Crazy Day Crockpot Soup

I may have mentioned once or twice (ha) that I hate Thursdays with the fiery passion of a thousand suns.  The schedule is crazy from start to finish, including three consecutive after-school activities for one kid or another.  Figuring out what to cook for dinner is even more of a struggle than usual because of the time crunch: I managed to make a quick batch of sloppy joes for the kids and Himself early in the afternoon and stick it in the fridge for later, but that didn't sound good to me today.  So, in the five minutes I had before I walked out the door to pick The Girl up from school, I threw some of my go-to ingredients into the crockpot.

Five hours later, after the afternoon's frantic runs from hither to yon and back again, gym games and soccer and basketball behind me, I walked through the door to a delicious smell and even more delicious soup.  And it is so blessedly easy: only four ingredients!

Rinse a 1-lb bag of dried legumes of some kind.  I usually use green or yellow split peas or lentils. Put them in the crockpot with water to cover them by three inches or so, and season the water to taste with dry ham-flavored bouillon.  Throw in some chopped onions (or dried shallots) and chopped garlic (or my current favorite, flakes of dried roasted garlic), turn the crockpot on High, and there you have it.  Simple, nutritious, and shorter prep time than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!

Good Riddance

Would that you were taking the rest of the enablers and deceivers with you.  Would that you had had the courage to root out, defrock and prosecute the child abusers instead of hiding and transferring them and condoning the actions of others who did the same.

Words without action mean nothing.  You failed to act.

May your successor do better.

The Other Side Of The Story

This evening, I came across a HuffPost article by Leslie Rasmussen entitled "Short Women In A Tall World."  Apparently she is about five feet tall, and this article details many of the things she finds frustrating about it, like having to have all new pants hemmed and not being able to reach things on high shelves and not being taken seriously.

I'm here to tell you that the other end of the spectrum is no picnic either.  I am about 5'10," so I feel qualified to speak for the long tall Sallys among us.  I'm not freakishly tall or anything, but certainly well above average.

If you're tall, good luck finding pants that fit.  Same problem as our shorter colleagues, except that for us the pants are always too short.  No tailor can fix that: at least pants that are too long can be hemmed.  And good luck finding cute shoes in bigger sizes that don't have 4" heels.  What dim-bulb designer thinks that people who tower over average women to begin with (i.e.  the ones likely to be wearing larger sizes) want to be three or four inches taller than they already are??

I can reach things on high shelves, I grant you.  And I have no problem with people taking me seriously.  I look the average man square in the eyeball in flat shoes, so I'm hard to dismiss.  Even those who love me most wouldn't call me 'cute'...the term just doesn't apply.  And I'm ok with that, believe me.  I'm good at basketball, I can put my own suitcase into the overhead compartment on airplanes, and my taekwondo kicks are very powerful simply because my legs are so long.

BUT.

I've been this height since I was 12.  In my entire sixth grade class, only two boys were taller than me, and we were seniors before any significant percentage of them had caught up.  (Living in Asia did not help matters either.)  Recipe for self-worth if there ever was one.  Back in the day, I got all kinds of comments about my height.  And I still do, charmingly enough: it has actually become a running joke with friends in my taekwondo class that my instructor (who is ten inches shorter than me) feels compelled to remark on it during every.single.freaking.class.  Dammit.

I'm sure everyone has something they wish they could change about themselves.  Mine would be my height.  But since giving somebody a few extra of my inches isn't really an option, I'll make all you shorter people a deal instead: you don't comment on my height, and I won't casually rest my elbow on the top of your head!

114 Pounds Of Candy

And 24 prizes.  That was my shopping haul for the morning.

I am the poor benighted soul in charge of running my town's annual Easter egg hunt, and today I bought the candy and all the remaining prizes for it (I picked up 6 yesterday as well.)  This event is attended by hundreds of children, all of whom would actually like to find a few eggs, so these quantities are very reasonable.  But every year, some damn fool busybody feels compelled to say something stupid about my sugar-filled cart at Costco or Target.  Usually something about how my children will need a trip to the dentist after Easter or some such.  This morning, unfortunately, was no exception.

Uhhh, yeah.  Like I would buy a hundred-plus pounds of candy just for my own children.  Or even my whole neighborhood!  Dumbasses.

It's a lot of work to organize this event: buying the candy and prizes, getting the egg bins out of storage, organizing the group that fills the eggs, getting the filled eggs onto the fields, and supervising the hunt itself.  This will hopefully be my last year of doing it, although I do really enjoy watching the kids hunt for the eggs and get their prizes on the day.

The lady behind me in the checkout line at Target (seeing my stacks and piles of goodies and having overheard my conversation with the cashier about the Easter egg hunt) asked if I was a teacher.  I replied, "No, just a masochist."

 

A Good Dose Of Perspective

Very grumpy tonight by the time I finally sat down with the computer.  We seem to be raising a liar (or at least one who hides things to avoid consequences even though the discovery of the hidden is inevitable) and this is disturbing.  Feeling our way through this, parentally speaking.  And the *very* long day preceding the discovery didn't help anything.

But then, in the course of my evening wanderings of the Web, I came across the Scary Mommy site, particularly the Confessions section.  The idea is that here, you can post an anonymous Twitter-style confession or secret for venting purposes.  (Much like PostSecret, another of my favorite websites, but without the associated art and creativity.)

Looking at the first page or two of confessions, it seems like most of the people (presumably women) posting here are tremendously unhappy with their marriages, finances, children and in some cases, their lives in general.  Compared to this, I am so blessed in the grand scheme of things.  Yes, there are things with which we need to deal, and nobody has a perfect life.  But overall, I have so little to complain about.  A reality check, indeed!

Does Anyone Else Use Dog Commands On Their Children?!?

Shortly after our bouncing bundle of puppy energy came to live with us, I signed her up for obedience training.  Just the basics: I wasn't looking to turn her into a therapy (ha) or show dog, just a well-behaved family pet.  The trainer taught us a dozen or so commands in the first series of classes, all of which are brief and to the point (one or two words) and simple for the dog to understand and follow.

As it turns out, they are also simple for my children to follow.  Not that I deliberately use dog commands on my children, I swear--they pop out of my mouth unbidden in moments of frustration; I'm on autopilot after months of training the dog--but they work!  Cases in point from the last 24 hours:

Sit: Directed to Thing One as he was wandering around the kitchen this morning with his breakfast toast, scattering crumbs hither and yon.

Out: To Thing Two, as he laid waste to the inside of the refrigerator while trying to find a snack.

Leave it: To Thing Two, as he messed around with Thing One's saxophone case.

Off: To The Girl, who was sitting cross-legged on the coffee table while watching television.

They do say that keeping directions short and simple works for getting kids to listen and follow directions.  Not exactly breaking news, especially for kids with language processing issues.  But even so, I may still be inadvertently crossing a line here!  :)

Ye Gods And Little Chickens, What A Morning

Spent more than four hours at the boys' school this morning.  I am officially basketballed out for the week.

I've mentioned before that I am an assistant coach for two of my kids' teams, The Girl's and Thing Two's.  Their practices are consecutive on Saturday mornings.  As it happened, the head coaches for both teams were absent today; one sick and the other at a business meeting.  The Girl's practice went okay, a little more chaotic than usual, but manageable.  The second practice, on the other hand, had the proverbial five fingers.

Of the kids on this team, four are still trying to figure out the basics of the sport, three play very well, one cannot either sit still or stop talking, one plainly doesn't want to be there and whines for the entire time, every time, one plays defense so intensely that he has been known to slide tackle opponents on the court, two have some kind of learning disability, and two descend into anarchy immediately if not widely separated.  (There is some overlap here.)  A daunting bunch to handle as a solo coach, to say the least, but none of the team parents who occasionally help out were there today!  I ended up, in desperation, drafting a friend off the bleachers, who most graciously saved my bacon despite the fact that he

a) knew very well what he was getting into,
b) had to leave his visiting parents alone in the seats to do so, and
c) ended up coaching against his own daughter during the scrimmage.

That would be the definition of true friendship.

Then both of us moved to the other gym to watch our elder children play a tough game.  (His son and Thing One are on the same team.)  Those boys absolutely couldn't buy a basket today to save their collective lives--maybe 10% of their shots dropped, but they still won.  On one particularly memorable trip down the court, all five members of Thing One's team on the court at the time took a shot, and all five missed!  (It is a testament to their defensive skills that they got the four offensive rebounds in a row, however--probably how they ended up winning in the end.)  

Now I am home.  I am not going anywhere or doing anything more complicated or stressful than laundry, dishes and cooking for the rest of the day.  The morning was enough!