Oh, a Bunch of Random Stuff

Over the last several months Fern has been watching Gilmore Girls on the TV in the sewing room. She records it from the ABC Family channel every day. I started absorbing the show by osmosis when I was working on my quilts. Then the next thing I know, I'm hooked. I'm wondering how wise it is to learn parenting-a-teen-girl tips from Lorelai Gilmore.

My grandmother would have been 94 today, but died at 86. I still miss her. Happy Birthday, Grandma. It was hard for her to celebrate, however; she lost her son this same week in 1984 and then her husband in 1992, the same week.

Today, Census is having a quilt display to honor Women's History Month. I'll be displaying two quilts. I'm hoping I'll meet other quilters from the building and we can form a once-a-month lunchtime group.

My regular Bowie guild is having their annual quilt show this weekend and my quilt is almost ready, just need to put a label on the back.

I was the only person to show up for my group session last night at the personal trainer's gym so I had a private session at the group price. My arms were very rubbery afterward with all the different things he had me do.

The new dishwasher, a couple weeks old now, is doing fine, very quiet. The capacity is a bit more and the tines have a different arrangement than the old one, so I'm still trying to learn the best loading/running procedure. It's that sweet spot I'm looking for, don't want to run it too empty, but if I wait another day, I'll have more than enough to fill it.

I think I'll make a cup of tea.

Weekend Round-up, Among OtherThings

I'm not usually one of those moms that dash off to the ER at the sight of blood, but when the sight of blood wasn't ending, I took The Boy in. I knew there was nothing to stitch up, since the edge of his left index finger was gone, but I knew I couldn't stop the bleeding by myself. He was cutting salami.

Dan was in Tampa for the weekend golfing with his friends.

I did a lot of laundry this weekend. The last load is in the dryer right now. It's the "everything else" load. Usually I pick through what is on the floor of the laundry room to make a load of like items, darks, pastels, colors, whites, towels. The "everything else" load is the stuff that falls through, the stuff that doesn't pass muster on previous sorting rounds. It's the load you hate to put away because it's usually a bunch of mismatched socks and shirts that are too small for your youngest child. You know. I'll have that load waiting for me tonight. Oh joy.

Lost is back tomorrow night after a nine-month hiatus. I gotta make sure the DVRs are set. Yes, both of them. I started a Lost marathon yesterday by rewatching season 5. This interrupted a Lois & Clark season 1 marathon and ended up being interrupted by watching How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days because we wanted to send it back to Netflix.

I found Season 1 of Lois and Clark on eBay for The Girl (and myself!) because I enjoyed it 16 years ago and thought she might like it, too. "Like it" turned out to be an understatement. She loves it and thinks Dean Cain is wonderful, gorgeous, and very good-looking. He was quite yummy in that show, wasn't he? I found Season 2 on eBay and she had that watched in a heartbeat. Now she's dying to have Seasons 3 and 4, but I can't find them as cheaply as I found 1 & 2 and I'm not willing to pay $61 per season at Borders, or even $40 at Amazon. She'll get her homework done and I'll keep looking for bargains online.

I've had 21 Girl Scout vests to work on this month. I didn't think my stack would ever diminish, but it's down and I now have only four to go, then it's back to personal sewing/quilting. Yay.

The quilt retreat is coming up at the end of next week so I've made a list of projects to take with me. It's a small list, only ten or twelve things. Sheesh. I probably ought to take my ritalin with me so I can stay focused and not get overwhelmed. And get stuff done. There are three guys in my office whose wives are due with babies and I've promised them all baby quilts. Silly me. The nice thing about baby quilts is that you can make them small and no one will complain.

I ordered a portable sewing machine table with some birthday and badge-sewing money. It should be here in time for the retreat. This new table will make it easier to do machine quilting at retreat, where it was impossible before because the table was not flush with the bed of the sewing machine.

Since I haven't had a proper blog post in a while, I'd better stop here. I can't give away all my secrets at once, and, I still have real work to do even though the crush is (almost) past.



 

Quiet

The house is quiet, I haven't even turned the radio yet. The refrigerator kicks on, it seems so loud when there's nothing else. I hear the mailman's truck stopping and going outside. I've just dropped the kids off at their Saturday morning activities, Fern to skating and Kevin to Swim-n-Gym, so I'm "free" until I have to retrieve them. Dan left this morning for a conference in San Francisco for the week. I'm torn between taking it easy this morning with some quilting and trying to get some stuff done while no one is in my way.

Maybe I'll do both.



 

I'm back from vacation.

I'm trying to tame the laundry beast.

659 new email messages were waiting for me at work.

My back hurts.

I haven't been sleeping well.

How are you?


 

Report on the New Washer

The new washer was delivered Saturday morning and the first load I ran was a load of towels. When the cycle was done, I was genuinely surprised with how "dry" the towels were when they came out. The front-load washers really do spin out a lot more water than top-load units.

The cycles on the front-load machines take a lot longer than in the top-loaders but for some reason the next several loads were taking 10 to 30 minutes longer than the initial time displayed on the front panel. These subsequent loads were also not as dry as the first one. I was confused and concerned. I had to use the 'drain and spin' feature to get the clothes dry enough to put in the dryer.

Finally, after several loads, I read the troubleshooting part of the manual and found out if the drain hose is pushed too far down the drain, it'll cause a vacuum and the washer will think it can't drain the water properly, thus not spinning fast enough. Sure enough, the installer guy installed the hose securely by pushing it down the drain much too far.

Fixed! I pulled it out a bit and every load after that has spun out sufficiently.



 

What Lies Ahead

Dan is leaving tonight for a work trip. After work on Friday he'll be staying on to visit a friend and play golf. Since work is paying for the flights, he is limited to contract flights home and they are all full until Monday morning. Which means I'll be a single mom all weekend.

I don't mind being a single mom for a weekend, I just have to remember everything, all activities and be there on time.

Tonight:
Quilt Guild meeting where we're having a "Trash to Treasures" sale. I've actually been setting aside some items to get rid of so I want to go. I am even taking an old Bernina 1010 to sell. I'm thinking I'll ask between $200 and $300 for it, plus extra for the special presser feet. The goal is make money and get rid of clutter, not spend money and acquire more stuff. I shouldn't bring anything back, right? Right. [clears throat]

Thursday:
Kevin ready for the bus at 07:15, don't forget to put money in his backpack for his field trip
Me at work at 08:00
Science tutoring session for The Girl at 08:30 (transportation?)
Leave work at 16:30
Pick up Kevin from After-Care at 17:15
Visit a family about adopting their mature fox terrier at 18:30

Friday:
Kevin, bus; me, work; Fern, school, etc., etc.
Get Kevin to Special Olympics swim team practice at 18:00 picking up dinner for The Boy on the way in plenty of time as to not push the 30-minute rule.
Does The Girl need to be somewhere?

Saturday:
Kevin to Swim-n-gym at 10:00 or to the Special Olympics swim meet at 09:15, which one? It's the last day of the Swim-n-gym session for the spring, but he should attend the meet so he can go to the state games in June.
Fern's ice skating lesson?
Auditions for Willy Wonka at 10:00 if Fern wants to
Fern's ice skating team practice at 12:00
Call-backs for Wonka 15:00 to 17:00
When is the swim meet over?
Can I possibly get to the ceramics studio somewhere between 12:00 and 16:30 and put a handle on my mug before it get too dry?
Basket Bingo Fund Raiser at church at 17:00, Fern to help work and I've volunteered to bring 24 cans of cold coke and a baked lasagna. When am I going to buy coke and bake?

Sunday:
Day of rest
Get myself and kids to 09:30 church
Think of some activity for the kids so they don't play on the computers all day
Is homework done?
Laundry?
Don't forget to feed the kids.
Is the toilet still leaking? Try to get to Home Depot before they close to buy a kit

Monday:
See Thursday and Friday
 

Snow Day

I'm back to work today, which means I can blog. For some reason I just don't blog from home much. Which is where I was yesterday, home. The schools were closed because of the snow storm that went through Sunday night and I chose to stay with the kids. It was a pretty day to take pictures, but the battery on the Nikon was dead and the Kodak decided it wasn't going to acknowledge the memory card again. Grrr.

I had grand plans to get some quilting done. The quilt show is coming up and I still have work to do. I also had grand plans to do some archeology. I wanted to excavate my closet, find the floor.

A couple years ago, the last time I could see the floor, Kevin felt it was a great time to dump some Legos out, the clean space made a great play area. I was never allowed to clean them up. Then add to that shopping bags, shoe boxes, piles of clothes that were folded but never put away, shoes, hangers, more legos, drill bits and a step stool left over from the new shelf installation, and dresses that were hung up but removed for the window installation.

So I spent a good part of the day doing laundry and cleaning out my closet. I got several loads done, including three loads of towels, and the mattress pad. I set up a mirror so I could sit on the closet floor and pick up enough Legos to fill two, count'm, two, large barrels and watch Lost DVDs at the same time. It's cool the TV remote works in the mirror. I stayed in my jammies until after 3:00 when I started trying on the pants in my pants drawer. I purged most of them, they were either too short or too small. A couple pairs almost fit so they got to stay.

By bedtime I could walk into my closet easily. I hid one barrel of Legos and will have to hide the other one tonight. Most of the piles of stuff in the bedroom were better. When I clean, I tend to push everything together and sort it from there, then put the sorted piles away. I can tell I made progress, but to the untrained eye, it might look worse, I still have piles on the floor to deal with.

I need to find some time to try on the clothes hanging in the closet and stashed in the dresser drawers. I'm sure there's stuff in there I could wear several sizes ago but has no hope now. Once the hanging clothes and sweaters get purged there should be room for the clean clothes that're on top of the dresser. I guess I'll need another snow day. Oh, and I still have a lot of quilting to do, too, so make that two snow days.
 

Tuesday

I'm going to have to remember to think about the trees when I tell someone they can park their 65' rig in front of the house.

Yesterday, as I already posted, I stayed home from work while we got our new windows installed, leaving only to take Fern to the orthodontist to get her braces on. When I got back they were all in place and the house was getting warmer. The actual ripping out of the old ones and the setting in the new ones goes quite fast, it's all the caulking and finishing that takes a long time.



While the installer guys worked on that, I worked on the living room. I had bought that book case a couple weeks ago and only got half the stuff back in place. Add to that an unbuilt K'nex kit or two spread all over the floor along with migrating sewing room paraphernalia and you need a snow shovel to navigate the room.

I cleaned and vacuumed and was able to lay out one of the quilts I've been working on. This is the One-Block-Wonder (OBW) quilt I'm making for my mom.



I started the center of this quilt almost a year ago, like in April or May. Then in July I had trouble with the borders, got disgusted, and put it away. I took it to the retreat with me this past weekend determined to get past the disgust and make some progress. I'd seen a cool border on another OBW in Houston but I forgot to print out the picture of it for reference before the retreat so I designed the one you see here on my own, with lots of input from a fellow quilter (Thanks Cap!).

I need to take a close-up picture of the corner block. When I drew it up I didn't realize the number of partial seams there were: all but one. Sheesh. I could have altered the pattern to make it easier and not as pretty, but I pretended partial seams weren't hard and knocked out the four rather nicely. For you non-quilty folks, a partial seam is where you have to sew together two pieces of fabric part-way, then add another piece, then finish the first seam. Here's a picture of a quilt block with them.

After Fern got home from school, she and I went to fetch Kevin from his after-school program. All the while, her new braces were irritating her gums so she called the ortho office to see if she could pick up some wax. She could. While we were in that neighborhood, I suggested we go to Bob Evans for supper. Motion approved.

We were mostly through our carbo-laden dinner when my purse started vibrating. I didn't hear my phone ring but Fern felt it. It was my baby brother. He had just seen a sign for Bowie on I-97, he didn't realize how close he was to me. I told him we were eating at Bob Evans and invited him to join us. He has a new job driving trucks for Swift. He's not on dedicated runs so he never knows where he'll be next. Just like he didn't know he'd pass close to Bowie on his way from Columbus to Easton until he saw the Bowie sign. At that point we were only about 8 miles out of his way and he hadn't eaten all day, so he made the detour.

After supper he called the company his load was for and couldn't get a hold of them. He hoped to unload ahead of schedule but it wasn't to be, so I invited him to stay with us. That's when I told him there was plenty of room to park a truck in our neighborhood. I hadn't counted on the trees.



Here's my brother taking a picture of his rig. Don't those new windows look great?!



I'm so glad my brother got to stop at our house for the night; I don't get to see him often enough. This morning I made him a couple sandwiches and fixed a bag of snacks and sent him on his way. I hope he can make his way by here again soon.
 

Snow Day

Schools are closed today so I'm staying home with the kids. My goal for the day is to make my sewing room habitable, and maybe get some work done. Here's the "before" picture. (I'm having trouble with the real camera acknowledging the memory card so I'm stooping to the camera phone. Blah!)

I should go take my ADD meds so I can concentrate long enough to make progress.

 

I Hate Waking Up to This

Westward Bound

Monday I leave for a week in Seattle for work. I've set my blogger settings to publish a post directly when it comes in through the email. I plan on snapping a lot of pictures with the camera phone and sending them for blog posts. It will be a semi-realtime travelogue. I don't think I'll be able to title the posts or explain the picture, so it should be very different for my blogging style.

I will be able to read comments from the road, so you'll have to let me know what you're thinking.

In the mean time before I leave I'll be doing laundry and deciding what to wear next week. I hate that. I always forget something, wonder what it'll be this time?
 

Catching Up

Sheesh, I haven't posted forever.

Somehow, I don't get to post from home much, just when I'm taking a break at work.

Yesterday I took the day off from work. Kevin had a pre-op appointment in the morning. His wisdom teeth are blocking his 12-year molars from coming in so they have to come out. Because of his autism, the oral surgeon wants to do the work at a surgery center where he'll have a professional nursing staff to monitor Kevin's recovery, instead of in his office where recovery consists of sitting in a chair until you're awake enough to walk out. The surgery is planned for next Wednesday.

After I got Kevin back to his day camp I went home and cleaned the kitchen, complete with a floor mopping. I was waiting to hear from my brother and dad. They were coming out to help with some yard work and I had to give them directions to the rental center. If you read my husband's blog you might remember this post about his tree-trimming project.

We hadn't done anything with the trimmed branches, they were still where they fell. For months Dan and I talked about how to get rid of them. There was a lot of branches from the 20 trees. Too many to drag to the curb on yard-trash days. We considered buying a personal sized chipper but that meant we'd still have a lot of work cutting down the branches so they'd fit. We considered renting a chipper, as well as hiring a tree company.

I ended up renting a industrial sized chipper which took limbs up to 6" in diameter. OK, stop thinking Fargo. My brother came out with his truck with a trailer hitch so we could get the thing home. For two hours Mark and I hauled, dragged and carried branches to the chipper while my Dad fed them in the chute, except when Dad took a break and took pictures of his kids (I'll have to check his blog later to see if he posted them) and Mark and I did the chute feeding.

It was fun watching big branches go in and mulch come out. I wanted to put in something else to watch it shred à la Malcolm in the Middle but since the rental company had my $800 deposit and I wanted it back, I thought better of it.

My new mulch pile is about 3' tall by 3' wide. That ought to cover a couple flower beds when I find the energy to haul it around the yard. Can I use that right away or does it have to age for a while? Anyone know?

Monday I took the day off, too. Dan and I played golf with AM and Mark in another fund-raising tournament. I started off playing OK, but went down-hill mid-way through. I guess I used up too many good shots at the driving range before we played.

Saturday I took AM out to a local executive course to play nine holes. She hadn't golfed since the tournament in May and I thought she'd like the practice. I played very well Saturday. Except for putting, we won't talk about that. At many of the latter holes, while we were waiting for the guy in front of us to finish, we'd hit two balls instead of just one. AM called it "testicle golf."

I hate lunch. I mean I like to eat it, but I'd rather just have someone give it to me than to have to think about it and plan it and prepare it and remember to take it to work with me and then remember to eat it.

I tend to not think about food until I'm hungry. (I think this is one of my major faults as a wife and mom—meal planning. I said one of my faults)

I went grocery shopping last night for the family, we were out of a lot of things since we were away for the weekend. I even put on my list "lunch stuff for mom" and aisle after aisle, nothing interested me. I forced myself to purchase single serving microwave soups and salami, but if I don't plan, I'm scratching my head at 1:45 every day wondering why I'm hungry.

---

We went to Birmingham for Dan's friends' wedding over the weekend. We stayed over an extra day and went to the DeSoto Caverns. The cave was the main attraction, but they built other things to do. Dan said it was kinda like what he imagined Grubby Gulch to be, if you remember your Lizzy McGuire days. I had more fun than I expected in the squirt-gun maze and ran out of water too quickly. I need to do that again.

The mini-golf was brutal. There was a creek that ran under the course and every hole gave you the opportunity to lose your ball in the drink. I did pretty well until the 8th hole when I lost my ball and didn't recover it until I ran back down to the 3rd hole. I wondered if I was supposed to play back up the hill again, or just walk. It was a good day even though it was HOT!

Teenage Attitude

Bride and Groom

hand-held shot of the light show in the cave

Kevin and Fern enjoy the pedal go-carts

Weekend Roundup

There's not a lot to round up from this weekend, blogger was misbehaving, my daughter was, well, shall we say, being a new "teenager."

If I had to recap my weekend in one word, it'd have to be laundry.

Our laundry room is a small space off the second floor hallway. The washer and dryer face each other with a space in between where we dump our clothes to be washed. I'm proud to say I got all the way down to the floor. I even used a hanger to dig out all the escaping socks from underneath the washer. Usually when I do laundry I start at the top of the pile and pick out all the clothes I can find of the selected color family, do a load, then pick off the next major color category, jeans, khakis, reds, etc. A couple loads every weekend usually keeps the family going. The little items usually slip to the bottom as I pick out each load and it might be a month or more before I get around to doing my "favorite" load: the dark socks. Everybody's got'm, my dress socks, my husband's dress socks, my daughter's skate socks. Fun indeed.

I keep the utility laundry behind the bedroom door, towels and sheets, the big stuff. I only did one load of utility wash this weekend and I probably will get another load in tonight while I'm still in the mood to get it done. Now if these people would stop taking showers and wearing clothes, there wouldn't be laundry to do.

But, on a happier note, we have less that a week to go before spring break. Dan's posted a map of our trip on his blog, please stop by to see it. I won't be redundant and post the same thing here.

Attention Please

Have you ever wanted the undivided attention of someone? Or a large group?

Call a bingo game. The usual bingo game has numbers from B-1 to O-75, but I have a bingo-a-day calendar that has a smaller set of numbers. Not that I play bingo that often, but it was on clearance a few weeks ago, so I bought it. Every day has three game cards and 50 lift-a-flaps revealing random numbers to be called.

I took a stack of unspent days to the retreat with me and passed out a set of cards to everyone. Throughout the weekend I'd call a game for a door prize. I didn't know if it would be received well, if people would like to participate or not. I was nervous, my self esteem was waning. I took the chance and it paid off. The room was dead quiet, you could hear a pin drop and the crackle of cooling irons, as I called each number. You've never heard a gaggle of quilters that quiet.

On Sunday after the last game had been played I got lots of comments from people asking me to do that again next year, it was fun, and where did I get the calendar.

I was thrilled and my ego was happy. Yay.

Ice Day

School was closed today so I stayed home with the kids. I've finished reading a book, started a load of laundry, ran the dishwasher and not a lot else. Fern asked if she could make brownie batter. No. Fern then asked if she could make a batch of brownies. Yes. Then she still tried to sit on the sofa and eat the batter, I guess she thought I wouldn't notice. For a smart girl, she's pretty daft.

I'll have to check the traffic and weather later to see if I can go out. Dan left for Florida and Fern will be at a sleep-over, so I might take The Boy out to supper or the mall. Wonder what other trouble I can get into while the house is mostly empty?

I am not my mother

When I was a kid...

If the butter was cold I'd scrape the top of the stick with the knife into curls thin enough to spread on my toast leaving rows of concave trenches along the creamy yellow bar. This would irritate my mom to no end. Thou shalt not mutilate the butter.

Or I'd pick up the stick of butter and swipe it across my toast. Leaving crumbs, of course, on the end of the stick. And again, "Who did this to the butter!"

Or I'd put the butter plate in the microwave to soften it so I wouldn't leave the telltale deep plowed furrows or even crumbs. Except it'd melt into a puddle. No escaping now.

Thirty-some years later the butter in my house is always a mess, and I don't care. The bath towels are not folded lengthwise perfectly in thirds, then in half and half again making identical stacks that fit precisely in the color-sorted linen closet. There are at least seven loads of laundry waiting to be done, probably ten, in the laundry room and quasi-sorted in piles on the hall floor. And I don't have the foggiest notion what's for dinner next week.

I'm glad the butter is a mess, it makes me smile.

What's for Dinner?

I'm running low on blog topics and I don't want to disappoint my vast readers so I'm posting my dinner menu.

No, I didn't mean to imply you are vast, sorry for the misunderstanding.

Inside-out peppers served with Asparagus

I call this inside-out peppers because it's a traditional stuffed pepper recipe but the peppers are on the inside of the mix instead of the out

If you're not on a low-carb diet you can add cooked rice to the mixture halfway through the simmer

Preheat oven to 425, I've set mine to convection roast.
prepare asparagus stalks (I just snap the bottoms off, but you can peel the lower half if you want to take up the time)
Put the asparagus stalks in a shallow pan and drizzle with olive oil, set aside until the oven is hot. Roast for 12 to 20 minutes depending on how thick the stalks are. Optional: toss in slivered garlic cloves halfway through, I forgot to slice some up tonight

Brown a pound or two of ground beef (depending on your family size, of course)
While that's cooking, chop one or two green, red, or yellow bell peppers

drain off the fat if you need to
add the chopped pepper
pour in a half jar or so of spaghetti sauce (flavor of your choice)
and a cup of water
crumble in a palm-full each of oregano, basil and marjoram
add in a healthy slug of worcestershire sauce (aka: "what's this here?" sauce)

simmer with the lid off until it's nice and thick about 10-20 minutes
salt and pepper to taste

enjoy!

I've agreed to make a halloween costume for Fern. She wants to be a "woodland pixie." She picked out a pattern, one with multiple possibilities. She wants her outfit like the green one in the center of the picture, but with short sleeves.

I study the pattern guide, everything is lined with lots of pieces, bias cut skirts and gathers. Yuck. Fern watches me nervously. I explain some principles of garment construction. She sees it's not going to be easy and is afraid I'll back out. She asks how I learned to sew (as her friends are amazed I made her halloween dress a few years ago). I tell my 7th grader and she is shocked. I first learned to sew in 7th grade Home-Ec class. One third of the year was spent cooking, one third sewing, and one third in crafts, although I can't remember what else I learned except knitting. She's jealous. She wants to have Home-Ec. She wants to learn to sew. She also wants to be able to help with my badge sewing business. (I should have 5 more clients by the weekend, yay me!) She wants to learn to knit, I'd love for her to knit her own socks and sweaters.

I guess Home-Ec and shop got cut from schools when money and scheduling got tight. No child left behind. I wonder what kind of long term repercussions will result in this. The kids, theoretically, will be able to read, but will they know what a healthy meal is? CNN had a bit on a few weeks back saying people think of food as ready to eat. Is the lack of cooking skills leading to overeating of fast food alternatives? Is the increase in childhood obesity a result of no Home-Ec in schools?

Just wondering.

I'm home right now, in the middle of the day, bread in the toaster for a sandwich, waiting for the delivery guys with my cabinets. They should be here soon, my window was noon to 6, now it's 11:30 to 12:30.

I need to clean up the kitchen a bit, empty the dishwasher, etc., and get some before pictures taken before my builder starts the work next week (I think that's when he's coming, he's on vacation this week). I'm not looking forward to a week or two without a kitchen. I wish he could have done with work while we were out of town, but the timing didn't work out that way.

Mmm, good sandwich, peanut butter on wheat toast. need some chocolate milk with this. Ah, that's better.

I was thinking about making more chicken salad for lunch today, but decided it was too much work. I made some for Miss Kingsfield's Independence Day Pool Party yesterday. I make it curried with raisins, apples, and pecans. It disappeared in a heartbeat and I got complements on it, so that made me feel good.

The party was fun, and my kids seemed to have a good time, for the most part. Thanks CG!

I guess whatever falls out of the freezer when you reach in for frozen microwave lunch is what you're serving for dinner.

Ever feel like that? No other inspiration for menu creation. When I was single I often forgot to eat. It just didn't enter my mind. I never learned to create a menu, it just didn't matter. Now I've been married for almost 17 years, and I'm still lousy at menu planning. I sincerely apologize to my husband for this void in my skill set. Come to think about it, my skill set is very much like Swiss cheese, more holes than substance. My better skills are with drills and hammers and putting tangible things together. Not abstract things, like menus. Or being a good parent when it comes to dealing with my pre-teen daughter and getting her to do things the first, or even second time I ask. She either irritates me or she's an angel, there is no middle ground in how I handle it.

But I digress. My original point. Meal planning and how I suck at it. I'm toying with the idea of subscribing to a meal planning service, where for $10 you get three months of seasonal menus, five per week along with recipes and shopping lists.

I've been considering subscribing for almost a year, but have been afraid to sign up. Why? I don't know, I'm still working on that. The autistic part of me has a hard time identifying feelings and reasons, but I'll try. Maybe I'll fail, or the recipes will be horrible. Maybe my family won't buy in to the idea. Maybe they won't help. Maybe they will help. Maybe they will help if they have everything available and ready. Maybe they will be thrilled and the service will be a success. Maybe harmony will flow, and world peace will ensue. Maybe I'm asking too much for $10.