7 Quick Takes - Surgery Edition

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This has been a wild week. On Wednesday I finally got the call about the surgery. I was told it was slated for the 17th. Which wasn't my first choice, but let's face it, my first choice isn't a sternotomy at all. So after fretting a bit about my rapidly diminishing summer I decided to suck it up and enjoy life.

Side Note: For those of you from south of the border, around here summer is a rare and precious thing. It lasts approximately 7-8 weeks and is the BEST PART OF THE YEAR. Better than Christmas even. Because Christmas is often cold. No one wants to spend summer recovering from major surgery. That's why God invented November.

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So, Thursday morning I decided to take full advantage of the week that lay ahead and spend time planning out my week and organizing playdates. I was even planning to babysit. Because what better way to spend my week than with oodles of high energy boys?

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Which means of course that the phone rang at 10:00 and it was my surgeon's office telling me there was a cancellation and I would now be having surgery Monday. This coming Monday.

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After hyper-ventilating just a bit I thanked God for PBS kids and made a whole bunch of phone calls cancelling a whole bunch of plans.

5

I have come to the realization that my job over the next six weeks will be to get better. SOOO, this blog is gonna go dark for a while. How long, I am not certain, but I'm guessing at least a month. BUT I will be back. Probably with bed-pan stories.

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However, I cannot quit the Internet cold turkey so you can follow me on Twitter. Please do. I may even give Way Cooler my password (it makes me shake a bit just typing that) so he can update you all. PLUS if you need a hit from the house of geek, Way Cooler has like four weeks of posts pre-written and ready to go on his blog. WARNING: this blog has been known to cause extreme drowsiness when read by a female. Use caution when reading.

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I will miss you all and can't wait to be back and more boring than ever. See you in a month or so.

For surgery-free quick takes, please go see Jennifer at Conversion Diary.

Taking Stock

Last night my sweet cousin was over for supper. When I was pulling the meat out of the freezer I spotted several bags of frozen chicken stock that I wanted to give to her. Whenever I do a chicken in the crockpot, I make stock after. It smells fantastic, is practically free, tastes great and Way Cooler won't touch it with a ten foot pole. So, I give it away.

Now in Way Cooler's defense, it doesn't taste much like the stock from the carton. And he's a carton and package man. I just recently realized that his palate just doesn't really love homemade stuff. It only took me fourteen years to figure this out.

Because I am cheap I have tried making homemade marinara sauce, homemade french dressing, homemade pickles and homemade bruschetta. I've been politely asked to just buy it next time on all counts. I finally clued in that maybe it's not me, it's him. The boy don't do homemade.

And for those of you wondering, I don't think he's planning to re-set his palate anytime soon.

End meandering tangent.

So, I pulled out the stock with full intention to take it off of the top of the freezer and put it in a bag and give it to someone who would truly appreciate it. All FOUR freezer bags with four cups in each. Unfortunately I am very easily distracted. As just illustrated by above tangent. I must have seen something shiny and never went back to the freezer.

AND it turns out, that there were small holes in two of the bags.

Yep.

There were eight cups of chicken stock puddled on my basement floor this morning. NEVER in my life have I been more grateful for an unfinished basement. Washing a puddle of stock off of a painted concrete floor is a heck of a lot easier than getting it out of carpet.

I went through an entire jumbo roll of Bounty. Yes, I know I should have used a shamwow or a towel, but at 6:45 in the morning, the only liquid I am in the mood to deal with is a homemade Chai tea Latte. I just wanted the greasy mess gone. I promise, as soon as the ground thaws I'll plant a tree or something.

So, now my basement still smells like Swiss Chalet and my cousin doesn't get her stock but that problem of what to blog about? Well, that was nicely solved.

But What is IN the Water?

I have a confession. I HATE toys that make noise. That is what my children are for. Why on earth would I want to add to the daily cacophony? I like to blame it on the fact that I am a SAHM and I would hear the noisy toys 24/7 and thus soon end up in a padded room, but I think that if I worked outside the home I would hate them just as badly.

So, we do not have the LeapFrog talking alphabet thing-y that every other child of this generation seems to have. You know, the one ensures that most 14 month olds now can say all their letters in an odd electronic voice.

But I did want some way to teach my children their alphabet without workbooks or flashcards, not that I am opposed to those, I'm just lazy and flashcards and workbooks seem like waaaay too much work.

Enter my amazing MIL. She gave Spud this game. Best $3.95 she ever spent. Yes, I know it is way cheaper on their website, but we are Canadian and even though our dollar is now at par we are still gouged on a regular basis. (End rant)

Both of the boys have learned their alphabets this way and we have spent hours and hours and hours playing together and trash talking. ( I teach my boys to trash-talk, it adds to the fun for me.) Just a note, on the website it says for ages 4+, both of my boys have been playing it long before then. Not well mind you, it takes a great deal of self control not to wipe them off of the board, but I do manage to keep the games somewhat even. It saves on the tears that way.

To me this is way better than listening to some electronic nuisance and tripping over small bodies while trying to make dinner. Plus then I wouldn't have conversations like this.

HG: Sprout, do you have a duck?

Sprout: Nope. Go fish. Did you know that ducks live in rivers? Oh that reminds me, I gotta pee. (Jumping off couch but continuing conversation as he heads towards the bathroom) I pee like a river, so ducks must live in pee.

HG: (still a little stunned by this particular tangent) ducks don't live in pee.

Sprout: What do they live in then?

HG: The water!!

Sprout: No pee?

HG: (lying through her teeth) none at all.

Sprout: That's too bad ( he returns) hey mommy do you have an alligator?