My Weekend

I survived the weekend. It was pretty uneventful after all. Friday night I stayed up late finishing a good book: Fair is the Rose. I got all the way to the end and discovered that it was one of a set. UGH! Don't you just hate it when that happens? They should put a disclaimer right up front: THIS STORY TO BE CONTINUED. So, I took the kids to the library on Saturday, hoping to find the next book and finish the story. Of course, they do not have any of the other books in the series. The kids got some new books and a couple of DVDs. I left a bag of express mail on the dock Saturday, so I'm probably going to get my butt chewed tomorrow, but I'll get over it. We're eating off the freezer meals now. About five minutes before dinner, I just pop a zip-lock in the microwave and fill up some milk glasses. Yeah, I'm warming up to the once-a-month thing. Except the potatoes in today's pot roast had a disgusting texture. I'm going to have to work on my spud freezing finesse. This morning, I got everyone that was here to church on time. During the sermon the guy mentioned Cinderella, so while I folded clothes this afternoon, I watched Ever After for the hundredth time. I don't remember much else from the sermon--too many stories and anecdotes. Like a recipe from the once-a-month cookbook, I found myself wondering, "Where's the meat?" I miss my old pastor. And I'm getting tired of visiting churches. I thought that by leaving the pastorate, we would be able to explore new churches unobtrusively. Move out of the lime light, so to speak, but so far, it hasn't played out that way. We are simply fawned over wherever we go. It makes me uncomfortable, and I can't help wondering if all visitors would be treated to such an enthusiastic (bordering on desperate) welcome. What if we didn't know the lyrics to the songs, the order of service, carry our Manual, or speak the language? What if we weren't a white, middle class, nuclear family? How would we feel? How would we be treated? I'm sure once we get settled somewhere and join we'll just be part of the family and not a prize to be won, but this visiting is rough. Tomorrow the three oldest head back to swimming lessons at Nana's, and me Rina, and Randy will hang out at the old homestead. It was VERY quiet around here last week. Visions of things to come.

Deer Hunting

Interesting title for a June post don't you think? But deer hunting is the pressing issue at hand, nonetheless. I briefly considered "Why I Changed My Name and Took a One Way Flight To Aruba," but decided to go with the simpler, less emotionally charged introduction.
My father, the consummate buckmaster, has succeeded in his quest of securing a position for his son-in-law on a lease. Now, a lease is defined by Webster's as a contract by which one conveys real estate, equipment, or facilities for a specified term and for a specified rent. To the deer hunter it means they have been granted permission (for a sizable fee) to attempt the recovery of (often elusive, underpopulated) game from a small tract of (heavily hunted) wooded land. My dad, Lord bless him, has had this dream for many years. He has pursued it, nursed it, and now finally has brought it to fruition. This is HIS baby. The master, for his part, made the mistake of not telling him, firmly, "NO!" The first time it was brought up, and every time thereafter. He allowed his name to be put on the waiting list. He did not wish to disappoint his father-in-law, loves to be outdoors, and "does not mind deer hunting." I knew someday we would have to pay the piper, I just knew it.
So now, we are three weeks into the "great news" that the master has "made it" on to the lease. The master and I have had two fights about deer hunting. "I'm sorry, I must have misheard. You want to spend what on the latest in pop-up blinds?" Master spending money on deer hunting + Me after three weeks of slaving in the kitchen so we could save a few dollars on groceries=marital unrest. Our immediate family has surrendered one entire weekend to the pursuit of a bigger and better deer stand. This coming weekend, Dad "needs" the master for two full days to do some "work" at the lease. I (with two hours of assistance from my mother) will be expected to do the mail run, laundry, feed and care for five children and get them to church on Sunday. The logistics alone of this venture are enough to turn my stomach. And guess who has been left to plan the details? Do you suppose the men have, since it is their absence that is creating the chaos? Oh, no, no, no!
My mom and I began this morning to work out how all of this was going to happen. We had a fight.

ME: (as the voice of reason) This is not going to work.
MOM: I put up with much more when I was your age, yada, yada, yada....you need to let your sons bond, yada, yada....________ needs his time off, too yada, yada.....this is very important to your father....

O.K. mom, some points I would like to make:
1. I honestly did not remember that Dad was away hunting during all those family disasters (gas leak that almost exploded the house, wood burning stove bursting and sending burning logs across the living room, terrible sickness that afflicted us to the point we were praying to die, etc.), but I do recall that you were always mad as hell at him afterwards. AS YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN! I also cannot pull from my memory files any hobby, pleasure, pursuit or pastime of yours that required substantial funds, time, inconvenience, or sacrifice for the family. Because you have put up with the injustice for thirty years does not mean that I want to. Perhaps the answer here is not that we women suck it up, but that the men do.
2. Why can't the men "bond" while cleaning the gutters? What's wrong with swapping stories over the toilette that needs fixing? When I have woman "bonding" with the girls, we check out a chic-flick (from the library) and I paint their fingernails. Takes two hours--tops--and costs 1.00 for the whole Bon-Bon bottle. Or we bake--and then everyone takes part in sharing the treat.
3. You'd have me on that third point. You really would. John does need his time off. Except for that one little word, and it's the clincher: too.
4. Bingo. I think we have arrived at the root of the issue. It is important to Dad. He loves to hunt. It is his passion. Right now it is something that my husband "does not mind doing." His feelings toward deer hunting are ambivalent. Much the same as a kid feels after his first cigarette, or his first drink of beer. Dad is the hunting equivalent of a chain smoker or alcoholic. I don't really want to see the master develop the same addiction.

My arguements are all very good, quite sound, and will be generally ignored. And to think, we still have four months til opening weekend. Heaven help us!

Cooking For a What?

So for the last two weeks, I've been trying my hand at once-a-month cooking. If your not familiar with the term 'once-a-month cooking', also know as 'cooking for the month' it is an idea that is supposed to "revolutionize" the way you prepare food for your family. The method is heralded as an EASY way to save time, cut cost, and conserve energy. All under the banner of their catchy slogan, "Cook for a day, eat for a month!" Horse hockey.
I've been reading about once-a-month cooking for years, and have tried a few variations of it. I almost always cook several meals on the weekend and have them ready to go in the fridge for weeknights. And cooking double batches and freezing half for dinners down the road, saved my butt and my budget when I was teaching full time. When we went to Russia, I had extreme guilt about leaving my mom to cook and care for the kids (not like she hadn't been doing it for 30+ years, but still...), so I prepared and froze a bunch of yummy dishes that she could just pop in the microwave and serve. But I've never been consistent, and I've never done an entire month. Since the master has taken this new job (which cut our monthly budget by $1,000), and taken over the money management department of our marriage (read--reduced my grocery spending allowance to 500.00), I figured that it was now or never. Or maybe I should say, now or starve. Doing the mail run at four in the afternoon, which was my normal time for supper preparation, is an additional factor. I was having to choose between getting dinner ready and getting my nap. Sweating in the kitchen or lazing in the bed, sweating in the kitchen or lazing in the bed....zzzzzzz
I started out on June first with my $250 determined to buy enough to eat on for a month. Ha! Ha! Give me $500, I'll show you! I'll only use half. But I think the joke is on me. I've put far more than $250 dollars of labor into this project (which has stretched from one day to ten) and I still don't have a month's worth of meals in my freezer. I only have 20. Now they say that you should not make any decisions about continuing the once-a-month method until you have enjoyed your frozen bounty for a few cycles, but this cooking marathon is hell. Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase, "Having my monthly," let me tell you.
For those of you considering taking the once-a-month plunge here are Jessy's Pros and Cons.
PRO

1. Does save money. Even for someone who never bought prepackaged or prepared foods, this has reduced my grocery costs still further. Because, I bought like a half a pig, 10 pounds of potatoes, vats of tomato sauce. The larger the quantity the cheaper per ounce/pound. Also you go to the grocery store less, so save on gas and eliminates impulse buying.
2. Able to combine steps. Instead of browning ground meat three times a week, you brown 10 pounds of ground round at once and use it in three different meals. Same with marinara--just cooked up a soup tureen of the stuff and used it in four different suppers.
3. Those are actually all the pros I can think of at present. But keep in mind I'm still in the trenches of getting this thing accomplished. Perhaps I will feel better about it, when I've spent five minutes defrosting instead of five hours slaving. I'll keep you posted.

CON

1. Arrrghhhh! The mess! The mess in my kitchen. The mess in my house. The books say you should not clean your kitchen until you are done, but in my case, that would be leaving the filth for 10 days, which is out of the question, and besides where would I continue to cook and what would I cook with? After each cooking session, every utensil/pot/pan/dish is dirty and the counters are spilling over with food and packages, and it's a real nightmare. My house is a wreck too, because all I've been doing is cooking and all the other housework has fallen by the wayside. Guess my savings would be lost if I hired a maid?
2. Whoever wrote these books do not have real husbands or real children. Because they set the same dinner on the table five times a month with every meal having one ounce of meat and everybody in their fake family says, "YUM! YUM! Thanks, Mom!" If I followed their meal plans, I'd be hearing from my folks something more along the lines of, "We just HAD cheesy potatoes last week." "We're sick of spaghetti!" and "Where's the beef?" At the Su_______ house we are accustomed to greater variety and much more protein than the once-a-monthers generally allow.
3. You have to plan every teeny, tiny, detail for the whole month. Have I ever mentioned that I'm not much of a planner? I'm more of a free spirit. I liked the, "Hmm....what sounds good tonight?" way of life. Now I have to decide a month in advance what will sound good on any given night. It is really cramping my style.

Some things that I have learned from this experience:

1. The old fashioned way of cooking truly is the cheapest way of cooking and it still works.
2. The old fashioned way of cooking is the hard way of cooking.
3. My family consumes on average 5 gallons of marinara a month. That boggles my mind.
4. When all of these children are consuming adult size portions, we will have to move to Montana, where we will kill and eat elk and forage for roots all winter long, and till the ground and scavage for berries in the summers.

Kid Swap

Everyone should have a friend like Abby. Ardyn and Abby have been best friends since, as they like to put it, "the nursery." It doesn't matter that we moved half a state away two years ago. Ardyn is Abby's "bestest" best friend. She has a school best friend and a neighbor best friend, and hopefully one day soon, she will have a church best friend, but the title Best Friend, sans adjectives, belongs to Ardyn alone. They do not see each other above twice a year now, but they just pick up the friendship right where it left off.
Last week, I sent K up to our old hometown and we brought Ardyn here. In a rare stroke of genius, I enrolled them both in theatre camp. They went as students-- not instructors. If you are intimately acquainted with either or both of these ladies, you know why it is necessary to make that stipulation. At camp, they could have all the drama they desired--elsewhere! Seriously though, camp kept them active and provided just enough structure and interaction with others to prevent them from driving each other (and everyone else in the house) crazy. Camp was held from 9:00 to 5:00, every day, with a full production on Friday evening. The play was the Lion King and the kids made their own masks, created the sets, memorized their parts (each kid playing several different roles), and mastered songs with choreography. It was a lot for two Kindergartners going on first grade, and they did an excellent job. We also squeezed in a trip to the beach, the lake, and a tea party. Abby had a wonderful week which she will relive through her artwork, imagination, and speech for many months--until the next kid swap.

Eight Random Things

I've been tagged for a MeMe by Tami. Haven't done one of these in a while, and haven't done any this open ended. Eight random things about me? Not eight random items under my bed? Not eight random moods for the month? Not eight random people I've been? Just eight things about me....
1) I have six scars. A white patch on my forehead where I scratched off a mole when I eight years old and decided I did not want to go through life with an Islamic dot. Two tiny marks under my mouth where I bit through my lip falling off the monkey bars. A small raised line on the back of my right hand, beneath my thumb where I pinched my skin in my trombone slide one morning in first period band. Large ugly scar across my lower abdomen from four "bikini" C-sections. Now, supposedly this type of C-section got its name from the claim that women could still wear a bikini after the procedure. Further proof that doctors have a sick, twisted, bizarre sense of humor is not needed. Just beneath this gruesome incision are two faint lines from having a Hernia repaired at four years old. I have one tiny scar on the back of my left ankle where I was cut by a glass bottle explosion. The cut was very deep and long, and needed stitches, but the idea going to the hospital kept making me pass out, so a friend of the family told us to bandage it with a cloth dipped in turpentine and heavily sprinkled with sugar. We did and it healed beautifully, you have to look close to see the scar, and if one of the kids ever gets a cut like that, I'm going to try it again. If anyone can explain to me why this crazy home remedy worked, I'd be most appreciative.
2) I'm a two time world champion yodeler. Nah. But that would be a super cool thing to be able to put in my list, don't you think? I really have no remarkable talent. No special skills. No claim to fame. So, I guess that will be number two. I'm just your average girl. I'm good at most things I put my mind to and great at nothing.
3) I don't believe we will know each other in heaven. That is to say, I believe we will know each other, because we will have perfect knowledge, but it won't matter to us, because we will will "know" and love Mr. Harry Whose-a-ma-callit as much as we know and love Great Aunt Sally Sue. In other words, we will have no particular connection to any one person (say our earthly spouse or child) because we will all share perfect union with Christ. This one drives the master WILD. We've had the debate at least a dozen times in the last ten years, but he still hasn't convinced me. I've also never heard of anyone who shares my view, so if you do, or think you can persuade me otherwise, chime in.
4) I cannot abide flies in the house. And this is the time of the year when they come in by the droves. I can't eat without a swatter in my left hand and my fork in my right. The kids live in fear that one will land on their milk glass, or worse--their head. I get tunnel vision, and the fly is all I can see. MUST KILL FLY. I can't sleep if I know one is still alive in the house. I haven't been able to type this post without making two circuit patrols of the kitchen.
5) I love books. I'm addicted to books. Especially children's books. One day, I'm going to count how many children's books are in our home, but there has to be close to a thousand. Each kid has their own large bookshelf (though the books themselves are considered communal property) and each shelf is packed. And there are books on the floor and under the bed, and on the coffee table, in the van, beside the pot....
6) I'm writing a book. The title is: 52 Fabulous, Fun Family Nights: A Year of Loving, Laughing and Learning With Your Kids. Look for it soon (read someday) in a Lifeway store near you.
7) I think Patrick Swayzee and Patrick Stewart are incredibly sexy. Is it the name? I don't think so, but 'Patrick' is what the master has christened the body pillow I sleep with. I can't sleep without Patrick.
8) I don't eat vegetables.

Well, there you go. I tag Lisa and Cari--fellow bloggers. And Jennifer--my space.

Walking!

Well, it took me to the fifth baby, but I've finally caught THE first step with pictures!!! Every time, when they took those first teetering wobbles, the camera was out of reach, and I've had to settle for scrapbooking pictures of their "early" steps. Randy has been standing up in the middle of the room for days with perfect balance, so I knew it was coming any moment, but unfortunately, I don't have the time to stay with him every second, my finger on the shutter. But for some reason this morning, I just sensed that this was it. He'd been standing up beside the laundry baskets and looking like he wanted to take off and go. I got the camera and sat down a little in front of him. He took the bait. And WALKED to me.

I'm so glad this happened today. I really needed a pick me up.