Hummus, Blueberry Jam, Steak, Potatoes....Veruca Salt?

For starters, hubs just told me that he broke the Cardinal Rule of laundry doing: don't mix colors and whites, especially NEW colors and whites. As such, these previously gleaming baseball pants are now...

vaguely pink. People, seriously!? I love pink. The boys love pink. But Nats pants are NOT supposed to be pink on Day 2 of camp. On the day of the Nationals stadium visit. Or ever.

Hubs says he's going to remedy this situation. I told him he best do that because I cannot add one additional shouldn't-be-necessary item to my list. He said "BLEACH!," like that simple word, said loudly and clearly, should assuage my concern. I replied, "Who washes new red jerseys and socks with white pants? Jesus H, Man, have you learned nothing in your 36 years?"

Secondly, for most of my more than 36 years, I have A) been mildly alarmed by the Gene Wilder version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and B) certain that the greedy girl who turns blue and blows up like a fat blueberry was named Veruschka Salt. Mother of god, her name is Veruca Salt. VERUCA?! Hubs says that in Latin, "veruca" means wart. Why does he know this? Probably because he mixes new reds and whites in a washing machine.

I didn't even bother questioning him about the veracity of his claim because my hubs is always right about the most random of trivia. It's infuriating at times, especially during Trivial Pursuit. Honest to god, some of his knowledge gives new meaning to the word "trivial" and the pursuit of it.

I said aloud the name Veruschka Salt because I spent literally 7 hours today running errands and then was hell bent on cooking. The first must-do was to deal with the dried garbanzos I'd put to soak yesterday morning, so eagerly anticipating a large batch of Yotam's hummus. I made that. I am glad.

Then I dealt with twelve of the 21 cups of blueberries I had by making the BB-Grand Marnier jam, though I first had to remove this guy who'd moved into my canning pot.

Whilst finally making said jam, one of my very best college friends, seriously one of my favorite people ever, called to tell me that he'd gotten married over the weekend. I A) stopped concentrating on the jam, and B) demanded to know how many people were in attendance at this wedding because C) I was going to be extremely peeved if it weren't small (read: I wasn't invited).

Fortunately for him and his beautiful wife, only sixteen close family members were present for this somewhat last-minute ceremony and equally fortunately, he assured me that of course after twenty years of mutually devoted friendship I am on the short list. At that point I remembered the jam which was, at that point, pillowing madly in the pot. I hurried to can it and while it's quite good, it's a bit looser than I'd like. Blueberry-Grand Marnier sauce, I tell you. Meant to make it all along.

It's 7:30 and T walks in, a full thirty minutes before I expected him. I'm talking to my friend, beseeching hubs not to eat Indian leftovers because steaks are coming and hurriedly turning on the oven. This is all before the ridiculous pink pants episode. I toss some purple majestics (potatoes) with some oil, garlic, saffron and mint. I season the filets with my super-duper steak rub. I tell hubs to wash and spin the kale while I smash garlic, mint and salt in my mortar.

Miraculously, things came together (though I took the damn potatoes out too early; go microwave) and we supped in relatively calm fashion. A generous pour of a fine Rioja I bought today hurt nothing.

Monday, Monday.

Ludicrous Wednesdays

Wednesdays have become the most outrageous day, and not in a good way (although I did manage a lunch date with a bestie today). They are so run-raggedy that Thursdays have defaulted into necessary mental health days. You know, the times you call in sick from work when you're not really sick or clear your schedule just because you literally cannot even feign interest in one more activity or to-do. And so tomorrow is such for me, and I am seriously looking forward to it. I will read the newspaper, I will not answer any calls from CVS, and I will finish unpacking from Richmond. We got home at 6:15 tonight, and the boys still needed dinner, bath and the bedtime routine. I urged them to snarf dinner like mannerless heathens, raced them through shoddy baths, read one joint story, Snoring Beauty, and then I bid them sayonara before going to sit catatonically with Nutmeg and online shop for god knows what until returning to some sort of stasis. At this point, Jack came downstairs (when did "bedtime" become like a yellow traffic light instead of red?) needing a yellow marker to color in the bubble lettered-Pokemon title he'd drawn on a Pokemon notebook he was making and also a brown to complete something else.

I accommodated these requests and certainly agreed when he then asked if he could do a page in his reading comprehension workbook (smart kid buys time in ways he knows I'll agree to); you have never seen a child write such lengthy and complete answers. I did not agree to a second dinner or his "real need" to "look something up on Amazon." I can't tell y'all how much rogue shit Tom and I found in our Amazon cart on a weekly basis. Reason 408 why I will never share passwords with the children! Can you imagine what would start arriving at our door?

Ultimately, I took a cue from my friend Randy, who regularly and very kindly beseeches me to take a load off, and decided we'd have salad and leftover gumbo for dinner. Because it's been more than a week, I also had to make a plum tart. Duh!

Lest y'all think my crush on Benedict has waned, it has not. It has been on the back burner as of crazy late, but I have colored in my coloring book and I do still gaze upon this picture on occasion. Know you've missed it too (except C and Mom; I know he mos def does NOT do it for you. We can still be friends.)

Sons, a pug, a salad

Friends, it's been a week. A lot has transpired in a mere seven days, and so when my trainer had to cancel our session this morning, I admit to feeling the heat of thrill. I'd been carrying a weight in my heart, noodling on it, working it out, letting it run its course, and awoke today with a lightness of being that felt awfully good. Once the cancellation was confirmed, I took my lightness to the couch for a magnificent thing called Reading the Paper. It's a remarkable event to quietly read two full sections, was it three??, in one sitting. I kept looking around furtively, as if I had forgotten a child somewhere, had the day wrong, was being caught on Candid Camera in "the mom who only thought she suddenly had an open morning" episode. As it turned out, none of these foreboding thoughts were true, and after reading the paper, I called my sister for our scheduled phone date. Afterwards, I decided to rake the yard because the flood of Biblical proportion that besieged us for the past two days finally got out of town late last night, leaving a serious trail of debris strewn all around.

I'm waiting for a call so took my phone outside with me. From across the yard I heard a bing so scampered over to check. It was an email from Oliver's teachers, subject line: Bathroom Behavior Alert.

"This cannot be awesome," I thought to myself, opening it with the slightest bit of trepidation. It turns out that my little Shamrock (such a fortuitous birthday for this kid; seriously, I've known that there was meaning in Ol coming two weeks early to be born on St. Patty's Day, since he was oh, about 8 days old) and two buddies were caught in the gymnasium bathroom pantsing each other and laughing hysterically. Can you even imagine the hilarity involved in discovering three five year olds exposing each other's goods [tiny] in front of childsize toilet stalls?

The coach who discovered this mayhem is awesome, and I swear to you he had to work hard not to laugh. The teachers, too, could not have handled this "teachable moment" more sanguinely. Obviously each of these tykes will receive a talking-to tonight and I am confident this will not happen again.

Say it with me, friends: "It's always something!"

Because the sun is finally out, I then suggested to Percy that we go for a walk. By the time we reached the backyard gate, he was panting to beat sixty. You'd have thought I'd just picked him up at the finish line of the Iraqi Iditarod. Good god, Percy! He spent half of our walk being pulled through slick grass on his back and finally plopped down in a puddle to relax-and-slurp.

At least there was this marvelously calm salad to enjoy for lunch! Hah!