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!

Last night The Wictor didn’t want to go to sleep. So I lay down next to him and promptly fell asleep until 9. And it’s lucky I did, because this is how my schedule for the evening turned out:

12.30: Go to bed

1.00ish: Fall asleep

3.30 am: Woken up by a loud sound, like a toad croaking but inside the house. It woke up The Daddy too. We traced the noise to our en suite toilet. Blocked and booming, apparently because it was attempting to unblock itself. I know, weird, I have never experienced that either. When we flushed the toilet it overflowed, but it was clean water and the noise stopped so we went back to bed.

4amish: Woken by the sound of a child screaming in the distance. I went out into the lounge to listen but couldn’t hear anything. Realized it was actually The Daddy, snore-whistling. Went back to bed.

Sometime after 4: Woken by the the sound of running back and forth upstairs. Baby Sister is not supposed to come downstairs at night unless it is “something important” and it seems she kept changing her mind as to whether this was something important. In the end I went up and she decided she had had a bad dream. Lay down in her bed and fell asleep.

Sometime after sometime after 4: Woken by The Wictor patting my face. It was still dark. Took him back to bed, lay down next to him and fell asleep. Again.

Around 7: Baby Sister came in and woke us both up.  I was so tired I kept insisting it was still nighttime, but my children were wiser and soon had the light on and every battery-operated toy we own up and running.

I know what sleep deprivation is, I didn’t really sleep much for six years.

But it turns out it doesn’t take long to get out of the habit.

I hope I make it to midnight tonight. In case I don’t - Happy New Year!

(or: Obviously the Evil Mommy, Destroyer of Simple Pleasures like Playing With Fire, was Not Home)

(or: Please Don’t Call CPS, They were Sort of Supervised)

(or: It All Turned Out Fine In the End)

The Daddy: “I left them alone for about 20 seconds. And when I got back, there was a flaming marshmallow in the middle of the lounge.”

Oh, really?

A few random things, because I feel the need for an update but last night The Daddy came home with not-one-but-two bottles of wine and then somehow after drinking the one it made perfect sense to drink the other, except the second one was a white and I have started to realize that white wine makes me feel less than good. Also, I may well have drunk more than my fair share of it and then worn thermal PJs on what turned out to be a very warm night and woke up this morning WISHING I WASN’T HAVING TO WAKE UP.

Dehydration is a killer and not a promoter of incisive thought, and the only rapid solution for me is to guzzle vast amounts of Gatorade. I happen to quite like Gatorade, but there was no way I was fitting in a special trip to the supermarket today so, *sigh*.

I suddenly realize that I don’t exactly promote myself here as the picture of health and vitality. Please know that behind the scenes I sometimes even eat fruit and vegetables and am a “Yoga Master”.  At least my Wii says so, during my six-weekly workouts, although it occurs to me that it also has the T-Bot convinced he is an ace at bowling when in real life, let’s just say he is very familiar with the gutters. But right now, I’ll take it.

At the moment I am drowning in parcels. Coming in, going out, of all descriptions. Family, you have been very  generous, and I can’t wait to see the kids faces on Christmas Day. I am so sorry I have to repay you by not managing to get your Christmas cards and in some cases, gifts, to you before the day in question. Um, Happy New Year? And truly, sorry…

I also did most of my Christmas shopping for the kids online this year and those boxes are arriving. I am secreting everything in our linen cupboard for now. (Look at me, all la-dee-da, pretending I have linen, rather than a motley collection of old towels and mismatched cotton bedsheets). Exactly how stupid am I? I forgot to remove the “linen” first. So that cupboard is fairly groaning and also I can’t find a towel without waiting until the kids backs are turned and hurriedly pulling everything out.

I am still getting Christmas orders, which makes me happy, and they need to get turned around and shipped out as quickly as possible also. Did I mention that the staff at the Post Office know my children well? Some shipping I can do online, but with my current setup it is not always possible. I need to change that, urgently. But sometimes change is such hard work.

Something else which makes me happy: tonight the T-Bot and Baby Sister are “camping out” in the T-Bot’s room. I put their mattresses down on the floor and they pretend the room is a tent. They went through a stage of wanting to do this quite regularly, and then T-Bot grew up and wanted to read in bed before sleeping, instead of snuggling in to tell ghost stories. He also realized at some point that little sisters are a pain. But he was in good mood tonight, and willing to tolerate her sharing his space. She went to sleep with a big smile on her face.

We are really getting into our stride with school, and now that we have a routine, of sorts, it is becoming more or less second nature. I am willing to admit, though, that it was a mistake taking Baby Sister out of “school at school” (as it is now called) on Mondays. I thought she could join in our activities but in reality, between her and The Wictor, T-Bot and I can never find a quiet moment to get anything done. So I decided that we will do what we can on Monday mornings, and then have science hour on a Monday afternoon.

This week we tried some activities from our Usborne Book of Science Experiments: we made a worm farm out of an old apple juice bottle and put pieces of cement and mortar chipped off the house into a glass of vinegar (scary, what vinegar will do to mortar in just a few hours). My favorite activity though, was a real crowd pleaser. We dropped raisins into a glass of Sprite and watched them go up and down, up and down, “like that man who tied balloons to himself and floated away” (T-Bot. What have they been watching now? ). Then, as usual, I got out the balloons. The Wictor discovered that if he threw his balloon onto the lawn over and over it would oblige by popping, and then he could whine for another. Baby Sister just wanted to bat her balloon and make it float. And the T-Bot made an artificial lung with his by putting it on the end of his Airhogs rocket launcher and pumping air in and out.

I know, that all sounds quite impressive doesn’t it? Come visit me on another day, when I will still be in my pyjamas at 11am.

There’s a reason I never diet. I don’t function when I am hungry. Low blood sugar just makes me into a kind of ghostly non-person, floating about the place but not really existing in any dimension.

Being fully aware of my condition you would think I would make sure to keep food in the house for myself and to eat it at regular intervals, wouldn’t you? Of course! That’s what a sane person would do! Sadly, although I make sure my children are fed and watered following a strict timetable, I tend to neglect myself. There is always something more important. And then time passes. In a kind of rapid haze.

This is how I came to skip breakfast this morning. Unless you define two spoons of sugar in an enormous cup of black coffee as a hearty breakfast. Luckily, I had thought to prepare a lesson plan for the T-Bot’s school day in advance, because if you want something done, you should never give the job to someone who hasn’t eaten.

Case in point: some time later I wanted to microwave my lunch, which happened to be pork and rice left over from last night’s dinner. But when I took it out of the oven it was shrivelled and hard, like a piece of old bark. In my befuddled state I decided I had typed an extra zero and set the cooking strength to 500% instead of 50%. (See what I mean? I got to thinking my microwave was magic!).

So, with lunch nuked (literally) I had to scrabble around in the back of the cupboards searching for something that wasn’t kids food, ie something yummy. Lunch: two pieces of toast with nutella.  Yes, that is technically kids food. But yummy. I meant to also eat an apple but didn’t. I will have another think about my colon tomorrow.

I’m not quite sure my energy levels were restored by that feast, as I seem to have spent the rest of the afternoon working furiously and accomplishing basically nothing.

I got a call from an old friend. Interpret “old friend” how you will. During our last conversation I announced I was homeschooling and she managed to run through items 2, 4, 6, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 19 and 24 from this list (link courtesy of Eryn) and mix up my son with another, teenage boy she knows who was suspended from school for looking up girls’ skirts. And then she never called again. I never called either, because, well… see above.

I think I managed to get through this conversation with dignity, mainly by saying “uh-huh” and “oh?” until she hung up.

After picking up Baby Sister from school  I took everything out of the garage and gave the kids free reign. So of course they decided to fill and use the wading pools and I was too busy fantasizing about sushi to stop them. Before you say anything, it was 80 degrees out there when they started. By the time they got out the temperature had dipped just a little, so I cranked up the heating and sent them to warm up in front of the TV.

At which point they exclaimed “TV! Oh! Is that what it looks like? What a wondrous box! Why have you kept this invention from us until now?”

… I bet I really had you there.

My husband came home and declared himself very very tired. We are currently sitting facing each other, on our respective laptops, each waiting for the other to crack and go start dinner.

I will totally win this one.

On Saturdays my children are prone to begging and pleading to go to the park. By this they mean that they want to go to the playground, rather than just any old open space to which we would like to drag them, such as  “Daddy’s Park” (where The Daddy goes running) or “That Park with No Childrens Stuff Where We have To Walk Forever” (Nature Reserve).

Sometimes we manage to buy them off with a DVD from Blockbuster instead, but last Saturday I must have been feeling generous or energetic or guilty because I said yes.

Getting to the Playground is, however, a major undertaking. We do not have a decent playground in our neighborhood. There are token parks, or as the neighborhood association so quaintly calls them, pocket parks. I personally do not see any use for this type of playground, and I believe that the local children feel the same way, as the only movement you ever see around the mini slide and swing set is that of squirrels and stray dogs. Sometimes the dogs in question are not even stray and their owners do not appear to be carrying any form of pooper scooper.

So, OK, local amenities, not acceptable. This means we have to load up with water bottles, snacks, spare clothes and first aid kit and drive 15 minutes into the middle of nowhere, to our nearest fully-featured playground. And it’s a good one. It has, for example, this slide.

I like to call it The Slide of Death because I can’t actually imagine how the city managed to get insured for this structure in an area where there are small kids running around. My children, however, love it.

But the park is also very popular on a weekend. Especially with birthday parties, and on Saturday there were no fewer than three birthday parties going on in the various BBQ areas around the place. The climbing structures were swarming with children, which is not necessarily a bad thing, as my kids love other children. But there was also a weird vibe coming from the playground. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

Was it the fact that the main play area had been taken over by fully armed insurgents?

Or maybe it was that most of the parents seemed to be missing. By missing, I mean nursing a beer next to a barbecue pit 200 feet away, while their toddlers and preschoolers ran wild.

I try not to be judgmental but please. There is a pond not 100ft away from that playground. God knows I am always losing my own children, but at least I make an effort to keep tabs.

My children played. I followed The Wictor closely just in case one of the soldiers felt like menacing him up there on the battlements. They seemed quite nice, but you never can tell.

Then a little boy grabbed my hand. “Swing, please” he said, as he pulled me toward the bucket swings. I felt a little uncomfortable. I mean, some parents get upset when you put their 3 year old on the swing and will rush over and embarrass you with nervous tales of how little Jimmy is scared of heights or can’t be pushed high because of this or that disorder. As I put him into the swing I was hoping that his caregiver wasn’t watching, and I resolved to push him gently, just in case someone was waiting to pounce.

Actually I didn’t get a chance to push him at all, because once in the swing he immediately wanted OUT. And, as I tried to wrestle him OUT, I started to wish that his caregiver would pounce and share with me the secret of how to unstick him from the swing. It turns out that Little Jimmy was heavier than he looked, and combined an inability to extract his own legs from the holes with the ability to squeal like a stuck pig.

Several sweaty minutes later I succeeded, and then we took a walk around the playground, looking for his family. “Is this your brother?” I asked, pointing at an older boy he had been playing with earlier. “Yeth!”, he said, his face opening in delight. It wasn’t. So I let go of his hand and watched him run down to the BBQ pit. I sincerely hope that was his family and he did not get taken home by some random strangers at the end of the day.

After this I decided it was time to leave. But by now Baby Sister had made a friend. Not just a friend, a BFF.  From whom she was in no way to be parted.

At first I was happy to see them running around having such fun, until I realized the other little girl was brandishing a very dirty, wooden skewer. Along the ramps, up the ladders, down the slides… all the time with a filthy, pointy skewer just inches from my daughter’s perfect face. So I approached and very nicely asked the girl to put the dangerous implement down.

“No, I won’t” she said, with the assurance of someone who always gets her way. I looked around for her parents, but I assume they were down at the BBQ pit having fun with Little Jimmy’s folk.

So I gathered up my children. The T-Bot, very excited because he had found a plastic rifle sight, which I euphemistically labeled “binoculars”. Baby Sister, dragging her feet and spelling out her name for the skewer wielding friend while making fervent promises to meet her again on our next visit. And The Wictor, who had been patiently following me around the whole time.

The kids were full of the park. They had such fun at the park! Park That! Park This!

I was just … exhausted.

Next time they ask for the park, we will be driving 15 minutes in the other direction.

Last night The Daddy and I were going out to meet friends at a fancy restaurant, so I jumped out of my jeans and threw on a very pretty flouncy red skirt (one I didn’t even remember I had!), a little eyeshadow and I was ready to go.

But then, as we were getting out of the car at the restaurant, I looked down and realized I had forgotten to shave my legs. “It doesn’t matter,” I reasoned, “I will walk in quickly and sit down with my legs under the table and nobody will notice”.

Unfortunately, as we walked into the joint, within sight line of our expectantly waiting friends, I glanced down again and saw I had gorilla legs which could not be hidden. In fact they probably already had been noticed, and from across the room. They looked something like this:

You remember when you were in elementary school and you had to write a story so you wrote a fantastic(al) one full of adventures and robots and dragons but then you didn’t know how to end it so you finished off “and then I woke up and it was just a dream” ?
(I still cringe every time I see a childrens’ book author use this technique now. Unless it was Mo Willems, in which case … forgiven. )

Well, I didn’t make it up - it was a real, true dream I had last night, and also an apt illustration of how the little things are getting neglected around here. I am busy and never make it to the bottom of the List of Things To Do. I feel I need to make some small changes.

I really don’t think I should give up any part of my already lightweight social life, although I am currently debating as to whether I should be maintaining a social life at all, given all the tasks which are piling up around the house. While I am pleased to report that as of today the whole house is clean and tidy (yes, you read that right! Ten minutes a few times a day plus dark threats to the children accomplishes wonders) some pesky chores still linger.

Now, after two enforced full nights of sleep, I am starting to think anything is possible. And I had an idea!

I would like to invite you to my house!

Yes, you!

Attention, you are only welcome if you have one of the following skills to share:

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1. Sewing skills.
I have my own sewing machine and three pairs of jeans awaiting hemming. I do not like my jeans to go flippety flap when I walk. But I have given up taking them in to the little lady in the room behind the laundromat, as she seems to think the pins I stick in them are just for decoration, and they always come back plus or minus an inch from the desired length. Although I am out of necessity still wearing the last pair which she cut to hang uselessly around my ankle, they do not make me feel sexy.

I will serve you a cup of coffee while you hem my jeans. I will lean on the kitchen counter and we can chat while you sew.

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2. Sealing Skills

Are you handy with a sealant gun? The joins in the shower are starting to go moldy and normally this is my job. It is difficult finding a window of opportunity when the shower is dry, the children occupied and I do not have anything else to do. Also, the fumes are obnoxious, I usually run out of rubber gloves, and then I get sealant on my hands and the skin falls off. This does not make me look sexy.

I will serve you a cup of coffee while you reseal my shower. I will perch on the side of the bath and we can chat while you seal.

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3. Ironing Skills

Some people like ironing. I am not one of them. I could double my wardrobe and triple my husband’s if I could just bear the squeaking of the ironing board long enough to iron more than a work shirt (one at a time, in haste, around midnight). My ironing basket and my unfolded laundry basket sit next to each other in a closet and guess which one is always more full? These old crumpled t-shirts are the opposite of sexy.

I will serve you a cup of coffee (or three) while you iron my forgotten clothes. I will lounge on the couch and we can chat while you starch and press.

…..

4. Plumbing Skills

Feel free to drop around at any time if you are good with toilets.

We have four toilets and I fix probably one a month. This open invitation is for someone who lives close,  as toilet emergencies often need dealing with fast.

I need to be able to say “Hey! Doing anything this morning ? Why not drop around now?”

I will serve you a cup of coffee, then shout to you from the other room while you plunge an upstairs toilet.

……

Open House at My Place Next Week!
P.S. Don’t worry. You will not be required to shave my legs.

I have absolutely nothing to write because my brain is mush.

In a minute I will give up and go join the kids in the yard, where they are running around scaring each other with paper plates folded in half. Sorry, not paper plates, mouths.

No, they are back indoors. The T-Bot just interrupted me to tape his mouth “mouth” to a cardboard roll, presumably to better scare other children from a distance.

As Baby Sister ran past, she dumped her paper plates and declared me a “mouth-sitter”.

The Wictor found some M&M’s somewhere (I don’t know, it was Halloween a while back, I have been busy, I have been distracted) and dropped them all over the floor. So at least his “mouth” came in useful for scooping them up.

Now T-Bot is riding the cardboard roll, yelling “Giddy-Up, Mouth-horse!” .
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The Daddy will be home in 30 minutes, expecting at the very least a glass of wine with his dinner. He will be disappointed because I didn’t go to the supermarket today.

Are you serious? That would mean changing and combing my hair.

And putting some trousers on The Wictor.
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Have a Happy Weekend!

I love fall and winter in the US. It’s an exciting time of year, involving three straight months of anticipation and celebrations, beginning with Halloween.

For us, everything started with last weekend, when Baby Sister and Wictors’ school had their Fall Festival at a nearby park. Have I told you before how much I love their school? Almost all the teachers and staff were there, on a Saturday, patiently manning the stalls and supervising activities. There were train rides and a Bouncy Castle and popcorn and candy floss and in deference to the loud influx of Europeans they have had this year, hardly any candy (although someone did point out to me somewhat disapprovingly that there was a lollipop pull). Baby Sister found a group of Princesses to join and they hung out like mini teenagers at the mall, getting their hair sprayed pink and their faces painted together. Meanwhile The T-Bot ran around all the games, delighting in each plastic bug or orange pencil he won. The Wictor was happy to hang out in the playground and I was happy to let him because phew!

As we left, Baby Sister did the rounds of her teachers, past and present, gathering hugs. For a while there it did feel like we were part of a big, happy community.

Which brings us to tonight, Halloween night, an evening of high excitement. The Wictor and Baby Sister were already strung out on sugar when I picked them up from school, and despite a couple of hours of cooling off time in front of the TV (Charlie and Lola, if you must ask), by the time we had finished dinner and changed them into their costumes they were so out of control that The Daddy abandoned his plans to take them Trick or Treating. Which meant that the job of keeping them out from under the wheels of passing cars fell to me.

We did the same as last year - visited about 10 houses on our block before calling it a night. They were actually very good, held hands and tried to remember to be polite and say Thank You. This may or may not have had something to do with my threatening a return home and early bedtime if they did not comply.

(Ha! the Daddy! He knows Nothing!)

We then spent the next two hours running excitedly between the lounge (now strewn with candy wrappers) and the door, servicing the stream of Trick or Treaters. Yes, strewn with candy wrappers. I am no killjoy.

Let me tell you now about some of our more memorable Trick or Treaters. There was the circa 16 year old dressed as a Naughty Nurse, who met my eye as she gouged two great handfuls of candy out of my outstretched bowl. Another 16 year old came by herself, sans disguise, and didn’t even pause her cellphone conversation to say thank you. By far the strangest visitor was the woman in her 40s who, after her children had chosen candy, stopped me as I tried to take the bowl away. “Please, Trick or Treat!” she said, and then, picking through the bowl, “Ooh! I like this one. And this one”. Confused, I didn’t say anything.

There were plenty of rude teenagers and a smattering of cute little kids too. And then we had a surprise Halloween visitor. He barged into the house and ran around scaring the heck out of Baby Sister, who proceeded to take the roof off with her wailing. After The Daddy calmed her down she was happy to come outdoors and pet Rambo. He thankfully was very friendly and had a tag on his collar with his name and phone number. And once his owner had come by to pick him up, it was bedtime.

And now it’s my bedtime too.

PS We brushed our teeth very carefully.

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We were standing in line at a checkout yesterday morning when the man in front, who had been studying us out of the corner of his eye for quite a while, suddenly turned to us and addressed the T-Bot:

“Hey,” he said, not unkindly. “Can you count?”

In the last few weeks we have fielded all manner of questions born out of curiosity but usually these are in the vein of “Why aren’t you in school?”, “What school do you go to?”, “School out today?”.  To actually be tested on our eddy-cayshun is a new experience.

“Yes,” answered the T-Bot, puzzled. “I can count”.

And just now, as I was uploading 152 photos from the camera to the computer, I found the proof:

We sometimes give our eldest our one and only and extremely indispensable camera, and just let him go to town. The results are usually variable, with one or two excellent shots, some quite good ones, and others that just leave us scratching our heads. He is probably not the next Cartier-Bresson, although may be taking inspiration from Man Ray.

There was the time he took photo after photo of our 1980s era recessed ceiling lights:

Which is probably on a par with the time he took 53 different photographs of his feet. Granted, from slightly different angles. I can’t find them now. Do you think I might have deleted them?

There are plenty of successes though. Hanging on our guest bedroom wall we have an abstract which is actually a T-Bot self portrait. Of the inside of his mouth. And this time we did get some, ermmm… interesting portraits:

But I also found exactly 32 photos of mess, which I am obviously not going to post here because then you will know just what a tip my house has become. If you want to get an idea of the scale of the problem, try here .