So I have been called out by a surprising number of people for my long blogging absence. Actually, I have been posting, over at Century Finds. And running a non-stop personal blog commentary in my head, not that it does much good swirling around in there. Oh, and also DIY. I wish I could stop doing DIY but it is kind of an obsession. Right now I want to coat everything in brightly colored Rustoleum, and fix the leaky faucets (not difficult, unless you need to turn the water off at the mains and are just not strong enough).

Also, The Wictor turned three and started channeling Johnathan Adler. He demanded I paint his room orange. And yes, echoes of the dining room, after three weeks I am about halfway through.

But mostly, it takes a lot to try and expand a fledgling retail business in the current environment, while maneuvering to keep three young children from killing each other from boredom or frying their brains with a TV screen. I have to admit I just can’t keep up with the all the demands and something has to give.

I am sure it will all straighten out sometime, like oh when that yellow bus restarts its regular runs through the neighborhood… In the meantime, for your amusement and entertainment, here is a list of all the things which have broken around here in the last few weeks.

The downstairs air conditioning unit (compressor)

My car (battery harness which sounds very impressive but is actually two skinny $300 cables which in turn fried the battery.)

Big toe on my left foot (via a full gallon of apple juice)

Washers on five faucets

The sprinkler system (Just add horses)

The DVD player

My relations with my web hosting company

The freezer is making a whining noise too, and when I googled “my freezer is making a whining noise” the general opinion seemed to be “get a new freezer”. So goodbye, holiday on the French Riviera.

Looking at that list, I should be depressed. But how can I be sad when I spend my days with such fascinating individuals?

For the last few days Baby Sister and I have been discussing Death. As you may know I am fairly superstitious so I am not at all comfortable with this. I am probably also breaking every parenting rule in the book.  I did try to cheat by playing the reincarnation card, which worked for a short while (she decided she would come back as a unicorn) but she is way too clever for me.

At least now we have established that Baby Sister would not enjoy being cremated. And:

“Mommy, when there is no more room in the cemetery, do they dig the dead people out?”

My answer: “Dig them out? Oh, where did you hear that sweetheart? Do you want nutella on your toast?” .

Yes, I lie to my children sometimes. By default. If it buys me an extra hours peace…

And now, The Wictor. He is really coming into his own. Apart from managing his bedroom interior design project, The Wictor appears to enjoy fashion.

And he has perfected this seasons Maison Wictor look:

Or would this be his new signature style?

And just to prove I didn’t decorate him while he was asleep, here is another:

Forget Johnathan Adler, he may be the next Grayson Perry.

(Why so many photos of The Wictor? Because he turns out to also be a real media wh*re. He wants his photo taken … like … all the time. )

Meanwhile, The T-Bot has been conducting psychological experiments on the cat. It turns out Fiji either has ADHD or is terribly indecisive, because he refused to point his nose in the right direction twice. Yes, no, yes, no, and he wouldn’t cooperate even for treats. Or maybe he is in control here and is just messing with the T-Bot’s mind.

The T-Bot gave up on the animal in the end. He has been keeping himself busy this summer with Legos, science experiments, and jewelry design.

Also, his already overactive imagination has gone into overdrive. I made a little montage of all the friends he has invited to stay, all at the same time. They are all sleeping in the T-Bot’s room and eating me out of house and home. They come down in the morning, pushing and squabbling and expect me to make space around the breakfast table. Chowder especially does not get on with Chomper (possibly not pictured, because I can’t tell those dinosaurs apart)  and the T-Bot is worried that having Bumblebee around might attract stray Decepticons, which quite frankly makes me worry too

I asked the T-Bot to make them go away, but he says they like it here.

So now do you see why I haven’t had time to post?

My grandmother was a seamstress. Actually she was Parisian-trained and could cut a pattern freehand.

(At one time she employed ten other women to do the actual sewing of the seams for her. In these times she would be called a “Businesswoman”. But those were the days when men were men and womens’ efforts didn’t really count. So, a seamstress).

We left for the other side of the world when I was six. Before we went, she only had time to teach me how to sew on a button.

My favorite casual shorts. They have been like this for a year.

I wear plenty of long t-shirts, and sometimes band-aids on my fingers.

I know my grandmother would be proud. But not of my efforts in the button fixing department.

Here is a little word to the wise:

Let’s just say you move into a new (to you) house and you love it except that the paint colors are all wrong (and half the major appliances old and about to stop working but let’s skip that part for now).

Now let’s imagine that you can’t wait to start repainting so you indulge in a little DIY. If you do this, DO NOT, whatever you do, decide to paint the dining room a bright, cheery yellow. Especially don’t do this if the dining room is open to every other room in the house.

Because if you do, when the time comes to repaint the rest of your open plan house, you will find that you have to match EVERY OTHER PAINT COLOR downstairs to BRIGHT YELLOW.

I promise, you will. And puh-please do not try and tell me that yellow matches everything, because it doesn’t. At least, it might do if you have a modern house, where anything you slap up on the walls will look highly funky and probably end up (sob sob) in the pages of Dwell. But those of us with mock-georgian piles complete with crown moldings and details everywhere have to pay a little more attention, especially if we chose the house partially for those details in the first place.

Next, when your husband, who you love very much, tells you he wants ALL BRIGHT COLORS, do not spend two precious days trying to oblige him. You will - I repeat - WILL find yourself rocking and babbling over the fan deck while holding great fistfuls of your own hair.

(Just believe me when I say that our chosen bright colors put next to each other make the whole house look like a nursery. Which, in effect, it is, but let us pretend a little, OK?)

Another thing: do NOT, under any circumstances, hold a last minute group consultation with your friends who all live in beautifully curated houses that look like they stole them out of a Pottery Barn catalog. Unless, of course, you are willing to paint over your bright yellow, forgo your bright green, and settle for living in a Pottery Barn Catalog.

A look, which, by the way, I LOVE. It’s just not us.

Another NOT GOOD IDEA: In a fit of pique caused by said friends agreeing that there is no solution but to paint your double-height entrance way CREAM (the color of a decades worth of rental houses - a color you swore you would never grace your walls again), you should not waste an afternoon trying to find exactly the right shade of GRAY. Because at this point your significant other will arrive home, shrug and say “you mean all gray like the inside of a dungeon?”. And you will suddenly realize that he is right.

Oh, and another word to the wise : do all this color research BEFORE you call in the painters and agree on a starting date IN FOUR DAYS TIME.

I am sure nobody noticed that I was away. But that is where I have been. Oh, and my final color scheme?

Some bright colors. And CREAM.

Job done. The painters arrive tomorrow. I am off to pack for the asylum.

I am the cheap one in our family. For years I have refused to let The Daddy spend money on a USB hub, preferring instead to give up my mouse every time I needed to plug any extra USB device into my laptop.

Then he found one for $10 on Amazon, at which point I had to give up and gratefully accept his generous gift.

I didn’t check it out before he bought it. What you can’t see in the photo is that the central LED also changes color about twice a second.

I am just a little bit worried there may be a strip joint hiding in there somewhere.

Not some new band totally rocking the underground music scene (because I would know all about that! Hah!).

This was the photo I took of my children this afternoon after everybody else remembered St Patrick’s Day for us.

Notice that unlike 99.9% of children at Baby Sister’s preschool this morning, none of them are wearing green. However, her  teacher was kind enough to color her hair, right before she banned her from the class St Patrick’s Day party for talking too much at naptime (grrr, but that’s a topic for another post). The Post Office had stocked up on green lollipops too, nice big ones which resulted in satisfyingly green tongues.

For my part, however, yet again I FAIL! Another example: this afternoon we made a cake, and right after I put the red food coloring into the icing, I realized “Oh! Whoops! Wrong color!”.

Ironic, when you consider the fact that had the kids’ great, great, great (not sure how many greats) grandfather not found it necessary to change his identity to avoid the forces of the law, their surname would have been Finucan.

In related news, this morning The Daddy woke me up at some totally unreasonable hour as he was leaving for work, to inform me that one of the drawers in the master bathroom was full of water. As it turned out to be a closed drawer situated nowhere near any pipes this can only be the work of the Little People.

The Leprechauns. I have been dismissive of them. They are surely showing their displeasure.

(Update: It wasn’t Finucan. We are not quite sure what it was but I got the wrong side of the family. The saintly side. My apologies to all concerned…)

I have managed to overstretch myself a little. This week I have at least one “extra” thing scheduled four days out of five on top of my normal schedule. I think the only way to get it all done is to go on autopilot. Much as I would like to blog I don’t have the time. I must write something, though, or else my Mom will worry (hello Mum!). So here is a picture of my cat:

Fiji. The Daddy calls him my Familiar because he follows me everywhere like a very quiet slinky little dog.

Oh, OK then, like a cat.

At night he sleeps on my pillow and purrs in my face. Strangely for a cat, his breath doesn’t smell.

In other news, we haven’t abandoned the T-Bot’s beloved science experiments. Here’s a fun one we did last week with yeast, sugar and water in a glass bottle. It blew the balloon up almost immediately.

I have been avoiding the project the T-Bot really wants to work on. Before you judge me, listen to why. He wants to build a rocket to fly into outer space. And I am scared of heights.

It used to be that when it came to dinnertime I would wait until The Daddy returned from his hard day at work and ask him what he was cooking tonight.

And then things changed, and I found myself in control of the kitchen. Actually, more like out of control in the kitchen, for as many of you will know I am a terrible cook.

Still, there I was, muddling along and not receiving anything in the way of compliments for all my efforts. I was starting to get a bit huffy about the whole thing really. I mean there are only so many times a person can hear words such as “burnt”, “bland”,  “tough” and “inedible” applied to her cooking before starting to feel, oh I don’t know, a little bit miffed?

Then came the fateful day when the moon and stars must have been aligned and the gods smiling and my lucky day, all rolled into one. The day I stumbled upon THE SOLUTION.

It did not start out well. I had bought a nice piece of beef which would have to be put in to roast early and was very proud of myself for remembering to take it out of the fridge on time. But when I looked at it, it turned out that I had accidentally not bought a nice piece of beef, but just a piece of beef, which would have to be put in to stew early. At this point I almost abandoned my abandonment of Twitter to tweet “Help! How do I make a beef stew with no ingredients?”

Then I remembered Mark. Mark is an old friend of ours from way back, when The Daddy and I used to have time to watch TV, and would watch his New York Times podcasts on simple cooking. Despite my well-documented hatred of the culinary arts, somehow I never minded watching his podcasts. He seems kind of … nice. It was Mark who taught The Daddy how to cook Paella and it was on his recommendation that I stopped buying those expensive kitchen knives and instead bought myself two restaurant knives for $16 from Costco. They have plastic handles but still I have received compliments.

I am not sure how I came to have Mark’s book, “How To Cook Everything“. I know that it came via Amazon, probably ordered by me in a fit of optimism after seeing a random ad. I also know that the moment it arrived I looked at the cover, thought “this might come in useful one day” and put it straight onto the shelf.

So there we were, several months later. I opened the book and discovered it contains tons and tons of simple recipes for simple people like me. Who don’t have 20 exotic ingredients in their pantry and really don’t feel like rushing out to buy them. Who very possibly don’t even have the most basic of ingredients. That night Mark didn’t try to make me feel guilty for not throwing three tired kids in the car and rushing them to the crowded supermarket to buy beef stock. He gave me permission to cook with water.

Imagine that! Needless to say, How to Cook Everything no longer lives on the living room shelf. It now has a permanent home on the kitchen counter. In fact, it is probably stuck there. With gravy.

And this is why Mark will always have a special place in my heart:  I spend less time cooking. I can usually find a recipe to accommodate my gruesome lack of fancy ingredients. Oh, and here is a real and honest quote from 5 minutes ago as The Daddy finished eating yet another of Mark’s 20 minute meals:

“It used to be depressing eating your dinners. Some days I almost wanted to kill myself. But that was great.”

No kidding.

(PS: Yet again this is an unpaid review. What can I say, I am a mug.)

Sometimes, for no apparent reason, the world will suddenly, imperceptibly, tilt on its axis. And life will never be quite the same again.

Eleven days ago,  on a Wednesday, I was at my friend’s house, drinking tea while our children played outdoors. And then the Earth shifted as her 3 year old was shooting off the end of the slide, sending him sideways and immediately to hospital for an operation, insertion of pins and an overnight stay.

She spent the next week following him around the house so that he didn’t fall in his soft cast and re-break the reset arm.

Ten days ago, on a Thursday, The Daddy was sitting in a small office with his boss’s delegate, for his yearly review. They diligently checked the check boxes and commented the comment spaces for the better part of 40 minutes. An hour later the Earth had upended them too, sweeping them both out onto the street clutching their cardboard boxes.

The Daddy spent the next week tied to the internet and the phone, sending out resumes and talking to recruiters and other contacts.

Good news. My friend’s son now has a hard cast on his arm and she doesn’t have to hover protectively over him any more.

Actually, although she had a busy week, with not a minute to herself, she also appreciated spending  one on one time with him that she would have otherwise missed.

Other good news. The Daddy has a new job, starting Monday.

And actually, this job is probably better than his previous one, using the kind of new technologies he gets excited about. And probably about as recession-proof as you can get these days. It’s a change he wouldn’t otherwise have made.

The Earth has been uneasy lately. It has been scratching its itch.

But we have been among the lucky ones.

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I haven’t been blogging lately. I just can’t, in all good conscience, make the time. And then there have been little things getting in the way, like for example my husband coming home suddenly in the middle of the day minus his work computer and then hogging mine while I roamed about like a lost soul doing unfamiliar things like … housework … all the while falling further and further behind with what I needed to be doing. We bought a new computer. It took two days to arrive. In the meantime I lost all my marbles. I swear, I was talking gibberish, and then the new computer arrived I almost kissed the UPS man, tight little shorts and all. Which would have been highly embarrassing. We see a lot of him.

But this weekend we had fun! Big Fun! We went to San Antonio for the T-Bot’s birthday and roamed around doing all the fun touristy things that fun tourists in San Antonio do. Like this:

And this:

And this:

We even had our portrait taken!

OK, it was a cheesy fleece-the-tourist portrait sold at the exit to the caves, the kind of thing we never, ever buy. But look! Whole family together!

I think if you read my last post you will realize how amazing this actually is.

(Full points if you noticed this is a not very good photo of a not very good photo. My scanner cable is still awol.)

Let’s finish off  this hurried effort with a picture of the Birthday Boy, who spent almost the whole three hour trip home in the car trying to convince us that he had actually grown a foot since the days - those long ago days - when he was six.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, T-BOT!!!

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.

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.