If you tell your wife you've planned a date night . . .
She will be very excited but will immediately think of a million little chores that need to be done before she can leave.
First, she will bundle up her children in clothes suitable for sunny, yet cold and windy March weather and she will ship them outside with the threat of "Don't come back to this house until I call you for lunch!"
Then, she will sweep the floor (even though she just did it yesterday).
She will do laundry (even though she just did it yesterday).
She will clean out the refrigerator to see what ingredients she has to make dinner for the children and her in-laws (who are graciously babysitting). She decides she will make a chicken parmesan pasta.
She will note in the clean out process that the refrigerator is basically full of condiments and juice, so she will go to her desk to write down a list of some things to buy at the store on date night.
Once at the desk, she will remember to look at her carefully plotted out menu planner and see that she had written down "Chicken Pot Pie with Cheesy Biscuit Topping" on the space for today and will re-think her plan to make Chicken Parmesan Pasta.
She will then go to the kitchen and search for the recipe she wrote down for the Chicken Pot Pie with Cheesy Biscuit Topping and will decide to go ahead and cook the chicken quarters now. After all, they are what must be cooked for the recipe - everything else can be decided later.
She will season the chicken and puts it in the oven.
She will find the recipe for the Chicken Pot Pie with Cheesy Biscuit Topping, review it and realize she does not have buttermilk for the biscuits and debate whether she should just make buttermilk with vinegar and milk or look for the other cheesy biscuit recipe that she has.
She will then look for the other Cheesy Biscuit recipe, find it and return to her desk.
Then she will look at her meal planner again and realize that she has planned a complicated meal for Thursday night - the busiest night of the week. She then erases the original meal and grabs a pencil to write in a new, less complicated one (like Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches).
When she grabs the pencil, she finds out that the pencil is not sharpened. She grabs another and another, and none of them are sharpened.
She grabs an entire handful and takes them to the craft cabinet where she gets out the electric sharpener, plugs it in and inserts the first pencil to be sharpened.
She will not hear the whirring of the sharpener.
She will hear the oven timer go off and realize that it is time to flip the chicken, so she goes to the oven, flips and seasons the other side of the chicken and returns it to the oven to cook.
She will look into the pencil opening and realize that her four year old son had inserted a pencil ERASER first into the sharpener and got the eraser stuck in the sharpening mechanism.
She will unplug the sharpener and look for a pair of needle nose pliers to try to pull the eraser out.
After minutes of desperate searching, she will not find the needle nose pliers.
She will search for the miniature screw driver set she received at Christmas from one of her children.
She will not find it.
She will locate a screwdriver that she thinks will be appropriate and it will not work.
She will then gather ALL of the screwdrivers she can find which takes her to several different drawers in the kitchen, a few bedrooms, the linen closet and the laundry room.
She will finally find ONE screwdriver that will work.
She will then dismantle the pencil sharpener, and find the metal eraser cap is stuck inside the mechanism and cannot be maneuvered out with a screwdriver.
After some thinking, she will realize the only tool she has that will potentially work is a pair of manicure scissors.
She will go back upstairs and locate the manicure scissors.
She will use them to somehow manage to get that blasted metal top with the eraser OUT of the sharpening mechanism, get it all screwed back together on her first attempt and will then sharpen five pencils.
She will walk back to her desk and on the way see that someone had eaten Saltine crackers for breakfast and smashed several of them into the carpet.
She will ignore it.
She will sit down at the desk to finish what she started.
She will forget what she had started.
Just as she feels like she is on the brink of remembering why she sat down at the desk in the first place, she will hear the oven timer will go off again, indicating that another 15 minutes have passed.
She will go check the chicken.
She will then hear the buzzer on the dryer indicate the clothes are dry.
She will remove the clothes from the dryer, insert the clothes from the washer, and start a new load of clothes in the washer.
She will realize it is almost lunch time and she has no idea what she is going to feed the kids.
She will open up the refrigerator, realize that the refrigerator is basically full of condiments and juice, and will remember that she had gone to her desk originally to write down a list of some things to buy at the store on date night.
She will then sit down and write a blog post about how she basically wasted the last hour and a half.
And that's what happens if you tell your wife you've planned a date night!
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
Trying Not To Get Excited
I'm a big fan of winter. I like that it gets very cold and snows. From December 1 to March 1 I would love for it to be about 20 degrees with at least an inch or two of snow covering the ground constantly.
Most people do not appreciate my view on Winter, which I can understand, but I still enjoy waking up to a blanket of white. I know I am kind of prejudiced towards a typical winter, given Erik's winter profession providing snow removal, but it really doesn't have as much to do with our income as it does my hatred of mud.
I HATE MUD!
Hate it!
There's not a square inch of ground on our 40 acres that is without mud. Most days, that includes my house. It makes me nuts! The amount of work mud creates for me is unbelievable. Everyone in the house requires at least two changes of clothes per day. Willie J, of course, requires at least three or four. No one respects my boundaries of TAKE YOUR SHOES OFF AT THE DOOR and I frequently find someone traipsing through the house with muddy boots on. Apparently, having mud caked boots is the only time my family remembers the rule: If you need to talk to me, come find me. Don't stand there and just shout "MOMMA!" If you are perfectly clean and want me, by all means, stand in your bedroom and yell for me when I'm down in the laundry room up to my elbows shouting out all of our mud stained clothes. But if you are covered in mud and most likely manure and want me, please, by all meanswalk STOMP all through the house as you search for me. Especially if I am in the upstairs bathroom. There's nothing I love more than being disturbed during my bathroom break. Unless of course, it's coming out of the bathroom to find a trail of mud down the stairs, through all the downstairs rooms and back to the laundry room where you are now taking off all of your muddy gear.
However, as we approach spring, I am looking forward to the warmer days and I'm getting used to the mud. Although our cellar has a lot to be desired, we set it up over the weekend for the kids to be able to enter through the basement door, disrobe of their muddy attire, and come upstairs through the basement. It has cut down on the mud considerably this weekend, which was especially important as I had spent the entire week thoroughly cleaning the house. Like, moving furniture and washing baseboards kind of cleaning. Three days in and we're holding pretty well. I only had to sweep four times today and I didn't have to run the vacuum at all.
I'm also getting kind of excited over the fact that we may actually have a real Easter break. Our school is scheduled to have the Wednesday before Easter through the Tuesday after off as part of their building in snow days into the schedule just in case. We haven't even had a delay this year, which has been kind of sad, but I had looking forward to this potentially long break.
That was until I was reminded of the Ides of March. This particular phrase has always stuck with me from High School - I want to say it was 10th grade - when we read Julius Caesar in English class. In modern times, the term Ides of March is best known as the date on which Julius Caesar was killed in 44 B.C. Caesar was stabbed (23 times) to death in the Roman Senate by a group of conspirators led by Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus. The group included 60 other co-conspirators according to Plutarch.[2]
According to Plutarch, a seer had foreseen that Caesar would be harmed not later than the Ides of March and on his way to the Theatre of Pompey (where he would be assassinated), Caesar met that seer and joked, "The ides of March have come", meaning to say that the prophecy had not been fulfilled, to which the seer replied "Ay, Caesar; but not gone."[3] This meeting is famously dramatized in William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, when Caesar is warned by the soothsayer to "beware the Ides of March."[4][5]
This sticks with me because during my late high school years, the Ides of March (March 15) is the day before my mom's (and now Maggie's) birthday and we had two years of very bad blizzards around the Ides of March. So I always associate the Ides of March with blizzards. Last year was not too different as I discovered as I went through some pictures from last year. I found these, taken March 11, 2011.
Most people do not appreciate my view on Winter, which I can understand, but I still enjoy waking up to a blanket of white. I know I am kind of prejudiced towards a typical winter, given Erik's winter profession providing snow removal, but it really doesn't have as much to do with our income as it does my hatred of mud.
I HATE MUD!
Hate it!
There's not a square inch of ground on our 40 acres that is without mud. Most days, that includes my house. It makes me nuts! The amount of work mud creates for me is unbelievable. Everyone in the house requires at least two changes of clothes per day. Willie J, of course, requires at least three or four. No one respects my boundaries of TAKE YOUR SHOES OFF AT THE DOOR and I frequently find someone traipsing through the house with muddy boots on. Apparently, having mud caked boots is the only time my family remembers the rule: If you need to talk to me, come find me. Don't stand there and just shout "MOMMA!" If you are perfectly clean and want me, by all means, stand in your bedroom and yell for me when I'm down in the laundry room up to my elbows shouting out all of our mud stained clothes. But if you are covered in mud and most likely manure and want me, please, by all means
However, as we approach spring, I am looking forward to the warmer days and I'm getting used to the mud. Although our cellar has a lot to be desired, we set it up over the weekend for the kids to be able to enter through the basement door, disrobe of their muddy attire, and come upstairs through the basement. It has cut down on the mud considerably this weekend, which was especially important as I had spent the entire week thoroughly cleaning the house. Like, moving furniture and washing baseboards kind of cleaning. Three days in and we're holding pretty well. I only had to sweep four times today and I didn't have to run the vacuum at all.
I'm also getting kind of excited over the fact that we may actually have a real Easter break. Our school is scheduled to have the Wednesday before Easter through the Tuesday after off as part of their building in snow days into the schedule just in case. We haven't even had a delay this year, which has been kind of sad, but I had looking forward to this potentially long break.
That was until I was reminded of the Ides of March. This particular phrase has always stuck with me from High School - I want to say it was 10th grade - when we read Julius Caesar in English class. In modern times, the term Ides of March is best known as the date on which Julius Caesar was killed in 44 B.C. Caesar was stabbed (23 times) to death in the Roman Senate by a group of conspirators led by Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus. The group included 60 other co-conspirators according to Plutarch.[2]
According to Plutarch, a seer had foreseen that Caesar would be harmed not later than the Ides of March and on his way to the Theatre of Pompey (where he would be assassinated), Caesar met that seer and joked, "The ides of March have come", meaning to say that the prophecy had not been fulfilled, to which the seer replied "Ay, Caesar; but not gone."[3] This meeting is famously dramatized in William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, when Caesar is warned by the soothsayer to "beware the Ides of March."[4][5]
This sticks with me because during my late high school years, the Ides of March (March 15) is the day before my mom's (and now Maggie's) birthday and we had two years of very bad blizzards around the Ides of March. So I always associate the Ides of March with blizzards. Last year was not too different as I discovered as I went through some pictures from last year. I found these, taken March 11, 2011.
What a difference the snow makes.
I'll curb my enthusiasm for a while in anticipation of what could happen with the Ides of March, but I'll be enjoying these amazing, warm February days as we head into Leap Day. And if March 2012 COMES IN and GOES OUT like a lamb, I won't complain!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)