Slacker Fudge

You know how I'm endlessly in the kitchen, trying out new and ever-more complicated recipes and then blogging about it? By which I mean, I never, ever do that? Yeah. But, BUT, this was so fun and easy and tasty, I had to share. It's not even a recipe, hardly, it's more like a trick. It comes from Julie:

Slacker Fudge (that's my name for it--everyone can make up her own)

• one 18 oz. jar of peanut butter (due to the shrinking grocery phenomenon, an 18 oz. jar may be hard to find, but the 16.3 oz. jar works fine too.
• one tub of vanilla or chocolate frosting.

Peel the foil off the frosting and heat it in the microwave for twenty seconds. Have your kids combine the frosting and the peanut butter in a big bowl. They will love doing this. Then they can stir it up. Heat this mixture for 2 minutes in the microwave, then stir it some more and spread it in a 9x9 dish. Let it harden. It will get firm enough to slice into little squares like fudge.

It was really tasty! (And what is totally adorable is that Hank didn't understand the name of it, and kept asking for a "piece 'a pudge." Pudge is right.) Laura and her sleepover friend had fun making it. And then this morning, when her friend's mom came to pick her up, she tasted it and said, "Wow, we never make fudge." And instead of saying, "It was a lot of work, but I want to be the very best," I was all like, "Ohmigod lemme tell you how easy this is!"

So, a totally credible candy. I am definitely going to do this again. I could see packaging it up in pretty cellophane and giving it out to the neighbors for Christmas. Enjoy it, slackers!

We Encumber You With Kindness

Wow, the people at Publix REALLY want to push my cart out to the car for me. What is up with that? I mean, they have always offered to do it, and when I have Hank with me I usually take them up on it. But their desire has definitely intensified to near-uncomfortable levels. Today I went to the grand opening of a shiny new Publix near me, and I didn't even have the kids with me, and my buggy wasn't very full. The bagger girl assumed the cart-pushing position, like she was ready to speed out of there, but after the cashier handed me my receipt, I said, "It's okay, I can do it." She said, "Are you sure?" and I said something like, "Yes, but thanks!"

Then I wheeled towards the door, and a managerial type was standing there. She had overheard my exchange with the bagger, and she said, "Don't you want some help?" I said, "I'm really fine," and she said, "But I can bring the cart back." And I said, "Okay, you talked me into it, since you really, really want to." I smiled as I said this. Then we strolled to my car together, enjoying the beautiful, blue November sky, and unloaded the bags together. Then I got her phone number. Not really, but there must be some special spark between us for her to have wanted to help me so much. RIGHT?

This policy must really increase their need for staff, because the parking lot was full of Publix employees streaming in and out with people's carts. This Publix in general made my regular Publix look totally punk-ass. It wasn't huge like some I've been in, but it was all boutique-y somehow. And there was a jazz combo playing. But I am sure that was because they only opened yesterday. Everything was gleaming, and the shelves were stocked and aligned in a totally OCD manner, like remember that scene in Sleeping With the Enemy where Julia Roberts has to keep all the cans lined up just so? The husband from that movie must be in charge of this place.

Also, a squadron of managers was walking around in a group, being instructed by their big boss at various stations. When I found myself shopping near them, I suddenly felt self-conscious, like they were saying, "Let's observe the behavior of this average shopper as she compares two different sizes of French's onions." So then I would feel pressure to act my role well and not disappoint them. I did my best to embody the nonchalant but with-it consumer, absorbed in her own world and her important errands, but interested in value and convenience.

All the roleplaying, plus having my cart pushed, totally wore me out, as you might imagine. Don't worry, I revived with an iced coffee on the way home. Now Laura is having a sleepover, and it's taco night. Have a great Friday, y'all!

Room Momming: Notes from the Front

"So, how's the whole Room Mom thing coming along?" you ask. Well, when last we spoke of this, my co-room mom had gone rogue, and despite her limited computer skills, was firing off emails and making a grab for various duties that I thought were mine. Not that there is anything wrong with that. I quickly adapted to a new world order in which Jan is doing most of the annoying stuff and I am organizing parties.

Since she had decided to jump in and start collecting money, I decided to start getting the holiday party together. And Jan is also lining up classroom volunteers and collecting items for the class auction basket. To that end, she needed to email all of the parents, and I'd told her how to copy and paste all of the parents' email addresses into her mail. By this time, she had also been the recipient of a mass email that I had sent, which had all of the parents' emails, not blind-copied or anything. Then I get this email from her: "Hi! Can you check this and if it’s o.k., send it to all the parents? I received everyone’s email addresses (thank you!) but I still don’t know how to group them together into one email." Then she favored me with an emoticon.


Okay, so she's not a whiz with the email. Or with basic digital literacy. The teacher in me is always happy to help someone who openly confesses that they don't know something. So I edited (slightly) her memo and sent it to the class, leaving in the superscription thingie that indicated it was forwarded from her. But of course, most parents did not reply to her. They replied to me and told me when they wanted to volunteer. I just forwarded the messages to Jan so she could put them on her schedule.

Then Jan went totally silent for a couple of days. I started to feel guilty because she was doing most of the jobs. So I emailed her and said, "Hey, since you're dealing with the money, do you want me to take over the volunteer schedule?" I even started making a Google calendar for the class. I was going to send it to all the parents and maybe give them the ability to sign up directly for stuff, right on the calendar. Jan never responded to me. But then we got another email forwarded by the teacher, from Jan (who must still be trying to master the whole email situation), with parents assigned to different volunteer slots. So I guess she wants to keep being in charge of that. She is an interesting combination of flaky, friendly, spacy, and territorial. But I can deal.

So, our actual Room Mom activities: The holiday party will be at 8:30 in the morning. Can you believe that? It's such a big elementary school that each class has an assigned time, to minimize parking problems, I guess. So we're doing a breakfasty thing with mini muffins, mini bagels and spreads, and fruit. Jan is handling the craft. And for a game, I suggested the Dress Your Santa game: The kids get in teams of 4 or 5 and each team has a Santa, usually a mom or dad, (but they LOVE dressing the teacher), and they have tape, scissors, colored paper, crepe paper, and cotton batting or cotton balls. They get 5 or so minutes to race to dress their Santa, then everyone judges them. We'll have different categories--funniest, most creative, etc--so basically everybody wins. I thought that would be properly chaotic.

Our holiday auction basket is BBQ-themed. That was Jan's idea. I suggested a Winter Fun basket, where the basket would be a snow saucer, and we could have mittens and scarves, cocoa, ice skating tickets, tickets to ride the Pink Pig, and maybe a wintery movie or something. Jan wanted to go with the BBQ, and she kept saying she had some "great meat rubs." So she has collected a ton of stuff for that, and the basket is a cooler, which will be cute. I sent in this child's apron from Ikea:

Party, check. Auction basket, check. Volunteers are happening. I am actually going in to be the Mystery Reader tomorrow. And Jan's collected a couple hundred bucks already. And again, children in classroom, learning/flourishing. I think we are going to be just fine as soon as I get a handle on Jan's communication style.

Par-tay! Free Christmas Music from Amazon

Harken, my peeps! One of Amazon's FREE mp3 downloads right now is a Holiday Sampler with five great songs. It is really fun, especially the Les Brown "Nutcracker Suite." I've been listening to it while tearing apart a chicken carcass (for stock) with my bare hands. I feel a little Clan of the Cave Bear here, but more festive.

When you're on that Amazon page, down below you'll see several other free albums. The Celebrating 10 Years of Music is great if you like classical. I don't have an iPod, but one of our computers has big speakers, and I play music on it all the time. I think the Holiday Sampler mixed with the classical stuff would make a nice little playlist if you're having people over for some 'nogg. Or wassail. Do people still do wassail?

The excellent Southern Savers tipped me off to this and I wanted to pass it along. Free Christmas music makes a Works for Me Wednesday!

This Into That

It is a chilly day, and not much is happening in the 'hood. Even Oprah is recycling tired material. (Dr. Oz again, really?) So I'm sharing some of my recent housekeeping flubs and bloopers. Keely at Un-Mom is having a Random Tuesday, and this certainly fits.



I'm noticing a thematic connection among my mistakes around the house. Let's play This Into That!

I put: milk
Into: my vodka on the rocks
Instead of: into Laura's thermos
Extenuating circumstances: her thermos and my drink were right next to each other on the counter and I was working on both at the same time. A terrible waste of both liquids.

I put: Hank's t-shirt
Into: the toilet
Instead of: not putting it into the toilet
Extenuating circumstances: I had a paper towel in the other hand that I meant to toss in there.

I put: a scoop of dog food
Into: the washing machine
Instead of: into the dog's bowl
Extenuating circumstances: It's a front loading machine, and the dog bowl is right in front of it, and I shouldn't try to feed the dog and start a load of laundry at the same time. This one was a real pain.

Bonus Hank Edition!

He put: a little Ikea pencil
Into: the floor heating vent
Instead of: into his nose
Extenuating circumstances: I said, "Don't put that in your nose," and I should have said, "Don't put that in your nose or anywhere non-traditional."

So, do I have a neurological problem, or do other people do this? I need to multitask less and unitask more. Or hemitask.

Also, I've been meaning to thank Stiletto Mom for sharing some bloggy props with me. She gave me an award. Yay!

I only found Stiletto Mom a couple of months ago, but her blog is now a place I visit daily. And I love the little picture, which is the work of these folks. I need to pass this on, so I am giving a shout out to:

Sara, who has a newish blog about her rural life. Her outdoor adventures make Sarah Palin look like Paris Hilton. Go read and you'll see what I mean. And I love the name: We Love It, Don't We?

Keely, whom a lot of people already know is super fun, but it bears repeating. And I love her new blog design for Un-Mom.

Messy Mom, whose blogging chops I really admire. She always has something interesting to say. And I would love to hit the thrift stores with that girl.

There are many other people I would love to name, but it would start to seem like I'm stalking them. I love our big, crazy Inter-Web! Have a good Tuesday evening, y'all.

Feats of Daring Do, and Also Shopping

So what's the policy on tree-climbing? Perfectly fine, or dangerous and forbidden? Does the answer depend on how high up the tree the kid can climb? Because Laura has only now gotten to the age and strength where she can get way up a tree. This, today, is the tree that was pictured in this post last week.


That's Pretty Neighbor's daughter up there. I am not used to looking out my sunroom window (our sunroom is high off the ground) and seeing a child level with the window. So first I took their picture, then I yelled, "Get down! If you fall and break your neck, your mom will kill me!" Only it sounded so, so genteel the way I yelled it, and not at all like shrill, crazy backyard mom-screaming.

Then Hank and I went on our appointed rounds to CVS and Publix. Now, Cassie over at Envirosavings had outlined an ambitious three-transaction plan, and I was going to try to emulate her. But my lame CVS didn't have the L'Oreal Pro-Calcium whatchamathing (the second store I've checked), so I just did the part of the plan I really wanted anyway: the battery deal. The store had some Crest Pro-Health toothpaste back in, and I remembered that the secret limit was 4, so I got:

• two Crests, $3.49 each
• 4 packs of Duracells at $5.29 each
• a pack of barrettes clearanced to $.99
• two big double boxes of Airborne that were 90% off, making them $1.30 apiece (AND, AND I had been saving and nurturing an Airborne coupon for $2 off, so that was some really, really cheap Airborne. Even if it doesn't work as advertised, there are still some vitamins in there.

And I paid with:

• 3 coupons for $.75/off Duracell
• 2 coupons for $1/off Crest
• 1 coupon for $2/off Airborne
• $11.99 in ecb's (from the Revitalift last week)
• $14.87 out of pocket

Got back $21.98 in ecb's, 15 for the batteries and $6.98 for the Crest. Good times!

My Publix run was modest: highlights were more of the bogo Ritz crackers, even though I'd already used the coupons I had. I can't quit you, Ritz. Also, there is a little "Holiday Planning" booklet on the Ritz display at my store. In the back are two coupons: one is $3 off wyb three boxes of Nabisco crackers and three 2-liter Coke products. With the Ritz being bogo, that's a pretty good deal if you drink Coke.

Fresh Express salad is bogo, AND in the Advantage Buy flyer, there's a coup for $2 off produce wyb two Fresh Express salads. Sweet! And the penny item was Publix cheese singles. I loaded up on more of the fifty cent mac and cheeses, but the rest of my stuff wasn't that couponable--a whole Greenwise chicken for $1.99 a pound, eggs, pears and bananas, more cheese, tortillas, milk, etc. When it was all said and done, I spent $32.61 and saved $27.88, which I think is 46%, but I'm not such a whiz with the maths. And Hank got to ride in car buggies at both places, and the Publix man at the bakery gave him a cookie.

The smarties at Fiddledeedee's Supersavers have racked up some impressive savings too, so check into it.

3 Reasons The Internet Needs To Be Over Now

1) Yesterday, someone came to this blog by Googling "hot pregnant women doing yardwork." I told those search terms to Matt, and he got this look of delight on his face. I think because he thought it was funny. Or maybe because those words do in fact conjure up a delightful mental picture. I don't know if there is p*rn out there for that particular predilection, but a glance at the first search results page would seem to indicate that there is not. So Mr. Dude (?) in Lewisburg, Ohio, I hope you eventually found what you were looking for, and I'm sorry I could not be of more help, but now I know what the next name of this blog will be.

2) That couple that got married in the online game Second Life is now divorced, because of an adulterous liaison that OCCURRED IN SECOND LIFE. Story is in the link, but the short version is: couple met in an internet chat room, married in real life and in a ginormous Second Life ceremony in 2005, wife grew suspicious, hired an online private detective (a what?) to snoop on husband's activities, wife sees husband's avatar having sex with a prostitute avatar, and they are getting divorced. Now the woman has taken up with someone she met in World of Warcraft. Good grief, Charlie Brown! Now, I know lots of women do consider it cheating if their husbands look at naughty pics online, like maybe those hotter-than-hot pictures of pregnant chicks pulling weeds and raking. I know this because Oprah says many women consider it cheating--I don't actually know any women who think that. But divorcing over that one incident of. . . whatever that was with the pixels and the avatars. . .is that kind of extreme? I don't know, but the whole thing gives me a pain in my head. I think these people are weirder than the pregnant yardwork porn people.

3) The insanely-detailed Dora the Explorer Wikipedia page. Here's how I came upon this. You see, I was pondering the question of whether the geography of Dora the Explorer is internally consistent. Like, if you collated all the maps from each episode, would you have a coherent and consistent map of Dora Land? For example, in the Boots's birthday party episode, they have to get to the party at Dora's house by going over the Troll Bridge. And, in the flap-book Super Silly Fiesta, the Big Red Chicken's party is also over the Troll Bridge, but it must be in the other direction, because they're starting in Dora's house. The Chicken's party is in a nondescript meadow, which I guess could also be the starting location for the Boots's birthday party journey. So they could be making the same trip in reverse. Except in Boots's birthday party journey they don't have to go past the Mixed Up Farm, like they do in the book.

Or is it unfair to compare the geograpies of the book and the TV show? I mean, the creators of "Lost" manage to keep the island geography consistent across TV and web features, but maybe that's a lot to ask of Nick Jr? Also, Dora's cousin Diego appears from time to time in Dora's world, with all it's weird, lollipop jungle topography, but on his own show, he doesn't have to deal with any of that whimsy crap. He just ziplines around saving animals. I wonder if Dora is actually crazy? And what Dora experiences as the Sneezing Snake Lake is just a little puddle to Diego? With no sneezing snakes?

So in pondering this, I did a quick search to find out if anyone has reproduced images from all the maps in the shows. And I found the Dora wikipedia entry, which is obviously not written by the PR people who produce the show, but by an amateur enthusiast or enthusiasts. It goes on and on and has way, way, a lot of information. So this is not really a reason the internet needs to be over, but more of a "Wow, that internet is really. . .something." I am thinking that the adult who authored that Dora page needs to spend more time looking at yardwork fetish pics. I hear that stuff is huge.

I am sure there are about 97 other reasons I'm forgetting, so feel free to add yours. Also, it's List Lovin' Monday at ABDPBT. Check into it, sister.

My Co-Room Mom Has Gone Rogue

Remember how I told y'all how I wound up being a room mom, and also what the job entails? And I've given you a glimpse of the quirky personality of my co-room mom Jan. Well, now Jan is a loose cannon, y'all. She's off-message and operating on her own. We had agreed on a clear division of duties: I was going to collect donations from parents, keep track of the money, and organize the class parties. Jan was going to coordinate the classroom volunteers and do crafts.

Early last week I saw her at school when we were both picking up from Jump Rope Club. She wanted to send an email to the parents about volunteering for reading groups, but she didn't know how to get all of their addresses into her email system. I said, "Well, you have that directory of all the parents that I sent to you as a Word file. It will take a couple of minutes, but just copy and paste all of their addresses from that document into your email. Then you'll have them in your mail and you won't have to do that again." Okay, she was going to try that. We also discussed how the PTA was still murmuring about their flat-donation fundraiser, and I wanted to wait until that was over to collect money for the class. I said that it was about time to start organizing the holiday party and the class auction basket, so next week, I would send an email about party stuff AND donating money. And she would send the email about reading groups. Fine.

So I was surprised to receive, a couple of days later, an email from Jan, forwarded to all the parents by the teacher. It was a big unbroken block of text talking about the party, the auction, the reading groups, AND saying that all parents should send in their donations made out to her. Whaaa? The really weird thing was that this missive was a .pdf attachment that Mrs. S forwarded. I have no idea how Jan managed to save her message as a .pdf, but apparently the goal of getting all the parents' emails into a message was not achieved. So the email arrived with no subject line, no text, and a .pdf attachment. It was like a Chinese puzzle box.

I didn't know if Jan misunderstood our plan, or just had a different take-away from the conversation, or what. So I waited a day, then went ahead and sent out an email to the parents saying, "You've already heard from Jan about x, y, and z, so let's talk about the holiday party," and so on. Jan emailed me right back saying, "Great job w/ the memo! I can never word things the right way so I’m so glad we are together in this!!" And she favored me with an emoticon:
She said that one mom had given her a check, unsolicited, and it seems that Jan panicked and decided she needed to collect all the checks. Or something. But if she is going to keep track of the money, it doesn't actually leave me a lot to do. I considered offering to take over the parent volunteering stuff, since she is now doing the money. Then I smacked my hand against my forehead over and over until I came to my senses. But maybe I am kind of a control freak, or more likely, words and tone are just really important to me, because I didn't like losing control of our communication strategy.

So that's what's up in Room Mom Land. Meanwhile, the children are learning and flourishing, etc. So all is well, I GUESS.