Let it SNOW!

Feb. 2013 Snow Storm - Boston MetroWest

9am Friday	11am Friday - snow starting
2pm Friday - a few inches	4pm Friday - approx. 4 inches
8pm Friday - at least 6 inches	9am Saturday - 28 inches - (shot taken from inside the house because we were unable to open the back door)

Other Pictures

Side porch with extra tall baby gate

Many hours later, you can only see the top of the gate.

Baby gate from the front - see snow drift patterns	Hurricaine force winds
Front porch Friday morning	Front porch Friday evening
Front porch Saturday morning	Front porch Sat. morning - blue cooler under here, with a road/street in front of the house
Saturday afternoon - snow almost at kitchen windows	While we had 4-5 ft. snow drifts in some of the parking areas, our car only had a light dusting.

The Fish that Got Away

I'm not the type of parent who micro-manages.  I know too many parents who are constantly in their childrens' faces, managing every second of their day, obsessing about their appearance, and making every decision their child needs to make.  I take more of a laid-back approach, allowing my children to make choices - sometimes the wrong ones - so they can learn and grow.

The same is true for projects.  With three children, one in his senior year, I've seen my fair share of projects.  I don't micro-manage school projects either.  I'll help with ideas, buy supplies, help with research, if asked, but I don't take over the project and the ultimate product - good or bad - is up to the child.  I can't tell you how many times I have seen other children's projects - especially for science fairs - where it is 100% obvious that the parent did most, if not all of the work.  That annoys me to no end!

So now take everything I've said above and apply it to projects that involve artwork and twist it inside out and backwards and throw it in the trash.

I LOVE ART PROJECTS.  Unfortunately my children did not inherit that gene.

A few weeks ago, The Crazy Clown brought home an art project where he had to research the history of mandalas.  He had to come up with a theme for a mandala, look at examples, plan and draw a mandala, color it, write an essay about it, and present it to the class.

As soon as I saw the paperwork, I immediately got out my mandala drawing book because I have one and I am a geek like that.  Long story short:

Instead of "helping" my child, I became a complete control freak, monster parent who obsessed over the project and did the ENTIRE thing. (He chose the fish/ocean theme). 

The Crazy Clown: "Wow, Mom.  That is freaking awesome!
It's so awesome that if I turn it in, I will definitely get a F.
  My teacher knows I could never do anything like that!"

So yeah.  NO restraint when it comes to art projects.

The Crazy Clown ended up creating his own mandala.  He traced a dinner plate for the outside circle and traced a coffee mug for the inner circle.  The mug handle made the circle warped, but apparently that was ok with him.  He used a crappy blue Crayola marker to color some water and used an orange marker to make dots to represent fish.  I pretty much kicked his ass in mandala drawing.

Since you're begging, I'll post one more picture of my beautiful artwork, but then I have to go get started on the clay pot for the Ancient Islamic Artwork project.  It's due on Friday and I'm running out of time!

Can you get herpes at the grocery store?

This is the white board I keep on the side of the fridge.  When someone in our family needs something, they write it on the board.

Score: paper towels: 3, jelly: 3, glass cleaner: 2, herpes: 1

I have Cinematic Dyslexia

I'll confess.  I'm not even sure if Cinematic Dyslexia exists, but it totally should because I have it.

Last night I told my husband I wanted to watch a movie, but I couldn't remember a single detail about it.  "I can't remember the name of the movie or who is in it, but the cover has a picture of a boy on the front".  He had no idea what I meant.  He sucks.  
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477302/

I often describe movies like this, "We should watch that funny movie we watched that one time that had that guy from the doctor show and that girl that you saw at Harvard once and it's about weird people in New York."   
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0333766/

I also completely confuse names of actors and actresses.  "We should watch that movie with Will Farrell and Jennifer Aniston.  I think it was called Spotless Sunshine". 
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338013/

I often confuse two actors on a consistent basis.  Morgan Freeman was awesome in Jurassic Park.  Samuel L Jackson is the voice of God in all those Will Farrell movies.  One of them is in the Die Hard movies, but I have no clue which one. The other guy in the Die Hard movies was really awesome in Sixth Sense, but I didn't like him in Cheers.

And sometimes I'm really amazed at the connections I make.  We were watching that movie where that really tall guy who sings funny songs and plays with puppets was in Hawaii trying to get his girlfriend back and that girl who worked at the hotel had the exact same voice as the girl from Family Guy! And I seriously can't even give you a IMDB link for that movie.  I'm sure the movie is called "Saving Sarah Marshall" and the only thing coming up is "Saving Silverman".  I've never seen that movie, but I do see that Jack Black is in it.  I'm not a fan of his, but I did like his version of Gulliver's Travels with that girl who was in that tv show about a tv studio.  She was also a dental hygenist con artist in that movie with the guy from Friends and the guy from the Die Hard movies. So hey - Six Degrees of Separation with the paragraph above.  Yeah, me!

My husband was watching that Fox show where the entire season is 24 hours long and I couldn't believe how much that guy looked like the guy in the original MASH movie.  Turns out they're father and son!  Yeah me, again!

I also can't watch certain movies because I fixate on something about the actor.  I've tried to watch Lord of the Rings a million times, but I fixate on that short, pudgy dude.  I know he is the son of Patty Duke and every time I see him my mind plays this on a continuous loop:

"Yes, they're cousins, identical cousins and you'll find...They laugh alike, they walk alike, at times they even talk alike..."

And then I get angry because Patty and Kathy didn't walk or talk alike and anyone who thought they did, obviously was not paying attention!

Then I remind myself that I'm watching Lord of the Rings and I should pay attention to the movie, but then I think about Gandolf and he reminds me of Gargamel from the Smurfs and I wonder what ever happened to all those little rubbery Smurf figurines I had when I was a child.  My brother used a Sharpie to color Smurfette's bra-top red and I was soooo mad at him!

Then I remind myself that I'm watching Lord of the Rings and I should pay attention to the movie.  When the short, pudgy dude comes on the screen again, I wonder how he can be so short and pudgy.  I know Patty Duke used to be married to John Astin and I think that John Astin is the short, pudgy dude's father.  How the hell can he be so short and pudgy when Herman Munster was so tall?

So I think they need to develop a test for Cinematic Dyslexia.  I should call Conan O'Brien and see if he will do a segment on it.  CNN often does health-related stories and they could put it on his 360 degrees show.

Toto, Pteradactyl Cats, Tomato Salsa, and Jason

Last week I had a brilliant idea.  I recently bought this new kick-ass Ninja blender and while the thing is awesome for making smoothies, I wanted to try making something new.  Let me just say that I LOVE fresh cilantro.  I could eat it by handful.  But sometimes it needs to be mixed with something.....enter the SALSA.

When we were ordering groceries the other day, I carefully researched salsa recipes online and added the following items to my online shopping cart:

• Fresh tomatoes
• Fresh cilantro
• Limes
• Red onion
• Fresh jalapenos
• Fresh serrano peppers
• Fresh garlic

Sounds good, right?  Right!

This is totally NOT what my salsa looked like.

So while I had all the necessary ingredients, I didn't really think through my idea.  I chopped the onion in half and threw it in, threw in a whole clove of garlic and all the other fresh ingredients.....including the tomatoes.

I pressed the button on my Ninja and within seconds everything had turned into SALSA BABY FOOD!  Yeah.  I realize now that I should have chopped the tomatoes by hand.  They were complete mush.

So today I had a second chance.  I recently met a neighbor at bus stop.  Our sons ride the middle school bus together.  Jason, the father, talks about his garden a lot and first he asked me if I'd like to come to his house and see his cucumbers, (Yeah, it's not what you think....) then he asked me if I'd like some of his cucumbers (still not what you think...)

Yesterday he arrived at our house unannounced. During the work day.  While THE LION TAMER and I were working.....  He brought a bag of fresh produce from his garden.  He apologized for not having any cucumbers, but he did have fresh Roma tomatoes, fresh jalapenos, and fresh serrano peppers.

So while I was making small talk and being polite, all I could think about was SALSA.  I knew I still had onions and cilantro in the fridge, but I also knew the clock was on countdown. I had a work conference call in 30 minutes.  Would I have enough time to chop everything and get it in the fridge before the call?

I made small talk for a few more minutes and then thanked him again for the wonderful produce. I slowly started to walk toward the doorway.  Instead of following,  he proceeded to tell me about the different strains of green peppers and which ones thrive in certain soil conditions and temperatures.

I decided to be a little more direct.  I apologized and told him I had a conference call in 25 minutes.  That's when he sat down in the middle of my kitchen floor and said that my black pug dog looked a lot like Toto.  Then he cackled like a witch and said "I'm going to get you my little Pretty!"  In my dog's face.  And then he did it again.

Not to be ignored, my fawn pug went over and pawed at Jason's leg.  She wanted attention too!  Jason ignored her and cackled at the black pug again.  The fawn pug pawed again.  Jason told her that he refuses to acknowledge negative behavior.  He cackled at the black pug one last time and then turned to the fawn pug and whispered in ear ear.  I didn't really get what he was doing until he turned to me and told me that he's watched every single episode of The Dog Whisperer.

And then I was smacked in the face.  No, not by Jason.  He was incredibly sweet and harmless.  I was smacked in the face by my own lack of observation and the realization that Jason has Aspergers.

 Here I am - the mother of a child who has Aspergers, the wife of a man who *sometimes* admits he has Aspergers - and I was being a judgmental, impatient ass.

At that point, I said "to hell with the conference call".  Seriously, I said it out loud.  No one heard me though.  My husband had come in the room and he and Jason were debating the theory that cats evolved from dinosaurs - specifically Pteradactyls.  They also talked about gene mutation and virus evolution and antibiotic resistance and encephalitis and strep strains and the version of syphilis that has no cure.

For Jason

Today I finally had time to make the salsa.  And the tomatoes didn't turn to mush.  I put the large bowl in the fridge so the spices can blend together.  Tomorrow I'm going to take it to Jason's house.  He wants me to meet his wife.  I want to see if we have anything in common.

Food Producer/Packaging People are Assholes

Dear Food Producer/Packaging People -

I am writing to tell you that you suck.

Tonight I decided to make my family a special treat in my new, kick-ass Ninja Prep Professional Blender.   While my husband and I fondly remember Orange Creamsicles from our childhood, my children have never tasted them.  I was positive that there MUST be a way to replicate this smooth, tart, orange, creamy goodness in a healthy smoothie drink format, so I devised a recipe with the following ingredients:

• frozen orange juice concentrate (100% juice)
• milk
• vanilla whey protein powder
• stevia
• ice cubes
• liquid vanilla flavoring

This looks yummy, right?

So I put all the ingredients into my kick-ass Ninja blender and the result was absolutely HORRIFIC.   

*I* simply grabbed the liquid vanilla flavoring from my spice cabinet and poured a smidge (or two or three...) into the blender.

One of these things is not like the other.

Is it MY fault that two almost identically-shaped clear bottles with brown liquid were side-by-side in the cabinet with their labels facing backward?  Hardly not! 

*You* failed to label BOTH sides of the containers.

And now, because you couldn't spend that extra $.20 to label both sides, my children will basically be traumatized for life and will probably never, ever taste an Orange Creamsicle smoothie.  Way to go, assholes!

Yeah, I did.

A glimpse inside my kitchen