Wine Please

Folks…I know we are our own worst critics, but all of you who know me IRL (in real life) never told me I make those faces all the time! GAAA!

Anyways…watch, point, laugh, mock. And thank you very much to Playtex for the opportunity–it was a lot of fun and I enjoyed watching the other women’s interviews (and yes, Andrew, I saw that part where I started smiling while you were trying to hold the door from the hordes of women on the other side–consider yourself lucky that you didn’t have to try to edit-out one of my witch cackles…ha ha).

In no particular order…

• Justin has been gone again all this week for training. He’s been sleeping in a hotel room by himself in a king-size bed. He gets to sleep without being woken up by an early-bird four-year old, snoring dogs, noisy neighbors, or nocturnally-crazed cats. He wakes up, works out in the hotel fitness room, has breakfast, goes to training for a few hours, goes to lunch at a restaurant, goes back to class for a few more hours, goes to a nice extended dinner each night with his classmates/co-workers where none of them are cooking or doing dishes, they have adult conversations and rarely need their food cut-up. He then goes back to the hotel, spends a couple hours doing what he wants, then goes to bed at a decent time (i.e. before 11pm). My days have been the complete opposite, with the added fun of a 2-3 hour daily commute, work all day then for an additional 2-3 hours at home a few nights, and I’m coming down with a cold. Guess who had the gall to tell me he was “so tired”? I’ll give you a hint: he’s taller than me and lives in my house slightly more than he’s gone.
• Gavin is pretty sensitive to change and always has been. Justin being out of town is no exception. Usually the first day or two Gavin will act up and spend an extra special amount of time in Time Out. After that little adjustment period he begins behaving better and becomes his usual sweet and helpful self, especially with Cooper. However, the entire week he will pepper me with such loving phrases as “I don’t want you, I want Daddy!” or “I don’t like you. You’re not my friend. I want Daddy,” or when I pick him up from school, “where’s Daddy? Why isn’t my Daddy here?” I’m considering selling him to the Gypsies in exchange for some jewelry or exotic spices.
• Anytime Justin is gone, or even on nights that he gets home late, Maggie will flip on “watch-dog” mode and become hyper vigilant about protecting me, the kids, the house, and the world from our cats. You know, the cats that have been around here longer than her.
• However, once she passes out at night, you know, when the actual boogey men are out, she’s worthless and doesn’t hear anything. Thankfully silly Ginger takes over and barks at shadows. Or the wind. Usually at 4am.
• I pulled a jar of applesauce out of the pantry and apparently it had been the victim of another jar’s demise while still at the store because it had some dried applesauce over one side of the jar. I put it under running water and start wiping the dampened applesauce off the jar and got cut on both thumbs by a small piece of glass. Both thumbs then proceeded to bleed profusely because I somehow hit a dang artery in each of them. But I didn’t know that I was bleeding that bad because it didn’t start until I saw blood on the coffee filters I was picking up off the floor a minute or two later (courtesy of Cooper). Thought he was bleeding until I realized (1) I never heard him cry, and (2) I saw the blood running down both my hands. Let me tell you, typing while both thumbs are bandaged is more difficult that you might think!
• Work has been interfering with my sleeping, blogging, blog-reading, plurking, and wine drinking (due to the several nights of additional work). But I stick with it because it pays for the stitches and blood transfusions I seem to need for my thumbs.
• Wanna hear about Cooper’s ears? You know you do! They’re actually doing great. He has been so incredibly happy all week, checking out all the sounds that he seemed to have been missing the past two-plus months. He has been repeating more and more of what I say and is responding better to what I say to him (i.e. “close the door”, “turn off the light”, “time for bubble-bath”), and has been singing in the car because he loves to say “la la la” with his tongue sticking far out of his mouth. It’s hilarious. Even better is that he has been laughing. Like throwing his head back and letting out these huge guffaws! And he loves doing it and tries to get Gavin to laugh with him (and Gavin is usually more than happy to laugh along with him, since he used to goad Cooper into laughing). The two of them just sitting there laughing in each other’s faces, watching Gavin let Cooper tackle him and squish him, and the picture below is what got me through this stressful week. Well, that and knowing Justin will be back Friday and will take over the kid-duty on Saturday morning, locking all lifeforms out of our room, letting me sleep until 9am in peace…whether he knows it or not.

As you may have remembered, I got crazy and purchased a basic water canning set with the intent to make some blackberry jam that did not need to be frozen. I was so worried when I ordered it that it would come too late and I’d be stuck with tons of blackberries on hand, or would just end up making freezer jam again (not the worst thing, but I wanted a product with a longer shelf-life). But the canner got here just in time; the blackberries, however, did not. And have not.

As summer has gone on and on, I have been continually perplexed as to why this time last year I had produced a good 16 half-pints of jam, while this year we’ve had yet to have enough berries ready at one time to make even a half-batch of jam (4 half-pints). We did a little research and found that even the U-Pick berry farms were having a rough year and didn’t have berries available this year; even the Farmer’s Market had very little berries to sell.

So I thought I’d try my hand at making homemade tomato sauce. I looked in my Ball Blue Book and they had a recipe for “Seasoned Tomato Sauce” and it required 45 lbs of tomatoes. WHAT? I bought 15 lbs and adjusted as needed. After cutting up about 11 or 12 lbs I realized I did not have enough space in my pots to accommodate the remaining 3-4 lbs of tomatoes, so I adjusted again. Good thing I like a lot of onion and garlic in my tomato sauce since those were already chopped and busy sauteeing. I think next time I will blanch and peel the tomatoes prior to cutting and cooking since peeling them via the food mill slowed things down quite a bit. But, after going through it all and waiting nearly 4-1/2 hours for it to cook down, it passed Justin’s taste-test, so I think it will be alright.

The canning itself wasn’t all that bad and I’m planning on using the rest of the tomatoes to make salsa. Hope I do it right since I don’t care for any of the recipes in the Ball Blue Book…just need to make sure it’s acidic enough so that I don’t make big botulism bombs.

I did go out briefly. But only for about 2-1/2 hours.

Today was Justin’s company picnic. I look forward to it every year because they do have a nice picnic…rent a pavillion, grill, play softball games, and the place where they go each year includes a water park. I couldn’t go last year because Cooper was just over a week old, so I was not up to sitting in 90+ degree heat with a newborn and post-partum heat-flashes.

This year I was all about it. I even made sure I had a suitable bathing suit…nothing too matronly since I try to be hip, but nothing that might get Justin fired because it got yanked off by one of my kids while playing in the waterpark.

But Cooper has had diarrhea all week. Mild, but still not suitable for public pool situations. And he’s been fussy, so since the pediatrician still saw fluid behind both his ears on Monday (leftover from his ear infection last month), I thought I’d best bring him in this morning to ensure it hadn’t gotten ugly again.

It had.

So since he was already banned from the pool due to the poops, the ear kind of cinched it that I would not be going at all. Which is just as well since Justin and Gavin left for the picnic shortly after I left for the doctor’s office.

Tonight was also the dinner for a friend’s upcoming birthday, so I had a babysitter coming at 5pm. Justin was supposed to drop Gavin by around the same time (or so I thought) and go on to the Rush concert with the Alaskan students he’s been playing ambassador to all week. By 5:20, no Gavin. And no responses to my calls or voicemails to Justin’s phone.

I go to dinner…play fifth wheel to my friends, and have a couple margaritas with my yummy dinner. Uninterrupted dinner. Well, besides when I called Justin two or three more times, and called the babysitter wondering if my eldest child ever showed up.

He hadn’t.

I finish my dinner, socialize a little more, and arrive home a little after 8pm. The house is completely quiet and the babysitter informs me that Gavin just went to bed…literally passed out from all the water and sun and fun he had today. He’d only gotten home an hour prior. I thank her, pay her, try calling Justin again, then started pouring myself some cosmos.

And since I didn’t have anywhere else to go and no husband to impress, I went from this:

including these:

and exchanged it for this (including swapping out my saucy butt-floss for some saggy maternity undies):

I know. Don’t say it. I am one sexy beast in my ratty t-shirt and old strawberry pj pants.

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Justin: Hello?
Me: Hi. Did you make and bring a lunch for Gavin today since he has his fieldtrip?
Justin: No. didn’t know he needed a lunch.
Me: It was on the fieldtrip sheet on the fridge. Okay…I’ll bring it. Did you grab his extra clothes for his cubby?
Justin: No.
Me: Uh, did you grab his sheets from the dryer?
Justin: No.
Me: Did you put sunblock on Gavin?
Justin: No. That’s not part of my morning routine.
Me: What? It’s summer…he needs sunblock. Alright…well, did you leave his carseat there?
Justin: No. Didn’t know I needed to leave the carseat.
Me: It was on the fieldtrip sheet on the fridge. *pause* So uh, did you bring Gavin to school?

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