Good Enough Isn't

"Good enough" is not a goal when it comes to food. "Good enough" is where one arrives due to constraints that can vary from budget to time. Why not take the extra time necessary to produce a "wow" moment rather than settling for just the ho-hum "good"?

There is a beauty in seeing something relatively mundane and necessary like food that has been crafted with careful attention and a desire to present one's best. A few days ago, the pastry chef in a local restaurant brought out the little treat pictured, and the ladies at our table were all Wowed. This plate featuring a pair of strawberries made my day with the level of artistry and beauty infused by the chef. Simple ingredients like berries, chocolate, and whipped cream were suddenly even better. That chef got it.

Disjointed Learning

I discovered that I can be taught despite my almost magical inability to concentrate for more than about five minutes before the eyes go vacant and the mind has left the building. Today was fun computer training day. Databases this morning with Administrative Genius and this afternoon will be photo editing with Visual Arts Mom. Yesterday was food safety class day. (I am generally pleased to report that food coming out of the home kitchen is safe according to current standards, but that my hair needs to be restrained. The kids so need to take this class. I was pleasantly surprised not to be eye-rolling, yawningly bored. Bonus.) Anywho...
I am content in my technical illiteracy. It works for me, and it gives my spouse the opportunity to rescue his charming damsel-in-distress (as evidenced by mild expletives and stomping from my cubby office) from the bad, old computer that does not always anticipate what a user really means. That said, I am highly entertained by the opportunity to learn how to make the mean machines do stuff besides inspire my blue streak. Nifty. We'll see if any of it sticks.
All this training is in preparation to be able to give a hand with two industrious areas at our church. The creative, brilliant artsy peeps need an admin. I am not their admin, but I am pleased to be able to help out with data entry--- and thrilled to be learning about the unused programs that litter my desktop because I don't really know what they are for... although I loved working with some old photos of Miss Katie today as I learned how to do things like make a color picture black and white and color in one little bit. The food stuff is where my heart lies. Food is probably my art medium as well as my (Look, it's the "dork" button! If I push it...) love language. Mmmhmmm.

Supermom

Ooooh. Today was just ugly. All the zillion details I juggle came crashing down. Hard. On my head. So I did what any self-respecting grown-up would do: I cried. I yelled. I probably threw a fit. It was singularly unlovely. I hate the start of the school year. My house is out of order following kids home all day for weeks, the schedule is still a work in progress, and there is a need for more flexibility on a daily basis than a human pretzel could muster. So I snapped a little bit. Thankfully it does not appear to be a permanent break with reason and patience. Here's to a bit of humility that reminds me that I cannot be superhuman no matter how much effort is exerted.

Calendar

After a summer when I only bothered to pull out the calendar on two or three occasions, the busy-ness of Fall is already closing in on us. A couple of months punctuated by trips to the swimming pool, grocery store, and church have led to a decisive laziness and lack of focus. Suddenly the reality of school starting is imminent with middle school schedule pick-up and Meet-the-Teacher at the elementary level. There are a zillion small tasks to get the kids ready for school from regulating bedtime to helping Katie decide how she wants to blow-dry her new haircut.
After the summer of showing up at my neighbor's house a couple of days a week to share a cup of coffee, I have reverted back to sending out e-mails in hopes of juggling assorted women's wacky schedules to allow us to all end up in the same coffee shop at one time. The church is launching a mammoth volunteer training effort this weekend for which I have been offered the opportunity to join in some serious sandwich-making with an eye toward lunch for the assorted volunteers-in-training. First, I need to take a food safety course before my sandwich-making commences.
A couple of friends have offered to show me how to edit my photos and do some admin stuff because I am allergic to technology and they are tenacious. (We'll see who wins out. I'm totally rooting for them.) At some point, I volunteered for the elementary yearbook committee, too. Next week will also kick off my wee munchkin care on Monday afternoons. I suspect the lazy days of summer have already slipped away while I was furiously scribbling in orthodontist appointments and meetings back-to-back.
Wheeeee!

Moodswings

I live with a thirteen year old and an eleven year old. Mood swings are just the norm around here. If someone is going to be whiny, obnoxious, or otherwise unpleasant then that individual should do the rest of the household (and the planet) the favor of keeping to themself. This plan has served relatively well in all but one instance.
When Momma ain't happy--- ain't nobody happy. Oh, yeah. The Moody Me has been out and unleashed over the weekend. Part of it is probably related to last week's Benadryl in quantity during my IVIG, and then Benadryl and more Benadryl throughout the weekend thanks to some kind of bug bite and the ensuing allergic reaction. Awesome. Benadryl wacks out my sleep habits and I am generally mean and oh-so-easily irritated when under the influence.
I refuse to continue this venture on the Dark Side. I am quite capable of being irritatingly chipper and cheerful. I'll just deal with the burning, itching, and the pretty, red rash. Taking my obnoxious self off to be alone in my nastiness is not an option because there are other people who come looking for me. Constantly.
Aside from the allergy badness, and off to a whole new topic on which I do not have enough to say to qualify as a single post. Don found a new weird Olympic event for us to watch--- Synchronized Diving. Bizarre, but high on the entertainment scale. Perhaps the amusement will pull me out of my funk... and if not there's always emotional eating, right? I still have some of those lovely (FREE!) cookies.

Give, Save, Spend

Katie wants. Evan wants. Erin wants. In order to determine which wants to fill, and which will be ignored, the lovies have been given a list of chores that will earn them extra cash. Said cash can then be turned into the fulfillment of their assorted wants. It will be interesting to see how much effort they choose to turn into cash this week. I want a maid, but this is the next best thing.
There is a catch. The extra chores are not compensated unless all the regular chores (the ones required of them for being members of this household) are completed and reasonably maintained. This does wonders to avoid the rush to hop on the extra (and higher paying) chores while ignoring their own messy bedrooms and laundry piles. The girls have been dynamos declaring that "I can't believe we said we were bored when there is so much to do around here!" Seriously.
Their earning frenzy presented an opportunity to talk again about giving and saving. We have offered them a suggested starting point of giving 10% and saving 10% of their earnings which will still leave 80% for their assorted wants. They have savings accounts that their Grandma says are for a car one day, and their Dad and I have made them an offer of matching savings while stressing that any money going into that account will be off limits to them. They are welcome to increase those amounts, or keep a separate savings toward large purchases, but only money in the grandparent savings accounts will be eligible for parental matching incentives which are contingent on their giving. All three have requested "direct deposit" into their savings and a tithe fund. Alrighty then.

Avoidance

Ever have to go where you just do not want to go? The last couple of weeks studying the book of Jonah has had me rummaging around to examine just where I might be avoiding something that I need to address. Of course, a handful of different somethings have surfaced. Yuck. Somewhat content with my policy of avoidance, I regret that it failed to work out. I don't want to go to Ninevah even though I am not even entirely sure of where my Ninevah is yet. I also know that I do not want to be stuck in the gut of some big, stinky fish either. *sigh*

What To Do

Possibilities. I have yet to go back to school in pursuit of a degree because I do not know what I want to be when I grow up. Last year's nasty little melanoma incident brought the question of, "What would I do to support myself, three children, and the assorted furballs?" should the oh-so-euphemistic "something" happen to Don. I am uninsurable thanks to a bout with cancer in high school followed by the myriad health issues from the immunodeficiency to the connective tissue disorder and mini strokes. (If you don't believe in answered prayer, let's chat.) Uninsurable is bad when there's a $5K treatment that has to happen fourteen times a year. (Yes, I am the reason your insurance premiums are so expensive.) Any-who... back to the possibilities.
I do not want to teach, or do anything that involves strangers' offspring. I am neither an artist nor an athlete. My technical skills include crashing Windows and asking my daughter how to send a text to someone not already in my address book. I have no formal training in anything. Uh-oh.
Volunteer experience I have out the wazoo. My primary interest is in trouble-shooting, logistics, and strategic planning. I like to make things go without having to step out in front. At the moment several possibilities have opened up including one supporting a batch of artistic folk administratively and another playing with food and beverages. A friend needs childcare once a week so she can do her job well, and I happen to be willing and available to keep her lovies while my own are in school. There was talk of helping to put together the elementary school yearbook, too. In a perfect world, I would be an event planner. I love to take a zillion details, a group of people with their assorted talents and abilities, and see them all come together to create someone's dream. It's just nifty.
Interesting to see how the various opportunities will come together. I'm not sure which tasks will be spot on, and which ones will be filling a need. I am also looking for the elusive answer to what formal training should be pursued toward the goal of becoming a bread winner. Don has our needs and wants covered, but he is correct in his assessment that I ought to have something I can do as a Plan B that can provide both income and insurance coverage should the need arise.

Multiplier

There are few things better than a cookie in my book. The obvious answer as to what those few things might be is "another cookie", but today we are enjoying the even better "free cookie". (I will also enjoy another one when the kids are not looking. It's good to be queen.) I earned these cookies by hitting not one, but three grocery stores yesterday in order to slash our grocery bill for the week with all sorts of specials. (The three stores are all within a mile or so of our house. There was no cross-country driving to suck up the savings on gasoline.) With both girls in tow, I found myself singing the "No" chorus so familiar to Moms everywhere as we cruised past the many and varied goodies proffered for sale.
I hesitated and nearly caved when Katie showed me the giant Snickerdoodle cookies on the thrift cart at one market, but after reading the label, I had to pass since one cookie had 300 calories. I also staunchly refused to buy the yummy little Goldfish crackers on sale 3/$5. I was exercising fiscal responsibility and good stewardship. It was the third stop where I finally caved. Read on before assigning blame for giving in to the wants and wishes of my darlings and my own cravings. Goldfish crackers were "Buy One Get One Free!" which dropped the 3/$5 price by a full third making my detail-oriented, cheapskate heart go pitter-pat. Then I saw the in-store coupons. Ooooh! Buy three bags of Goldfish crackers and receive a free (discount taken at check-out, nothing to mail in) bag of Pepperidge Farm cookies. Oh.
I felt my resolution evaporate as I stared at a bag of Pepperidge Farm Milk Chocolate Chunk Macadamia cookies. For those gentle readers unable to master the obvious, I was definitely going to take home my FREE (!) cookies. Purchasing only the required three bags of crackers for cookie coupon redemption, would mean leaving behind a free bag of crackers. That would be silly. With the tally already at four bags of Goldfish, what was the purchase price of one more bag to earn a third free bag of crackers and a second free bag of cookies? Who would pass up such a deal?! My reason is flawed, but I really don't care because I have not one, not a measly two, but 16 free cookies. It's good math when $6.50 brings home six bags of Goldfish and two bags of yummy cookies.

Self-serving

Sometimes reverse psychology works. It works best when employed unintentionally. Fed up with the children (who outnumber the adults around here) leaving their dishes out, I finally reached the outer limit of patience when I found a whole box of popsicles sitting out on the kitchen counter. This is a problem in Texas in August. In an unthinking moment, I declared that all three kids were officially grounded from getting themselves anything from the kitchen. Uh-oh. The smart mom in my head wished we could take it back, but the decree was loudly voiced and addressed not just one, but all three kids. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
This morning I left one child sitting at the table for five minutes waiting for me to get around to serving his breakfast which was a sane portion of food. (I am fairly certain breakfast cereal should not be eaten out of mixing bowls unless one is on a NFL payroll.) I offered the boy a second bowl of cereal if he would go for a walk with me. Nope. So he retreated to his bedroom. The girls' breakfasts were fairly uneventful.
Throughout the day, the kids had to wait on me when they wanted a drink or a snack. They had to remind me of their need for forks to eat pork chops. (Hee. That really was just an oversight.) One of them stuck her head under the kitchen faucet in a creative effort to circumvent the waiting, but I nixed that method immediately. (Ew.) By dinner time the whole brood was waiting patiently for me to make up their plates without so much as a complaint. I was highly amused by the excited responses when I informed the trio that they would be "allowed" the privilege of getting their own drinks for dinner.
I think I may be on to something here. All three kids feel like they have received a great privilege in being allowed to serve themselves. There is some serious potential here...

Boogers

I don't get it. As I scanned the headlines online this morning, I was a little thrown by an article regarding cloning Boogers. Booger was a dog. Booger's owner paid the bargain rate of $50,000 to have her dog cloned after the critter's death in 2006. (The cost to have your pooch genetically reproduced is estimated at up to $150,000, but the Boogers' owner helped with publicity so she got a deal.) Yesterday, I posted the web address for a site detailing an opportunity to assist a family who are in the midst of raising the necessary funds to bring their daughter home from Guatemala. Today, I am nauseated by a woman who spent more than double the cost of bringing home baby to have her dog (okay, her beloved dog-who-saved-her life) cloned. Of the five cloned Boogers, two will be donated as service dogs while three will return to the owners' property to live amongst the other critters. Okay, I do get it, but it still bugs me.

Team Adriana

Check out Team Adriana at http://teamadriana.com/ and join the adventure.