She said it better
so you can go read a really good rant about Sarah Palin and sexism here. Yours truly is a pretty big fan of Bitch, Ph.D. in general, given the smart writers, interesting political commentary and occasional nod to the world of academe and the women in it.
At arm’s length
Sniff, sniff, originally uploaded by jda127.
As promised–a shot of Ingrid wondering what sort of vicious creature we’ve brought into our family. Look at those PAWS. This is going to be a big Thumper. Maybe Ingrid knows he’ll be able to take her out one day. . .
Our leetle friend
Thursday night we went out to the countryside and adopted a Rex rabbit from breeders in St. George.
I had never seen a rabbitry before–or a ‘wabbitry,’ as the family’s business cards insist (groan). They had A LOT of bunnies. This corresponds to A LOT of rabbit poop. In case you were wondering.
The girls checked out four or so Rex babies and picked the second-to-smallest one. Greta named him Tobey–which is an awesome rabbit name and so much better than her first choice–Fluffy Bunny.
Tobey, at Dale’s insistence (he has more experience with rodents and their shitting ways, I guess), lives outside on our deck in a hutch. Tobey appears to like the hutch and his kibble and his ice bottle on hot days.
I’m not so sure how Tobey felt about the 6am deluge this morning though. Dale is building a roof for Tobey’s hutch to protect his furriness from the unpleasant elements of sun and rain. (cuz we are nothing if not good bunny parents) Roof is not done, though, and at 6am we woke up to thunder and a downpour and both immediately thought: oh god, TOBEY is WET and went downstairs and outside in the deluge to cover his hutch with a sheet of cardboard and dry him off and make sure he was ok.
Good Grief, people. This is a rabbit. He has fur. He found a patch of protection from the elements and was only sort of damp. Sheesh.
Nevertheless, the rain has not let up much at all in the past 8 hours, so the girls and I brought the rabbit inside (This is where I need to tell my mother: sit down, Mom, breathe, it’s just linoleum. The rodent can’t hurt the linoleum, nor make it diseased.) We played with him in the kitchen, made sure he was dry and warm. The girls tried to feed him expensive German-made “rabbit popcorn” as a treat. Tobey evidently has more proletarian, alfafa kibble tastes.
In our next post–a picture of Ingrid running away from the Fierce, One-Pound Bunny!
Not Elmo
Angel Cake, originally uploaded by jda127.
Per the Princess’s request, an angel food cake with strawberries and whipped cream for her birthday.
My grandmother made this cake for me several years in a row when I was growing up. As a kid (loosely defined, I think this held true for me as a teen, too) I would have preferred Cool Whip, and grandma always used a box mix. As an overachieving adult, I made the cake from scratch (stiiiccckkkyyyyyyy but very very fun) and used real whipped cream.
So: take a dozen egg whites and some sugar. Do the thing you do with them. Oh, and a wee bit of flour to hold it all together. Bake it til spoingy. Cool. Slice into three layers. Nifty trick is to turn the icky top layer upside down, so that the part of the top of the cake my knife took a huge chunko out of doesn’t show and the top is all white and fluffy pretty.
Now, Dale tells me I should have mixed the strawberries and whipped cream together, maybe even added a bit of red food coloring, to make it all PINK. However, I went the purist route and just layered: cake, whipped cream, strawberries, cake, whipped cream, strawberries.
Awesomeness. Of course, the transport was a bit of a challenge. Next time: hold layers together with skewers!
Raising kids with The Cramps
I’ve never been much of a fan of typical kids music and am thoroughly convinced, as was widely reported in the 1990s, that Barney is actually a minion of Satan. I do know, however, that kids love music and even their young ears can appreciate a wide range of music and tell the good stuff from the bad stuff.
Yesterday I was alone in the car with both girls, driving from gymnastics to pick up J. I didn’t have any “kid” music in the car, but I did have my shuffle and the little connector thing that will play it through the car stereo. Alas, all I have on the shuffle is the stuff I use for my workouts, so pretty heavy on the loud and fast: The Prodigy, Led Zeppelin, Toten Hosen, Depeche Mode, etc. I also have the entire songlist off of the Cramps album Smell of Female. If you don’t own or know of this album, proceed to Amazon via the link I’ve provided and acquire it. Yes, it has a revolting title, but don’t forget that the searing, pounding guitar that marks the Cramps style is played by none other than Poison Ivy, an überfeminist if ever there was one. As with most Cramps music, it’s all meant to be taken with a large grain of salt.
So, anyway, I’m in the car and their song You Got Good Taste comes on. At first I thought about skipping it, but then remembered that it has surprisingly harmless language, albeit laden with sexual innuendo that is way over the head of kids, thankfully. So during the second chorus, when Lux is chanting “you got good taste,” G casually asks, Dad, what is good taste. We have a nice little chat, where I explain that striped shirts with striped pants is bad taste. She gets it immediately, being the little clothes horse she is.
This morning, she gets dressed, walks into our room, and asks me if she has good taste. Thank you, Lux and Ivy, for helping me edumacate my chilluns.
Son of Bonnie makes cakes
Bonnie was my mother, who sadly isn’t around to enjoy her younger grandchildren. One thing I learned from my mother (and one of my sisters confirmed today that she got it, too) is that birthday cakes are made, not purchased. With one exception, J and I have stuck to that rule.
For Ingrid’s fourth, Jennifer suggested an Elmo cake. She bought some new 9″ rounds for this, and I told her I’d take care of it. I told her she was doubting my ability that I could make it, but she says she was just pushing and motivating me. Whatever it was, it worked.
This cake turned out pretty well considering that I don’t really have Martha Stewart approved icing hardware. No offset spatula, no magic frosting recipe. It’s a butter knife and Better Homes and Garden’s butter cream frosting for me. I posted many pictures of the process if you’re curious about how I made it.
Best of all, Ingrid thought it was pretty darn cool. Part of me winces as I ram candles into a cake I’ve just spent hours icing, and I actually cringe when I first hack into it with a knife. Then the kids smear as much on themselves and the table as lands in their mouths, but it’s all such grand fun that I could care less. The look on a child’s face when you set a homemade cake in front of them is worth a lot of work.
Priorities
Sickly sweet, originally uploaded by jda127. This picture was taken while the girls waited patiently to get their faces painted at City Market. Greta was magically transformed into an indian princess, a sure sign of how she actually sees herself in the mirror. Ingrid chose to have Mickey Mouse painted on her cheek. Then wanted to be called Mickey all afternoon.
At the Market, I gave them each a few dollars to spend as they wished. Greta purchased a lovely pleather purse/pouch thing with two tubes of lip gloss, two small bottles of nail polish, and thrill rings that all fit inside. She carried it around all day, except when she forgot it in the ladies’ room at the Nelson-Atkins museum and didn’t realize it until an hour later and we had to go hunt for it and ohmygoshmommy it was still there!
Ingrid, being not quite four, spent her money on a giraffe sucker. You can see her here holding onto the giraffe’s head. The sucker part comes out of the giraffe’s mouth and is–hold onto your seats–shaped like the giraffe’s tongue. She licked, sucked, and otherwise loved on this gnarly giraffe tongue all afternoon. Kids: the definition of gross.
A Night on the Town
Isn’t this beautiful? This is the sweet face of a sleeping toddler who played SO hard and SO long all day long in Kansas City that she slept blissfully through the marathon vomiting session her sister treated us to at 5am. Aren’t kids great?
Making a house a home
Now that we’ve lived here for almost three years, it seems time to frame some pictures and put some art on the walls. Like the enormous metal maroon flower on our living room wall. (See similar flowers here)
We also recently matted and framed a 10X13 picture of the girls, awwwww, in which they look SO sweet and kind and loving. It’s almost like they aren’t even ours.
And now I’m on the lookout for other beautiful things for our home. Etsy to the rescue. I found a printmaker/collagist in Switzerland who makes the most amazing things. I want them all, but will settle for a few to put in wee frames in a cluster above my couch.
booksontape at etsy also has wonderful collages and illustrations. I’m getting this for Ingrid’s room. Alice falling down the rabbit’s hole.
Works of Art
The girls made these for family, friends, and teachers for Christmas. I loved the way the red and gold mixed. Even the ornaments where Ingy used every color we had on hand turned out really, really beautiful.
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