Going Down with the Ship

Captain Cubby, en route to Sandy Island to see his friend Turtle. (That's what he told me.)

With First Mate Charlie at the stern.

Mayday! Mayday, Mommy! Danger ahead!

And the predictable fate of the once-proud vessel (and its crew).

P.S. I made some joke at this point about how the laundry basket must have been the Edmund Fitzgerald. Captain Cubby informed me quite seriously that it was not, because it didn't have a hole in it (photographic evidence of said laundry basket/boat does show MANY holes, in fact, but we'll let it slide). And then he told me the tragedy was the result of the boat running out of its fuel: dill powder. 

 I guess anything is fair game for eco-friendly fuel these days.

The Cold that Killed the Weather Station

The SAD FACE weather station got so sad last night, it committed suicide.

At least, it got so cold last night that the weather station stopped functioning. When we got up at 5:30 this morning (thanks, Charlie!), A. went right to the weather station for a reading and found that there was no reading. The outside sensor--which runs on batteries--stopped working. A check of the old-fashioned mercury thermometer outside revealed that it was currently a toasty 10 degrees below zero.

A., our resident weather fanatic, was enthused about the low reading. I was not so enthused when I realized it meant the preschool would not be open today.

SAD FACE indeed. Especially since Cubby woke up this morning at 7 a.m. with both loud and hyperactive guns blazing. Figuratively speaking, of course.

But then, I remembered that it's Wednesday morning. And Wednesday morning means story hour at the village library! HOORAY! Almost as good as preschool.

Charlie and I have not been attending the story hour since Cubby started preschool, because frankly I enjoy my only-one-child time too much to willingly attend an event that features more like twenty children, but I sure was grateful for it today.

So we whooped it up at the library and then came home for lunch. As the kids were eating, I started wiping down various disgusting areas of the baseboards in the breakfast room we eat in, which is when I discovered that our bedroom isn't the only room with ice on the walls.

Yup, there was ice covering the bottom of the wall and the baseboards in the corner of the kitchen with an exposed exterior corner. In fact, the box of grapefruit that had been on the floor there--for obvious purposes of VERY cold storage--had actually frozen to the wall.

SUPER.

But hey, at least it wasn't my pillow.

A.P.D.--The Scrubbing Edition

I made an apple crisp for dessert last night. It was a party-sized crisp in a 13x9 inch pan, and so there were actually some leftovers. Miracle of miracles. Only about two servings were left, but at least that's something. The leftovers were put into the refrigerator in the Pyrex pan the crisp was orginally baked in.

Which leads us to the scrubbing part. Because baked-on brown sugar that's been sitting in the refrigerator for 24 hours is no joke in the dishes department.

Now some people would probably soak that dish until the morning, by which point everything would be nicely softened and easier to get off. Not me. I let it soak for the amount of time it took me to wipe down the counters, and then I attacked with the steel wool.

I love steel wool. It allows me to avoid soaking, which I hate. I will scrub a pan until my fingers cramp to avoid an overnight soak. I don't know why exactly; I guess I just can't stand to leave something undone.

Which leads us to the question of the day: Are you a soaker or a scrubber? Or can you actually put something that gnarly in the dishwasher and have it emerge clean?