the crockpot is my new best friend

Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that I would be writing about the wonders on my crockpot. I've had the damn thing for 20 years, have usued it once in a great while, and now today, I think this thing is the best invention since the KitchenAid mixer.

Tonight Madison MUST attend Maundy Thursday mass at church. It's part of her confirmation program and since she must be there, the whole damn family is going. In anticipation of this, I got out the crockpot and threw in some frozen round steak with onion soup mix and cream of celery soup. OMG, the smell of it cooking right now is delicious. All I have to do yet is throw some rice into the rice cooker and steam some green beans and Voila, dinner.

Who would have thought that this obscure kitchen appliance that has merely occupied space above my refrigerator actually serves such a useful purpose? I just might have to use this thing more often! It should have been called the "Just throw it all in and walk away" cooker. Whoever invented this thing is a friggin genius. Or it could be that I am just a slow learner and haven't seen the beauty of this thing before as it laid dormant in the cabinet under a layer of dust?

I know Thomas enjoyed watching me eat his popcorn

I have been grazing all day long. I'm very pre-menstrual and extremely crabby. I have found myself sticking my hand in whatever chip, candy, cookie, popcorn bag is open and lying around.

We got home from swimming a while ago and as is usual for Thomas he popped a bag of popcorn in the microwave. A few minutes ago I saw this same, half-eaten bag sitting on the fireplace hearth and picked it up, shoved my hand in and started shoveling. After several handfuls I noticed a hair in my mouth. I retrieved it from it's lodged position on the back of my tongue and continued to eat. Once again, I discovered another hair in my mouth.

I'm a slow learner....obviously. At this point I looked into the bag and noticed that all around the opening of the bag there was a coating of long, multi-colored hair. As I stared in confusion, I realized that the our long haired Maine Coon cat, April, was sitting in front of the fireplace licking her paws and her face. I called for Thomas to come to me and when he got to me, I inquired as to the half-eaten bag of popcorn he left on the fireplace. He told me that he put it down and April had stuck her head in and started eating the popcorn so he just left it there and walked away. I explained that I had been chowing down on it for several minutes and had hairs in my mouth which just made him laugh and shout, "Gross Mom. Do you know she licks her butt?"

Yes I could vomit and I have brushed my teeth and gargled. I still feel dirty, and Thomas is still laughing.

This is what happens when I leave for a bit

We are really fortunate to have Madison. She is a terrific babysitter for her little brothers. We jokingly refer to her as a 'born dominatrix.' This kid is a take charge kind of gal and is pretty smooth and collected in a moment of chaos. In addition to her child care skills, she also is a super little baker and cook in the kitchen. As I write, she is in the kitchen making Marc's famous cheesecake recipe since she felt short-changed on the last one.

While she supervises the boys fairly well, she also manipulates them to her own amusement and enjoyment. We have had many pictures posted before of her dressing Jerome as her little sister complete in Christmas taffeta dresses and now this:

I think Jerome is the most accomodating of the boys, hence he suffers at Madison's hands and bears the stigma of her embarassments. I suppose that in years to come, Jerome will want these pictures burned and forgotten, but Madison will forever have the joy in her heart of cross-dressing him and making him look like a sleep-deprived clown. These two are a perfect pair since they are on polar opposites of the personality spectrum and Madison can push his gentle soul around like one of her own fingers. Oh the joy of family life.

Ok, so I am complaining

My birthday was yesterday. When i was in Minneapolis last week, I treated myself to the things I wanted and knew Marc would just not be able to purchase for me. For one, he wouldn't know which shoes would tickle my fancy or which purse gave me shudders of pleasure. So, I treated myself and enjoyed my birthday extranvagances.

Yesterday I had one request of Marc and that was to stop at the grocery store and pick up a small sheet cake; either chocolate with vanilla frosting or vanilla cake with chocolate frosting. He came home with a marble cake with non-dairy whipped frosting. Honestly, it was like a really runny imitation cool whip. NASTY! And he had them write on it: Happy 44th birthday Geralyn! Who in the hell puts their wifes friggin age on a cake??? After scraping off the nasty frosting, we ate the cake which was only slightly dry as a marble cake can be.

I was joking about this with our pastor this morning when he called to chat and he (jokingly) said it was my fault that Marc messed up since I requested a different cake this year. You see, every other year of our 19 years of marriage, Marc bakes a scrumptious cheescake for me with his loving hands and heart. But oh no, not this year. I had to change it up on him and cause his brain to go into spasms since he actually had to go to the grocery store and buy a cake.

He just walked in the door a full 2 hours early with all the needed ingredients to bake his famous cheescake. I suspect sometime before I head to bed tonight, I will be savoring a bite or two of still slightly warm chocolate cheescake. To die for is all I can say.

What I really want to know however, is how men can be such overwhelmingly creatures of habit?? How can one small request cause him to lose his ability to read, think, and reason. Why was the grocery store cake so stressful that it caused him to not read the labels on it identifying it as, well, gross and yucky non-dairy topping? Hell, he didn't even have 4 bickering kids with him while he was shopping for the ONE item. Had he been dragging the kids along with him I might understand his impulsive and wrong choice in cakes.

Whew, I feel better now. I love him to peices but I really love him when he is tinkering in the kitchen with the springform pan and cream cheese! I feel like Pavlov's dog. I'm drooling already!

Guess I am a cheap date

I was going to leave the kids at home this afternoon and head into town by myself. My big plans would have taken me to Barnes and Noble for some new books that will occupy space on my nightstand and MIGHT get read sometime soon, grocery shopping without kids, and returning some items from Christmas, yes Christmas!

All that changed when Marc called and said if I could hold off from heading into town for a while, he would come home, join me and we'd squeeze in a date night. Wahooo, a big time at the bookstore, grocery store and maybe Applebees. I'm just looking forward to time alone with him without crabby kids and runny noses. Guess I should slap on some makeup and as my dear mother would say, try to make myself presentable and pleasing for Marc. If only she knew it was as simple as saying to Marc, "Yeah, what the hell, I guess we can squeeze in a quickie before Letterman comes on."

Yeah date night is fun, but coming home to the inevitable disaster is less than appealing. I know that Madison will keep the kids in line....because we all know she was born a dominatrix...but it's the toys everywhere, dishes, everywhere, blankets, pillows and art supplies scattered all around the house. If only I had a delightful little maid to come in and wave her magic wand and shape this crap hole into a tidy place of peace. That's delusional thinking on my part, so reality forces me to just accept the disorder that will occur when I'm gone and deal with it tomorrow.

Date night however fun and enjoyable, is pure and simple, way more work than when you are a childless couple. Nonetheless, I'm signing off to go put on some makeup and perfume to tempt Marc. Who knows? Maybe we'll end up making out in the Barnes and Noble parking lot again!

Summer plans that make me want to gouge out my eyeballs

Josh, our 23 year old Arab gelding...and the best horse EVER!

This coming July, Madison's birth father is getting married to a lovely woman named Gina. They live in the San Francisco bay area and we plan on attending their wedding. What is causing me an ulcer right now is the thought of driving all the way there and back with my wonderful family.

Why not fly you ask? Because the airfare out of Bismarck is horrendous and I would rather save that money for a nice trip to a Beaches Resort in the Caribbean. Sooooo, our delightful little family of 6 will be packing up and heading out the middle of July. The other ulcer causing problem of this trip, or any trip really, is trying to find someone to take care of our 9 horses. The dogs are fairly easy, yet expensive, as they go to a kennel at the cost of $14 a day for each dog. $14x4 is $56 a day x10 days and that is $560!! It is very difficult to find someone that would take care of our horses in the attentive manner we do. We'd ask our neighbor who has horses, but she is a certifiable PSYCHO!! That leaves us up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

Our search is on for a horse caretaker. One who recognizes the signs of colic. One who knows to turn out our gelding by himself with our Arab in the run next to him. Someone who knows how to drive a truck and trailer just in case they have to haul a sick or injured horse to the vet. Someone who is comfortable giving one of our mini's oral medication because of her previous founder. The list is endless. We need an experienced horse person, not a cowboy who learned to solve horse problems with a bottle of Wild Turkey and a gun.

This problem will eat at me until I find someone willing to stay at our house during our vacation and feed the horses twice a day; at 7AM and 4:30PM. I don't know how to go about finding someone. All our horse friends, live too far away to make the daily trip to our place so I am stumped. I miss our dear friends in Oregon who got us started in horses. They knew what they were doing and did it right. We learned from them and it is hard to find anyone that measures up to Steve and Terri.

I love living here, but sometimes the isolation from dear friends and family is tiresome. Having purged all this openly now, I hope I get serious about finding a horse care-taker. I am such a procrastinator!

The new and the old Jerome

A close up of Jerome's eyes today. The blood is slowly
being reabsorbed.

Jerome today with both eyes looking in the same direction!

Just chillin' before surgery. And yes, the time stamp is

correct. It was 5:39 AM!!

You can see he was terribly worried (NOT) about what was

coming up!

The trip to Minneapolis was a success on two fronts. First and foremost, Jerome's surgery for his bi-lateral strabismus was a success. It was a little involved as they had to aligne the eyes both vertically and horizontally. The second success was that although we only had a mere two hours at the mall, we rocked Nordstrom with some serious power shopping.

We found 5 different pairs of shoes for Madison, a gorgeous dress for her to wear in July for Uncle Darryl's wedding, and a little pair of Stride Rites that fit Jerome's unusually narrow foot well. I hit the motherlode for myself! Found a great pair of Stuart Weitzman's, a really cute and disgustingly expensive pair of flats that can be worn with dress pants, jeans or capris, some super cute flip flops, and the coup de gras....a new Burberry purse.

So I know how shallow it makes me when I am running on a shopping high from my new purchases, but since we live 400 miles from the nearest Nordstrom and I rarely get to indulge myself....I'm gonna revel in my shopping high!! Marc got some new dress shirts for work. Best part about them is that they are wash, tumble dry and NO IRONING NEEDED!!

When I was a little girl, my mom would take us shopping and indulge us in our hearts delight. From my earliest memories, I remember mom telling me to not flaunt all the new clothes and shoes in my dad's face the moment he walked in the door. She advised me to wear it and if he acknowledged it's 'newness' to merely reply that I've had it awhile. But the most obvious dead give away that mom had taken us shopping was that when we hit the mall and mom burned up the credit cards, she always bought my dad underpants. Go figure? I guess it was her way of purging her guilt and including my dad in the 'fun' of shopping. Needless to say, my dad had a boatload of underpants!