I beat Alex so bad at Risk that it gave him PTSD (which is odd because he usually wins hands down in games of strategy as well as in real-life scenarios which require said skill). I know this because the other night when “Viva La Vida” by Coldplay came on he said, “This song is about playing Risk.” Now I laugh every time I hear it.
(I cannot embed it but if you click it twice it will go to YouTube.)
I had a yard sale Saturday and my friend Becky came and sold some stuff too. She said that Maggie came up to her and told her that “I had a nightmare that Tinkerbell was mad at me,” which I thought she said Abby and was like “Abby said that?” and she said “No Maggie” and I said “Oh yeah that sounds totally like something Maggie would say.”
Later that day we were in a store and I said “Maggie, did you tell Sister Matz that you had a nightmare that Tinkerbell was mad at you?” and she said, “Uh, Nooo, I told her that I had a nightmare that Tinkerbell didn’t like me. And then she threw my wand out the window.”
1. WAY too much TV.
2. I wish I was 6 & had that as my only trouble in the world.
Once upon a time my sister and I took a cake decorating class at the local community “college.” Our teacher felt that only scratch-made cake qualified as actual cake and we were given a copy of her yellow cake recipe, which was supposedly the one she uses for the cakes that she sells. It sucked. And lest you think it was amateur recipe mismanagement or a sabotaged recipe that was responsible—we have since had her version of it and it was the same as the horrors we constructed. So we put that little scratch-cake baby to bed and never attempted it since.
Until this past Wednesday. I had watched an episode of Everyday Baking on PBS and thought, “Gee, look how easy it is to make a yellow cake from scratch.” And since Martha Stewart herself condoned the recipe it could not possibly be bad, right? I followed the recipe exactly to make a coconut cake with 7-minute frosting and lemon curd filling.
(Q: When does 7 minutes take 3 hours? A: When you are making 7-minute frosting.)
At least it looked normal.
When it was done I tried a piece of plain cake and thought it was quite dry and kind of plain but I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt because I was humbly unsure of my own plebian opinion in deference to the refined taste and sophisticated palate of my Supreme Homemaking Idol.
Alex had slept all day and was oblivious to my cake-making plans, the scratch recipe, MS’s involvement, etc., when I gave him a piece of plain cake and waited anxiously for his analysis. Which was this (in all seriousness):
“Is it cornbread?”
Shame Martha Stewart. For shame. I was not this disappointed in you when you were sprung from the big house and incited a crocheted poncho craze.
Bleh
But I think I know where MS got the recipe and this leads to the “bright side of the story.”
When I was a kid growing up with my grandparents we Trick or Treated around our neighborhood block. Most people gave out fun-size candy bars/suckers/gum/etc., one gave out full-size candy bars, and one house alone we were not allowed to go to. Reason being when my grandparents’ kids were little the lady at that house gave out what was referred to as “frosted cornbread.”
But now I know the sad truth, she was giving out scratch-made yellow cake.
No Frosted Cornbread, Halloween 1981
And so as Martha Stewart dashed all hope of ending my box-cake addiction, she also solved The Mystery of the Frosted Cornbread Lady of Dorsey Street.
Alex got into grad school!! Yay!! He will be starting the WCU nurse practioner program this coming fall & it will take him three years part time.
Our hamster, Coconut (Photo Not Available), passed away some time between a few days ago and while I was eating dinner tonight and glanced over at his cage.
Coconut lived a happy little hamster life and put smiles on the faces of all the visiting children (who were promptly told, “Do not put your fingers in there, he will bite you” at which point Alex would say, “It is a girl,” and I would say, “No it is not” and just today I learned it was, in fact, a girl).
Visitation will be tomorrow at 4 p.m. followed by a brief memorial service for the immediate family. Interment will follow somewhere yet to be determined. In lieu of flowers, memorials can be made to the Community Pet Center at http://www.rutherfordpets.org/.
Song for the day:
Rest in Peace Coconut Hamster Beaumont, April 2007- May 6, 2009
“Potato slushies don’t exist.”
–Maggie, while being dragged around Wal-Mart for 2 hours
Today I was flipping through the radio and I got to hear the song “Islands in the Stream.” I am willing to bet that had Alex been in the car with me he would have claimed to have never heard it. Earlier in our marriage I would have called him a liar, but now I can face the truth.
The truth that he likes his cornbread to be sweet. He could not name a Ray Stevens song or character from Designing Women. Recently I learned that he had never heard of Lewis Grizzard. He hates Dukes Mayonnaise. He could not name one pitcher on the Braves’ starting rotation in the whole decade of the 1990s. He thinks he could drive in the snow if he got the chance. He doesn’t understand the concept of buttermilk.
While I do feel conflicted about certain unpleasantness involved with being from the South—things like the Civil War and stock car racing—I am so grateful I had the opportunity to be raised in a family that exemplified all my favorite things about it, all of it that is good and gracious and old timey and ideal to me.
UPDATE: When Alex got home from work this morning and read this he said he had never heard the song! I knew it. He also said it sounds like “Ghetto Superstar.” (-What- has the world come to? WHAT??) He did manage to name Greg Maddux.
Oh lovely back to school day. Sleeping baby. Sleeping Alex. Yay!
Since I have all this time to waste, I thought I would go looking for crocheted mice I made the girls for Easter that I was going to write a little story about. When formulating this plan I did not take into account that this would require searching approximately 7 Easter baskets and a messy room. That seriously throws off my trying to not accomplish anything schedule for the day, so instead I decided to share this note I found on the floor of their room:
I had no idea that this was going on in their room over the weekend but it is plausible that something the size of a pool could be hidden in there.
I bought this chair at the Hospice Store for $4 (and another one just like it):
And I did this to it:
I bought the girls some desks at Wal-Mart that are white and it turns out no one makes white chairs.
Ella gave me the fabric for the seats, it is stain resistant.
I made this bunny cake Wednesday:
It turned out much better than the first time I used that pan when I used jelly beans for the colored parts and they bled onto the white icing. Lorelei was very happy about her first visit from that guy:
We had a busy day today but managed to get some pictures taken before everybody got too sugared out to sit still:
Pay no attention to the hand behind the baby. She should be sitting up on her own by now but she just chooses not to.
Happy Easter!
Matthew 5
39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also.
41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.
43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
