So, about that sourdough...

Erm...yes. About that.

Heh heh.

Okay, here's the thing. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I'd made sourdough bread. I had made one loaf, and that turned out okay...kind of. I figured that there was nowhere to go but up, and that my future sourdough loaves would get progressively better.

And then the universe said, "BAHAHAHA, not so fast."

Between then and now, here's how the sourdough thing has gone. (And it was a months-long struggle to begin with, thankyouverymuch.)

• I tried two other bread recipes. Each batch turned out more doorstop-like than the last. I considered starting a brick-making business.

• The sourdough experts say to do easier recipes, like muffins and pancakes, before trying to make bread. Fine. So I made muffins, and they were shockingly soft and delicious.
  



You're totally drooling right now.



• A third bread recipe rose properly, and looked nice and pretty, but man was it sour.
  

Deceptively innocent looking.

• And then, I checked on my sourdough starter and saw...*gulp*...that it was moldy. Mold = sourdough death. I poured all of it down the drain. And I cried a little. And I did everything possible to not touch the mold left in the jar. [By the way, please donate to the Moldophobics of America Fund. Mold-o-phobia is a serious and debilitating condition.]

Annnnd...that was last night. I'm not sure where to go from here, sourdough-wise. I'm still a little bit in shock. It seems silly to give up on a project that I've been working on for months. Hrm. We'll see.

So maybe you'll hear more about sourdough from me one day. Or...maybe you'll hear more about my brick-and-doorstop business. Only time will tell.

Stuff I Should Do...But Don't.

I was going to write a post about the sourdough bread I made this week. And I probably still will, some time.

But I know that there's a tendency in the blog universe for women to look at each other's blogs and say, "Wow, she homeschools, she makes her own bread, she reads a lot, she does genealogy, she grows vegetables...I could never do all that. What's wrong with me?"

So before I write that bread post, I just want to say: there's nothing wrong with you. Or, if there is, there's just as much wrong with me. None of us is perfect, right? And I want to point out a few things that I should do, but I don't, and it seems like every other mother in the world does.

I don't...

• clean my house very often or very well. I'm serious. If the laundry gets done and we have enough dishes to eat off of, that's a good day for me. I'm trying to get back into some FlyLady routines, and they've helped a little, so we'll see how that goes. 

This is what my kitchen table looks like almost all the time. Except for when we know someone is coming over.

• take amazing photographs. (See evidence above.) I wish I did, but I don't have the time or inclination to learn. Once in awhile, one will show up on my camera by accident. Isaac insists that those are the ones he takes.
  
• get out much. We have one car, and Isaac takes it to work. He does some of the errands, and I do the rest on Saturdays. The Boy and I do get out to see friends sometimes, but we don't go out every day.
  
• have more than one child. This is not by choice, but there it is. Maybe someday.

I'm not trying to throw a pity party or anything. I'm okay with where I am. But if you find yourself thinking I've got it all together, don't worry--I don't, and I probably never will.

If you do want to homeschool, or make bread, or find good books to read, or whatever, and you think I could help you with that, then feel free to ask! I'm happy to help. Just don't ask me anything about cleaning. Or sports. I'm really bad at sports.

Happy Friday!

Dang, it's Friday again already! How was your week? Mine was busy, I guess...school for me and The Boy, writing a lot (not here, obviously), and trying to get our house decluttered and a few other projects finished before (maybe) moving when Isaac finds a job.

But. It's Friday. And you know what makes me happy?

Bubbles, that's what! Go outside and blow some bubbles today, okay?

Happy Friday!

Say, "Ahhhhh"

Someone around here has been losing teeth everywhere. And it's grossing me out.

I've lost official count, but I think he's lost four teeth in the last few weeks. And that tooth that's dangling below his upper lip in the photo? I'm praying for that one to come out as soon as possible. I try not to cringe when I see him wiggling it all day long, and I try not to gag when he asks me to try to pull it out. It's still hanging on, though I can't figure out how.

It doesn't help that he's nearly as disturbed about it as I am. Body parts should just stay put.

Old Years and New Years

[image by Katratzi]

I haven't been blogging well lately. (You may have noticed. Heh.) So...I think I owe you guys an explanation.

At the beginning of November, I found out that I was pregnant. I felt tired and sick, so I didn't blog much.

In the middle of December, I found out that I wasn't pregnant anymore. I felt tired and sick (still), and a lot of other things. Blogging was not on my list of priorities at all.

And now...most of the time, I feel like I'm making a pretty good recovery. And I feel like blogging again. So here I am.

So, New Year's, anyone? There are a lot of changes coming up for us in 2013--Isaac will be graduating from technical college, hopefully finding a job, and moving us who-knows-where. It's hard for me to think about goals and self-improvement when I can't see past big, scary, hairy changes.

But. You know how a lot of people will say, "I hope 2013 will be awesome!" Hoping for a great new year is good, but I think we can all do better than that. Life is what you make it, right? So isn't 2013 going to be what you make it? Sure, you might get sick, your parents might die, your house might burn down, the economy might NEVER EVER EVER recover, and the government might knock on your door and take your guns and your children away. (Uh...maybe.)

But if you really believe that happiness depends on your attitude (and I do believe that), then 2013 depends on your attitude, too. So, be a good person. Help someone out. Do your small part to make 2013 a good year for everyone. And if you feel crummy or sad...take a nap.

And then get up and try again. 2013 is going to be awesome.

Dear Internet, Carry on without Me...

[This...just made me laugh. I'm not actually deathly ill. Photo by Monceau.]

Hey, everyone. Just wanted to check in and say that I haven't been feeling well, and that I'm not sure how long I'll be out. I'm still around, reading blog posts and stuff--but evenings are my usual writing time, and I've been going to bed early.

Hopefully, I'll be back in the swing of things soon. Carry on!

How Little Boy's Slippers Make Me Happy

Since I've been trying to change the focus of this blog to the good things I find in my life, and the good things I want to remember, I am not going to tell you a story about how I tried to make applesauce ornaments yesterday and totally failed.

Instead, I'm going to show you these:



They don't make me particularly happy, at least not in and of themselves. But Little Boy received them as an early Christmas gift from his grandparents earlier this week, and he has worn them all day, everyday since. They make him very happy. And that makes me happy.

Cooooomfy.

We don't spend a lot of money around here. Like, any. We just can't spend money on anything that isn't essential--you know, like electricity. Can't browse Pinterest if I don't pay the electric bill.

Anyway, about a month ago I spotted a booster car seat on super-duper sale that I knew Little Boy would need soon. So we bought it. And he loves it.

The thing is, he doesn't quite need it yet. He's a little on the small side for his age, so he still fits into the good ol' convertible seat that we bought...I dunno, three years ago? That one has a five-point harness, so I'd like to keep him in it for as long as possible.

Soooo....hmm. Comfy high-back booster seat, just sitting around the house. What are we gonna do with it until we need it?

Oh, I know.

He can use it as a super-comfy high-back TV watching seat! You know, like normal families do.

New Post at The Storybook Shelf!

I've been pretty good about posting lately here, on my personal blog, but I haven't posted on my other two blogs in...um...too long.

So today I finally posted again on my children's book blog, The Storybook Shelf. I'm going to try to get some Thanksgiving books from the library and post about those, too--we've always had trouble finding good Thanksgiving books. We'll see how this year goes.

Wal-Mart Pajamas

[The look on his face cracks me up.]

Wal-Mart sells kid's pajamas that I call "pajamas in a box." They're only $5, but they come in a cardboard box, so I can never tell if they're actually going to fit Little Boy.

I buy them anyway.

A couple weeks ago, I picked up a SpongeBob "pajamas in a box." I don't like to buy licensed characters, but I couldn't get over how excited I thought Little Boy would be to wear them. (He loves Spongebob.)

Turns out, he wasn't excited to wear them.

Isaac kindly took the pajamas (in a box) back to Wal-Mart and exchanged them. He called us from the pj aisle so Little Boy could pick one that sounded good to him. He almost picked a rhino playing football. But when Isaac said, "Oh, and there's one over here with a fox and an owl on it," Little Boy said, "YEAH!"

Oooookay then. Whatever you say, Little Boy.

And you know what? He loves them. He kept saying, "Mommy, I like these jams. I REALLY like them!" These are the first pajamas he pulls out of the dryer after I've done the laundry. He'd wear them every night if I'd let him.

(Which I don't. Gross.)

These are probably the pajamas I would've picked in the first place, if I'd been going off of the cuteness of the pj shirt. D'oh.

We're All Mad Here*

I live with a mad scientist.

This...well...I don't know what this is. It started out as a spaghetti sauce jar. But now it's full of some kind of chemicals that turned bright green when they were mixed together. And that gray thing on the right is a pump from a fish tank. A tube from the pump is stuck in the green stuff (yes, that's a technical term), and it's blowing little bubbles. The little bubbles make little mad-science-lab bubbly sounds. I try to find excuses to leave the house when stuff like this is going on.

I think this might be the stuff that Isaac warned me would eat through almost anything but glass. I'm not kidding.

That might've been a different experiment, though.

Either way, I'm pretty sure I know what Isaac's Halloween costume should be next year.

*That's a quote from the Cheshire Cat. Also, I just realized that this post kinda makes it sound like Isaac is cooking drugs in our kitchen. OUR HOUSE IS NOT A DRUG LAB. Truthfully, I think Isaac had this set up to do some kind of etching to make a little board for his electronics.

Trick or Treat...?

I know it's November 2nd, but I left my camera at my mom's house and just got it back. So pretend it's still Halloween, m'kay?

Little Boy gave Halloween two thumbs up at the end of the night. Wanna see what we did?

We made Halloween sugar cookies a few days before. The mini M&Ms were supposed to be for making faces, but when it got down to it, Little Boy decided they made better polka dots.

Little Boy was so looking forward to carving a pumpkin with Isaac. Until...

...we made him touch the pumpkin guts. He sobbed and insisted on washing his hand right away. Yes, we are excellent parents.

This is what happens when you leave the pumpkin carving to the boys--you get a picture of a monster truck crushing a car. Rendered in pumpkin.

We ate mummy dogs for dinner. Thanks for the idea, Pinterest!

Looks gross, huh. Blood and guts potatoes are a Halloween tradition 'round here.

And now, the photo you've all been waiting for:

This is the best shot I have of Little Boy's costume. The cuteness comes through, though, right?

This is the top of Little Boy's hat. My favorite part of the costume, if you wanna know.

We didn't do this on purpose, but we ended up trick-or-treating on a street that got hardly any trick-or-treaters at all. Little Boy got the pick of whatever (handfuls of) candy he wanted.

Which explains the two thumbs up.

Bonus photo! My sister works at a thrift store, and Halloween is the store's busy season. The employees were encouraged to dress up, and they had a different costume theme every day. Can you guess the theme for the costume she's wearing?

(Hint: You can't tell in the photo, but she's wearing a fancy dress that's a little...um...out of style.)

It's better to look up.

I haven't been very grateful lately.

I've always been basically happy with my life. Even when we've been unemployed, when we've been seriously ill, and when we've had to go without. Even then, deep down, I've been able to say that I'm happy. Because I've always tried to appreciate what we have.

I've struggled a lot since Isaac quit his job last summer. When he decided to go back to school, I knew (and still know) that it was the right thing to do. I hoped I'd feel better. We'd been students before, and we'd been fine then, right?

I don't know if I was living in a bubble when we were students before, or whether this time is truly different. Maybe a little of both.

And don't get me wrong--we've had some beautiful, wonderful days since then. But lately...beautiful and wonderful have eluded me. All I've been thinking about is how much I would change my life if I could. About how much we don't have. And about how much I can't do.

But then, last night, I looked around myself and realized that I have more now than I've ever had before. My life isn't what I expected it to be right now, and it's different from everyone else's my age that I can think of. But everyone else's lives don't matter. I have what I need for now.

Like President Monson was quoted as saying in this last General Conference, it's better to look up.

Health Care Scare

{click image for source}

Okay, so this image has nothing to do with this post, but when I typed "prescription" into my favorite flickr search engine, this cartoon came up. And I laughed. Because zombies are funny.

Anyway, on to the story. We've been on Medicaid on and off throughout our marriage.

(I realize that Medicaid isn't a perfect system, and I really don't want to go into that right now. Maybe I'll post my thoughts on that can of worms later, but today...politics aren't the point.)

Here's one of the stinky things about Medicaid: paperwork. Lots and lots of paperwork. We sent in our most recent paperwork a couple weeks ago, but a blip in the system got our coverage terminated. That sounds like a big deal, but it's really not. It's happened before, and we just have to call in and get things straightened out.

So Isaac made the straightening-out phone call this morning while I was sleeping in. Then he woke me up, all upset, because the phone lady told him that we didn't qualify anymore. THAT is a big deal. Between Isaac and me, our prescriptions alone cost upwards of $600 a month.

Yeah, I know.

I don't know if it was because I was still half-asleep, or if something was just whispering to me that everything was going to be okay, but I didn't panic. In fact, I went back to sleep.

Isaac woke me up again later with the news that he'd called the Medicaid office again (to see what we needed to change so we could qualify), and the new, lovely phone lady told him that our paperwork hadn't been processed correctly, and that we do qualify. Problem solved.

I guess this is where some people would get angry. I'm not, though. I know that the system has problems (again, not really gonna go there right now), but most of the people I've worked with in the system haven't been incompetent--they've been helpful and nice. And they've been perfectly willing to help us figure things out.

So really, I'm just grateful to have health coverage at all.

Blockage.

I'm feeling better. I think. For now. We'll see how tomorrow goes.

So I thought to myself, Hey, I'm feeling better! I could blog! Yay!

But then I got a little bit...blocked. WRITER'S block, guys. I write about a lot of things on this blog, but constipation is not one of them.

Anyway, the thing with my bloggy-writer's-block isn't that I don't have any ideas of what to write about. It's that I have way too many ideas. And I can't pick one. I'm kinda overwhelmed.

So, while I ponder this further, here's a cheerful little song to entertain you. It's one of Little Boy's favorites right now. We, uh, don't listen to a lot of "children's" music around here.

"Give a Little," by Hanson

Oops.

So I realized today that I've been neglecting my homeschooling blog for the last three weeks. There's a new post up now. Come on over!

Me and My Wii

So, we have a Wii. It looks kind of like this:

only with more fingerprints and whatnot. My brother-in-law was buying and selling used Wiis for awhile, and he gave us one of them for Christmas. He's kind of awesome like that.

Anyway, I was thinking about our Wii the other day (yeah, weird, but stick with me here). And I was thinking about how, just based on the fact that we have one, a person could think that we could afford a Wii. How much does a Wii even go for these days? I have no idea.

Well, however much a Wii costs, I'll tell you right now that we can't afford to buy one. Not even a used one. We can't really afford anything but basics right now. And we won't be able to for a long time--Isaac will be in school for a couple more years, at least. So for now we manage our money as well as we can, and we have an EBT card (that's fancy-talk for food stamps), and we're on Medicaid. That's just how things are for now, and I've accepted that.

So I guess there are a couple of points here--one that I wasn't really trying to make, and one that I was. The one I wasn't trying to make, but probably should anyway, is:

1) We're grateful for the frillions of things we have that we could never pay for on our own. Anyone see a gospel analogy there? Ummm...I didn't really mean to make a connection between a Wii and the Atonement, but there ya go. You have my permission to use that one in sacrament meeting.

But my REAL point is:

2) I see people, all the time, who have things that we can't afford. I wouldn't really say that I'm jealous of them, because I'm pretty content with what we have, but I do usually assume that they're better off than we are. Not in a good or bad way, just...as a fact, I guess.

But really, I shouldn't assume that about anyone. Because maybe they saved up forever to buy whatever-it-is. Or maybe they went way into debt to get it (hey, it happens). Or maybe they found it on the side of the road. Or maybe it was given to them. Or maybe they really can afford it, in which case, good for them. It doesn't really matter.

So my real, real, REAL point is:

3) I can't judge a person's situation by what they have. Because we're flat broke...and we have a Wii.

A Crisis of Textbook Proportions

So...I've mentioned a few (or a million) times that I'm finishing my bachelor's degree through BYU Independent Study. I'm sorry if you guys are getting tired of me blabbering about this all the time (unless you're not tired of it...in which case, you haven't been reading my blog often enough. ;)

Anyway, I just finished up a class on the New Testament and registered for a class on Creative Writing. Super excited about this one, because I'm a nerd like that. (I may have mentioned that nerd thing, too.) And I was also super excited to order the textbooks.

I needed three books for this class. Two of them showed up at my house within a week. One did not:

Isn't that cover gross? Just sayin'.

Anyways, I checked the mail every stinkin' day. I had to have that book to start my classwork--it's used right from lesson 1. One week went by, two weeks went by...

...and then I lost track of how long I'd been waiting. But it felt like fooooreeeeveeerrrr.

So then last Saturday, I woke up, sat up in bed, looked across the room at the bookshelf opposite my bed, AND THE EXACT SAME BOOK WAS ALREADY SITTING ON MY SHELF.

Well, not exactly the same. It was an earlier edition. I'd bought it when it was new, in 2003, for some class or other. And then I saved it, just in case I needed it for another class. Turns out that I DID NEED IT. Eight years later. After I'd forgotten that I had it.

I flipped through the course manual to see if my edition was close enough that I could get started with my classwork--and it was. So I did a happy dance and got started.

(Nerd.)

So yeah, that was Saturday. The book I'd bought arrived in the mail on Monday. Heh. And I really am going to need that one; it has some stuff in it that my moldy-oldy 2003 edition doesn't have.

So here I go, writing creatively...and it looks like this class might not interfere with my blogging time. More on that later. Because school is really all I ever talk about anymore.

I Wanna Be Sedated

{Not my actual medication. Don't the pink and orange ones kinda look like M&Ms?} So. With Isaac being unemployed, he and I were a little bit...uninsured...for a few weeks. He and I both take medication that we can't do without, so the lack of insurance made things interesting. When we finally did get insurance, we had to switch pharmacies. The Walgreens pharmacy here is pretty reliable, but they don't take our new insurance. So we switched to our local grocery store pharmacy. And it's been a huge pain. It's really not the pharmacy's fault--some of it was even our insurance's fault. The grocery store pharmacy is small, but very busy. So I'm not trying to drive business away from them (although that might make things better for me); I'm just frustrated. Grr. (See?)

Time Keeps on Slippin', Slippin', Slippin'...

{image link} I know I say this all the time. Really, I do. But I'm going to say it again: I'm still here, and alive, and reading your blogs. The only time I really have for blogging is when I'm caught up on my own schoolwork and caught up on planning for Little Boy's schoolwork. Turns out, that's not very often. But I just want to reassure everyone, yet again, that I do love to blog and that I'll keep blogging when I have time. And thank you, those of you who have stuck with me for so long. You guys are the best.