In theory I don’t have time to post now, but I feel like I deserve 10 minutes me time.

This is yet another post about how cooking and me are just not compatible.

You know how some people just can’t grasp Math? I’m like that with cooking. Actually, not too hot on Math either, but you get the point.

You see, The Daddy wanted to introduce me to some cool people he knows. We were going to get a babysitter and go out to dinner.

Then, while I was distracted, that somehow turned into Sunday Lunch at Our Place.

Fine. For them, I will tidy my living room.

Still working on other things. Not really giving lunch my full attention, and then, when I do,  it has become lunch at our place, eating a dish that only I can cook. As in me. The non-cook. It is one of my repertoire of about 5 dishes I can cook reasonably well. As long as I concentrate.

I decide to get a head start. By Saturday lunchtime I have been to the supermarket and I am - triumphantly! - cooking up a storm. I have two ways of cooking: For us - sloppy and not very nice. For other people - so scared of getting it wrong that I go all OCD and start adding ingredients drop by drop for the perfect mix. Predictably, yesterday’s preparation of today’s lunch takes me most of the afternoon.

And then The Daddy opens wine, we have a quick dinner, put the kids to bed and I sit at my computer to do some work. I am sleepy, so I am in bed by 11.

And then I remember the lunch. It has been sitting on the bench to cool …

…since 5pm.

I start to rationalize. Chicken, yes, but people take chicken sandwiches on picnics all the time and don’t poison themselves. Remember, I am half asleep at this point. Then, all of a sudden, I am not. Because it dawns on me that the chicken is suspended in a cream sauce.

Chicken and cow juice. It’s a Bacteria Party!

So this morning, 7am, I had a date with a second cream sauce.

You know what happens next. For this, my second cream sauce, I am not so enthusiastic. Plus, The Daddy is not up yet so I am empty of my morning coffee.

I begin by burning the butter.

Start again. All going well. I turn away for no more, I swear, no more than 20 seconds and the whole concoction inexplicably curdles.

I am no good with curdle. Start again.

And now, friends, it is done. And as soon as I have my shower I will be off to the supermarket for another chicken. Silly me, I didn’t think to have one in reserve.

At this point I am thinking our mystery guests had better be Rock Star Cool.

We need more cool around here. Because I have lost mine.

Ah-em. Well, so yesterday was our 15th wedding anniversary.  Crystal, I believe. And we should have been whooping it up. Except we forgot. Again.

It’s not at all like it sounds. We forget almost every year. I mean, we don’t forget we are married, and we do remember in the days leading up to our anniversary that we will soon be married one year more. It’s just that, when the day itself arrives, we usually go on with our daily lives, our happily married daily lives, and don’t even think about celebrating that fact.

It’s easy for us to forget our actual wedding day because although we had a very nice day (and that is entirely down to my mother, I mean, I was 22 years old and quite happy to rock up to the registry office wearing a pair of old jeans) it wasn’t really a day when anything changed. We were poor students before we married, and we were still poor students afterwards, albeit poor students with a little more income as the government judged that married people somehow needed more money. And anyhow, we were practically living in each others pockets from the day we met. Or, as in each others pockets as you can be when you are living in separate cities and only see each other every three weeks. I mean, when your boyfriend of a couple of months turns up on his motorcycle at 2 in the morning and throws stones at the window to get in, then announces that he has spent all his student allowance on beer … oh  and on gas to come see you (awwww, how romantic) and so you will have to pay for everything this weekend, you may as well be married already

The license was a formality, we really only needed it to get The Daddy a visa. Otherwise we might still be living together happily unmarried to this day. I never really had any dreams of flowery bowers and lacey white dresses and although the thought quite appeals to me now, that’s probably only because I want an excuse to throw a big, bling party.

So, seeing as we forgot our anniversary and I therefore don’t have any happy stories of swanky restaurant dates and clinking champagne glasses to relate, I thought you might find a little photo roundup of us together through the years mildly amusing.

I went looking through my archives. But it appears that throughout this marital adventure we have been quite happy to take photos of each other from time to time, without attaching much importance to formal posed photos together.  I came up with only two photos of the early days, and one of them is from our wedding. Thanks goodness for weddings! Except, I have lost my scanner cable, and  you will have to wait to see them.

Don’t worry, once I have had a good tidying session and found my errant cable I will post them, along with a photo of me aged 17 with my 1980s ‘do. I know! I know! I was 17 in 1989, I had no business even still having 1980s hair! But, very unfortunately, I did. And I really do not want to show the results, except that I was dumb enough promise Kirsten that my 1980’s hair was worse than her 1980’s hair (and it was) and now feel obliged to prove it. You are going to laugh and laugh.

In the meantime, I will leave you with a few photos, blurry ones taken with my phone (because of course I forgot my camera), at the celebration I did take part in yesterday. It was a 5 year old Princess Party for one of Baby Sister’s friends, and it was one of the best childrens’ birthday parties ever. I wanted to dress up as a Princess too and get my nails done and “fairy glitter” on my cheeks, and decorate a cupcake and do a fashion show and even play musical chairs (even though I knew I wouldn’t win and would end up crying) but to fit into any of the available dresses I would have had to lose a ton of weight and probably shrink by at least a foot.

So I contented myself with talking to the other moms and shooting very bad camera photos. By the way, despite appearances, there were other children there. I was just very careful to crop them out.

The choice of dresses was amazing. Surprisingly, she chose blue...

Goodness girl, one would think you had never modeled before... oh yeah. You haven't.

Her first ever manicure!

Well, actually they just dabbed on a bit of pink polish. She bites her nails, so it has been touched up at least 3 times today already. And then she insisted I do her toes. And she has already finished the lip gloss from her party bag. Sigh. Before I know it I will be opening her an account at Sephora. Do they even have accounts at Sephora? Because Mommy sure doesn’t have one…

(Scene: In the car coming back from somewhere …)

Baby Sister: Mommy, when I grow up I am going to be a superstar!

T-Bot: Hmmm….. Daddy, what’s your job?

The Daddy: I’m a software engineer.

T-Bot: And Mommy, do you have a job? What’s your job?

The Mommy: You know I have a store. And I look after you people. I have lots of jobs.

T-Bot: Oh… You know, if you don’t like your job you could become a policewoman. Or a pizza seller. Those are natural jobs. Your job is not a real job and neither is Daddy’s.

The Wictor: And the mail carrier!

The Mommy: Why isn’t a store owner real? Does everybody have to be a policewoman or a pizza seller?

Baby Sister: How about being a superstar? T-Bot, superstars sing in rock bands! How about that?

T-Bot: How about a bus driver?

The Mommy: Aren’t computer jobs real jobs?

T-Bot: OK, how about someone who works at Honda?

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And on that note, I would like to show you where The Daddy’s world and my world meet. This is the Era Browser, a whole new way of shopping on Century Finds. It was originally conceived as a showcase of what can be achieved using Microsoft’s recently released Silverlight plugin, but as it happens it’s also a pretty nifty way of browsing my store. Although this first edition won’t be replacing my traditional store just yet, I really see this kind of interface as the future of internet shopping.

So, if you are a geek at heart and/or don’t mind downloading another browser plugin, you can experience the real thing here. Otherwise, I have a few more screen shots over at the Century Finds Blog which should satisfy your curiosity.

You know, seeing as you asked

Sometimes I cook. Sometimes The Daddy cooks.

But recently, we have been sharing the cooking. Which means The Daddy cooks the meat and I am responsible for the vegetables and starch.

Last night The Daddy complained that he was sick and tired of chewy rice, raw spinach and raw baby carrots. So I asked him somewhat irritably what he wanted then, and he said “Can’t you at least cook the vegetables?”.

So tonight I cooked the vegetables. Behold: cooked vegetables.

Sometimes I amaze even myself.

This morning I was a little groggy as I met T-Bot and Baby Sister coming down the stairs.

Not for long though!

I woke up very suddenly when Baby Sister casually announced that her brother had blood all over his foot.

“I scratched it, Mommy” he said, suddenly concerned. “It’s on my hand too”.

Oh my goodness, I thought. My white carpets!*

… and rushed him to a bathroom where I started by trying to scrub the blood off his hand.

… but it wouldn’t come off.

… because it was red marker pen.

It wouldn’t come off completely with soap, wet wipes or alcohol either. Thank goodness he doesn’t have school. I don’t think they would take too kindly to bodily decoration.

It was only later that he showed me his other hand:

Son, that’s very sweet, but … if you really want to impress me try something more permanent.  On your upper arm.

Oh, actually it does appear to be permanent…

I guess that’s a start.

(*Yes, I did actually think that. Judge me as you will. )

For almost as long as I can remember, I have been looking at toy teepees in those catalogs which flood the mailbox around Christmas. For almost as long as I can remember, I have narrowly avoided buying one, for all manner of practical and monetary (OK, mostly monetary) reasons.

At various times I could have bought one like this ($99):

But there is no room for it indoors. Outdoors it would get muddy, it would get torn, and how much fun can you have in a teepee anyway?

At other various times I could have bought one like this ($366):

Except (and no offense to anyone who has bought one, because they are beautiful and are supposed to last from childhood into the teens, although what a teenager would find to do with one of these beats me, unless they were to sit in it to smoke marijuana. Oh, I misread that, it actually said tweens, but still… ) um…

… except it would get muddy, it would get torn and OMG $366, didn’t my Wii cost around that? You know, the one involving chips and wires and years of experimental research by some very educated boffins? I am looking forward to the day when I can just drop $366 on a couple of poles and some cloth which doesn’t even fit a full grown adult (no, not even me, I am actually slightly over 5ft. Slightly.) and think nothing of it. Oh and BTW here is another tent which costs around $366, give or take $3. It doesn’t have a hole in the roof and will fit a family of three.

And also - how much fun can you have in a teepee anyway?

Given all the above, I have not given in to the Lure of the Funny Shaped Tent. But those catalogs keep dropping through the mailbox and falling open at the Fun Native American Toys page. It must be the hippy in me, but a teepee, that’s so cool! My kids would love one! Oh the fun they would have! Oh the stories they would weave! Oh the joys they would sing!

But then this Christmas I came home from shopping to find that The Daddy, without even being asked, had solved the problem for me. Because theoretically I might just have given in this Christmas and bought a teepee. And if that had been the case The Daddy would have just saved me between $99 and $366. He’s a keeper, that The Daddy…

And his creation? Classy. Around here, this is how we roll.

Oh, and the kids loved it … for the first 10 minutes. Because actually it turns out, there isn’t a whole lot of fun to be had in a teepee. Unless you are really into sitting.

This afternoon I decided to try making a  Galette des Rois, traditionally eaten in France at around this time.

Click through above if you would like to see what it is supposed to look like.

Unfortunately, my oven runs very hot and while I could have used The Daddy’s oven, his runs very cold ( yes, we have two ovens, neither of which actually work ).

I should also mention that I have only the most basic of housewifely skills and shouldn’t really be allowed near the oven in the first place. I have, for example, never ever in my long and very full life used puff pastry. Of which this recipe required massive amounts.

So I am not sure what happened today. The cook had the day off, I mistook myself for Martha Stewart, I was having delusions I could do anything, the recipe looked easy, take your pick. (Clue: Actually not the first three.)

Now that I have set the scene, ta-daaaaaa!

Wow, puff pastry sure does puff, don’t it?

Although … once we cut off the burnt bits, it did actually taste pretty good

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In other news, I got a bloggy award, from the gorgeous Kari at I Left my Heart at Preschool.

I have always wanted a Lemonade Stand! Thanks Kari! I am flattered!

I am supposed to pass it on but I am going to take the easy way out and invite anyone who doesn’t yet have it to come and get it. Come on, don’t be shy!

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And don’t forget to tune in to tomorrow’s post, where I will reveal how we saved between $99 and $366 this Christmas.

I know, I know, waiting is difficult. But I can’t feed you all the excitement at once…

Alright, you got me there. Actually I am stopping here because I am feeling very guilty that I am blogging, while letting my husband believe I am doing “real work“. And it’s getting late and I would quite like to get some sleep at some point. So thanks for listening, and Goodnight!

The first day of 2009 also marks the first anniversary of this blog.

I believe I might have really started blogging because I had such a depressing New Years Eve in 2007, watching Dick Clark’s Super Banging Rocking Old Time New Years Eve Jam or whatever they call it, while listening to fireworks. And then, at some point, I got online and came across a whole lot of bloggers who were planning awful  evenings also. A whole lot of other losers parents of young children who couldn’t easily get out of the house on the one day of the year you should be out partying. And that made me feel a whole lot better.

Now I have Twitter. So last night I knew I was far from being the only one. Also, I entered the Pioneer Woman’s competition for losers who were not out partying, and I was comment number over-10,000.

Last time we watched the Dick Clark thingy, and also a whole lot of other very very bad TV. But we did have champagne.

This time we downloaded the $1 movie on i-tunes.

Legally Blonde.

Also, instead of champagne we decided to go teetotal, then at the last minute changed our minds.

So we had to drink beer.

For New Years 2009, I don’t think we could sink any lower, unless we drink water and watch old silent Charlie Chaplin movies.

My first New Years Resolution: New Years Eve Party. My House. Be There.

PS:  Yes! This year I did get to see fireworks! At 12.30 when the neighbor started letting them off right in front of our house and woke up Baby Sister. Who was petrified and refused to let me leave her for the rest of the night. Her bed is very uncomfortable. But the fireworks were pretty. So maybe it was worth it.