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That’s all the stands between me and certain failure.  I know, you think I’ll do fine but seriously… I am getting some pitiful scores on my practice questions.  Pitiful is even a bit of an understatement.  I shouldn’t even be posting right now, I should be taking my 40 lashes and getting back to the books because the set I just did was so bad.  BUT I haven’t been around for a few days and I’m starting to feel a little withdrawal. 

Here’s a quick rundown of what’s going on here.   The sweetpeas I planted started blooming but now everything outside has been fried crispy by the recent heat wave.  Our best efforts to water and tend the garden didn’t save everything.  

We’ve been doing some fun projects inside to keep us cool and busy.  Yesterday we picked up some craft supplies on the cheap at Target and made pipe cleaner bangles.  They also had some of those little Schleich animals on clearance so we got a random assortment of those.  Chase loooves the little animals.  They’ve been keeping her pretty busy and since now we have way too many of them I devised a plan for storing them.  I picked up a cheap zippered pencil case with a clear zippered pocket on the front.  That way we can store the animals in the big pocket with one in the smaller front pocket so everyone can tell what’s inside.  It’s not terribly sophisticated or attractive but I think it might work and it’s cheap, did I mention cheap?

So I took this picture because it pretty much includes everything we’ve done over the last couple of days.  The pipecleaner bangles, a bouquet of grasses that Chase picked, a poor, sad, lone stem of a potted palm that was once glorious that I snipped at the last second and rooted in a cup of water and recently repotted in soil as an experiment, and the butterfly that Chase decorated today.  The butterfly had a head and pipecleaner antennae… had.  

I took Chase to the library there and we decimated their collection of insect books.  We brought home an Eyewitness DVD about butterflies too.  Butterflies and insects in general are big around here lately– each of them in turn referred to as fly.  We found a praying mantis living in our front garden on Monday and today we found a big cricket in the back.  It was so cool but I think it tried to attack me and bite my face, the mantis that is.  I try to keep it together for Chase’s sake and not fly into hysterics at the drop of a bug hat but I’ll smash a bug that attacks my face without hesitation.  I still marvel how everything about the library is free, the librarian’s time and expertise, the books, the videos and right now they have a nice collection of original artwork from children’s literature on display.  Last but not least, Chase says adios singing ‘don’t fence me in.’  It’s not even a gate for her it’s a gate for the dogs but she wasn’t hearing any of that.

We’ve been back since bedtime Tuesday but I’ve been in a constant rotation of studying and exhaustion. I thought I was getting a cold when I went to bed last night but I woke up feeling fine. Which is good because I’m a week and half off of game day. I still have a lot of stuff to cover but I think I can get it all done next week if I don’t go complete shit-house prematurely. For this weekend… farmer’s market, Artscape and more studying… sigh.

Chase with her great grandma

Tell me everyone else isn’t studying too.  I would really, really like that.

Tomatoes are here!  This is the ultimate summer side dish.  Veg and a little carbs all in one.  I’ve been meaning to make this for a while but I eat so much bread that there’s never enough stale stuff left over for the croutons.  Between the three of us there wasn’t a morsel left.  I patterned what I did pretty loosely on this BF Contessa recipe.  It’s so yummy, filling but not heavy and the bread.. oh, the bread.  I foresee us eating this many many more times this summer.  

You knew it was coming right?  It’s good but not great.  It’s more of a tutu apron than a tutu proper.  Here’s how it came about.  I’ve been picking up pieces of tulle from remnant bins for months and finally had enough to put a little something together.  I also splurged and bought a gathering foot.  First of all it’s the best thing ever.  No more fussing with rows of stitching and getting great gathering only to pull to hard and break the thread.  The only thing I can’t do is account for how much length will be left if I gather with x tension and y stitch length.  Does anyone know how to figure it out?   

There are obviously some kinks to work out.  I should probably stop taking pictures of projects before I cut all the thread ends and try to prettify it a little.  I just used a wide ribbon for the band and tied it in the back.  You can get a sense of how it looks in the back from one of those pictures.  The other reason Chase got a tutu today?  Last night I jumped up and tried to squish a bug.  Who knew that would precipitate hours… HOURS of EYE? EYE? That’s fly? in baby speak.  EYE?  all through bathtime… EYE?  all through bedtime, we even read a book about a fly.  First thing this morning… everything was ok.  Ben got up with her and put the tv on and I slept in.  When they came back upstairs his face was drawn and pale and all he could tell me was that he looked away for a second and that when he looked back at the tv there was a chicken, a duck and a frog on the screen and Chase had renewed her efforts at looking for an EYE?  What do I do he asked me.  What to do indeed.  

I let Ben go back to bed and went to work.  EYE?  was nothing a new tutu and a little Dragon Tales couldn’t take care of.   

So even though I just got the results of last year’s MRI a couple of weeks ago I’m now awaiting the results of the one I had for this year on Friday.  The whole thing is absurd.  The stack of films that I have to bring with me to every appointment weighs almost more than I do and yet the actual scan doesn’t get any easier.  It’s not the tight space that bothers me, I’m not afraid to be in the tube.  What I can’t stand is not being able to move.  

No matter what I wear, no matter what I do with my hair I spend the whole time supremely uncomfortable.  This time was no exception.  I get comfortable, get an earplug and she slips me into the tube and starts the scans.  As soon as the scans begin the woman starts talking to me through the intercom even though she’s JUST handed me an earplug and the machine makes a terrible noise.  She’s asking me if I’m ok and she continues to ask me for the next 20 minutes or so.  The third or fourth time she asks I say um, I have a cramp in my back because the burning pain is just becoming unbearable and I haven’t even gotten the contrast dye yet.  Her response?  Even though she’s been asking me if I’m ok for half an hour?  Um, she says.  Um!  Um.. what does that mean?  I tell her I need to move my shoulders which makes her huff and puff and carry on before she bustles in to the room.  That’s when she notices that she’s forgotten to wedge my head in place with the little bolsters.  The crazy thing is that once she did that?  The whole process was a lot more comfortable.  Stupid, stupid!  

So I get my films and hustle over the hospital where I find that the appointment before me hasn’t been seen yet and have been waiting for 45 minutes.  It was not looking good.  Luckily it didn’t take that long to get in.  Of course once I was in I was out again in 10 minutes.  Why did I have to go through all of that for the doctor to tell me to call him in a week so he could read me the MRI technician’s report?  I’m happy that the scans show no change so I’m not that angry otherwise I’d be carrying on about how it was a total scam.  Keep your fingers crossed that the report is consistent with the doc’s initial opinion.  I’m not too worried about it though.  

So what else is going on?  How was your fourth?  I’m trying not to freak out.  I love fireworks when I’m watching the display of a professional pyrotechnics technician.  The thought of every Tom, Dick and Harry launching his own show makes me glad it rained today so my house has a chance when the embers of Tom’s bottle rocket land on the roof.  Am I the only person that thinks fireworks at home are stupid and that it’s a really bad idea to sell fireworks at Target?  

We had a pretty good day.  We spent it just hanging around and having a good time.  A few pics from the day.

I stirred some of the cherries we canned into softened vanilla ice cream.  It was so yummy.

Ben calls it: the 1980’s are calling and they want their phone back.  

I took Chase to the toy store today.  I love that place.  I love toys but on top of all the cool toys they have all of these tiny little things like stickers and erasers and tiny little plastic animals.  I love those even more. Chase got this new stroller.  She loves it.  See stunt baby’s feet sticking out?  See all the fingerprints on the door?  Sigh.  

To be included here!  It’s a big deal for me cause I feel like I’m out here all alone sometimes.  I feel all insecure when people talk about the traffic they get on their blog because I get very little… so feel free to add me to your reader, leave a comment or bookmark me, I like to share!  

Of course I was so excited about it and the prospect of friends that the server went down and with it my site for a while.  I know it’s times like that where Ben wishes he didn’t manage my hosting.  I turned into dracu-client demanding answers and responsive action and the worst part was that he couldn’t ignore my phone calls or neglect to answer my email, poor guy.  It came back up though and I took a deep breath and everything was fine, lucky for him…

I think I’m all caught up on posting now.  I was feeling a little overwhelmed there just missing a couple of days over the weekend.  

This could very well be the single most money-saving post ever for us hairy gals.  I remembered my mother having a friend that made a homemade wax concoction for waxing legs.  This is the information age right?  You bet, everything you need to know about the home hair removal process called sugaring is right there at the tip of your fingers… I mean fingertips, honestly, who writes like that?  

If you Google sugaring you’ll get lots of hits but this page has some good tips.  I had to make it twice before getting it right.  I think that the key, like this person says, is to not let it boil too hard.  I got impatient the first time and cranked the heat and it was hot, like molten hot right up until the time it turned rock hard and unusable.  I didn’t end up using a thermometer so you can do this without it.  The one I have ended up going off way before the mixture even started to color so I knew it was off.  I did use a glass of water to see if the sugar would hold together when dropped in.  If you search sugaring on youtube you’ll find yet more info about it.  It will look about like this:

It totally worked and I am happy to have 42 more bucks in my pocket every month.  I didn’t even wax my eyebrows off.  

My second sugary topic is about jam.  We went back to Shaw’s and picked blueberries and cherries.  You HAVE to make this jam.  This jam is out of this world.  I found it poking around the internet for recipes.  It really delivers.  I increased the lemon juice by a tablespoon and decreased the vinegar accordingly.  Obviously I didn’t use frozen berries and it didn’t make a difference.  Now for all the cherries.  The trees were just dripping with fruit.  They were so easy to pick that even Chase filled a bucket.  You just put your hands up into the leaves and you would come back with a handful of ripe red cherries.  It was my first time picking cherries but by far the easiest of the fruits we’ve tried recently and by far the most fun.. you know, cause you can get dad up on a ladder.    That’s always good for a few laughs.  

I did proper canning this time but I did make one serving for immediate consumption.  I was sitting around last night complaining that my back was sore, that I felt bruised and then later realized that my underwear was too tight.  So tight that it made my back hurt?  You think it’s because I ate almost a whole loaf of bread slathered in jam?  It was worth it!