band teacher in middle school. We were supposed to keep a daily practice chart and have a parent sign it weekly.
Guess who neglected to do so?
I remember being to afraid to tell my mom that I had forgotten (didn't want to get in trouble), though I'm not sure what she would have done. So I filled in all the spaces with reasonable practice times and asked my mom to show me how she wrote her signature. I then took the paper with her signature and wrote over the top of it to make an impression on the form underneath.
I tried to go over the indentations with pen, but needless to say, it wouldn't have taken a forensics expert recognize the fakery.
What to do?
I couldn't not turn it in, as that would get me in trouble at school; and I certainly couldn't tell my mom now since the evidence of my attempted forgery was so, well, obvious.
It was then I had a stroke of brilliance. I took the form and ran it under the faucet - not too much, but just enough that I could smudge the ink of the signatures and wrinkle the paper up real well. Then, when I turned it in, I told my teacher I had dropped it in the snow.
And of course he believed me.
I was the good girl, remember?
Whew. Just reliving that desperate act of my youth made my anxiety spike.
There have been other instances, both big and small, when I have broken the rules... but not by much.
It wasn't until I decided to take my three youngest out of public school 8 years ago that my desire to live by the rules, or rather, my fear of breaking the rules, began to fade.
The biggest stumbling block I faced in deciding to home school, other than the fear that I'd bring my kids home and make them stupid, was going against the norm.
And when I say fear, I mean FEAR.
I don't remember there being any specific fears, it was just plain scary to do something so... radical; something other people could point at and question. Add to that the decision to "mostly" unschool and the idea of fitting into social norms pretty much flew by the wayside. Though at first it was difficult to answer well-meaning questions honestly. "What curriculum do you use?" "How many hours a day do the kids study?" "Do you have school in the summer?"
I often found it easier to fib than to explain the philosophy of unschooling.
My rule-breaking has since increased, though I no longer feel the need to cover it up. My decision to no longer be a hypocrite by attending a church I didn't believe in evolved into my ability to flatly state that I am an atheist.
I cook from scratch, my home is way too furry, and yes, I raise chickens in my urban backyard. I make my own pickles, can tomatoes, and read for hours to my girls nearly every day. We rarely eat at the dinner table anymore, instead enjoying an episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" while balancing our plates on our laps. (Hmm, I need to look for some old-fashioned TV trays...)
Where am I going with this?
Oh yes, my most recent failure to follow the rules.
I joined the Eat from the Pantry Challenge and was an abject failure.
That's right - no sooner had I vowed to spend no more than $200 on groceries for the month of January than I felt confined. I did well the first couple of weeks, but then orange juice went on sale for 77 cents a half gallon and peanut butter for only 99 cents a jar. I felt the strain of my self-imposed restrictions almost immediately.
Suddenly, despite quarts of frozen strawberries, blueberries and applesauce in my freezer, all I could think of was going to Costco for some fresh fruit - kiwi called to me, blackberries beckoned, and tomatoes taunted.
When milk went on sale for 88 cents a half gallon, I couldn't justify passing that by, so 20 half gallons soon graced my refrigerator shelves. Cheese on sale for less than $2 a pound? Load me up, please.
In all fairness, I did eat from my pantry, which by the way, includes two freezers, two refrigerators, and 7 overflowing shelving units in the basement. But the idea of following self-imposed strictures quickly lost its luster.
I did spend less than I normally would have last month and I even was able to defrost and organize one of my freezers.
But I just don't have it in me anymore to follow the rules - even when they are voluntarily self-imposed.
Funny thing. I've noticed this month that I've hardly ventured to a grocery store and my grocery spending is crazy low.
Wonder what that means...