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Hi All! Malcolm and I made it back to Seattle from our trip to Florida. We got in late last night and now I'm trying to get the house ready for Dad & Carolyn's visit. I hope to write a much-delayed update soon, but my plate's pretty full for the next week. The PEPS group that I'm leading meets for the first time next Tuesday and there is much I need to do to prepare for that. Gotta run!

And then I said 'Ouch'

A couple of days ago, I was walking. I do that. And then, for some reason, I decided to kick a hard thing. It wasn't on purpose. We all do it. It hurt. It still does. It is quite likely that I broke my toe. See?

This picture does not do justice to the actual color of my toe. I noticed today that the bruising has extended to the top of my foot.

Wednesdays is Farmer's Market day. There was no way I was going to miss it this week since I didn't go last week. I taped my toes together and walked to the market. This was at the point where I thought I probably just stubbed my toe. It actually didn't start feeling worse until Wednesday night. I'm sure all of the walking didn't help. But, I scored some great stuff at the market, consignment store and used book store!

Mal's been sleeping much better the past couple of nights. His bottom left tooth has broken through the gums and he's drooling up a storm. We had a rough day yesterday because he refused to take his morning nap and then fought me a long time when I went to put him down for his afternoon nap. Fortunately, he has not repeated this behavior today.

One week until our trip to Florida! There is much we want to get done around the house this weekend since Dad & Carolyn will be arriving a couple of days after our return from our trip. We need to convert the office into the guest bedroom since Mal is sleeping in his room now and we'd have to take apart the crib in order to move it into our bedroom.

Another Step in Becoming a Domestic Goddess

In an effort to eat locally for longer than the growing season, I've decided to take up canning. On a whim, I bought a few extra pounds of asparagus at the Farmer's Market with the intentions of pickling it. It would have been wise of me to actually read up on how to can before I bought the asparagus. I knew I needed mason jars and lids, but a special rack to put in the pot? Huh? So anyways, I decided to work with what I had in my cupboards which meant putting the jars on their sides during the hot water bath because my largest pot was not tall enough. For those of you that have canned before, you probably know what happened. Out of the 4 jars, only one didn't leak brine. I'm thinking it's no big deal. However...

When I cook, I often eye measurements of dried ingredients. I read today that it's a big no-no when it comes to canning. You need to have the proper ratio of sugar/acid/etc to avoid botulism. Oops. It looks like we're going to be eating a lot of pickled asparagus in the next week.

Now I'm on the lookout for the proper equipment to do hot bath canning. I'm hoping to pick it up second-hand. I'm also going to pick up a book on food preservation because I also want to learn how to properly freeze greens & fruits so they last a long time. I'll freeze soup and occasionally fruit right now in a food storage container, but the fruit gets consumed pretty quickly. I'm looking to keep fruit in the freezer so I can enjoy plums in the middle of winter without feeling guilty that they've been transported from a far-away place.

Drainbrainnotfunction

I love my son. I do. But two nights of waking up ever 1.5 hours (and then some) is KILLING ME. The joys of teething. I gave him teething tablets all last night and they did nuffin. Baby Tylenol = nuffin. I know this will pass soon so I just need to whine about it for right now.

I asked Tony to get up with Malcolm at 7 this morning so I could get a little bit of sleep. Tony likes to give Mal a bottle of watered-down juice in the mornings. Since we were all out of juice, Tony gave him SODA. Granted, it was caffeine free, no HFCS stuff, but still! I really wanted to put off giving the kid junk food for several more years.

Happy June!

Wait? Is it really June already? Where did May go? Seriously!

Tony got a new job about a month ago and it's going well so far. He's working for a small publishing company doing web development and random IT stuff. He's in L.A. today for a business meeting - it was so odd not having him here last night.

Several months ago, I planned a trip to Florida and made it a long trip because it takes a day to fly there and a day to fly back. The plan was to have Tony come out for part of the time. It has become apparent that he won't be able to come out at all because (1) the cost of the plane ticket has doubled (that's conservative) since I bought my ticket, and (2) his boss is going to be out of town the whole time so he can't take any time off. Now I feel bad for taking such a long trip (11 days) because I hate to think of Tony and Malcolm being apart for so long :( What can you do?

Sleep is a precious, rare thing around here lately. Malcolm has another tooth coming in - his top right one. Isn't that odd? I thought his bottom left one would be next. We're going to have a little snaggled-tooth boy running around here! His teeth are slow to come in and wouldn't be obvious in photos yet. Once they are, I'll be sure to post some.

We think he's really close to walking. He's able to stand up w/o support for quite a long time and he can walk around with the support of just one hand. I've been meaning to take a little video but keep forgetting.

Speaking of videos, here's a couple of Malcolm & Screech "playing":


Screech is an incredibly tolerant kitty to say the least.