Havoc and Mayhem

4 weeks in

2012 has had its ups and downs so far.

One of the downs has us considering a new bank after 16 years at our current one.

But on the up side Mom seems to be doing ok. She is home now but is still short of breath from time to time & last I heard they were thinking she once again had fluid in her lungs & are apparently considering a pacemaker for a different problem. Nothing is certain though. Could just be a chest cold, which is admittedly dangerous after heart surgery, but the treatment is easier.

I’m still working on my meal planning resolutions. I have about half the recipes I want to try written up on a list on a clipboard in the kitchen and I have made several of them

This is broccoli cheddar soup in a bread bowl, with the removed bread on the side for dipping. It’s from the Cooks Illustrated cookbook, though the bread bowls are my own doing. They are made from the peasant loaf recipe in Artisan’s Bread Book.

I also made roasted cauliflower, cupcakes, chocolate cake & chicken dumplings from the CI book.

None of which would have happened without the list on the clipboard.

Budgeting time still needs work. It always seems to be suddenly noon and then suddenly 4pm & I’m not sure what happened. I’m ta.king a layers class at Creative Passion and I have yet to manage to read lesson 1

Budgeting money was thwarted by the bank, which in the past 8 weeks has held DH’s check deposit for anywhere from 12 hours to 12 days with no coherent explanation about why the difference or why the hold. And it’s not the check issuing bank’s fault. They show the money leaving them within 12 hours of the deposit. Our bank is just holding on to the money for various time periods before letting us have it.

Budgeting stuff is better now that I have organized my scrapping, yarn & fabric stuff. I have yet to buy any craft supplies, apart from a couple fonts from Darcy, yet this year.

How is 2012 going for you so far?

Birthday Boy

Mayhem is 8 today. He asked for the Skylander’s Wii game & some additional characters. We got him those, a Big Nate book and a gift card to Game Stop.

This is the last year for cupcakes at school

He asked for green & yellow ones because he is a Green Bay fan.

He’s been counting down the days since Christmas.

He wants a make your own pizza party tonight with some friends so I have to par cook a bunch of small crusts.

And make more cupcakes.

Happy Birthday my little man!

Tower update

It’s made it from the trailer to the roof, but it is still horizontal

They came & moved it a couple Saturdays ago.

But then they realized part of the top was bent from the fall it took & would have to be hammered back to straight.

Then they discovered the gear part that moves & controls the receiver at the top of the tower is broken.

And the place in town where they normally bought new ones stopped carrying them.

And no place else in town has it & no other company that might use them had any spares to sell so they had to order it to be shipped.

And then it snowed.

Plus I am at the bottom of the priority list. That pole in the photo is my current source of internet and it works so everyone else with problems or who are new installs come before my upgrade.

Also? And this is the kick in the pants part…

They are looking at putting a new broadcaster up in my area. Part of my problems are that too many people in our area are feeding off of one broadcaster so they want to put up a new one.

They found a site less that half a mile from my house!!!

But due to our house being topographically challenged, we are slightly downhill on the other side of a rise between us & the new site.

So we can’t see the new broadcast tower & broadband signal works on line of sight, hence our need for a 50ft pole or 75ft mini tower because we can’t see any of the other towers either.

New, close, limited usage tower and we can’t use it.

Technology. Never short of new ways to hate on me.

Of storage and china

I have 3 sets of china.

None of them are mine

One is my mother’s ‘secondary china’.

Secondary china is the set of plates that are not the good china, but not the revere ware either. These dishes sat in the china cabinet when I was little & we ate from plastic plates, then around the time my brother was 10 or so these dishes were in everyday use & the good china was on display.

China for people with children who can be trusted not to drop the plates.

We have not reached secondary china in our house. Someday though we will not eat off plastic.

She gave it to me when they sold the house I grew up in knowing I had no china of my own.

Despite being married.

I am apparently the only bride in the history of ever that did not have a china pattern picked out

But I was in the middle of the ‘move every year’ part of my life and packing up & storing, let alone using pricy dishes that can’t go in a dishwasher seemed ill advised.

Odd coincidence about that dish pattern. DH’s family had the exact same pattern. Only theirs was green

The other two sets I inherited from my grandmothers

These were my Nan’s good china

White, with grey flowers & gold trim. Very pretty. Something I might have chosen myself if I went with flowers, which I probably wouldn’t do. I’m not really a floral person.

These were the plates we were using before the boys started eating solid foods at the table.

Wal Mart 4 person set. $20

Had I wanted it I would also have inherited the china cabinet but there is no room for one in my house. I don’t have a dining room & have never lived anywhere as an adult that had one either.

This is a disappointment because I would like to display this china. Not just because I think it’s pretty but also to remind me it exists and I should use it sometimes. It can’t go in the dishwasher so it can’t be regular use, but maybe once a month we could do ‘fancy dinner’ night, followed by ‘fancy hand washing’.

Right now this china lives in a box, next to a box of my mom’s china and a box of my other grandmother’s china.

This is my paternal grandmother’s china

Also very pretty, but a little too feminine for me. I wouldn’t choose pink dishes personally, but I like the deep dishes, which are a good size for stew or pasta.

All of them have those teeny cups in the photo. 6 ounce coffee cups, which is why you can’t trust a coffee pot when it says it makes12 cups. It still means 12 6 ounce cups even though people stopped drinking coffee in those cups in the 70s.