You Learn Something New Every Day

In the past few days, I've been learning lots of new things. Did you know that Almond Joy and Mound now use a Jamaican theme to sell their candy? Red Robin is now selling a really awesome looking burger with fried onions and other yummy toppings. And the movies that are coming out in the near future? Yeah, I'm probably not going to see a single one. The Toyota commercials with new customers touting how they still bought their cars even after the recent recall issues make me giggle, though.

Why do I know all this?

Wellll, on Friday, I sat down after the wee ones were in bed and turned on the tv for the first time all week. Funny - you'd think with me being off work I'd have more time to watch tv and get caught up on my computer, but oddly the reverse is true.

I immediately flipped over to the saved shows on my DVR and started to watch one from a couple weeks ago that I hadn't yet seen. Oddly, it had no volume. I sighed, as this sometimes happens where the volume goes out for awhile but then comes back partway through. No dice. I tried another one. Same thing.

Then I noticed that my husband had stopped the recording of one of my favorite shows earlier in the week so that only a single minute recorded. I sighed and decided to watch at least that one minute. Annnnnnd nothing. I received the error message "Sorry, no video data detected. Show not recorded."

Uh-oh.

I began looking at other shows, and they all had the same volume problem. I noticed other shows that had taped in the past week that also recorded only for one minute. Even shows that I had watched previously with no issues and saved no longer had volume.

I tried watching just the regular tv, but it wouldn't change to television and instead kept playing the silent recorded show. Worried, I flipped over to straight cable instead of the DVR feed, fearing that all tv was gone. Nope, that still works.

I went through my usual fixes of turning off the DVR and resetting it. I reset the cable modem. I reaffixed the little laser DVR readers to the cable box. Nothing. Nada. Zip.

My DVR has died.

I've lost three weeks of LOST now, two weeks of Grey's and Private Practice and other shows that I won't quite admit to - the last two were revelation enough. And nothing else can record until this gets fixed.

Our DVR is a Replay TV that offerd a lifetime subscription. I think we hit its lifetime (granted it's over seven years old and my husband has been begging me to replace it for years with a model that allows you to record one show and watch another and does so in HD).

We kept it all this time, however, as I had no interest in paying an extra $15 for cable for something I was essentially getting for free. I knew it couldn't last forever, but I didn't think it would just go like this.

Since Friday, if I wanted to watch something, I had to be home to watch it, and I had to watch it commercials and all. I couldn't rewind and rewatch something particularly interesting or something I missed. I couldn't pause to read details on the screen that are too quick to catch when watching live tv.

And I haven't been home much. I miss my shows. That's sad to admit, isn't it?

How did we live without DVRs again? What technology is now a required one in your life?

Irish Soda Bread - Tasty Tuesday!

This week, I had a plan for what I was going to put up on Tasty Tuesday. It's my week to bring in lunch for everyone at the bi-weekly PTO president meeting in my district. And hey, it's St. Patrick's Day on Wednesday, so making something Irish was an easy choice.

Not so easy? Figuring out what to bring for 25 or so people that's Irish but isn't something that half the people won't like. Thus, corned beef was out. And lamb stew. I was going to do baked potatoes with a variety of toppings, including chili, until that was done last meeting.

Ugh.

Then I found inspiration (literally). While cleaning off my book shelf to make more room for the wee ones' books, I discovered that I have a traditional Irish recipes cookbook. I eagerly leafed through it. And then I decided that I was bringing in the cookbook just to show everyone how lucky they are that I didn't bring in any of those items.

I was back to the drawing board and drawing a blank. I finally decided to make a potato soup (still deciding what recipe to use, if you have a suggestion), fresh bread, scones, and Irish soda bread. Wa-la. Hopefully that's enough food to make everyone happy.

The Irish soda bread I make is the same one that my mom makes that her mom made that she got from her husband's family who came from Ireland. That being said, I have a feeling it isn't the most traditional Irish soda bread, but it's ours and it's yummy.

You'll notice in the picture that the bread has butter on it. Odd, I know, but this is something my family does. While I rarely put butter on regular bread, my family has taught me to put butter on other bread-like products that definitely don't need any additional fat or calories - coffee cakes, muffins, cinnamon rolls, and the like. Go fig. It's what we do. And the butter on the Irish soda bread is pretty yummy.

Irish Soda Bread

Ingredients:
5 c flour
1 c sugar
1 T baking powder
2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1/2 c butter
2 1/2 c seedless raisins
2 1/2 c buttermilk
1 egg

Directions:
Grease two large loaf pans. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Cut in the butter until pea sized chunks appear. Add the raisins and stir to distribute.

In a liquid measuring cup, add the egg to the buttermilk and whisk gently until the egg is lightly beaten and no goopy strands remain. Add the buttermilk mixture to the dry ingredients, and stir gently until just combined.

Turn into the two loaf pans, and cut across the top lengthwise. Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour. Butter the top when it comes out of the oven. Lay on one side for a few minutes, then lay on the opposite side for a few minutes. After both sides, remove from the pan and continue cooling on a wire rack.

Enjoy warm or room temperature. This will keep for a few days but is best within the first two days. And yes, butter makes it better!

For this and more, go visit Blessed With Grace and Tempt My Tummy Tuesday.

That'll Teach Me To Listen To My Mother

A couple weeks ago, as I was about to walk out the door to go to work, my mom looked at me (and keep in mind, this is at 6:15am and I am not a morning person) and said, "Wow, you're really getting grey!"

Yep, just what you want to hear from your mother first thing in the morning. Now I will admit that I've never been one to color my hair. To be honest, it just seems like so much maintenance and time that I don't have. My mom, on the other hand, has been coloring her hair forever and doesn't actually know the true color of her hair anymore.

That little comment stuck with me. And now that I have a little more time on my hands since I'm staying home for a bit, I decided to do something about it. It could be fun to color my hair and have a little bit different look for a bit.

Having never done this before, I decided to find one that is not a permanent color. The last thing I want to do is have a disaster on my hand until my hair grows out. I looked around, and I was shocked at how hard it was to find non-permanent hair coloring. But I was persistent, and I found some that claims to last for a month.

The hard part was finding a color. I didn't want to go blonde. Or black. Or red. Or really anything with a major difference. I wanted to find something that had a little bit of a hint of color and highlight more than what mine does naturally these days. I finally settled on one that was a mild auburn. It was fairly close to my natural color but a bit brighter.

I read all the instructions and followed the preparations. As I poured the color from bottle one into bottle two, I was reassured that it was a lovely brown color. I put on the gloves and shook. I was supposed to shake until it was thickened, but who knows how long that takes. I kept shaking and shaking and finally decided that had to be long enough.

On went the dye, and I somehow managed to not get it on anything other than my hair. I consider that to be a minor miracle. I set the timer for eight minutes, figuring that it had taken me a minute or two to apply everything, and I was to leave it on for ten minutes.

Once I heard that magical beep, I began to rinse. I added the small amount of water to my hair and worked it into a lather. Next step was to rinse until the water ran clear. Yep, that's when I realized we might have a problem.

You see, the water was running purple. And I don't mean mostly brown with a little color, I mean full on Northwestern purple with a hint of red. My first instinct was to hyperventilate, but I managed to hold that back. As much as I love purple - and yes, it's my favorite color - having purple hair wasn't really what I was going for.

Every splatter against the shower walls freaked me out more, and I quickly used the gloves to wipe away those traces - because if I can't see them, it didn't happen, right? The water finally ran clean, much later than I thought it should have.

I cautiously peeked at my wet hair, and it appeared to be much the same as it was before. Of course any dark hair that's wet looks the same, but hey - it made me feel better.

Then I looked at the gloves I'd been using first to apply and then to rinse my hair. That's when I actually did start hyperventilating.

This doesn't do a good job of showing how truly red the gloves were (I so need a good camera!), but this doesn't look like the brown with a bit of a brighter hint that the package had promised, does it?

As I dried my hair, the sunlight streaming into the window showed me exactly what I had on my hands, errr my head. It was a gorgeous color. For Sharon Osbourne. In fact, I think this might well actually be her color.

Ironically, I heard my mom come into my house at this point, as she wanted to take Little Miss to gymnastics. I walked downstairs, and she started laughing. This is not a good sign. Once she recovered, she asked whether I was trying to go that red. Umm no.

Once Little Miss got off the bus, we moved into the kitchen, where I had the blinds closed. The good news? When I'm not in the sun, it doesn't look nearly so red. In fact, it's actually a decent color. I'm working on staying inside in bad lighting for the next month.

See? It's cloudy and rainy and yucky right now, so the red isn't coming out very well but you at least get the idea. Sorta. I should really know better, shouldn't I?

The friends I've seen in the intervening two days have yet to comment at all on my color change. And you know what that means - if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all as my mommy taught me.

Twenty-seven more hair washes, and I'll be back to normal. I hope. Apparently my virgin hair really liked the dye, so I'm hoping this doesn't mean it will last longer for me, too. In the meantime, does anyone have a cute hat I can borrow?

Bring On The Bubonic Plague

This Easter is shaping up to be a fun one for me.

My husband has tickets to the first game at Target Field (the brand new home of the Twins) for their exhibition against the Cardinals, which is my husband's favorite team. He mentioned that he had these tickets and that we were going to go, along with a friend of his from St. Louis.

He neglected to mention that he didn't have tickets for the wee ones (although with a night game on Friday, that would be a trick anyway). And he neglected to mention that this was Easter weekend. Once I found out those two facts, I started hemming and hawing - and we love our baseball (and football and hockey) around here, especially in person.

Easter is a holiday weekend. It's for families. The wee ones want the Easter Bunny to bring their baskets, and I want to be with them to celebrate. We sort of agreed that we'd drive up sans children on Friday and then drive home Saturday immediately following the game. That's a lot more driving than I want to do, but it worked.

Then we got The Call.

In February, my husband's younger brother announced he was getting married. Considering that he's eleven years younger than my husband and had already been engaged once and had it broken off, forgetting the fact that he's made a lot of life choices that I certainly hope the wee ones never do, we didn't put too much stock into it.

Then we heard that they were planning to get married quickly (and no, not for that reason). They didn't have a date, but considering that my husband coaches in the spring and is either at or hosting tournaments most weekends in spring, he was fearful of what the date would be.

We finally heard from my MIL that the date did not coincide with any coaching commitments. Not only did it not coincide with any of the coaching dates, but we weren't invited to the wedding. No one was. They were getting married in Vegas and then holding a reception later.

The reception? Yeah... the Saturday night before Easter. Good-bye first Twins game. Oh, and the reception is going to be held about forty miles east of where my in-laws live.

Now we have a problem:

There is a reception that starts at the wee ones' bedtime in a city where we have no childcare on the night before Easter. The wee ones are invited to the reception, but I am sure there will be behavior there that I just don't want them exposed to.

The only good news? My husband got it and agreed with me one hundred percent.

But how do you say that you aren't going to your brother-in-law's wedding because it just doesn't work with your schedule? That just isn't going to fly.

My husband's aunt offered to let us use her babysitter for the evening. Buuuuut someone I've never met watching the wee ones in a city they don't know well while we are almost an hour away just doesn't quite sit well with either of us.

So we noodled and noodled on it. (Fortunately, the reception invitation hadn't come while we were thinking.) My husband finally suggested that I might become deathly ill on the Thursday before the reception, which would preclude me from coming. And maybe the wee ones will start to come down with it, too. (Sadly, you can see the impact of how we was brought up in the fact that missing Easter with the wee ones doesn't seem to faze him.)

And now I'm the bad sister-in-law hoping that I get sick. Or rather, planning to get sick. Then again, my husband didn't sell his baseball tickets for the weekend until we got the text last night from Vegas from his brother in law stating that "The deed is done."

I'm Becoming Me Again

Today: ran, read, wrote.

Frequently doing my choice,

at home, loving it.

The wee ones are fed.

We play and have fun and work,

getting used to Mom.

Commitments are met;

my inbox unread are down.

Piles are decreasing.

I went out to eat.

I feel like I have friends again.

Next: Mani pedi?

I'm into Week Two of my leave of absence, and I can't believe how quickly the time is flying by. While I'm not getting nearly done what I thought I would (outgrown clothes are still unsorted, I haven't packed the eggs for the Easter Egg Hunt, and my filing hasn't been touched), I've been cooking dinner each night and playing with the wee ones, getting to the gym, feeling mostly caught up with the PTO, and I think I'm less crabby.

May 24 is coming up really quickly. Here's hoping I'm ready for it!

*This* Is Not My Child

Little Miss still naps. Yay! Most of the time, she actually sleeps, but there are times when I have to head upstairs during naptime to figure out what she's doing up there. I've yet to fully decipher the bangs and what the differnt kinds mean.

Yesterday, I was hearing noises that I was pretty sure meant Little Miss was jumping on her bed, which is a no-no in regular times (her bed isn't built to withstand that) and definitely verboten during naptime. I sighed and headed upstairs.

I found her laying atop her bed bouncing slightly, and whining.

Hey, Peanut, what's the problem with sleeping here?

I'm cold!

Well, of course you're cold. Climb back under your covers, silly girl.

And then the crying ensued. Seriously, this girl needs to pursue a career in drama. She has got the crocodile tears thing down pat. Ohhh the horrors of childhood in my house.

I finally got her calmed down enough to tell me what the problem is. But, Moooooooooooom, if I get under the covers, then the bed will get all messed up again!

Oh. Huh. Well, yeah, now that she mentions it, I notice that her bed is rather ... organized. Her blankets are folded, and I don't remember having done that in the past few days. Hmmm.

The truth finally comes out. Little Miss made her bed this morning, unbeknownst to me. When I put her down for her nap, I not only put her under her covers, but I also "ruined" the blankets by covering her with them. While I'd been downstairs, she'd remade her bed and refolded all the blankets. And rearranged all her stuffed animals.

Oh.

Well.

I'm not quite sure where this came from. My bed gets made on the days when I change my sheets, and that's it. I tried briefly to teach Mister Man to make his bed a couple years ago, but it didn't take, and I let it go. It just isn't that big a deal to me.

I'm pretty sure an alien is inhabiting my daughter's body. On the other hand, I'm not sure that this is an entirely bad thing.

In the end, we struck a bargain. She'd take her nap - under her covers - and I'd help her remake her bed after naptime.

I had to wake her up three hours later from a nice, sound sleep. And then she directed me in exactly what I had to do (while she helped) to fix her bed just the way it's supposed to be.



Weird, I know. How long do you suppose this stage lasts?

Tasty Tuesday!

It's that time again. And hey, with me having been not working for the past six days, I've whipped up a lot of great food right? Welllll sorta. I've been cooking each day, but unfortunately I've for the most part I've gone with tried and true recipes from the quinoa entree to chicken noodle soup to spaghetti and meatballs.

Oops.

Fortunately, I also had bunco last week (ummm twice with two different groups, sadly), which means I had to whip up something to take with me. I chose to go the dessert side, knowing that I was going to be slightly late and didn't want my food to go uneaten.

Fortunately, it wasn't. While I have a few leftovers, for the most part, my mom's recipe for Texas Sheet Cake Brownies was gobbled up. And several people asked for the recipe, so here goes:

Texas Sheet Cake Brownies

Ingredients:
2 c flour
2 c sugar (that is not a typo)
1/2 c butter
1/2 c shortening
1 c water (my mom sometimes used coffee, but sadly, I don't drink it so I use water when I make them)
1/3 c cocoa
1/2 c buttermilk
2 eggs
1 t baking soda
1 t vanilla

Frosting ingredients:
1/2 c butter
2 T cocoa
1/4 c milk
3 1/2 c powdered sugar
1 t vanilla

Directions:
In a large mixing bowl, mix the flour and sugar well.

In a heavy saucepan, combine the butter, shortening, cocoa, and water (or coffee). Bring it to a boil, and boil for one minute. Pour the boiling mixture over the flour and sugar mixture.

Stir briefly. Add the buttermilk and stir until just mixed. Add in the two eggs (I beat mine ahead of time, then add them), baking soda, and vanilla. Mix well (this sounds weird, I know, but my instructions tell me to beat on high for one minute. I can't quite bring myself to do that, but I do bring it to high and beat briefly, and they don't turn out tough).

Pour into a greased jelly roll pan. Bake at 400 for 20-25 minutes until the cake springs back when you touch it.

While the cake is baking, melt the butter in a small saucepan, adding the milk and cocoa. Stir well. Remove from the heat and add the powdered sugar and vanilla. Beat until smooth.

When the cake comes out of the oven, use a fork to pierce holes throughout the cake. Pour the hot frosting onto the hot brownies and spread to cover completely.

Let cool, then cut into squares and try not to eat them all.




Enjoy! For more recipes, check out Tempt My Tummy Tuesday with Blessed with Grace!