Shopping List

There is a shopping list pad that stays on the table in the kitchen.  The family knows that if they want me to pick up something for them, they'd best not trust to my memory:  put it on the list.

At some point yesterday evening, someone mentioned Nutella.  I don't remember how it came up, but Em immediately said how much she loved the stuff.  I didn't know that.  I told her that if she wanted some from the grocery store today, to put it on the list.  Several minutes later, she was still working on my list.

Now I can see why:

As you may have guessed, I added the pork roast and box of stock after she left for school this morning.

I'll be adding other items as well, but there will definitely NOT be a pineapple in the buggy at check out.

Pretty vs. Practical

There is a product at my house that my husband will never use, at least not for its intended purpose:  double-sided fashion tape.  I feel sure that he could possibly encounter some situation when it would provide the perfect solution, but that situation would not involve what he was wearing at the time.

It's made to attach women's clothes to their bodies.  We first purchased it to make a prom dress behave.  Recently, I've discovered a shirt that I really like has a misbehaving shoulder.  A little double-sided tape keeps the shoulder of the shirt where it belongs, arresting its attempt to slide down onto my arm.

That got me to thinking:  Would a man put up with clothing that had to be coaxed or constrained into place?  With the possible exception of belts and suspenders (which are not uncomfortable), I'm guessing No, they would not. 

So why are women willing to go to such great lengths to get one shirt to perform?  Why will we tape it to our shoulder?  Why will we wear a spandex undergarment that hampers our breathing to get that shirt smooth around the middle?  Why will we wear shoes that require us to install additional comfort zones in the soles?

Why?

Because it's pretty, that's why.

Hand-painted Toms

El had a pair of Toms shoes that she really liked.  In fact, she wore them so much (and consequently washed them so much) that the design faded completely away.

When they were new, they had small neon symbols stamped all over them.  Wear and washing over a couple of years rendered them basically white.  She had heard of people painting new designs on their shoes and decided to investigate.

I'm not sure what website she eventually discovered her design of choice on, but she showed it to me and asked if I could do something like it.

Well, if my children are willing to risk their property to my creative attempts, I'm willing to try it.

And here's the final product:

She didn't want them uniformly colored and she didn't want the colors mixed, so we taped off sections along seam lines with masking tape. We also stuffed them with newspaper so as not to paint the insides.  To keep the background color from being too thick and uniform, I put acrylic paint in a spray bottle with a bit of water and sprayed it on.  The tree was started with a small brush and finished with a toothpick dipped in paint.  The flowers were dabbed on with a stiffer brush and the white spots were added by dipping the wooden end of the brush with paint and dotting it on.

Right before we painted them, the shoes were freshly washed.  That's why they seem rather oddly shaped and wrinkled.  Once she got them on her feet, they resumed their customary fit.

All in all, I think they turned out nicely.  Now I'm trying to decide if I want to paint something on my pair.  I'll have to come up with something special for the hole in the left toe.

Cow Magnets and Harry Potter

I've been keeping my eye out for new Mad Science possibilities for Vacation Bible School.  A few weeks ago I saw some magnets on the clearance shelf at Hobby Lobby, so I picked up the 2 packages they had on hand.  Then I stashed them and forgot about them.

Yesterday I found them and pulled 2 out.  These are small bar magnets, about 2" x 1/2", and are labeled N and S on the ends.  The back of the package says that they are alnico magnets.  Then the package mentions cow magnets and the prevention of Hardware Disease.

Cow magnets?  Curious minds want to know!

Apparently cows do not have discriminating lips and will swallow whatever gets into their mouths, including nails, staples, pieces of barbed-wire fencing ...  You get the idea.  Those little pieces of metal can do nasty things to cow insides.  But if stopped before they get too far into the cow's gastro-intestinal system, the metal pieces are relatively harmless.  Feed the magnets to the cows early in life and the magnets attract all that metallic debris and the cow lives longer and happier.  Makes perfect sense.

And then, I found this sentence on the Wikipedia page:

While the resultant mass of iron remains in the cow's rumen as a pseudobezoar (an intentionally introduced bezoar), it does not cause the severe problems of hardware disease.

A bezoar?  Like the one used by Harry Potter to save Ron's life after he drank the poisoned wine in Professor Slughorn's room?

Yes!  Just like that one!  (Well, it would be like that one if bezoars actually possessed the powers they were believed to have 1000 years ago, but that's beside the point.)  Again, from Wikipedia:

Bezoars were sought because they were believed to have the power of a universal antidote against any poison. It was believed that a drinking glass which contained a bezoar would neutralize any poison poured into it. The word "bezoar" comes from the Persian pâdzahr (پادزهر), which literally means "antidote".

So the magnet becomes a pseudobezoar (pseudo- because it was artificially introduced instead of growing there naturally) which essentially neutralizes the potentially fatal effects of the sharp metal objects ingested by the cow.

Wow.  You just never know what sort of informational journey a simple package of clearance magnets will take you on.

Socks

I just folded a load of clothes that had 26 clean socks.  That's not really unusual. The truly remarkable thing is that from those 26 socks, there were 13 matched pairs of socks.  There was not a singleton (or I suppose from an even number of socks there would have to be at least 2 singletons) left over.  That is almost unheard of at this house.

There is always the question of what to do with those singletons.  Should they go in the sock drawer where they will always remain unused, passed over in the rush to get dressed in the morning?  Should they be thrown away with the understanding that parted pairs are hardly ever reunited?  In our house they are put in a little pile on top of the drier.  At the present time, there are 13 singletons on top of the drier.

I know.  That sounds like a lot of socks.  But at least 4 or 5 of those are little bitty, no-show, mainly-just-covers-the-bottom-of-your-foot kind of socks, so they don't add much volume to the stack.  And those are in a variety of colors, too: pink, black, and several shades of beige.

There is one black band sock.  No one in our house wears black crew socks except Mr. H . . . unless it's marching season.  Then 1 or possibly 2 of the girls have A pair that gets worn for a few hours on Friday nights.  The one on top of the drier is too small to fit Mr. H, so it must be a band sock.  And its mate probably made its escape on a bus trip.  I'll end up purchasing a new pair when marching season starts up again.

Certain socks are delegated to the singleton pile and never move on.  (I suspect the band sock is one of those.)  Others move in for the time it takes to wash several loads and are then happily reunited with their mates.  I try to look through them weekly to see if there are any pairs hiding among the singletons.  I suspect some of those little bitty, no-shows have mates lurking at the back of my daughters' sock drawers or under their beds or even static-ly stuck to the inside of some garment that has fallen out of favor.

But until I am overcome with a fit of cleaning, the pile on the top of the drier is safe...but still lonely.

A Post about Nothing at All

There are times that something happens and I think to myself, "Oh! I should write about that." And then I consider which of my daughters might take offense, and either decide it's worth the risk or it's not.

But sometimes, like now, when our family is in the middle of wedding planning (which seems to be all-consuming, in either thought or deed) that there needs to be a down-time, a time of doing nothing.

So, here it is.

At the grocery store this week, I spotted a box of loose tea.  Nothing fancy:  Lipton tea, not in bags.  I smiled as I placed it in the buggy ("buggy" is for you, RK!)  I knew at least one of my daughters would have the same smile when she saw it in the tea cabinet. (Yes, we have a tea cabinet in our kitchen.)

She found it last night and the box has now been replaced by 2 sealed jars of lovely loose tea.

At the present moment, a heaping spoonful of said lovely loose tea is steeping in a Chinese pot on my kitchen table.  By the time I finish typing this, the tea should be perfect. Then I can drink a cup and do nothing while I enjoy it.

Christmas from my family

I thought I might tell you about the gifts my family chose for me.  Deep down, when we choose items for others, there's a lot of 'us' in them, too.

The gift from El, our youngest, will be the first one consumed.  She got me a book:  a specific book I requested.  She is very literal.  And she has recently developed an interest in reading.  Her 2 older sisters consume books at an alarming rate.  And not just once, but over and over for their favorites.  They have been that way since they learned to read.  El read something at school last year and wanted to read it again on her own time.  Then she read the other 2 books in the series.  I asked for the 2nd book in a different series and she jumped right on that suggestion.  It was something she understood.

The ....hmmm .... I hate to use the word 'geekiest' gift, but I'm having trouble finding another word to convey the essence of a jigsaw puzzle depicting a painting in the style of Van Gogh used in the TV series 'Doctor Who.'  I have always loved jigsaw puzzles and the Doctor.  A few years ago when we learned that the series from my college days had been revived, we started watching.  True to their heritage, at least 2 of my 3 girls have embraced the Doctor with open arms.

The gift from my beloved Mr. H reflects quite a bit about him, too.  He presented me with a set of fabulous knives:  German Henckels with Japanese -styled blades.  He's a guy and guys like tools.  Just the other day, I was complaining because my one and onlyHenckels knife had been missing long enough for me to conclude that it wasn't coming back.  This set has 11 knives and a pair of kitchen scissors that are as sharp as the knives.  Ooooo......

Then there is the gift from my eldest:  a mug and cozy.  But not just any cozy.  It was knit by her own hands, hands that I taught how to knit.  And not just a plain pattern, but a basketweave pattern that I did NOT teach her.  She researched and experimented and learned it on her own. She knew what it would mean to me. And she was exactly right.  It makes me smile and warms my heart.  And it lets me know that she is an 'accomplished' lady (to borrow a line from her favorite book.)

All these gifts are special because they are from people I love.  And each one represents specific qualities about those loved ones.

I am indeed a very blessed woman.