Romance Lives

Don't you just hate it when a beloved thing--whether it be your favorite jeans or the perfect pillow or the best flavor of chips--is suddenly nowhere to be found? Such has been the case this summer with my beloved Perry's White Lightning ice cream.

It just hasn't been in stores. I've had it once at a seasonal ice cream stand, but for whatever reason, stores weren't stocking it anymore. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing to not have a full half gallon of irresistible temptation in my very own freezer, but still. Bummer.

But then!

A. went to Pennsylvania yesterday to spend some time with friends and returned this afternoon with a bag. "I brought you a treat," he announced. And he pulled out a quart of White Lightning* that he found at a random gas station on his way home and of course purchased for me, because he's been married to me for 12 years and knowing your spouse's favorite kind of ice cream is just something that comes with a dozen years of marriage.

Wuv. Twue Wuv.

* Apparently Perry's has started marketing it in its special and smaller-sized "Escapes" line of ice cream. Probably so they can charge more for it, but whatever. I have White Lightning in my freezer.

It's the Journey, Not the Destination

A. took the day off of work today, which of course means Fun Daddy Day for the small children. And that, also of course, means fishing.

I mean, what else do you do with Fun Daddy?

A. was going to go all the way (ten miles) to the general store that sells live bait, and I was all, "You need worms? It's been raining for five days. We have worms."

And then me and my big mouth spent the next half hour lifting heavy rocks and gross old rotting logs so the kids could pull nightcrawlers out of the ground.

We also found a lot of ants and way too many slugs.

The things I do for these children.

After a sufficient quantity of bait had been collected, the whoooole happy family loaded up and went to the village dock for some fishing. At least, A., Cubby, and Charlie fished. Jack and I sat at a picnic table listening to the village maintenance guy mowing the grass around us.

Big downside to summer: the omnipresent combustion engine and its roaring noise. Loud engines, I hate you.

Anyway.

The lake was too muddy from all the rain for really good fishing, but A. caught a few bluegills and Cubby caught a goby all by his ownself. Cubby and Charlie are even now setting up the goby's "habitat," by which I mean they're chucking rocks into the metal container outside that will be his home (and eventually his grave, as all gobies die in captivity).

Fun Daddy Day, indeed.

We're Cool. It's All Cool.

Other than the three days of thunderstorms we've had, which has made for some cooped-up hellions and a lot of wet clothes. We did have the bonus of a rainy period yesterday with no thunder, so of course Cubby and Charlie ran around like manic ducks, soaking themselves and ending by shivering uncontrollably (it was only about sixty degrees) but NO, they did NOT want to come inside. Who cares if our lips are blue, Mom, our water bugs* want to play in the rain. They LOVE the cold!

Right.

Jack has slept more or less through the night for the past two nights. This is in contrast to the past, oh, two weeks, during which he decided to destroy his mother by waking up like four times a night.

Okay, so maybe he didn't consciously set out to destroy me, but that was pretty much the result.

But now I feel almost human again! Hooray! So I made some rhubarb sauce.

We had way too much rhubarb sitting in the refrigerator for way too long and our first CSA box arriving today to claim all the refrigerator space, so I made the recipe for Victoria Sauce in the Ball Blue Book. It has sugar and raisins and spices and hey! That's pretty much chutney. It's good, but a little too sweet. I bet it'll be really good with our pork, though.

Let's see, what else?

Next week is Cubby's last day of preschool. That same day will be Jack's six-month birthday. My sister is arriving the day before with her family for a short visit. She's coming on her birthday, actually, so I promised to make her a chocolate cake. Jack doesn't get any, though. Sucks having no teeth sometimes.

And I think we'll end here. Happy random Wednesday, my lovelies.

* A strange plastic bug toy that came free in a Wendy's kid's meal, and Charlie's sunglasses. Those were the water bugs. No one could ever call my kids unimaginative. Weird, maybe, but definitely not unimaginative.

Wow

I just spent ten minutes in the bathroom with Charlie, trying to calm down his raging tantrum long enough for him to pee and then get to the bed he OBVIOUSLY so desperately needed.

Ten minutes of mustering all the calm I could in the face (the literal face) of a screaming, shrieking, crying, writhing toddler.

Know what he was (ostensibly) crying about? His shorts. His filthy shorts that he did not want to deposit in the basket to be washed.

I don't know either.

This is three years old. And I'm oh so happy that it and its freaky, shrieky behavior arrived a whole month early.

(Sarcasm. So very much sarcasm.)

Speaking of Weapons

I just found this on my kitchen floor:

A disgusting old deer antler with a rubber band on it? Nope. It's a bow.

And this outside the dining room door:

A random old piece of metal with a rubber band on it? Of course not. It's a crossbow.

The crossbow, incidentally, works pretty well. I shot one of Cubby's twig arrows a good ten feet with it.

Not sure which is supposed to be Robin Hood and which is Little John, but they're both merry (little) men. Especially when they're eating pumpkin bread in the hammock. Beats tough venison in Sherwood Forest.

Creative Weaponry

If you've spent any time around the mother of small boys, you will no doubt have heard her complain that her male children can turn anything into a weapon.

And I do mean anything.

To me (and to my mother, who gave it to us), this looks like two pieces to a foam boat that can all be pegged together and floated in the bath.

To my boy children, it looks like "bills," an imaginary animal that uses their hooked ends to battle each other. If that makes perfect sense to you, you are probably a man.

To me (and again to my mother, who again gave this to us), this looks like a pretty cool wooden rattlesnake.

To my boy children, it looks like a whip for whacking your brother. Obviously.

We also have this electronic toy guitar that my sister gave us that just recently has been discovered to be a perfect rifle. It even has this lever on it that when flicked makes an electric guitar noise OR, if you are my sons, the exact noise the laser guns make on He-Man. It's about the most annoying thing ever.

I could go on, but I'm sure you get the idea. It doesn't matter what you give them, they will find a way to weaponize it. 

At least they're creative. I guess.

Happy Eggs

My egg-eating evolution has gone from not eating eggs at all when I was young, to only eating scrambled eggs with ketchup (a marginal improvement), to eating hard-boiled eggs with butter, to eating eggs fried in butter (still with a hard center, though--deliver me from runny egg yolks), to only wanting eggs fried in bacon fat. And not just any bacon fat, either. Good bacon fat.

So basically, I started out picky about eggs and haven't really changed.

The problem with only really liking eggs cooked in bacon fat is that you have to have the bacon first. And I don't really dig bacon all that much. I mean, I'll eat a piece if it's there (and it's worthwhile bacon, which is not the case with most bacon), but I don't want to eat bacon every time I want to eat eggs.

I know. Weird.

Anyway.

On the occasions when I did cook bacon, I would have a happy couple of days following when I would have bacon fat to cook my eggs in. But the bacon just didn't make that much fat, so it didn't last that long.

You know what bacon does make a lot of bacon fat, though? The bacon from a Large Black Hog. This breed was one of the breeds of so-called "lard pigs," which means they were raised for their nice layer of fat.

We picked up the bacon from the MiL's pig this weekend and I cooked five pieces of it on Sunday morning. From those five pieces of bacon, I got enough fat to cook our eggs that morning, plus an extra half cup of fat.

That's a lot of fried eggs.

So now I anticipate always having a nice big bowl of bacon fat for cooking my eggs. And that makes me happier than I ever would have thought possible.