Lately

Today I did a lot of this.

That’s washing dishes in case you couldn’t tell.

It was also laundry day and the last load of towels just finished drying.  I might even fold them tonight instead of unceremoniously dumping them into the still full basket of unfolded towels I did last week.  Maybe not.

I had Peanut clean her room again this morning before she could watch Little Einstiens (we rented it from the library and she LOVES it).  I only have her do it once a week but apparently that is still too often in her book and she whined and cried most of the time about it.  I don’t know where she gets that from.  She certainly never sees me complain about cleaning (note the stacks of dishes behind me in the above photo and you can’t even see the ones hidden by my body).  I reminded her I needed to make cookies today and if she finished her room in time she could help me but if not then she was out of luck.  At the mention of cookies all whining ended and the room was clean in less than ten minutes.  She even asked me to vacuum it.  I must remember this tactic for the future.

ODD’s family reunion is this weekend.  Just his immediate family.  Since there are 10 kids in his family and all of them are married with families of their own it’s a really big reunion with around 50 people.  We are in charge of dinner on Friday night along with one of his sisters and her family.  Most of my part will cook in the crock pot(s) all day but I also need to bring a dessert.  Rather than heat up the house that day with the oven I decided to heat up my own house with it today and make a million cookies to take.  I made a huge batch of Nieman Marcus cookies, baked half of them, and froze the other half to take along in case we need more.  I prefer them freshly baked anyway and this way they’re already put together.  I usually have frozen cookie dough balls in my freezer so I can bake a couple up whenever I want.  Which is, like, every afternoon while my kids are napping.  Or more often than not I just eat the frozen dough.  In fact, here’s a pic of Peanut eating some from this afternoon.  I ate my fair share, too.  Please don’t send me emails or comments about salmonella.  We partake of raw cookie dough knowing the risks.

The other day while at the store I saw somebody go by with plants in their cart and was reminded I still needed to buy some so I went right over to the nursery and did.  It was in the evening but I was so excited I planted them in the dark when I got home anyway.  I think a couple of my poor little tomatoes may have survived the snowy flood but they still look rather flaccid so I bought 4 tomato plants, a couple of bell peppers, and some jalapeños to replace what I lost.  As I mentioned I was really excited about replacing all my sad, dead plants and in my glee I also picked up some romaine lettuce, yellow crook-necked squash, and pickling cucumbers to give them a try.  My beans have almost literally exploded through the soil and are getting huge really fast.  Snails and slugs have been eating my peas like I cannot believe.  I saw them at work the night I planted a bunch of my new stuff and shrieked in horror.  ODD flung them into our neighbor’s yard.  We’re great neighbors, huh?  They don’t have a garden so we figured we were probably okay.  Maybe their loud dogs will kill the snails for us.  My sweet Aunt E gave me a bunch of herb starts from her garden the other day.  I was admiring her garden and she told me I should take some of the herbs home and give them a try in my garden.  I couldn’t argue with that so I’m now the proud owner of oregano, mint, sage, and tarragon.  She has a big strawberry patch in her lovely garden, too.  Seeing hers makes me excited for mine to keep growing.  I don’t want this to turn into yet another big, long gardening post but I have been taking a lot of pictures of my little babies as they grow so if you’re interested they’re in the garden set of my flickr account.  It also includes grapes, cherries, baby roses, and irises that were already in our yard when we moved in.  Peanut likes to pull the roses to pieces and sprinkle them all over the ground.  Some days I feel like royalty (a la Coming to America) walking around the yard with rose petals under my every step.

This months is a month of reunions for us.  There’s ODD’s family reunion I mentioned but a couple of weeks later I have a choir reunion, seminary council reunion, and ten year high school reunion.  We didn’t go to my five (we didn’t go to ODD’s either) but I think the ten will be fun.  At the very least the food at the high school reunion should be good.  We’re going to a great restaurant so even if the only person I have to talk to is ODD I can still stuff my face with yummy stuff.