Friday, October 13, 2006

Handy-Dandy

Forget handy-man; I'm the handy-mom.

OK, so maybe I'm more Red Green than Bob Vila; duct tape is my secret weapon (or not so secret; it's hard to hide the silver stuff when it's in the middle of the room). I swear, I can fix almost anything with it.

For example, Simon has figured out that there's no door knob on our bedroom door. This means that he can just crawl over and push the door open any time he wants to go in and play with Daddy's toys- a BIG no-no. I thought about just leaving the door open and putting a baby gate across the doorway, but that would mean I'd have to go out and buy another one... nah. I tried to tape the door shut, but it didn't work. Now we've got a lasso-type thing made out of duct tape stuck on the back of the door; it comes out of the room and loops around the top of a chair in the living room, keeping the door closed. It looks weird, but it works well, at least until someone gets trapped in the bedroom and has to holler to be let out.

We also have a power bar (the kind that plugs go into, not the semi-edible kind you choke down after a workout) that was resting on a heater in the living room all summer. We reluctantly decided to turn a few heaters on last week, but having electrical cords touching the heater seemed like a little bit of a fire hazard. Duct tape to the rescue! Everything is securely attached to the wall.

I can even do plumbing. A few days ago I turned on the hot water to the bath tub (it has to be off most of the time or it drips), and the pipe started spraying water all over the room, from behind the toilet to the door. A duct tape tourniquet has reduced this to a fast dripping for the moment; we'll have to get that taken care of properly, but at least most of the water's getting to the tub for now.

Ooh, and then there was the luggage strap I made out of ribbon and duct tape... not attractive, but certainly distinctive!

Oh yeah, I'm proud of my skills. Just call me Mrs. Fix-it!

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

The Cupcake Caper

It's been over a month now, and I think I'm ready to share the truth about the birthday cupcakes. There are a few people out there who already know; now this sad story is going to be available to the general public for the first time. (Check local listings)

I'm not very good about nutrition, to say the least. I take my vitamins every day, but my grandmother would have conniptions if she knew how little vegetable matter I actually consume in a week. I start out with the best intentions; A. doesn't like veggies, but I buy them for myself, and then I get to feel guilty when I open the crisper drawer in the fridge a week later and clean out the brown goop that has accumulated. But I take my vitamins every day... I know, it's not the same thing. You don't have to tell me.

I am, however, a bit more careful about what Simon eats. I'm not obsessive about organic stuff, and he has, in fact, tasted ice cream. Still, he and I eat whole-grain bread because I'd rather he get used to that than the white stuff. He eats a lot of veggies; sadly, they're in mush form most of the time, and not real appetizing to me.

Maybe that's why I decided to try to do the SuperMom thing for his birthday and make a carrot-cake for him. Not just any carrot cake, either; the one from "What to Expect the First Year," with wheat germ and whole-grain flour and carrots cooked in apple juice. We went to the bulk barn for most of the ingredients; they've got a good selection of crunchy-granola stuff there, and you don't have to buy a 30 lb. bag of it to get the 3 cups you need. While we were there I also bought apple butter, multigrain pancake mix, wheat germ, dried fruit (for me) and spaghetti.

See where this is going yet?

The thing is, for some reason the Bulk Barn doesn't provide any means of labelling your bags, just little twist-ties to close them with. I got home and found myself completely unable to distinguish between the whole-grain flour, the whole-wheat flour, and the multigrain pancake mix. Oops. In case you're wondering, they all taste the same if you try to do a Lik-M-Aid taste test on them.

I took my best guess and went to work. I figured either flour should work, so I had a 66% chance of the cake turning out just fine. (See, kids? You do use some of that math stuff later in life!)

I boiled the carrots in the apple juice until they were soft. I mixed my dry ingredients, and I pureed my carrots with raisins. It did not look appetizing, but everything was going well, until I mixed the wet and dry ingredients. Um, yeah... my batter bubbled. It was like a sick, brown, witch's birthday-brew. It swelled until it filled the bowl.

Oops.

As I watched my batter bubble, I thought about what Martha Stewart would do. I quickly realized that Martha would never have found herself in this situation, partly because everything would be neatly organized and labelled, and partly because if anyone let this happen, they'd be fired before the raisins hit the blender. Still, what would she do if, by some great cosmic accident, she did find herself in my situation?

Well obviously she'd toss the batter, make a run back to the store, re-purchase the ingredients and try again, possibly waiting until morning (though I don't think she actually sleeps).

Screw that, Martha I thought as I poured my puffy-looking cake mix into a dozen muffin cups. Either they'll be fine or they won't. I had already decided to buy a backup cake for any grownups who weren't tempted by the very healthy cupcakes, so if things went south, we'd just have that. It was late, I was tired, and the oven was already hot.

Well, they looked OK when they came out of the oven. They smelled fantastic. So they were a bit dense. Nobody complained, especially Simon. He loved them, and he made a nice mess all over is high-chair with them just like a first birthday-boy should.

So, what did I learn from this experience? Well, for one thing, I learned that Betty Crocker is my new best friend, and her reasonably-priced cake kits will be the extent of my adventures in baking for the next little while. More importantly, though, I think I learned that no matter how hard you try to be SuperMom, no matter how hard you try to get it right... stuff's not always going to turn out the way you wanted or expected. I guess you just pray that your best was good enough, and try to enjoy things the way they are... even if the cupcakes are a little heavy!

Monday, October 02, 2006

Buggy Buggies


Have you ever wondered where wasps go when the summer is over? They spend every nice day bothering picnickers and popsicle-eaters, and then when Autumn comes... they're gone. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I only ask because today I discovered the answer to that very question.

Eat your heart out, David Suzuki.

The answer is: They go and live in baby buggies.

Not what you expected? Me either. I could happily ave lived the rest of my life without knowing this little tidbit of information, too. Te only reason I found out is tat it's raining today. See, we usually leave Simon's "good" buggy outside; the one that goes wit the carseat he used when he was little, the "Travel System" buggy. It's great- it's very comfy for Simon (sitting up or reclining- life's rough, isn't it?) and it has tons of storage space for toys, bottles, and/or shopping bags, plus it and it has convenient cup-holders for the rest of us. The only problem is that it's BIG. Even folded up, it takes up a lot more room tan your standard umbrella stroller. That's why the good buggy has lived outside since we moved into this house in June, staying under an old shower curtain when not in use. It's stayed relatively dry there for a few months, but since there's a storm coming, I decided to bring it in today.

OK, so maybe the shower curtain-system hasn't worked perfectly... the buggy's a bit wet and just the tiniest bit musty. I opened it up in the kitchen to dry out, and gave 'er a good spray with Febreeze... or the generic equivalent, one of the two. Anyway, apparently a small family of wasps had taken up residence somewhere in the stroller when the nights started getting cold, and they didn't appreciate being de-stinkified.

I thought the first one was a fluke, just a little critter that got caught in the buggy before I brought it in. I felt bad about killing it (my guilt over killing bugs is a topic for another post), but I reasoned that it would ave died soon outside anyway. Fine. One down. Then I was sitting here writing- er, I mean helping Charlie write his blog, and another one started banging and buzzing against the window. Oops... we didn't have a bee or wasp in the house all summer, and now suddenly in October we have 2? Riiight. Well, that one got smashed with a Coke bottle.

Wasp number 3 joined me soon after the demise of wasp 2. He suffered the same fate. Big sucker, too...

That's all so far, but I think my thesis has been proven. Wasps live in baby buggies in the winter. There's got to be some kind of award for discoveries of this magnitude... I'll be home if anyone from the scientific community needs to contact me about that.

Oh, and there was a slug, too, but I think it was just after the damp Cheerios.