Running on empty

We are doing fine so far on the TP front, and we have yeast and flour. 

However, some scoundrel finished off the stroopwaffels and left the empty box in the pantry!

That’s pretty close to a declaration of war...

AND I’m out of cookie butter.

I’m not trying to downplay their seriousness of the real world issues out there, because they ARE serious and I can’t even imagine the front lines of those who are living with this virus. Be safe, people. Do the very best you can to keep yourselves and others from getting sick. Please don’t take unnecessary chances, please support whatever local eateries you can, and please try to brighten the lives of others. Be well!

“Let me sum up...”

Ongoing Lego challenge

Full disclosure: the Lego challenge was to build a house and he did, but this was before the challenge started and he wanted to use it. Impressive either way!

How does your garden grow?

I don't know about you guys, but I get a little stir crazy at the tail end of winter before everything greens up and it all looks dead, brown, soggy, grotty, and dead. Ha. So I inevitably gather up a bajillion old pots and bags of dirt that Dada graciously concedes to buying and I sift through my seed packets trying to decide what I want to plant. I didn't order any new ones this year, so I'm crossing my fingers and hoping for the best!

Starting on the left, and if everyone shows up, we will have morning glories, then pansies in the foil covered pot as they like to start in darkness, the green pot with strings to hang from will host Thunbergia which is something white and winding along with Zebrina Malva Sylvestris which, oops, looks like a hollyhock upon Googling. Oh boy. Well, continuing on, in the tan pot are some leggy lettuce sprouts, four sun gold tomatoes are starting in that red/orange pot and last but not least are zinnias and rudbeckia which is a fancy name for Black Eyed Susans, I think. I hope.

The guys in the foreground are brandywine tomato and red currant seeds while the background are Allegheny Sunset tomatoes and cucumbers. We haven’t had good luck with cucumbers since The Best Nest where Dada had the raised bed gardens complete with the soaker hoses. Here they tend to drown in the spring and shrivel up to look pickley in the summer while they are still cucumbers! 

The three pots on the floor are sun golds for Zita, on the table are Thumbelina zinnias, and between them in the plastic bin are marigolds, Cherokee Purple tomatoes, black cherry tomatoes, yellow pear tomatoes, sweet basil, bee balm, more Rudbeckia, some sweet peppers, and some Genovese basil. And I still have more dirt and more seeds to play with! I’m so excited! With all this rain, though, perhaps I should begin cultivating water lilies... for our moats...

I know I've talked about this before, but some of you are new here. I tend to be more of a "let's plant these for the bees" than a "let's plant these for us" gardener. In fact, gardener is too strong of a word for what I do. I should label myself a putterer. I love plants that self-seed and I drive Dada to distraction as he, with his orderly engineer's mind, likes things tidy, in rows, cooperating with each other and not hogging nutrients while my vegetation philosophy runs towards, "flowers like to be close to their friends, too!" My things crowd each other, avoid each other, don't come up where expected, and come up where they are unexpected. I love that marigolds will crop up wherever they feel like it. "Don't pull him! That's a basil! He stays. And he stays. I don't know what that is. Let's leave it and find out; it's cute!" Can you hear Dada rolling his eyes and protesting? That's how I found out about mulleins, which are cool tall spiky plants with tons of blossoms and large, super soft leaves I've been told make an excellent substitute for toilet paper. Good to know! Especially these days, ha.  

I got a bonus seed packet of Chinese Foxglove last year, which I did nothing with because I didn't know anything about it. I had Dada look it up this year and it looks to me like borage, and even better, it says "tendency to self-sow". WOOHOO! He says I'm fired. So if you hear adult voices squabbling from our general area, carry on. It's just our annual Battle of the Blossoms.  

Don’t mind my Lucky Charms...

I don’t want this to cause anyone anxiety. Just breathe and repeat, “that is not my table. That is not my table.”

But I would like to point out a downside to homeschooling. All the food consumption that happens! The dishes along one side of the table are all from the same person!

Pay no mind to my Lucky Charms on the other side of the table. Yes, I buy those around St. Patty’s Day for some fun at breakfast. It’s supposed to be a dessert cereal after they’ve had something like Cheerios and it’s supposed to be a small portion but I hear, “they came out fast” with some regularity.

So once This Child gets up, there may be Beatings. If said Child has a device in his/her bedroom and is already on it, there will definitely be Beatings!

Getting creative

Liam's got Jedi ponytails going on...

Bless Damon's art teacher who assigned a pillow fort (medieval castle). He grabbed armfuls from multiple rooms and made many trips to the basement. Several attempts later  he had a defendable fort including Nerf gunnery and catapult (his black belt) which doubled as his flag, one of the art teacher's requirements.

He even had a horn to herald in there!

Blast off

The Damonater decided he wanted in on the Lego challenge action as well. Here he is in his Star Wars jammies, listening to our John Williams station on Pandora, with his rocket for today's challenge:

Anybody besides me ready to yeet all devices out the window? 

Saved my bacon

So my Mary Alice saved my bacon big time; she sent me a 30 day Lego challenge. I showed Liam who promptly responded, "awwwww yeaaaaaah. Challenge accepted!"

Today's suggestion was to build a roller coaster:

He explained every part to me and my conclusion was, "so what do you call it? The Barfmobile?" Lots of spinny parts and some upside down parts and Dada turning green and *hurk*!

Maybe this is a tasteless way to plug, but did you know that this year is Cedar Point's 150th birthday? If you haven't been for awhile, might be a great year to check it out. Provided we're all allowed to be out in public again this summer, naturally...

Anyway, I don't know that I'll blog every single day, but I'll try to showcase his best work. I know there are pirate ships, tree houses, rockets, and more to come! What are you doing with Legos, Playdoh, art paper, toilet paper rolls, recipes?

My Jen also shared that Mo Willems of Gerald and Piggie and the Pigeon fame is posting YouTube videos called "Lunch Doodles" so wander over thataway and check him out. He reminds me of a Bob Ross crossed with Mr. Rogers. Lots of fun! Get creative and share your work!

A snapshot of self-sequestering

While chomping on a hot dog and working on metric system conversions, Thing Three is singing, “I farted, it tickled, my butt cheeks jiggled, so I did it again...” 

Sorry, Mom. This is my reality. 

Also, yes, that is a recorder beside the laptop. The school sent them home. Welcome to the eleventh circle of hell.

“What are you doing? Don’t take my picture. Why is my door open? It isn’t noon.”

Yes, my day is clear. For now until the foreseeable future. Just like many others who are trying to stay home and out of trouble...

My dishes are done! For a hot minute, anyway. So is my load of whites- washed, dried, folded, and put away!

Thing Two was banished from the device to the Legos so his eyeballs could have a break. This is one thing he never complains about being sent to. Getting him to leave the Lego table to go back to work is a different story.

And Dada with his bottles, computers, and microscope has taken over the Grandparent Suite, requiring the removal of some furniture and the installation of some other pieces. Desperate times, right?

The dogs, who are outside while it's not raining, are a bit bemused by all of us being home all the time, but I think they're secretly enjoying it. 

I'll leave you with this beloved little nugget:

Wash your hands and say your prayers, 

cuz Jesus and germs are everywhere. 

Stay safe, everyone! As my Uncle Gary often says, 

"good decisions, wise choices."

When it rains...

The headlight on my passenger side has burned out. I had anticipated that we'd take care of it over the weekend, but we forgot. I'd been taking Dada's car in the evening to pick up Thing One from work so that I wouldn't have to tempt fate to warn me about said headlight. His car needed to be run anyway as he usually takes the truck and we'd had some really cold temps. So no problem until...

He took the car to the airport for this trip. And it's dark. 

And it's raining.

Stink. 

Now, the truck is an automatic and therefore in theory I could drive it. However, it is also humungous and I am not a country girl who can drive/park/back up just about anything. Let's just say spatial awareness is not my greatest strength. So for my virgin truck driving experience to be in the dark and in the rain is probably not the very best possible idea. 

 I opt for risking a nighttime drive in Pepe the Pilot, the one headlight wonder.

My entire way north to pick up said kid, I'm chanting, "no cops, no cops, no cops, no cops" and humming Tom Petty's "One Headlight."

I end up in the lane beside and behind one once I'm in town. Whew. 

A mile down the road, maybe two miles, in the dark, in the rain, my driver's side wiper suddenly flips so that it looks like a smile and starts thudding along my windshield. Are you even kidding me? What the heck? Pepe hangs out in the garage. I haven't had to scrape the windshield, there's no ice jamming anything, I didn't hit a bird. ARE YOU EVEN KIDDING ME? 

It is doing no good at all. Then it jams, wedging itself under the hood. The passenger side one stops and, figuring it can't get any worse, I turn them both off. It looks like I am underwater. There's rain all down my windshield, a ditch along my right side, one pitiful headlight doing its best, I can see not only the road signs sticking straight up but also their reflections in the water pooling on the road, and yay, here comes a roundabout! Good times! "Oooooone headlight..."

My chant changed to, "ack! Need a cop, need a cop, need a cop, need a cop..."

Thankfully, I am a mile or two from where I need to be and the lighting is better as I'm heading into town. With my eyes glued to the line at the side of the road, "eek, where'd it go? Okay, follow the center line..." I navigate safely into the parking lot, zip up my raincoat, and then investigate the dratted wiper. I manage to unwedge it (apparently that's not a word, but I'm claiming it as one. Right now.) and as I wiggle it around I am left holding the long blade piece and a clippy piece. In theory, these things fit together and then fit back onto the arm that is poking straight up into the rain. I am unsure of my ability to click everything back together in a manner that will A) last the ride home and B) actually be helpful.

So I do what women have been doing for thousands of years. 

I march into the business where I'm picking up my child anyway, greet the cop I know who happens to work there as I drip on his rug, and chirp, "could you please help a damsel in distress?"

For his part, he was already in his raincoat and was cheerful enough to not only venture into the rain with me but also gave me a rudimentary lesson on "if this should ever happen again" insert clippy thing A into slot B and what have you. 

I kept quiet about the headlight. After all, he IS a cop...

We turned the wipers on and lo and behold they worked perfectly. Thank you, thank you, thank you! 

On the return trip my TPMS button lit up. 

Thing One mused, "hmm, Toilet Papered My Self?" Works for me. Pretty sure it's tire pressure something something but I like her version much better. 

Now sometimes this button comes on, hangs out for a moment, and then turns back off. Usually when it's really cold and I've just gone from the relative warmth of the garage to outside on a frosty road surface. However, it was warm enough to be raining a decent amount and the button didn't click back off. It was still lit when we pulled into the garage.

Strike three, Pepe, and you're out. I'd love to stay and chat, but we are headed to the dealer to sort out the Shenanigans. 

Special thanks to the terrific cop who is the epitome of protect and serve, and who is a pretty terrific person all around. Really appreciate it. Thanks for saving our bacon!

*Update: Pepe received his new headlight, a new battery, and a new rear passenger side tire pressure sensor and I was told, "your friend did a great job fixing that wiper!"