Earworm for my Sis!

For you my sister! crank it!

Tagged

Here are the rules:

1. You have to post the rules before you give your answers.

2. You must list one fact about yourself beginning with each letter of your middle name. (If you don't have a middle name, use your maiden name).

3. After you are tagged, you need to update your blog with your middle name and your answers.

4. At the end of your blog post, you need to tag one person for each letter of your middle name. (Be sure to leave them a comment telling them they've been tagged and that they need to read your blog for details.)


P - patient. or I try to be anyway
A - animal lover. I think everyone's guessed that one!
T - truthful. I'm shamelessly stealing that from Hoopy. :lol:
R - raunchy. great word! nice and earthy
I - intelligent.
C - charitable. it's my new goal for this year. I'm active in two ministries and am sub for two more
I - idealistic. I'll go with that one. I'd like to think I'm more that than cynical still in my life.
A - affable


That was hard!

New Habit in 21 Days

After much pondering - because there is so many things that could be possibilities here I've selected brushing out the dogs more as the new habit that both the bichons and I need to start. This thought comes to me every time I get them groomed .. I should brush them more. So the bichons and I will work on developing a new habit of regular brushings.

Ice, Ice Baby

The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium.

--Norbet Platt


Here's a new revelation brought on by some deep thinking. Winter weather in the South. When something happens weather wise things shut down. People run for the grocery store. Knew that. We had a couple of scares regarding the weather and I watched and, yes, I laughed. Last Saturday we had snow. They shut down the church for Sunday and cancelled evening events. I drove to Durham for the Duke Basketball game. Didn't think twice about it, it was barely snowing. Fast forward to the last couple of days. Yesterday the kids were still on Winter break but apparently other school districts weren't. It's been raining off and on and the temperature is hovering at 33 degrees during the day and 20 or below at night. I was supposed to go to the Church to break down the alter flowers into smaller arrangments and make Nursing Home visits with one other member. She calls just before we're leaving and says she looked outside and saw ice on the street so we needed to postpone to today. I looked out and "saw" wet pavement and thought hmmmmm. Still thinking to myself that I've driven on much much worse than that to get to work that was never cancelled and it took lots of ice for the schools to call a delay in Ohio.

Later that night I'm watching the news and one of the school districts was giving a press conference. Apparently they thought they hadn't needed to delay school and rolled the buses. They were getting TORN APART by angry parents. I mean raked over the coals. Even by the news reporter a little bit. Furious calls had been made after parents saw the buses "skidding" and the school district had to call all the buses and tell them to pull over until a new call told them they could go again. I'm telling you these people were FURIOUS! Whoa ... these people take icy conditions very seriously.

So dh comes home and he tells me he was sliding a lot trying to get to work and I start paying attention a little more. I pick up the paper today and read there was actually 40+ car accidents during rush hour.

When I really started reading the article on the accidents I had a revelation. Ice is maybe different here. Icy roads in Ohio came with snow most times and in quantities where the height was elevated. It was not necessarily clear, more white. You slowed down. Sometimes you had patches of what was labelled Black Ice.

Black Ice: thin, new ice that forms on fresh water or dew covered surfaces; it is common on roadways during the fall and early winter and appears "black" because of its transparency.

Yesterday it was Black Ice - everywhere and definately on all bridges and overpasses and exits. Not just patches but large quantities. The rain here hasn't really been steady. It's been spitting and very spotty. Is it possible I had looked out the door yesterday while my friend was on the phone and did't "see" the ice that she saw? More than probably!

Today the phone rang at 6:00 am. I was expecting it to. It's still spitting moisture. I'm not even going to call it rain anymore. The call was the automatic school notification system. Two hour delay. This morning, based on my new revelation, a school delay sounds like a good plan.

Whoops! Wait!

someone mentioned beer bread in a post and I remembered I tried a beer bread that dh didn't like at all. so whatever the bread machine score is ... what was it 5? Add one.

Parkie 3; Bread Machine 6

Parkie versus the Bread Machine

I got a really nice Cuisanart convection bread machine for Christmas. Some of what I've made has been good. A couple of things have been - blech! Here's a rundown:

1. rustic french bread - heavy crust with some whole wheat thrown in. family verdict - good. Parkie 1; Bread machine 0

2. basic white bread - plain jane vanilla recipe. family verdict - don't make this again it is tasteless. Parkie 1; Bread machine 1

3. Made some whole wheat bread - it just didn't come out. very crumbly, couldn't really slice it. not sure what I did wrong. I didn't even need a family verdict on this one Parkie 1; Bread machine 2

4. Made some Buttermilk wheat something or other. went all over town looking for wheat gluten. it was hard as a rock - maybe not enough gluten? I'm not even sure what it does. Parkie 1; Bread machine 3

5. Now I am getting annoyed. Back to basics I think. Let's go for some pizza dough. The kids had a blast helping me make the pizza. Family verdict - delicious. Yay! Parkie 2; Bread machine 3

6. So now I'm thinking ... maybe it's the recipes. so I searched for bread machine recipes. I added some rye flour to my list of supplies. I found a recipe for Steakhouse black bread and thought .. YUM. Which one is it that serves this? the one with Flo isn't it? the big haired lady? This recipe has just about everything in it - whole grain, rye, coffee, molasses, chocolate ... chocolate?? Hmmmm.. Family verdict - delicious. Again - yay me!! Parkie 3; Bread machine 3

7. so now I think the french bread came out all right. I'll make a loaf of regular french to go with the potato soup I'm making. I about burnt out the motor of my electric knife just trying to slice the thing Ummm - blech I sliced the rest though. I'm starting to think I need to save my disasters for like croutons, stuffing or bread pudding or something so I'll feel better. Parkie 3; bread machine 4

8. does it count that we decided on pizza again and I made another batch of dough?? prolly not

9. I'm thinking I'm right - the recipes in the book that came with the machine are just ... not interesting. When I say blech - I just mean that it really just had no interesting flavor at all. I might make another batch of that steakhouse bread but since I didn't count the pizza dough I can't count the bread. I'm thinking I need to find some good recipes .... maybe some rolls.

In the meantime there's a Red Lobster commercial that just came on with a close up of those biscuits.... Mmmmmm ... maybe I'll just search up a recipe for that instead!

The most ignored blog in the entire world!

I guess that would be this one - is this better guys? I've been negligent. I shall do my best to correct it. In my defense I forgot my password. Jeanne didn't let that one slide though LOL.

So OK I saw the post about the hardest thing you did this past week. At least I think it was for this passed week... was it for this past week??

My Hardest Thing:

The silly turtle is now in my living room. I am irked that Ralph the turtle is here. But other than the manual labor of moving the big tank down from the bonus room to the living room, which in and of itself was hard and also included a necessary deep cleaning of everything and rebuilding the tank, was the necessary acknowledgement on my part. What is it that I am babbling about?

Ralph is a red eared slider. He is an aquatic turtle. I can't remember how long he's lived with us. Do y'all remember how long Ralph has lived with us? It's been awhile. We went through a lot of extra effort when we moved to bring the turtle with us. He swam in hotel room bathroom tubs for heavens sakes.

So now - there are absolute minimum requirements for his care like water, and his turtle light so that he gets a healthy basking, and you know .. FOOD. When we moved he went up in the bonus room halfway between the kids area and my scrap area. Long story short on how Ralph came to live with us - Ralph is Cassie's turtle.

Well I started checking on Ralph. There would be days when his water was way too low, days where I would come in and his lights would never get turned on, and from this I can interpolate that there were days where he never got fed. My first step was to make sure he got his evening lettuce. With stern lectures to make sure he had enough water when you gave the lettuce. This was met with moaning, complaining and if she was in a bad mood general nastiness and if I was not nagging, did not lead to any improvement in the turtle care.

So now y'all are saying to yourselves - Parkie you should just have made her give the turtle away. If anyone remembers the condition Ralph was in when he got to us - and everything we went through to get him to start acting like a turtle - and as silly as it sounds I consider Ralph a special needs turtle. You know what a softie I am when it comes to animals. Am I babbling again?

I didnt' want to move him. I really didn't want him in the living room. But the hardest part of the whole thing was that despite everything. All my talks and pleadings, everything I've demonstrated to her about my beliefs in responsibilities of animal care, I had to acknowledge that Cassie, if left on her own, would let that turtle die. And that hurts. It really hurts.