Cooking class

Last Saturday I took a cooking class. It was fabulous! When I first saw the ad for the class, I was a bit bummed because it was for stocks and soups. Spencer doesn't like soup and I usually get stock from a can or box. (Since taking the class, using stock from a can or box seems like a sacrilege right now!)

I was amazed how much I learned. I wish I could post it all here! I think the funniest part was that what we made for stock was pretty much what I was serving for soup. Wow. Chef said that when you simmer for a while there should be no flavor left in the veggies, that you should strain out the veggies, throw them away and add in fresh veggies and the rest of your ingredients to make your soup. What a concept!

He also suggested making a big batch of stock and freezing it in containers to use in recipes later. That sure solves some problems too.

I am excited for the class next month!

My kid is so smart, no really, he is.

Friday I bought a new purse. I was pretty excited because I needed a new purse. I seem to have outgrown my last one. Anyway, I got it home and started the process of changing purses. I opened it up to remove any stray packing paper and silicone drying packs. As I buried my face in the purse for the final check of things that didn't belong to me, I was surprised to find...


...a STENCH!


Eww. This was not a stench that I was going to be able to live with. What to do? I was whining about it to Ian and he said just take it back and get another one.


I got a great deal on this purse. It was on clearance. I was starting to think maybe I knew why. I stuck my nose in the purse again. Could I possibly deal with this smell? Definitely not!




Ian suggested I buy a pack of Doublemint gum, open it up and put the pieces in there. Hmmm. Interesting concept.



I am happy to report that today I am loading up my minty fresh purse with all of my stuff!


Thanks Ian! You rock!

Am I an old lady, or what?

Pat and some guy friends went on a motorcycle weekend getaway. They are calling for rain most of the weekend. It was pouring this morning before he left. I asked him if cancelling the trip was going to be an option. Nope.

I just got a call and they all arrived safely. He said there wasn't that much rain once they got north a bit. I actually am quite happy for him. I know how much he enjoys this trip. Plus he bought me flowers.

My wild weekend is going to be pretty crazy with out Pat here. It is just me and the boys. so for my excitement I decided to start a crochet project. Wow! Wild, huh! I have a friend having a baby soon. I hadn't done any crochet work in a while, so I thought I would do something special for her.

I forgot how slow the thin. thin. thin. baby yarn goes. I hope I have it done before the second kid arrives!

sevens

One of my favorite bloggers is having a "sevens" challenge today.

Here is my list of seven reasons I am glad I married my husband.

1. He makes me laugh.
2. He supports me in everything I do.
3. He loves our kids.
4. He loves everyone else’s kids.
5. He is a hard worker.
6. He is a man of integrity.
7. He loves God.

Love you sweetie!

Not enough hours in the day

I am suffering from two issues right now. First I am crazy busy. My summer commitments are overlapping with my fall commitments and that leaves little free time. Free time for things like washing the kitchen floor. I hate cleaning. Even if I had 24 hours in a row I still wouldn't manage to get the floor clean. Anyway, with being so busy, I haven't had lots of free time to blog and even then, I feel like I don't have anything interesting to say.

Work was kind of touch and go today. The woman of the couple that I wrote the divorce post about called today and said she and her ex were going to come in together to place an additional order. Yea, whatever. Keep me out of your shenanigans!

Then, the girl whose mom has cancer came in and I asked where her mom was. She said she couldn't make it today. Hmm. I finished with her order and 20 minutes later realized that this was not the same girl, but one that looked just like her! Thank God I didn't ask how she was handling chemo this week. That would have freaked her right out!

Fortunately, I seem to have made it through the day without saying anything too embarrassing.

VICTORY!

Thoughts for the day

There are lots of screaming kids at Meijer on a Saturday morning and their parents don't seem to care.

Organic spices cost roughly the same amount as regular spices.

When all you run to the store for is spices and toilet paper, you realize how much toilet paper actually costs.

So today I got called out. Called out for putting up such a lame blog post yesterday.

Why did you keep it so simple? Why didn’t you tell the story? Why didn’t you share your heart? I was asked.

Because it hurts too much. I thought.

Two weeks ago a mom and daughter came in to the photography studio that I work in. They came in to order the daughter’s senior high school pictures. The mom was wearing a turban. There was a wisp of hair sticking out the front. The turban bothered me. The wisp of hair bothered me just as much. I knew it was one of the few wisps of hair she had left after the chemo.

I remember when my mom would wear the caps. They looked so out of character. She never wore a hat before. Why isn’t she wearing her wig today? I would wonder. The wigs are HOT and make me sweat! She told me once.

I worked with the mother and daughter as they looked through the proofs. The mom was so happy that the pictures turned out so nice. The daughter was happy too. The mom and I were discussing how much time she needed to keep the proofs out to show them to all of the important people that she wanted to show them off to. She couldn’t wait to show them to her oncologist and the oncologist’s nurse. They were high on her list. I wondered how often her daughter went with her to her chemo appointments.

I went with my mom once. She had built a community there. I wish I had gone more often and sat by her side to keep her company. I can’t change that.

I looked at the mom. She told me the oncologist told her that the cancer would probably come back in a couple of years. I saw her look lovingly at the daughter’s pictures. It occurred to me that she probably wouldn’t be around to help select her daughter’s wedding pictures. The daughter was very sweet, but never condescending to the mom.

We often tell the story to my children of the day that my mom came to visit the house that we currently live in. She painstakingly sat in every room of the house. She even crawled hand over hand up the stairs to sit in each bed room. She needed to sit and rest because this was an exhausting ordeal for her.

It was the only time she was here. She said she wanted to come here because she wanted to know where we were once she got to heaven. We have lived in this house longer than either my husband or I have lived in any other house in our entire lifetime.

When the mom and daughter left, I sat at my desk. I wept.

I wept for that mom. I wept for my mom.

Now you know. That is why I am walking to raise money and awareness to end cancer.

Making Strides Breast Cancer walk

I am doing a walk-a-thon in October. (Do we still call them walk-a-thon's?)

In any case, here is a link to my sign up page in case you are inclined to support my efforts. Thanks for considering it!

Let's go Green!

No this is not a cheer for the Michigan State Spartans or any other team that boasts green as one of their school colors. This is a cheer for one of the projects I worked on this past weekend. One of the items that I wanted to accomplish was to change over to a different computer at my desk. I had one in my workshop in the basement that I had been hoarding away from when I went to school last year. It is loaded with all of my really cool graphics software. I kept wanting to work on my stuff, but don't really like sequestering myself away in the basement. (o.k. I will admit it, sometimes sequestering is awesome!)

When I pulled everything out from my desk, and I do mean everything, I decided to reroute all of the cables as well. I told my husband that we needed to address the "power management" at the desk. This may seem like an odd thing to say to say to a spouse, but if you understand where he works, it makes perfect sense!

He had a brilliant idea. How about you figure which items need to have constant power (i.e router, modem, etc.) and put them on one power source (a.k.a. plugbar) and which items you can turn off at night (i.e. CPU, monitor, printer etc.) and put them on another source that you can shut down when you are not using the computer. This will save electricity.

Hot diggity, it worked and it wasn't even that hard! Now I feel like I am doing even more to help out ole planet Earth.

Next I am moving to the TV area. Surely all of those things don't need power all night long!