Have Your Cake and Eat It Tuesday

Man, I haven't done one of these posts in a loooong time (six months?!).  And this one isn't even a real one, as I'm not sharing a recipe.  And a more appropriate title would be Have Your Cake and Eat It The Tuesday After You Get Back From America In June.  Here's why:

I had a dream last night.  I was in America for a very short visit.  I was on my last day or two and I hadn't bought any Reese's Peanut Butter Chips.

Also, I was in Poland and had just found out that they started selling Reese's peanut butter chips in a certain store here.   Greg was the manager/owner of one of them and he "helped" me while I was looking for the chips.  I searched EVERYWHERE, as I knew they'd be on some random shelf in a small pile between two products that weren't remotely related to baking.  After a desperate search (after all, I was leaving America very soon to go back to Poland -- never mind that I was already in Poland in this part of the dream) I realized that I'd have to go to a different store in the same chain.  

That one was in America.  It was about Costco sized and I did a shelf by shelf search and came up with nothing.  I went to the bakery and talked to some people working there about where I could find them.  Sitting at a table there, talking to another lady, was Steve S. from jr. high/high school who used to tease me and who I was a little afraid of, until he got a some self esteem, joined the football team and started being nice to me.  He didn't care too much about my peanut butter chips, but the lady he was talking with helped me (I have no idea why on Earth he was in this dream.  I haven't thought of him in decades, almost).

I don't really know what happened after that.  I don't think I ever found the chips.  It doesn't really matter though.  I know this all sounds very pointless, but it's not.  Not for me at least.  The moral of the story is, buy LOTS of peanut butter chips when you're in America in June.  

www.sweetstall.com

I love how a bag of those can last such a looong time.  I use them as an accent in chocolate chip cookies or brownies.  It only takes a very little bit to transform a recipe.  Good thing, too, because when I have them in the house I want to add them to everything I bake.  Mmmmm.

I really hate that there's a weight limit on luggage.  

www.gabbaideals.com

You Probably Had To Be There

Today while I was cleaning the kitchen (again) and the kids were eating a snack at the table:

Me:  Okay, I see two cups here with juice in them.  Whose are they?

David:  This one's mine, and this one. . . . is mine, too.

Me:  Why are there two cups half full of juice on a table that was just clean?

David:  Well, I had to get some new juice.

Me:  Okay, David.  New rule.  No juice for you unless you ask me first.  Every time I clean the kitchen I dump some juice from at least one cup.  You have to drink the juice that you pour for yourself.  Why did you pour a second cup of juice today?

David:  Because I had a Halls (he's a little sick) and then when I drank this juice it tasted minty.

Me:  Soooo. . .?  (stifling a giggle)

David:  So, I didn't want to drink it.

Me:  So you got another cup out?  And?  {I start laughing and can't finish my sentences}

Evie:  {starts laughing and tries to ask David a question, but she's laughing too hard}

Me:  That one . . .was minty so. . . you decided to try with a new cup?  

Evie and I are laughing like crazy and trying to talk.  David starts laughing a little too.  

Eventually we calmed down enough for David to explain that he came back to get a drink a little while  after he left the "minty" juice and thought that some of his "minty breath" had tainted it and it would still be minty, which is why he went for a new cup.  

He still has to ask before he can get juice.  

In Poland they sell mint apple juice.  And David likes it.  

Earth Hour: Switch Off the Light for an hour

As part of the effort to to take action on Global Warming. Earth Hour has been transformed into the world’s first global election, between Earth and global warming in 2009.


For the first time in history, people of all ages, nationalities, race and background have the opportunity to use their light switch as their vote – Switching off your lights is a vote for Earth, or leaving them on is a vote for global warming. WWF are urging the world to VOTE EARTH and reach the target of 1 billion votes, which will be presented to world leaders at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009.

THIS SATURDAY 28 MARCH AT 8.30PM YOU CAN VOTE EARTH BY SWITCHING OFF YOUR LIGHTS FOR ONE HOUR - EARTH HOUR.

Beside turning your lights off for an hour, there are many other things you can do to make Earth Hour 2009 a success.

• Sign Up Now. Become a part of Earth Hour and get useful tips and tools to reduce your carbon footprint everyday

• Tell A Friend. Better still – tell them, your family and even your work mates. Encourage them to sign up. Email them a link to this website and mobilise even more people!

• Tell Your Story. How is climate change affecting your family and your community? We want to hear how you're becoming part of the solution.

• Run your own Earth Hour. Download our quick guide for how to run Earth Hour in your city or town. It's easy!

• Your Earth Hour. What will you be doing at 8.30pm on Saturday March 28? We're keen to know what you have planned for Earth Hour 2009. If you'd like to share your plans with Earth Hour and the media, then please send us an email describing with as much detail as you can what you have planned to myearthhour@earthhour.org. Don't forget to include your name, where you live (City and Country), and your contact telephone number including your country code.

• Blogger Tool Kit: Create a blog post about the importance of global action on climate change and how participation in Earth Hour can make a difference.(Just like me! :) )

Paying My Lack of Craftiness Forward

I'm not crafty.  I don't feel apologetic about it.  I like seeing other people's crafts, and hearing about their talents.  I just don't have those kinds of talents.  

I  bake, but that's not a talent.  I'm a recipe follower and I'm also a make-the-same-thing-over-and-over-er (brownies) and an only-bake-very-basic-recipe-er (almost all drop cookies or bars).  I don't feel apologetic about this, either.  

But there are times when I sort of wish I knew how to do something.  Anything creative where you actually physically create something and then you can look at, display, or share it.  

 Well, there is one thing I know how to make.  I make really great ones, too.  Babies.  Unfortunately, I think there are a number of other women who might make the same claim for themselves, so I don't feel that it's some exotic talent of mine.  Plus, they aren't actually give away-able for like 20+ years from creation, and even then they'll still belong to me.

I've seen this on maybe 45 other blogs, but never entered to win because -- I'm not crafty.  And I'm not willing to pay shipping for one of the things I can create.  Then my sister Su posted it on her blog and told me I should really do it.  So I am.  Because I want to get something in the mail from my sister.  But, as I said, it makes me wish I had half a crafty bone in my body.  (I know, I'm one of the many with that particular wish)

It's called Pay It Forward:

Lucky you! The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you. This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

1. I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
2. What I create will be just for you.
3. It’ll be done this year. {might be a little while}
4. You will have no clue what it’s going to be. It may be a story. It may be poetry or maybe even some creation I haven’t even invented yet (but Heaven knows it will most likely be totally fabulous and creative…  . I may draw or paint something. I may bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that’s for sure!
5. I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

The catch? Oh, the catch is that you must re-post this on your blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on your blog.

There are a few things I like about this.  Number 4 implies that there is NOTHING wrong with something that will fit in an envelope.  I can almost guarantee that what I send will fit in an envelope.  Oh, now I've got you all clamoring.  Relax!  It's okay.  I'm so sorry that I can't do this for everyone who comments, but over time, and with a little therapy, I'm sure you'll get over it.  

Also, if you're one of the first five, you could also pay me to not send you anything.  That's the option I'd go with, if I were you.

In case you haven't seen this on 45 different blogs and don't quite get it, the first five people that comment saying that they want me to send them something and that they will post the same thing on their blog, will get something from me.  It's not necessarily the first five people to comment either, since many people won't want to play and will just want to tell me that I should learn to bake more interesting stuff or something. 

Aaron's Calling

As I was washing dishes yesterday Aaron came in and stood next to me.  He began his babbling.  He does a lot of that. This time, though, he was speaking in a very firm voice.  I looked down and saw that he was facing into the kitchen, holding Greg's Polish Bible open and discoursing to the specks of dust floating through the air in the sunlight streaming through the window.  

"How darling!"  I thought, as mothers are wont to do.  I dried my hands and gave him a long squeezy hug and 3 kisses and then went back to washing dishes, while he went back to his sermon.  I reflected:  He sees his daddy up on the stand at church every Sunday.  Nearly every Sunday he gives a talk or teaches a lesson.  This is imitative behavior!  He's preparing to be like daddy.  How sweet!

But his tone of voice was different than Greg's.  He was sounding a bit more authoritative, putting a stronger emphasis on the key word of each "sentence." And it was getting worse.  He was as close to shouting as you can get while still only talking.   Soon his voice almost had an angry tone to it.   We were on to the hellfire and damnation portion of his address.  I looked down and saw that his face, buried in the book, was red and at some points his whole little body was shaking with the intensity of his delivery of the message.  

I stopped thinking about how adorable he was and started wondering where in the world he learned about this type of preaching.  Really!  Sheesh!  

If he's going to grow up to be a prophet, as Ewelina has been telling me she feels that he will, he'll have to learn a different way of sermonizing.   I think in our church we call it giving a "talk" for a reason.  

Also, today while I was starting a load of laundry, Aaron was in my room "folding" the socks.  When I went in to check on him and saw that he had made a discovery:

David's underwear fit perfectly!

This is a cell phone shot, obviously, but at least you can still make out my unmade, laundry covered bed in the background!

*********

I've mentioned that I don't have much access to books of different genres.  This is part of the reason Annette the Angelic sent me her book to read.  She thought that maybe there aren't as many Deseret Book Stores in Poland as there are in Utah. (Also, on my review I forgot to mention that the book is LDS historical fiction, the fourth in her temple series, and that Ewelina is reading and loving it, too!)

Also, Heather the Heavenly was SO NICE that she rigged her giveaway so that I won the book Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult that she had signed,!  Obviously Heather wants to give me a chance to read a wider range of books, too.  Or possibly I happened to be chosen randomly.  Either way.

However you look at it, I'll tell you one thing:  If I ever write a book, there are two phrases you'll be sure to find in that book, "The Lyon's Tale" and "The Extraordinary Ordinary."

Thoughts on Shouting

This is sort of a journal type entry written for my own benefit but you can read it if you feel so inclined.

My kids are relatively well behaved.  They never (I may be jinxing myself here) write on walls or rip pages out of books.  They don't climb the curtains (and this isn't only because we don't have any.  I'm sure they wouldn't if we did) or hit other kids at school.  They're tame.  They're good.  I believe there are three likely reasons for this: 1) they are calm kids by nature 2) I'm a stickler for not letting them do anything I don't want them to from the very first time they try and 3)  We are only given what we can handle and I could not handle hyper kids.  

I love watching those parenting shows.  Little Angels, Tanya Byron's House of Tiny Taraways, Supernanny etc.  It's so surprising to see what some kids get away with.  I love cheering the mother on when she's following the counselors advice.  I love seeing the change that comes over the entire family when the parents learn what behavior of their own they need to change in order to change their children's.  I love that I can always anticipate what advice they will be given because it's very logical to me (and maybe because it's what I studied in school).

But I see those mothers, too.  The desperate single mother who's convinced that her four year old wants nothing more than to rile her up all day every day.  While following a new bedtime routine she takes her son back to his bed 30 times saying calmly, "Good night" as she walks out the door over and over and over.  And then he whines one more time and she goes into his room and throws off his blanket and screams in his face "WHAT DO YOU WANT!?!  JUST GO. TO. SLEEP!!!"  Very, very loudly.  

I'm thinking, am I so supposed to be shocked that a mother would do that?  I feel so much empathy for this poor mother.  And I have screamed in my own kid's faces before.  I mean screamed.  And I've never even had bedtime issues.  And I know all those tricks you use to get good behavior.  And my kids are generally good.

They're not perfect, though.  And I'm even less so.  Lately I have felt awful that I yell at my kids so much.  It is often almost my first reaction when they do something wrong or whine about something silly. 

Last Friday I had an awful migraine.  Or it might have been my blood sugar.  I had a terrible headache, I was nauseated and lightheaded, shaky and I just felt like bawling.  Greg was at a business dinner and David was whining about everything.  And I mean everything.  He would not do what I asked and I was just waaaaay past my limit and I went up to him and I held his shoulders and screamed in his face.  

Of course I felt terrible about this later.  Terrible.  Even though I knew I wasn't being myself, I realize that I just shout at the kids all the time.  Pretty much daily.  Some days are worse than others.  

On the drive to church on Sunday Greg had recorded a lecture from some Perry Symposium (or something) in which the speaker talked about the omission of the "without a cause" from after the "He that is angry with his brother."  The talk was compelling.  I mean, I know that we know that the "without a cause" was an addition to the original text, but it was fascinating to hear about the various versions and how and why it was added etc.  

The talk was very academic.  There was very little talk of the gospel or any sort of sentiment in the telling.  But it was very striking.   After an hour long speech, he ended with evidence that we are not meant to be angry (including a rebuttal to the common "What about Jesus and the money changers in the temple" argument.)  His closing paragraph was a short.  I don't even remember what he said.  I just remember feeling that there was no room in my home or life for shouting.  I knew it about anger in general, but I felt it about shouting in specific. 

As if I didn't know that before!  Duh!  As if I didn't feel bad any time I yelled at the kids.  As if I didn't pray to be a more patient mother all the time.  But this was just one of those moments of change.  

This week I didn't yell at my kids.  Well, I started to maybe 4 times.  I would ask them to do something and they wouldn't do it a few times in a row, then I'd ask them one more time a few minutes later and whining would ensue (this is what makes me mad.  They should be apologizing for not doing it earlier, not whining that I was going finally force them to do it!)  I would start in with the stupid, "I've asked you to do this 4 times. . ." in a raised voice, totally ready to be MAD.  Then I stopped myself and said, "Okay, I'm not going to yell. . ." and magically I didn't feel mad at ALL!  And the kids smiled!  And happily did what I asked (sort of).

So I feel like I just was not angry with my kids this week.  We even had FHE about anger and specifically shouting.  We've all decided that it doesn't belong in our home.  Aaron had just recently started yelling "NOOOOOO" very loudly when he didn't get his way, and I know he learned it from all of us (the kids yelled at each other a lot, too).  I really hope we can completely reverse this.

It's working so far, and I'm feeling really good about it.  It feels so nice to have control over myself.  I feel like I'm finally starting to set a good example for my kids.  Finally. 

One Way An Author Might Tell You What She Thinks Of You

People who read my blog know that I am not a very well rounded reader.  I love to read, (and I'm still a little more well rounded than I'd like to be in some ways (ahem)) but you can't really put those things together in reference to me.  I don't have access to many books and even if I did, I'm likely to just stick to the classics that I love.  

Annette Lyon knows this, but she's a good writer, and wants to get a fair representation of all types of readers on her blog book tour.  Which is why she asked me to be part of it.  That is totally unfair of me to put words in her mouth because she would never say or probably even think those things.  It's really just how I myself justify myself writing a review.  Myself.

I was in the middle of my Twilight series reading when I got the book.  Now, I'm not going to say that I hate Stephenie Meyer's writing or that I think her books are trash or any of that (because neither statement is true).  But I AM going to say that when I switched over from the middle of Eclipse to Annette's Tower of Strength I had a hard time thinking much more than "Really?  She wrote this?  I can't believe someone I know wrote this!"  Not because I didn't know that she could write well, but because I'd never read any of her fiction (historical fiction, in this case), and it is such a different thing!  

The story was interesting from the very beginning, but the thing I loved the most and noticed right away is the detail that makes you feel like you're right there with the character.  Little things like what a character is doing with their hands while they say something or what they're thinking about as they cross the street.  It just felt so whole and full and real.  Like I wasn't missing anything.  I loved that.

Also, Annette often says that her stories are supposed to be about the story more than the romance and she has been surprised when people consider her books to be first and foremost romances.  Well, you definitely get some good story lines going through this book, plenty to wonder what's going to happen with, but when the romance hits, it happens much as it does in real life.  When you find yourself in love with someone, that emotion sort of drives your life and all the other things that are happening in it become sort of "the other things", even if they're really very major.  Love just does that.  I think that's what happens in her books (though this is the only one I've read so far).  You have a terrific story, but the romantic parts are so real, even if they're just little clips here and there, that they sort of color everything about the book.  I think it means that she does a good job with it.

Now I must say that I really like Annette a lot.  I think she likes me too.  You want to know why?  Well, you'd think it would be strange and awkward to mention someone's BLOG in a book that takes place in the 1870's.  Especially to work it into the actual story.  Well, Annette likes me SO MUCH that she did that with my blog!!  I mean, there I was, reading on page seven and she distinctly mentions Away From It All!  Except she didn't use capitals.  But she still said it.  When Tabitha was talking about feeling guilty for even considering taking her son away from everything he has ever known.  I KNOW!!!  She totally loves me.  And the fact that we didn't know each other at all at the time she was writing the book is completely irrelevant.  So is the fact that my blog title is an everyday phrase.  Annette just really, really likes me.

You should definitely read this book.  Maybe you'll find your blog title in there.  Then you'll know she likes you, too!  (Because if it isn't in there, she probably doesn't like you.  You know how that is.)

Click the button in my sidebar to find out how to get your hands on a copy.