Things That Are Small

You know how they say "don't sweat the small stuff"? I was thinking about that today, and how it's true. And it's easy to get all wound up about things, that in the scheme of Real Life, are not really big issues. Like if the kids have head lice. Or whether the dogs have fleas. Or if the rug in the hallway is drenched because the toilet flooded again while I was gone and NOONE (this is my newest adopted child) wants to tell me. And it would be REALLY easy to FREAK the HECK out about any of these. Or all of them at once, since that's how they generally come, but really, no amount of freaking out has ever gotten rid of lice. Or anything at all. Other than annoying people. Freaking out at them enough usually does the trick. Not that I have tried. *innocent stare

But if we IGNORE the small stuff, it can get REALLY BIG. Like, you know, lice in the Whole Entire School. Or stuff like that. And also, if we aren't paying attention to the small stuff, we miss some of the best parts of life. Not head lice, or fleas, or toilet floods. But we miss things like how the bathroom air freshener at the Northside Costco smells EXACTLY like a brand new Strawberry Shortcake doll from 1984. Which smells EXACTLY like my birthday.

Or we might not notice that when we walk in to the house and Fun. is blaring on the stereo at 7,000 decibels that it probably means that an 11 year old is doing her Best Job Ever on the dishes. Like 15 minutes scrubbing and drying each Hydroflask lid. The small stuff. Nevermind the pile of crockpots full of applesauce we made with Lofty Intentions for canning last week and forgot about. And the stuck on mashed potato pot. Those lids are SPARKLING. The small things. And Fun. is loud. And it's good. Especially since Aspen probably has no idea what "getting higher than the empire state" in the bathroom really is.

If you weren't paying attention to the small stuff, you might forget that you finally got a flipping HEATED MATTRESS PAD at like 70% off, and that means that even if NOONE brought in pellets for the stove, once again, and your rotator cuff/laboral tear and bulging disk absolutely dictate to you that you sure as HECK ain't doing it, you will still sleep warm tonight. And you might forget that your sheets are tossing all warm and clean in a Brand New Dryer sitting by a Brand New Washer.

Or you might not have read that piece of junk mail that offered you DirectTV for $29.99 a month, and you might not have called and talked to Jared at CenturyLink, who would not only refund all of the overcharges/late charges that were NOT YOUR FAULT, but he'd hook you up with some sweet NFL Sunday Ticket action for $25 a month AND a $50 cash card AND could quite possibly be the love of your life. If only he wasn't married.

If the small stuff didn't matter, then you wouldn't care when a very tiny wiener dog confided in you that Nobody Can Replace You, and also: You Are The Best Mom in the Whole World.

It's because I was foolishly ignoring the small stuff that I left my Fitbit 1 (one) home this morning and now I don't know if I should really be drinking this one glass of wine. Or why in the heck my hip hurts so bad. Not that they need to be sweated, but at least remembered. So you can get credit, and have ice cream and stuff. And ignoring the small stuff led to me not paying attention when Kiz told me that her boyfriend had a high fever and sore throat for three days, and not COMMANDING her to not visit him, to prevent the spread of the plague into our house.

Even though there is some BIG STUFF this week that maybe needs to be sweated, like divorce papers, which are the printed equivalent of a big fat kick in the gut, and double shifts at work, followedimmediately (<---- see how I did that?) by all-nighter at a BOY'S house his birthday for all the older girls, which I will obviously be chaperoning, and figuring out how to deal with teenagers that probably think they got away with "borrowing" the car and driving it sans licenses... all that stuff can, and will be sweated about. Probably through my tear ducts and into my pillow, but there's still the small stuff. There's really loud Fun. when you would have probably played some terrible sad song over and over to go with the continuous rain. The small stuff that doesn't have to be sweated, when you realize that mayonnaise as a lice remedy is also a kick-a** hair conditioner, and all this pestilence equates a Really Clean House (someday), and life is actually really, really good. Because of the small stuff. Heated mattress pads. Wiener dogs. Fun.

(please note: the one minor reference to alcohol in the preceding blog is compensated for in this drink riddled but very happy video. Here's to the small things... Carry On!)

Things I Am Cooking

Call me obsessed. It's like I only leave the kitchen to sleep feverishly on the couch. After I kicked some serious peach and plum booty on Friday, I am back in the kitchen in a race against bees and the little deer who sneaks up on our porch to eat the apples that have been picked so far to use them up. No joke, at 1:45 AM, when I couldn't sleep because of jaw-clenching pain, and because Josh had just chased some punks out of the new announcers booth at the football field across our yard, I heard the suspicious snuffing and crunching and looked out the window over my bed to see our pet deer - one of many, really, but we'll call this one Mildred, eating the apples. Understand that only a fraction of the apples have been picked from the tree thus far, since I directed the kids to "pick all of the apples" and I wasn't at home to explain that the ladder there was actually for climbing up and picking the ones they can't reach from the ground. Mildred is fairly certain that the apples conveniently located in boxes on our front porch were selected for her midnight buffet - as is the local bee population who has eaten it's way into several apples and seems to be drunk on the loveliness. I redeemed many of the apples into my giant stock pot, which is now scorching on the bottom, and my crock pot, which holds half as much but doesn't seem to be burning. Oh the politics of food preservation!!!!

Canning anything is complicated in my kitchen since I only have two burners, and the former occupants installed a really cool grill into one whole half of the Jenn-Aire cooktop I have. I have used the grill once, to make some smoked chicken breast jerky for dinner. Otherwise it has sat there, collecting things. Like pots that the kids seem to have no idea how to put away. So I have one burner with some bizzarre platform, as if it was height-challenged and had self-esteem issues, so the former cook helped it out. That, coupled with a microwave that was installed directly above and about 6 inches too low, makes just enough room to fit a canner, or my big stock pot, on the front burner, with no lid. the back burner is almost useless, except I can fit the small pot to boil my canning lids back there. getting the small pan out around the big one is tricky, especially if the kids have stored all of the pots on the space offending grill. I have tried to talk Josh into getting a replacement two burner Jenn-Aire insert, but he is insistent that we are replacing the whole stove "very soon" and so I must make do. Which is also why the bathroom is still country blue and buttercup blossom. My friend mentioned the other day that I have control over that and could fix it, but that was about an hour before she met Josh and he explained that the room is "about" to be remodeled and there is no sense wasting money on paint. When he's right, he's right. Unfortunately "very soon" and "about" are somewhat subjective and the country blue is really eating away at my soul.

Anyway, it's now a race between my crock pot and the big stock pot to see who can output applesauce most efficiently. If I am judging, the stock pot is losing on the mere grounds of how much stirring it takes to avoid making smoked applesauce (something I have produced before - goes well with chicken breast jerky). Especially since I need those stirring muscles to give my stupid little vintage sieve another chance to redeem itself on four thousand pounds of apples. I was hoping the applesauce would be done in time to free up the burner to finish the bread and butter pickles I started, but it's not looking promising, and I am not sure when I would heat the canning water in that line up.

Josh is working on remodeling the stairs, which apparently needed to be done, but which makes Emmy attach herself to my ankle, usually leaving a trickle of pee everywhere we go. She hates power tools. I have tripped over her at least 8 times now, and if you have ever fallen down stairs the day after you have given birth to a baby then you can imagine the kind of pain that catching myself from a fall causes in my lower abdomen area.

I tried, unsuccesfully, to figure out how to live stream some NFL games here on my computer, but short of subscribing to Madden 25, which I think is a game or something, and costs a hundred dollars American, there is no way. There are a couple of radio stations out of Seattle that you can listen online to, but neither would play on this side of the state, or on a Mac. COME ON, PEOPLE! You are from Seatlle!! WTH. So I am stuck with my Frank Sinatra Spotify station on, wondering how all of those NFLers are doing out there. My sister in law is involved in some emotional eating, which must mean the Vikings are not doing well. She is an ardent fan, for whatever reason, to the extent that she wouldn't play Aaron Rogers on her Fantasy Football team, but has kept him benched, since he is a Packer and they are from the devil. This had rendered her absolutely scoreless, since she also traded the rest of her team for players with last names of three sylablles or more. I am keeping my head above water in our family league, but I would be dominating if I could figure out how to trade. My baby sister is at the head of the league with our ultra-competitive, death-before-losing middle brother (yes, middle child thing), but her wins were purely accidental, or maybe even karmic punishment to the rest of us for letting her call her team "Suessical". Freedom of expression be dashed, in this family, right Sanna? I would be more panicked about missing the games today except the Bronco's don't play til tomorrow, at which point I will throw a fit if Josh doesn't take me to the Whitebird. I am hoping for Andrea's sliders to show up as a menu special one of these football days, but it's almost like she doesn't care.

My applesauce is burning. And I have to go show the kids how to use a ladder. After I clean up after Emmy, and hold a tape measure for Josh.

GO SEAHAWKS!!!