Showing posts with label 7 Quick Takes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 7 Quick Takes. Show all posts

7 Quick Takes in Which I Have an Extreme Case of the Mondays

If you want to support what I’m doing with this blog, just follow any of the product links and order whatever you want off of Amazon at no additional cost to you.  That’s it and I’ll get a little bonus.  Thanks so much for clicking!


Remember when I posted on Wednesday that I wasn't able to post on Monday because it was full of craziness?  Well, let me drag you along for a little ride...

--1--


I extracted myself from our little leech and carefully tiptoed past the suitcases and other travel items littering the floor that had been groggily dumped upon our return from Miami earlier that morning.  Since we always try to eat up all the perishable food in the house before we go out of town, I headed from the bedroom to the garage in the hopes of scrounging up something to eat for breakfast from the spare fridge we keep out there.

As I peered into the open door, I noticed that the air circulating inside wasn't very cold.  In fact, it was quite warm.

Not such a big deal, because the fridge side is just full of pantry items that we don't want bugs to get into (part of the fun of Florida living), but all of a sudden, I came to my senses and jerked open the freezer door...

Yup, warm there, too.

I panicked and began yanking things out of the freezer:  10 pounds of frozen salmon, vacuum-sealed bags full of 17 pounds of frozen blueberries, 8 pounds of mozzarella, various bags of frozen vegetables, and random containers of frozen beans, olives, and leftovers...

None of it still contained ice crystals.  All of it was still (barely) cool.

Well, not warm, so that's still cool, right?

I shoved the cheese and olives into our other (already packed) freezer, hoping that they would be okay.  As for the rest, I knew I'd have to cook it all immediately if there was any possibility of saving it from the compost pile.

Do you know what a house baking 10 pounds of salmon smells like?

No?

Well, you can stop by anytime, because it still smells like a fish market five days later!

(Come to find out, we'd been hit by lightning - for the umpteenth time - and it zapped not only the freezer, but pretty much everything else electronic, as well.  Guess there's a reason they call this area the lightning capital of the world...)

--2--


As I continued to cook all that food (I'm still working on all those blueberries, so you can be sure that the blueberry post I promised back in May is finally going to happen), Gv starts grunting...and we all know what THAT means...

I go change her and the poor little thing is crying now, because there was so much to clean up that it irritated her little tender parts...

Not to mention I'm practically crying, because not only did this little "gift" mean a diaper change, but also an outfit change for her and me and a complete scrub down of the changing table...the floor around the changing table...half the stuff on the changing table...

--3--


But my little sweetie is still crying.  I've slathered her bum with coconut oil and I know it's helping things feel better, but she's got herself so worked up by this point that I sit down in the dining room chair to feed her, because these milk machines I'm walking around with are magic, I tell you and they can dry up almost any tears!

She finally calms down and I move to get up when suddenly she starts screaming as wild as all get-out and I realize SHE'D GOTTEN HER LEG WEDGED BETWEEN THE SLATS OF THE CHAIR and was going bonkers when she realized she couldn't get it out.  

I couldn't get it out, either, and she was of course screaming bloody murder and squirming all over and I was trying to figure out how I'd saw through the chair slats with her all over the place like that and furthermore how I'd even get the saw from the garage without risking her breaking her leg from all the flailing she was engaged in at the moment...

I laid the chair down and after about 20 minutes, was able to pull her leg out, but of course it was all red and swollen and already bruising.

Offending chair.  Seriously, how in the world did she get that chunky little thigh wedged in there??
 
She, of course, was in a lot of pain after that scary experience and so I brought out the big guns again to calm her down, along with applying ice and arnica gel .

--4--


So she's managed to recover from that trauma (although I hadn't fully gotten there yet) and she drifts off into a restorative sleep and I head back to the kitchen to continue my cook-a-thon of defrosted food...

Minutes later, the food processor breaks.

No, I wasn't jamming things into the feed tube - this time.  It just busted while I was grating some cheese.  You know that little lock in the handle, that has to be triggered when it's shut so that the thing will turn on?  

PING!  That was the sound of those little lock pieces flying all over the counter.

--5--


Now the food processor won't work, and since it's the only appliance I have that grates, I'm resigned to grating the rest by hand.  Not that big of a deal, unless you're the only person on the planet who can't grate cheese without grating her hand at the same time.

Seriously, I have a fillet glove to wear when I use the hand grater, and I still managed to shred my thumb knuckle to smithereens.

The upside is, now I can get a replacement food processor, with a much larger work bowl...I've got my eye on this one , but am hoping more realistically for one like this .

--6--


Okay, so I've managed to bandage up my shredded thumb and dispose of all the shattered food processor pieces and I'm back to work, finally starting in on some baking with all those blueberries.

Gv comes toddling out from the bedroom after her nap and begins to busy herself with the spice drawers.

You know where this is going, don't you?

Of course you do.

Yes, folks, it's just moments later that I hear wild, uncontrolled giggling behind me and I turn to see Gv shake-shake-shaking the dill weed all over the place.

All of it.

The Whole. Giant. Sam's-sized container.

Which she then begins to play in, as in roll around and rub the powder all over herself and then run circles around the kitchen, leaving little green footprints in her wake.

At least it doesn't smell like salmon anymore...

Our little pickled progeny

--7--  


But wait, the day finally begins to turn.  It's 7:30 in the evening and it's been an insane twelve hours, but this is what catches my eye as I finish dumping the initial swept-up dill into the garbage can:

Even though I've found a better way to clean my floors nowadays, I'm SO glad I held onto this Swiffer to modify & turn into a Gv-sized floor cleaner toy!

I must say, the girl is thorough - look at that floor now!


I guess it was just an extreme case of the Mondays...  



I'm joining Jen for her 7 Quick Takes Friday.  For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Linked up with I'm Lovin It at Tidy Mom 
Creative Ways Link Party 

7 Quick Takes in Which I Illustrate How it's Not Always Sunshine & Rainbows Around Here...

Remember my post the other day about our Cinco de Mayo tortillas?  Well, G arrived home that day to a wife who looked like this:
You see, what my post didn't share was the craziness that occurred while making those churros:
What better thing to wrap up our fun holiday meal than some homemade churros, I thought foolishly.  I scoured the web for some recipes, found a couple that I could play around with, and set to work.

I ground my wheat, mixed the batter, and realized that it was a total mess.  Way too runny.  I'll just add more flour, I figured.

I succeeded in getting the batter to a consistency I felt would work better for sticking in a Ziploc bag to pipe out in that classic churro star shape...


Ahem.  Yep, just like I'd imagined.  I started piping the batter out - it was still too runny - and POP!  The bag exploded, oozing churro goo all over the baking sheet.

Okay, so they won't look like churros, but they'll probably still taste like it...
In the meantime, Gv had been pulling books off the bookshelf next to the kitchen:

A pain, for sure, but nothing too serious that couldn't easily be cleaned up when I'm done messing with the churro blobs and tortillas.
Ah, but then she did the leg hike, in an attempt to climb the bookcase.
Classic example of the leg hike.  In her mind, this maneuver gets you all places you want to go vertically.
Still got it all under control, though.  Squeezing out the last wanna-be churro with one eye on the little mountain climber...
Then I hear it.  Did I leave the faucet on, I wonder?  

Oh no.  

Oh no.  

Oh,  yes, that's exactly I'm hearing, trickling out of the gap between the diaper and the leg - still in leg-hike position - and of course landing on all those books and book jackets strewn about the floor.


Suddenly, I'm racing to wash the churro goo off my hands so I can grab Gv and get her on the changing table before more books become saturated.

The phone starts ringing.  It's G.  He's being his usual amazing hubby self by calling to make sure I don't need anything else from Sam's besides the greens he'd stopped to pick up after work.

"No!" I shout into the speaker on the phone, before hitting the "end" button with the-only-clean-pointy-spot-on-me-at-the-moment, my elbow.

The girl is now cleaned up, the books and jackets are hanging over the dining room chairs to dry, and the oven timer dings.  The churros are done!

Shake a little cinnamon and sugar over them and they're all ready to eat...
Loveliest churros I bet you've ever seen - Ha!
Tasty?  Not really.  And no, the fact that one churro came out of the oven broken off in a completely inappropriate shape did not escape our attention.  Look (not so) hard.  You'll see it.

I won't be making churros again.

But you know what?  I will be making something again, and the next time you read about it and wonder how I manage to do it all with a little one underfoot, just remember that more often than not, this is the way these things get done...

It's not always sunshine and rainbows around here, you know.

I'm joining Jen at ConversionDiary for her 7 Quick Takes Friday.  For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Linked up with Yes Works for Me at We Are THAT Family 
Friday Frivolity
 Weekend Traffic Jam