tuesday

in my quest to rekindle my love affair with my favorite coffee of yesteryear, i found this recipe online to recreate it :) this woman claims her mix is so much more economical than Folger's Straight Up Latte but i beg to differ. the coffee was $8..... $3 for creamer..... $5 on sweetener......... $10 on dry milk (holy crap - what is in dry milk???) $3 on vanilla (or bone-illa as Danny calls it:)... which comes to $29 - i think. Straight Up Latte was $3 a box (and how i miss it!!!!!!) but thanks "Hillbilly Housewife" for the $30 recipe :|

can you believe our asshole dog - he is a lizard killer. poor defenseless toothless lizards, whose only crime against humanity is having a weird forked tongue. yesterday we were playing in the fort when Danny spotted Romeo chewing on a lizard. that boy is SO SO SWEET - he leapt from the fort, wrangled the dog's mouth open and rescued the lizard, and was hugging it and whispering to it while Daddy found a safe canine-free place for him to recuperate. bad doggy! but good good Danny!

gasp - the fancy Countess of Real Housewives is no longer a Countess (snicker) does this mean her feverishly awaited book "Class with the Countess" is going to be mysteriously removed from my amazon.com shopping cart...?!

pics from the day.................
he found a california slender salamander... here he was asking if we could keep him (we did for an hour then put him back with his 'fameewee')


he wants that little lamb so baaaaad... it is awfully cute....

guns 'n' hairhands

speaking of guns...

before school snapshot

hanging out this afternoon

he chose to do his American Hero project about JFK :)

the day in pixels

before school

up the hill backwards

bad kitty

he loves this iphone toy - if you tip it upside down, it moos :|

you can even let your kid play with fire in complete safety

monday

i love pita chips. they are thick and delicious and make the best sound when being crunched to smithereens. with guacamole (made from the avocados that took a entire WEEK to ripen) - mmmm - good!!

of course i ruined my good day by having chips and guacamole, after eating nothing but fat free yogurt and watered down soup all day long. AND walking 7.3 miles uphill, while discussing whether a velociraptor could escape from jail if he was in jail, in 70 degree heat. i am definitely not going back for a third bowl of chips :|

i don't know if DC is a state but if it is, we will visit 11 states next week! i reaaaalllly need to make the boys a little passport picture book with each state in it as we zoom by at 90 mph. i am trying not to stress like crazy and take deep breaths because the peak cherry blossom season is 1-4 april and we will be there 8 april :|

i have become completely addicted to Ruby - not Max's sister Ruby, no, she is so mean! Aaron and i argue constantly because he thinks Max is the dumbass and i think it's all Ruby's fault... oy, the fights. anyway no, not that Ruby, but the woman in Savannah who is on a diet too. i LOVE her show and Savannah is now on my list of places to move to, it looks so beautiful! (i wonder if it has a Trader Joe's... i know it doesn't have an In-N-Out......) however... the opening titles trouble me greatly - the fountain scene looks like she's peeing all over the place and it makes me feel a little sad that someone wasn't smart enough to change the camera angle :(

ho hum... off to make dinner and attempt to make a driving DOWN the coast playlist of REM and east coastish songs for rainy days. i hate making playlists. HATE IT!!!!!!!!

sunday night

i am in the midst of my pre-vacation preparation checklist - tonight i am cleaning out my entire purse and replacing each item back in it's correct place, cleaned, replenished and returned to pristine condition.

also broke off from soaking my purse handles, to return my roots to 'natural neutral brown'-ness... which reminded me - once a neighbor told me you can save leftover hair color for the next month. and since i only used a teeny squirt of it on an old toothbrush, i decided to go online to check if i remembered right... since i have also heard stored unused hair dye can become explosive and blow your house to pieces. but the FAQ just sends you in circles so i decided to click on live help... now i am waiting for some Nice and Easy person to notice the red light is flashing and come to my aid.

while i am waiting for that person to help, i decided to see whatever happened to Folgers Straight Up Latte... i have one box for dire emergencies but it clearly isn't going to last forever :( apparently Folgers no longer make it (grr) and some proactive people started a website for Mocha Fusion fans (which i don't like as much but it's better than nothing) so i urge everyone to put a pin in the map and maybe they'll consider bringing back Straight Up Latte too :) for some reason, there are lots of people floating helplessly in the sea....

ping! i must go and rinse my hair. still not a dickybird from the live help :|

sunday

i really really really want breakfast for dinner but i know my children will revolt if i so much as suggest it, so i plan on stealthily cooking the maple syrup sausages, potatoes o'brien and yummy baked beans and passing them off as simply dinner for dinner. then they won't notice or complain :)

ok i am dumb as a rock but i didn't know Washington DC had soooo much cool stuff to do... like the burial site of JFK for example and all those awesome cool statues you see on money. we're there less than a day total :| anyway we are staying at a place called "Foggy Bottom" which is walking distance from the Washington Mall (which i am hoping has a Cheesecake Factory:) and the Basin which will be in full cherry blossom splendor early April. woohoo!! once the schedule gets soooo tight that we literally have minutes between each event i start to get really excited :)

i am so in love with my 100mm lens, it's so sharp and wonderful for portraits. i used to only have zoom lenses but now all i have is prime lenses. it's a funny (not as in ha-ha, just as in huh) world.

i just made the world's most amazing lemon cake. and as usual i didn't have the vital ingredient and put jello, the wobby see-through stuff not pudding, in instead. but oh my gosh - it is SO GOOD. that 9 x 13 pan is going to serve one, i just know it.

today at the Nixon library

playing Secret Service :)

it's official...

... i suck at any kind of kitchen procedure. one minute i am holding my french bread up to the heated things because it won't get toasty and crispy no matter how high i turn the oven... then i remember the saying 'a watched kettle never boils' so i force myself, against my better judgment, to step away from the kitchen for one split second to check one teeny thing online and return only to find my crusty french bread on fire. seriously, it's just so unfair!

our trip is growing another arm or leg every hour. next thing you know we will be driving to Florida :| we originally were spending one perfectly calm solitary week on the Cape. but MA is sooo close to NH which is soooo close to Maine, i just HAVE to get those imaginary stamps in my new USA passport - so we're squeezing those states in after the JFK museum in Boston via the really yummy donut place. then we decided to do a flying visit to the dinosaurs in NYC while we were 'so close' (4 hours away)... now we have decided, heck if we're only 4 hours from Washington DC when we're in NYC, we would be crazy not to go there too :)

my amazon shopping cart contains about $14,000 of stuff. i have to remember not to accidentally buy everything in it. there are so many things that i had to add to my cart just to see the price of, i really wish they would just show the price :| like i'm going to be SO SHOCKED by the low price i instantly buy whatever i just added?? hmm... it could happen i suppose :)

the icecream man never comes down our street. for one thing the average age on our street is 78 and for another thing the kids who do live here would NEVER eat something not 100% soy and organic. anyway he has been sitting outside my house for 20 minutes playing his chimey music blisteringly LOUD to tempt me out to buy his wares. but it won't happen! i have willpower!! and a Choco Taco right now (if he had it - they are very hard to find) would ruin my appetite for my charred bread and microwaved can of chili. come back in an hour, Mr Softee and we'll talk :)

off to watch Split Ends, i am sooooo hopelessly behind this week!!

morning things

we have a busy day today at Rice Headquarters so i am blogging before the scheduled outage at 4pm and the party of screaming, squabbling, koolaid-spilling children arrive and render me lifeless for the rest of the week

you know it's a busy week when Desperate Housewives (new, 2009) is still sitting on the DVR at the end of the week....

i have noticed that icecream is slowly shrinking and it's just not right. first it was the "good" brands like Dreyers which i only ever buy on sale anyway. it shrunk overnight from 2 liters to 1.75 liters and very quietly to a barely there size of 1.5 liters when no-one was paying attention. now the tub looks like a Haagen Dazs tub, it is like a thimble compared to it's former size. anyway, i just figured i'd never buy Dreyers again and teach them a lesson ;) now the store brands are doing the same - the 2 liter tubs were the ONLY REASON i shopped at Albertsons and bought their own brand! don't they realize that getting 0.5 less icecream is very hard for little piggies to overlook??! it's official - i am boycotting icecream. :| i can do it, just watch ;)

one week to vacation. gulp. time to get serious and try to remember which company i booked our flights/car rental with. and get that google maps thingie to work with the dumbass iphone (yup, i am sure there's an app for that - eye roll), compile color coordinating cold weather beachwear, pack my favorite instant coffee and extra creamy creamer, renew library books that are going and return library books that didn't make the cut, write down the address of Build-a-Dino, find the nearest White Castle to JFK, so much to do!!!!! i haven't been on vacation for years ;)

i have had a Kitchenaid flat beater blade in my amazon.com shopping cart since Christmas to replace the one that i lost in 2005, waiting patiently for me to take the time to read the small print to see if it will fit on the Artisan model (because clearly i am an artisan baker). And i needed to spend $0.05 more to get free shipping. anyway yesterday while looking in a little-used cupboard (cookware) i found the original beater blade!!!!!! yippee!! and the big Captain Hook hand thingie! and the shields that stop eggs flying everywhere. now i can rest assured that i don't have to buy a new camera just to get free shipping on my mixer attachment!

back after lunch... and Desperate Housewives :)

what you can buy for 2 peanut butter cups around here

eye contact!


sooooo not missing my 40D. i got rid of it last week and my 24-70mm and am teetering on the Nikon fence.... still. what to do...

wednesday

everytime i attempt to bake a cake i screw it up. today is no different to any other day. i made this particular cake - my finest creation, my most wonderful tres leches cake - because i had some leftover heavy whipping cream from last week's baking extravaganza. why not put it to good use, i thought, and bake the only other cake i can think of that requires cream. i had to buy condensed milk. and evaporated milk. and more eggs. and strawberries. all to utilize the cream. i came to make the cake and discovered i didn't have enough cream and had send the troops on a mercy dash (thanks Aaron:) for more. seriously, baking sucks!

that Countess woman on Real Housewives drives me crazy. from the very first scene on the show when she says she never feels guilty about being privileged i despair of her... she doesn't feel guilty for treating her housekeeper like a slave? or when she walks past a homeless person in the street? or when she sees a teenager in army fatigues at the airport flying to Iraq?? maybe i just feel really really guilty all the time..... and i am certainly not privileged enough to be married to a pompous old fart ;)

today's Martha Stewart was about felt :| now i love Martha AND i love felt as much as the next woman... but oh my god, it was pure agony to watch. they showed this clip of some woman (which for some reason i couldn't tear myself away from) at the Cooper Hewitt museum making a big pointless tent out of layers of combed felt that she sprayed with hot water and then added a little soap and then rubbed it in then rolled it all up and squeezed the water out, and then she repeated this agonizing process TWELVE times... and all the while i kept thinking, yes but i bet it's going to look SO COOL though in the end. but it didn't :| harumph

Romeo was a VERY bad dog today. Sam and i spent foreverrrrr planting rows of herbs and vegetables in our little garden patch and then put a big 'no dogs allowed' tall fence around it - fastened on either end to keep dogs out that can't read. we went to the front yard to plant flowers for TWO MINUTES and came back to plant the rest with the veggies. Romeo was already sitting inside the fence digging up the frickin vegetables...

it has been on my mind ALL DAY LONG. but i thought it was too depraved to search for. in the end curiosity got the better of me and i HAD to. but a lot of other 'normal' people wonder about it too!! this Q&A is hilarious (but doesn't really give any real info.....)

back after real housewives.... can't possibly watch and blog :)

tuesday in a list

pound cake makes a very delicious, if not very nutritious breakfast....

so far every time i've gone to disneyland i've got to park in my lucky spot. today was no exception. the one time i didn't get to park there, i asked a sweet friend to move the traffic cones for me... the space is that lucky :)

since we see her every single week, i have made it my mission to befriend evil Erin, the Disneyland Railroad conductor and find out her life story (and also so Danny can eat lollipops on the train with fearing her wrath). she has twin boys Danny's age and is relatively human underneath the tough exterior. she says Bono takes his kids 'all the time' which doesn't sound right to me because he lives in Ireland and Anaheim is about 3000 miles away. and she says Teri Hatcher is a psycho piece of work and Angelina is a coldblooded detached mother, which i know to be true from my reliable NYC source ;)

went to the store for tomatoes and forgot to buy them. now i have to go back for $50 more stuff i don't need and hopefully remember the tomatoes this time.

i hope avocados don't take longer than 36 hours to ripen....... i am sure there is some trick like sitting them in the bathtub in saran wrap but i don't know what it is

came across this website while looking for political information today ;) this thing is SO RUDE... it can't possibly be real, can it? isn't it illegal to make a sex toy out of the president? it should be!

off to the land of nod... pics from the day:

i dont sleep i dream

today was the weirdest day ever. despite forgetting to take my multivitamins for the past 3 days and not sleeping a wink last night, i had a freakish amount of energy - enough energy in fact to:

• walk 4 miles to the park while talking nonstop about dinosaurs
• weed/mow/edge/sweep the entire front yard
• mow the back yard
• rearrange the toy shed and set up the basketball hoop
• wash the toys and set up the sand table
• sweep again
• pick Sam up from school with Danny in his favorite red wagon
  
• rescue 2 caterpillars on the walk home from the baking hot sidewalk
• play in the fort, pretending to be a stegasaurus being attacked by a ferocious utahraptor (Danny)
• play basketball
• take 919 pictures
• play frisbee with the dogs

and make dinner. phew. ok, now i'm feeling kind of like sitting down for 5 minutes.

maybe this was the reason today felt so happy.... we booked a vacation!!! we're going to our magical beach house in May after Sam finishes his yucky star testing. the house is the one on the right - AKA the perfect Michael Mancini Melrose Place beach house in Mandibu :) ahhhhhhhhh!


that saucepot Aaron says i am hopelessly starstruck and have a huge crush on Barack Obama. but it's just not true. he could be a big hairy sweaty religious guy with thong sandals for all i care and i would still gush and guffaw over him for being so awesomely cool, funny, smart and positive. OK... maybe a big hairy sweaty religious guy with thong sandals is a bad example, but Aaron, it's just not true!! (i keep that lovely pictorial of him doing dishes in my bedside table for it's valuable political content :)

my music folders are so hopelessly messed up... i must have 5 folders with varying punctuation full of REM music. sometimes i get so tired looking for an album in my F and G folders, i - shh - buy it again :| when i need to hear Beachball, i reaalllly need to hear it. it's honestly better than aleve and diet coke....

this life is sweet

me in honey

googlicious

although i have a very hard time remembering my google password, i do absolutely love google maps more than life itself! it is the one thing (ok, one thing of many) that kills me about that stupid iphone thing. no matter how hard i shake it, it can't load the world with any degree of efficiency and it is only about half way done loading before it starts to sputter and the annoying little ring of petals (or orthotricyclen tablets) starts to spin endlessly - it's so much worse than the hourglass where you can actually imagine the sands of time running through.

anyway i have all kinds of supercool maps that i need to access ALL THE TIME... a map that details every cupcakery and fine bakery in the land, my favorite being Joan's on Third which shockingly is Gwyneth Paltrow's favorite too, but i guess we have to agree on something, it might as well be bouchons. one map called 'where the wild flowers are'. one called HILB = homes i'd like to buy. one simply called Cape Cod with such fancies as the mall with both Christmas Tree Shoppe and Trader Joes, the nearest superwalmart, the JFK library, some awesome wooden steps at Thumpertown Beach, the potato chip factory, the really jammy donut shop, my list is endless.... and the iphone simply can't handle it all.

one apple thing i admit to loving like a third child - iTunes on my computer. today it isn't working and i am forced to listen Barry via the windows media player, with it's hideous 'looks like we made it' graphic shadowdancing thing. i can only imagine how shockingly awful the artwork on Bill Gates' walls must be :|

sigh. must must reboot. back with pictures from our windswept day at the beach........

some random weekend pics:

oh yeah the iphone takes a sucky picture even with the self timer app (even with winning smiles!)

future president

future gold medalist

friday i'm in love...

with husbands who vacuum and mop with my favorite perfect english lavender disinfectant while i am out running errands. why - just because. gush!

and in love with Obama as always but maybe a little more than ever today.... and now i get why he wasn't his usual smiley self last night - i KNEW it had something to do with that unliquifiable oaf Jay Leno. he had just made an unfortunate joke on his show and was consumed with guilt and wondering how on earth to dig himself out of the hole he was in. he's so forgiven.

and in love with my boys being gone for the day so i can catch up with Alex and Ramona and Gill and the nasal-y one who cooks and umm, who else - the obnoxious countess one who's husband IS really really old (yes he IS! :) oh how i love them all!

in two weeks, i'll be in New York for about 45 minutes!! and in two weeks and 4 hours i'll be in Cape Cod gazing out at the atlantic ocean for an entire uninterrupted week of seashell collecting, museum touring, whale watching, adorable little town visiting zen.

we just had lunch at Chipotle. i have dreamt of going in for sooo long - it looks so shiny and industrial. but i would give it 5/10. any mexican place that doesn't provide free chips and salsa isn't mexican at all.

off to walk. and go to costco. and get a yummy chocolate frozen yogurt with Sam... back later ;)

the day i met the president

... kind of. we didn't have milkshakes at the Ruby's at the end of the pier like i had pictured in my wildest dreams, or ride in the yellow teacup together at Disneyland... but still, i saw him and he's real. kind of. i thought he would smile more - so i am wondering if:
a) he didn't see me
b) he DID see me but thought i was someone else
c) he was an Obama impersonator (most likely explanation)
d) he hates Jay Leno just as much as me and was in a foul mood from sitting on his couch






no 22nd in line to take off for him. turned right and bam, effed off home