We Interupt This Productivity for an Oliver Moment...

I am SUPPOSED to be cleaning my house and baking granola bars and folding laundry...

I DID sleep until nearly eight o'clock, which is three hours after my normal rising hour...

I DID get my hair colored.  My hair has gotten so long that this ordeal has turned into such that I can not plan to accomplish anything else for a good hour and a half while I'm diligently coloring my grays... 

Instead I must sit in my Grandmama Dolly chair and read a book...

I'm pretty sure God wanted me to have dark auburn hair instead of dark brown with silver highlights...

After washing that gray right out of my hair I decided I'd better tackle the mountain of laundry that has overtaken my living room...

I was in Popcorn's room putting new sheets on her bed, complete with an electric blanket.  That girl is seriously attached to climbing into a toasty warm bed when the first sign of chilly weather is here...

That girl is also wearing shorts and a tank top and it's a whopping 60 degrees outside...She's  "not cold," but I guarantee you she will be nagging me to crank up the thermostat when it's time to climb in bed...

Anyhoo, Popcorn let Oliver in the house as I was making up her bed.  He sauntered down the hall, fluffy black tail swishing back and forth.  He sat on his haunches and gave me a good long glare.  I continued to work...

This disgusted him, so he let out a long, plaintive "mrrrroooow..."

I looked at him and said, "Give me a minute here Flufferpants.  I'm putting fresh sheets on the bed for you and your servant Popcorn."

He laid down and continued to watch me with narrowed eyes and tail swishing lazily from side to side.  Of course he made sure to thump his tail each time it hit the ground so I would understand the level of royal offense he was feeling...

I neatly tucked the blankets in, complete with hospital corners,  fluffed the pillows and gingerly picked His Royal Fluffyness up to put him on the freshly made bed...

"I know it's a lot to ask, but could you please refrain from grooming yourself right now?  This bed is nice and fresh, and I'd appreciate if I could go one day without spying giant tufts of fur all over it."

He sniffed and swished and sniffed and swished...

He eventually hopped gingerly down on the floor NEXT to the bed and dismissed me...

At least I'm taking it as a dismissal.  It could be disgust that I'm not doing something about the mounds of clutter in this bedroom...

Either way, I'm staying out of his way for the near future...

Oh, and I've decided that every single post must have excessive dot dot dots, just so my Gentle Readers may understand that I have not completed one single thought, but my brain is racing ahead of me anyway...

And now I'm off to run around like a mad woman straightening the house lest my husband show up and think I'm not deserving of the title "Trophy Wife."

Puppy Antics...

It's raining today.

And it's my day off.

And there are no fantabulous deals at Homeland.

So I'm sitting on the couch sipping hot cocoa laced coffee and not feeling guilty for doing nothing...

Well, I'm feeling guilty about my thighs, but that's irrelevant.

The obvious answer to that dilemma is homemade banana and pumpkin bread...

I decided to delay that spurt of productivity by sharing some puppy antics with you...

Aawww!!  Look at that picture of innocence!

Too bad it was directly following a wild chase through the house by Popcorn who was endeavoring to save a baby bib I had stored in a cabinet under our bar that was made specifically for her by one of the leader of my MOPS group...The strings were dangling out after I had dug through the cabinet looking for my fall napkins...

The chase lead to this:

So, after much crashing and banging and excessive yelling by everyone present she decided she should lay docilely on the floor to prove her overall cuteness.

Oh, and what about this sweet little snapshot I took last night?  Well, Brent had decided it was bedtime.  Chesney refused to lay down next to him on her pillow case and sack out with him on the floor.  (This is their normal 8pm routine, followed by me waking Brent around 9:30 and telling him to put his puppy to bed and come to bed with me.)

Well, as I said she did not feel like going to bed at 8pm last night.  Instead she was rolling around on the floor, getting into everything she shouldn't get into, and generally getting on his nerves as he wanted to go to sleep while watching the timeless Halloween classic "Lost Boys" on Netflix...

He scooped her up and shoved her in her crate.  And she proceeded to yelp and whine and whimper.  She did not WANT to be in her crate when the living room lights were still on and the family was still awake...

So she endeavored to keep the girls awake, and was quite successful!  They yelled "SERIOUSLY!!??  She is keeping us awake!"  So, I broke the rules and let her out of her crate where she walked directly to Kelsey's bed and promptly squeezed between her and the desk and went to sleep. 

I think Brent was slightly annoyed by her choice of sleeping partner...

Since it is raining, and I'm off work.  The dogs are in the house with me.  Chesney is getting a tad rambunctious.  I am trying to teach her that playing rough is not allowed in the house...Kelsey is not doing an adequate job of discipline, which is clearly her job...

I mean part of the family's argument when begging me to get a new puppy was that we needed a puppy while Kelsey was still young enough to "train" her...So far Kelsey is gleefully joining in games of tug of war with stuffed animals (dog toys, thankfully) and wrestling matches directly at my feet...

I lost my patience with their antics this morning and yelled in my best "I've had it" mommy voice...

"That is ENOUGH!!  Kelsey!!  GO TO BED!  Chesney!  Go AWAY!!!"
 

They slunk out of the kitchen and plopped down on the carpet, gazing woefully at me like this:

But it did not make me feel guilty.  Not one little bit.  Instead it inspired me to stop any pretense of productivity and write a blog!

And Chesney has decided that all is forgiven and she is running maniacally around the sofa I'm sitting on, weaving under the table the lap top is sitting on, behind the sofa, then behind the recliner, and between the end table and wall where she knocked the lamp off just two days ago.

Lord help me, what was I thinking when I decided to surprise Brent with a puppy???

Oh, but on a brighter note:  I hung some chimes from the door and have been using her nose to ring them each time I take her out...She has rang them THREE times this morning and went outside to potty!  I'm finally getting trained...

Perhaps We've ALL Been Mislead

Things are...

Perhaps...

NOT always as they appear...

For example, a picture of a vicious dog attack could in fact simply be...

A picture of my dog playing with Brent's puppy...This would in fact be the same dog that patiently allows aforementioned puppy to hang from the skin folds of her neck while she is attempting to walk away...

And can we not all agree that there must be some level of humiliation even in the dog world involved with skin folds on the neck?

*Shudder*

Another misleading picture could be this:

Well, perhaps it's not misleading precisely...  Perhaps instead it is a simple statement that was quite true in 1968...

You see, in my eagerness to go camping with the fam, I decided to go two days ahead of my husband...  I arrived a little after noon on Thursday, and my brother agreed to help me set up my camper and my nephew offered to help, but he mostly ended up watching in that special way that 16 year old boys can "help" while not really knowing what to do...Of course he willingly fetched lots of items for us!

As we were attempting to slide out the last bed, it was giving me some difficulty, and I couldn't get the final brace for the canvas to come into position.  I called Brent to ask if perhaps I was opening it out of order...You see, 1968 pop up tent campers must be erected in a very precise order...

As I was on the phone I was attempting to raise the brace and

BANG!!!

The darn rivet broke...

And David vanished in to thin air....

No not really.  He looked through his tools for the random bolt to repair the rivet (you can see the bent hinge and newly replaced bolt attaching it to the sliding part thingy that brings the bed out...

Of course he DIDN'T have a bolt so I had to make my dad go with me into town to buy a bolt to temporarily replace the rivet...

And then I realized Brent forgot to throw the jack in to brace the tongue on.  Of course I improvised with the spare tire and a log that previous campers had left behind...Which did not prove as stable as a jack designed to hold it in place...

Oh!  And did I forget to mention that the ground jacks that hold up one half of the camper tend to slip now???

That was exciting when the girls were fast asleep and I was trying to quietly slip into bed...

They did not wake up, but I was immediately afraid the whole thing was going to capsize...

This post has many dot dot dots, no?

Well, on that note, I'm done for now.

Oh, except you simply must go over and read Dawn's post on what you must do while on fall break...

And then you must mentally realize that when she says you look for pearls in clam shells you must picture this child:

And she is pulverizing clams with a stick and finally throwing them on the concrete to bust them open in an effort to discover pearls...

I am glad the SPCA was nowhere around when this was going on...

And I'm glad my mom had a hair dryer in her camper as the very FIRST thing she did was fill her rain boots completely full of mud in her quest for clams...We had to hose them out, and strangely rubber boots with a fabric liner take FOREVER to dry...

FOREVER!

Of course she filled them with mud AFTER she got her only other pair of shoes completely caked in mud.

I'm sure you're all quite shocked any child of mine would be up to such shenanigans...

I'm quite sure she gets it from her father.

I'm glad you agree.

Vicious Dog Attacks, UFO Sightings, and Mr. T

We had an adventurous camping weekend.

Studmuffin had to stay and work on Thursday and Friday, so I decided to bravely go forth with our 1968 Apache Eagle pop up tent camper and join my family for Fall Break... And it broke...  We won't go into the details today...But it's safe to say that little girls never stop needing their daddies to come rescue them!

I have so much to tell you, but I'm tired, and I have tons of laundry to do, and I discovered my washer is leaking, and my hair is smelly, and did I mention I'm tired...

However, here's a quick sneak peak:

We had vicious dog fights.

We had UFO sightings.

And we had a close encounter with Mr. T...

But I'll let Dawn tell you all about that!

He's Still Workin' On Me!

Remember this children's song?

It took Him just a week to make the moon and stars,
the sun and the moon and Jupiter and Mars.
La la la I don't remember all the words!
But He's still workin' on me.

You don't remember it?  Strange.  Especially considering how thoroughly I just described it to you!

Well, it took Bookworm just a few days to make her solar system. Her daddy used all of the self restraint he possessed and lent minimal assistance.  I assure you this was a very big challenge considering this is the same man who once declared:  We will NOT have a red back splash.  It is too much work to paint the red evenly!

And then I promised to paint the bead board.

And so he agreed...I painted maybe two square feet of primer on the bead board, and he looked at me and said:  Give me the brush.  You are not doing it evenly.

It was primer for the love of Pete!  I didn't realize it NEEDED to be even!

So, he let her do all but a small bit of the work...

And this is the result!

Oh wait!  That's not the result!  Dag nab it!  My secret it is out.  But, hey do you see the lovely little fall display I have buried next to Popcorn's jacket their on the right?  Chesney actually leaves that thing alone.  Now that the scarecrow is gone, that is.  She is quite determined to eat every scare crow she encounters.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who has a mysterious explosion of shoes, socks, jackets, lunch bags and back packs every single day.

Please?

Tell me I'm not alone.

Mind you, this is not the solar system either.  This is just an example of puppy paraphernalia strewn threw the living room while the culprits lay in blissful slumber.  I am just wondering when I lost complete control of my house.  Do you realize that when my kids were babies my house was spotless?  It was!  Truly!  I was a cleaning and cooking machine!  Every single day I mopped and ran the vacuum.  I washed dried and folded laundry promptly.  I cooked dinner nearly every single night..in fact it was usually completely prepared except for the actual cooking by 3:30 while the girls napped... and I vowed to never let my kids sully their palates with carbonated beverages, high fructose corn syrup or french fries...

I have failed in nearly all of those endeavors in the past eight years.  Of course I snapped out of the post partum depression about eight years ago...  My housework has slowly slipped down hill ever since.

Who knew post partum had an up side?

Why lookie there!  I finally got around to showing a picture of the solar system!  And nary a mess is in sight!

Who says my house is a complete and utter disaster?

Three words:  Location, angle, and sweep (as in your arm across the counter to pile all clutter against your lovely red backsplash.)

Here's another view.  If you click on the photo and enlarge it, you will see that there are two more planets than there used to be in my day.  Yep, that little tiny dwarf planet on the far right is Eris.  And the little brown dwarf planet in the asteroid belt is Ceres...And not only does Saturn have rings, but so do Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus...Uranus and Neptune's rings are made out of thin sheets of plastic she cut to fit then wrapped around the planets.  She is clever, no?

And here's the clever girl herself posing for "just one picture" before heading off to school.  Good thing this turned out as she was quite adamant about the one picture only.

She gets that from her dad's side of the family, I'm sure.

This picture is purely gratuitous.  I wonder what on earth Chesney is dreaming of?

That is Just so Granola

I remember when I was in a clinical rotation at a Columbia Hospital in Arlington.  I don't remember the entire gist of the conversation, but I do remember one of the nurses looked at me and said with a look of utter disdain "Your school is just so granola."

I was young and idealistic and had no idea what she was talking about...

As I got out of the ivory tower of nursing school and in to the real world, I realized what she meant.  However, I also remember how jaded and bitter every single nurse that I encountered at that hospital was.  Seriously, they all hated their jobs.  How sad.  That is the only hospital where I had nurses tell me, "Change your major while you still can."

 I think perhaps if they had a puppy napping on their kitchen floor while they provided nourishing food for their family, their cranky factor may have decreased...


If you know anything about me, this post began as expected...Completely unrelated to the point of the post...Just random thoughts that were circling my brain as I was involved in the endeavor this post truly relates to:

GRANOLA!!

Color me excited!

I have a friend at work who occasionally brings oatmeal bars to work.  His mother makes them, and they make him think of the Oatmeal to Go bars by Quaker.  I love those bars.  I do not love the price involved with them, since they never last more than a day.

I asked him for the recipe, and he brought it to me.  I joyfully tackled it last week.  I have tweaked the recipe to suit our family's tastes, but the bare bones of the original are still there.

The beauty of this recipe is that it assembles in mere minutes, requires only two bowls and a spatula to assemble, and it is good for you!

So, without further ado, here it is!

Molasses Oatmeal Bars

In a large bowl combine:

2 c old fashioned oats
3/4 c flour
3/4 tsp soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1/4 c brown sugar
1/2 c chopped pecans
1/4 c sunflower seeds
1/3 c toasted wheat germ
1/2 c golden raisins





In a small bowl combine:
1/2 c vegetable oil
1/2 c honey
3 Tbsp molasses (spray your spoon with vegetable spray to make it slide off easily)
1 large egg









Add the molasses/honey mixture to your oat mixture.  Simply stir this with your favorite red spatula.  I promise, red spatulas work best!  I am so convinced of  this fact that I own three red spatulas and one lime green...The lime green, while it is visibly appealing, just does not seem to do the job properly.  Therefore all reliable research indicates that red spatulas work best!

Use the back of your red spatula to spread and press firmly the granola mix into a greased 9x13 pan.  Will you hold it against me if I tell you that I used my 9x11 pan because I still had a few bars left in my 9x13 from a previous batch?  I just couldn't be bothered to take out the last three bars and then wash and dry the pan...

Place in preheated 350 degree oven and bake 18-22 minutes.  Remove when edges are starting to brown.  Let cool on wire rack about 90 minutes before cutting...

Enjoy!

Oh!  Are you wondering what that little peek of blue orb is on the right side?  Well, that just happens to be Popcorn's solar system model.  That will be a post for another day.  I tried to take a clever photo of the granola bars with her solar system in the background...

However in that same background you could see my three bags of recyclables lying on the dining room floor so I would not neglect to drop them off in the morning...And you could see the piles of crafty stuff on my dining room table...Not to mention the piles of junk I "need to sort through" on our hutch.

That was just clearly too much clutter to include in one post...

I mean I'm all about being real, but even I have limits!

So, when I deem the background tidy enough to show you pictures of the solar system I will post photos of her masterpiece...Granted the background will be tidy while everything outside of it may very well be chaos.

But I'm totally okay with that!

And Then I Saw These Shoes...

We are going camping in the near future.

At a lake...

And every year when we go camping my youngest gets her shoes wet.  I know!!  It is shocking.

In the not so distant past she asked me for rain boots.  "She doesn't need rain boots.  It doesn't rain here," her dad stated quite sternly.

Have I ever mentioned that man is the rain on my parade?

Anyway, as I began making my list of camping necessities (last year we forgot our skillet.  Try cooking eggs and bacon with no skillet, I challenge you.  I ended up having to bum my brother's electric skillet off of him...Which if you understood anything at all about my brother you would see the sheer irony in HIM having something that I needed to borrow.)

Did I just digress?  Imagine that!

So, I was making a list.  I made a note that perhaps I should buy socks as Bookworm only has about four pair that fit properly, and there is nothing worse than wet feet...

Which made me wish we had rain boots for the girls...

Which led me to nagging my husband to let me BUY rain boots for the girls...

Which led me to checking out Target.com for boots and Halloween gear...

Which led me to finding Bookworm's Wednesday Addams costume for twelve bucks, and Popcorn's Indian costume for $20...I only needed to spend $18 more to get free shipping...

Of course I decided to throw in two pairs of rain boots.  However, as I went to check out, I realized the boots may not get here in time...

So, I removed the boots from my list and instead ordered Popcorn a super cute pair of winter boots that are only $8 more than I was going to have to pay in shipping if I did not buy them...

Of COURSE I bought them!

Sadly, I sitll did not have rain boots....

I loaded Popcorn in the car and drug her to Goodwill...Where she was horrified at the used shoe smell and racks of clothes organized by color...

Sadly, Goodwill did not have my Morticia costume, or even a black witch dress I could improvise with, and they did not have one single pair of rain boots...

We headed to Target...Except before going into Target I decided to run in to TJ Maxx and see what they had to offer...

No, they did not have rain boots for children.  But they did have a cute sweater dress for Bookworm and a lovely sweater for Popcorn and an adorable black pea coat with hot pink lining for Popcorn!  As she pointed out her current coat is from first grade.  Now that she's in fourth grade, she apparently thinks she needs one that actually reaches past her forearms.  She is just so needy.

We meandered over to the fitting rooms to try on a variety of shirts for Popcorn, and Popcorn was even trying Bookworm's dress to see how it might fit on her sister...

 As you can see, our guess was pretty good!  I think I may have to forbid her wearing it due to she looks entirely too grown up in it!  Of course, if I do perchance crumble and let her wear it, she will be wearing leggings and knee boots.  Which will probably only add to the grown up look, but at least she won't look like she's wearing a mini dress with those long skinny legs!  Can't have my daughter trampin' around at eleven years old, now can we?

We decided on the clothes and as we left my eye caught sight of these:

They were only $49!!!  These Dansko's sell for like $150!  Granted, I'd been saving for a pair of Barefoot Merrel's, but I simply had to buy these! 

And so I did.

Oh, and for anyone who may not realize:  These are for work.  Considering I'm weary of wearing the required navy blue scrubs every. single. day.  I'm quite excited to have something with definite personality to wear! 
  
After splurging on unplanned purchases we dashed on in to Target where I bought the two pairs of rain boots the girls had picked out online...

By the way, did I mention that I was doing all of this on a tight schedule?

Did you know that people tend to spend more and impulse buy more when they are on a tight schedule?

And to think that before I left the house today I was stoked that I was actually going to have cash left in the clothing envelope this month!

Oh, and here's an image of Barefoot Merrells.  Yes, they are purely frivolous.  Which is why I've been yearning but not buying them for nearly a year now.  They look and feel exactly like my high school track shoes...Which is perhaps why I want them, but I'm not really sure I have any glamor associated with track...Click here to read about my illustrious history as a track star.  But, even if you can't be bothered to read about my humiliations, here's a picture of the shoes I'm unsuccessfully saving for!