Thanksgiving Days

Our day started yesterday morning at four.  It ended after midnight.  Ainsley was very good all day, considering the fact that we dressed her up, strapped her in her car seat 5 times, drove a total of 7 hours, put her in unfamiliar situations, and wanted her to nap on a quilt on the floor instead of her bed.   There were a few times during the day when she was crying inconsolably but we were there to try to comfort her and we worked as a team.

I’m really thankful (really!) about yesterday.  I’m glad that we have family that’s worth going through the trouble to see.  I’m happy that Ainsley has so many people who love her.  And I’m especially happy that she could end the day in her own bed and wake up in familiar surroundings.  Her sleep-wake schedule is a mess but she’s been eating well.

Today I have some cooking to do.  We’re hosting Thanksgiving at our house on Saturday and most of my dishes can be made ahead.  They’re twists on traditional favorites: an apple-cranberry pie, pumpkin mousse tart, green bean and shiitake casserole, and Asian-spiced fried turkey.  I won’t be eating any of the turkey myself but my new eating habits are mine alone; I don’t need to force it on anyone else.

We bought a foam football to toss in the yard and we have strollers to take the kids on walks.  Hopefully our Thanksgiving will be full of tradition…and we can start some new ones, too.

Sunday?  Well, I’ll be going to church with Ainsley and, other than that, I plan to sleeeeeep!

Praying Mantis Named Yorick

My husband told me he found an enormous praying mantis on our driveway the other day. “It’s about to die,” he said. “It’s barely moving.” He moved it from the driveway to the shelter of the porch. It didn’t move for 24 hours, so he brought it inside to show me the beautiful but dead insect.

“Oh *&#@!,” Carlton eloquently said. The “dead” bug started moving in his hand! We realized that it was moving more due to being in the warm of indoors. But what to do? Keep it? It was surely dying due to old age and the climate combined. We put a plastic box over it and decided to decide after watching a movie.

We came upstairs to Sunny barking at something. The mantis had escaped the container and was on the carpet, flaring its wings at the little beast barking at it. We rushed to help the mantis with her forearms tangled in carpet fibers. I found a spare aquarium (no surprise there) and we protected the mantis from our many predator pets. Carlton made a dish of water for her and I googled what mantises eat. But where to find live bugs this time of year?

Amy’s house after dinner! We’d been at a fundraiser dinner and talked about the mantis on the way home. The best part was that none of the three of us questioned the silliness of caring about feeding a dying wild bug. We gathered carcasses and even a live spider or two into a bag.

We put it all in the aquarium, and while the mantis turned her head to look at us inquisitively, she displayed no interest in food. I even used a chopstick to nudge a live spider under her nose. She looked at it, but made no move at all. She was almost dead. As expected, she died within three days. She didn’t eat or drink anything. She knew it was the right time to go, and she died without being squished by a car or something.

I’ve always had a soft spot for living things, especially sentient ones. When I was a child, my parents bought me Pets in a Jar and I devoured the book. Even bugs I never collected were fascinating. I gained so much respect for caring for them and knowing what they needed (that book even made me think planaria infecting my aquaria were cool).  I still have the book.  My dad and I looked at earthworms in his garden, watching them wriggle in my hands before I set them free.

My subscription to Ranger Rick ensured a steady stream of new creatures and new knowledge.  I loved them all- even slugs, especially spiders- and I still don’t kill spiders in my home.  And not only is all of this true, it’s one of the things I really like about myself.

So alas, poor mantis, we barely knew ye, but we enjoyed meeting you and hopefully you enjoyed having food and water as you shuffled off this mortal coil.

Shakespeare + bugs.  Up next: Britney haiku.

Turkey Bowling

When I heard the ad for this event, I was a little repulsed.  Seriously, is this necessary?  Eat meat if you want.  Don’t be so disrespectful to creatures who die so you could eat.

I believe that God gave us dominion over the earth and all its creatures. However, with responsibility comes…well, responsibility. If I’m 16 and my parents give me the keys to the car, I have “dominion” over it, but that doesn’t mean that wrecking the gift they gave me is the right thing to do. Similarly, I feel that God gives us many gifts and that we should humbly accept them and treat them with the right amount of respect. Think about earthly gifts given to you by someone you love. You cherish them, right? If it’s a statue or trinket, it’s displayed prominently in your home, and lovingly preserved. If it’s food or concert tickets, you thoroughly enjoy the experience your loved one gave you, savoring every moment.

So why would we treat gifts from God in such a lesser fashion?

Fridge Friday Part II

OK, the fridge thing is addictive.  I realized that if they had a day of the week for other storage areas, it might strike enough fear in me to make me organize them!  But as it is, my refrigerators are in pretty decent shape.  So now for my other refrigerators.

First is the keg fridge.  I love this refrigerator because it’s unique.  How many people have a three-tap keg fridge for homebrew?  This refrigerator was originally for a store-purchased regular keg.  I purchased the triple-tap and fittings so it could hold three homebrew kegs, and even have a special tap handle for stout.  In this photo you can see only one tap is in use.  Sadly, I realized that this year’s Oktoberfest would be Januaryfest or Februaryfest or may not happen at all.  The two weekends we picked for this year both had multiple conflicts for key guests.  We held out hope until last week, when the Nut Brown tap ran out!  Hard to have a brew party when the beers are gone.  We admitted defeat and put the Red Amber on tap.  Hey, we’ll still have guests to drink beer…just not all at once.  The keg on top of the fridge is the empty; inside is the red amber and the mess of CO2 and beer lines.  The CO2 cylinder is underneath the bar sink.

Next week- bar fridge!

World Diabetes Day 2007

If you drove to work (before sunrise) today, you may have thought that the monuments around the city were lighted in blue to support the Colts. But they aren’t. Today marks WDD in a very special way. Buildings across the world are being lighted to show awareness in the face of this pandemic.

Click here to see an interactive map of those monuments that will be lighted.

Diabetes isn’t a sensational disease like avian flu or mad cow disease. But these diseases have affected far fewer people; today, over 246 million people have diabetes. This year’s WDD focuses on the effects on children:

Diabetes has a unique impact on children and their families. The daily life of children is disrupted by the need to monitor blood glucose levels, take medication, and balance the effect of activity and food. Diabetes can interfere with the normal developmental tasks of childhood and adolescence, which include succeeding in school and transitioning to adulthood. To help the child and family cope, and to ensure the best possible physical and emotional health of the child, care should be delivered by a multidisciplinary team with good knowledge of paediatric issues. Support must also be given to caregivers and to school personnel. In this way, children with type 1 or type 2 diabetes can reach adulthood with as little adverse impact as possible on their well-being. For children with diabetes in developing countries the situation at present is bleak.

There are lifesaving medicines to control the disease, but there is no cure. For type 2 diabetes, the type with the largest growth rate, people can make changes to help decrease the risk. If you consume too many calories, eat less. Walk more. Dedicate the first 246 steps of every day to the millions who are affected.

Do something!

Realization of Banality

As NaBloPoMo marches forward, I am guessing lots of blogs are starting to have one-liner posts that say “this is hard” or other fluff.

I felt like I was running out of what to say, too.  Then I realized that I can be chatty with the best and worst of them.  But there are no topics I want to fling into cyberspace for everyone to see.

While I do have my bad days, I try to keep the whining to a minimum on my blog.  Yes, blogs are basically serialized whining, but I do try to be more positive than negative.  I just don’t see a need to fling negativity into the world.  I also do have some need for privacy.  I noticed with amusement the other day that there are topics I won’t discuss with people in person but that I feel comfortable declaring to anyone seeing my link on NaBlo.  There are yet other topics that I don’t really ever discuss.

But I’m running out of interesting, positive stuff.  I will be back to my regular posts soon, but for now I have writer’s block.  Little Ainsley was up very late last night and that doesn’t mean she slept late today!  So I’m sleep-deprived and not very creative.

OK, it’s time to stop writing.  I have begun about five sentences that were so boring I deleted them.

Good night.

Fridge Friday Part I

Main RefrigeratorI jumped on the Fridge Friday bandwagon thanks to Amy. I actually took the pictures on Wednesday so I wouldn’t have time to clean and stage my fridges!! When I took the photos, I had to resist the complusion to turn all of the labels outward so it would be prettier.

I didn’t do a fridge post on last Friday, so let’s start with the main fridge. Top left is dairy/soy; top right is homebrew for cooking, cooking wine, and big pots of leftovers (no leftovers this week, though!). The two small open shelves on the left are cheeses and eggs; the larger open shelf on the right is tofu and leftovers that are ready to be taken to work for lunch. The left drawer is “mire poix” (carrots, celery, green onions/shallots/whatever) and the right drawer is other fresh fruits and vegetables, currently packed full of hand-picked apples. The huge bottom drawer is unopened dairy and soymilk. It’s extra cold, so the stuff stays fresh for a long time. I can buy lots on sale and it doesn’t spoil!

If you haven’t already stopped reading this very boring post, I’ll tell you what’s on the door by shelf, starting at the top: baking (e.g. yeast) and meds; butter; condiments; jellies; homemade hot sauces and jalapenos; and the bottom shelf is tall stuff and perishable, opened condiments.

Main FreezerStill with me?? How about the freezer? Top shelf is, left to right ice (duh), limeade (for delicious margaritas not from a box, Mymsie!), frozen bagged vegetables in the back row, and frozen homegrown produce in the front row. Most of the homegrown stuff is from other people’s garden. Homebrew is a powerful bartering tool!

The bottom shelf is soymeat (crumbles make a really yummy marinara additive), Extra frozen veggies, frozen fish, lots of frozen milk for Ainsley, an ice cream maker, and a big chunk of charred wood. Wha? What idiot puts charred wood in the freezer? Well, it’s my salmon grilling plank and although I rinse and scrub it after use, I just don’t think plain water can rinse off all of the bacteria that could fester before the next time I use the plank.

I guess I didn’t realize the large amount of insanity that goes into my fridge. It is a very small refrigerator, so I really have to be creative with the space. It is not very deep, which is really a big advantage; it’s much harder to lose a container of leftovers, only to find it six months later covered in fuzz. The biggest thing I noticed was that I am doing a pretty good job of keeping it neat. I used to throw away a lot of rotten food- what a waste of money and resources. Having everything organized has helped me use everything before it rots and also feels less cluttered.

I hope this post isn’t as boring as what I had for lunch.  Next week: different fridges from around the house! Stay tuned…