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Created by OnePlusYou
72%. Not bad, all things considered. Blogging is fulfilling, fun, and cheaper than therapy. Now that school is out, I’ll spend more time decompressing online. If I took this quiz in a few weeks, my addiction percentage might be higher. Meanwhile, I need to refill my coffee cup.
How does your blogging addiction measure up? Leave your score in the comments!
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I found this recipe on Margalit’s site and I’ve made it several times. Any mistakes below are mine, not hers. I did make a few small changes to make it work for my everloving and starving family.
Add the ingredients as they are printed into the bread machine pan.
1 cup old-fashioned oats
1-1/2 cups water (add more if dough is too dry in 1 tbs increments)
3 Tablespoons canola oil
1/3 cup honey
2 teaspoons salt
2 cups white bread flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2-1/2 Teaspoons active dry yeast
Place all the ingredients in the pan, using the least amount of liquid and adding more if needed, as seen below. Select Medium or Light Crust, Wheat course, and press start. Daisy tip: Stay home and enjoy inhaling the lovely aroma of baking bread.
Observe the dough as it kneads. After 5 to 1- minutes, if it appears dry or stiff, or if the machine sounds like it’s straining to knead it, add more liquid 1 Tablespoon at a time until dough forms a smooth, soft, pliable ball that is slightly tacky to the touch. Daisy tip: put a little hot water in the honey-coated measuring cup and use this for the additional water, as needed.
After the baking cycle ends, remove bread from pan, place on cooling rack, and allow to cool 1 hour before slicing. Daisy tip: good luck waiting. It smells so good you might have to hire a guard or set an alarm to let it cool for an entire hour.
>I’ve heard it said that the Secretary of War should be an autism parent. We plan for every eventuality. We not only have a plan B, but a plan C, plan D, and more. We think through possible roadblocks and speedbumps, make exhaustive lists, prepare everyone thoroughly for the road, and we always, always, have an exit strategy.
Amigo, a teen with Asperger’s, is actually a very good traveler. He loves road trips. In fact, we print the route plan for ourselves and in Braille for Amigo. He is a great navigator, despite his lack of usable vision. When I drive, I put him in charge of the cell phone and the radio. It keeps my mind (and eyes) on the road, and lets him explore any region’s local color through its radio dial.
In order to stay the course with fewer hiccups, we plan more details than most parents. The route file for our upcoming trip includes these statements and more.
“After this stop, Mom will need to sit in the front to help watch highway signs in the big city for Dad.”
“This stretch will be a long haul.”
“We should get gas before we get on the tollway.”
“And now we stay on highway 80 until we reach Ohio. Easy, huh?”
“If we’re feeling spunky when we reach Cleveland, the Indians are playing at 7:00.”
“Are we there yet?”
Amigo has been an active participant in planning this trip. In fact, he’s already suggested getting up early the first day and hitting the road by 7:00 AM. Granola bars and cappuccino for breakfast anyone? I’ve already chosen my travel coffee mug. After all, besides an exit strategy, what’s more important to a road trip than coffee?
This post is part of Scribbit’s Write-Away contest for June. Her theme is “Going Places.” I can’t wait to read all the submissions; they’re always varied and fascinating.
Update: Readers from Scribbit might enjoy this vacation post. It was written too late for the contest, but it definitely fits the theme of “Going Places.”
>(Inspired by the incredible Kelly at Mocha Momma)
10. How to dress fashionably. Not going to happen. Don’t even think about it.
9. Remember to scrub my nose in the morning. Since I’ve developed a snoring problem (quiet up there in the peanut gallery!), I’ve used the funny nose strips that football players wear. They seem to help me breathe better at night, but the adhesive is a mess. I am constantly waking up in the morning, tossing the strip in the wastebasket, blowing my nose, and ending up with a schnozz covered with sticky tissue remnants.
8. Master all the features of my cell phone. I can call out, receive calls, text message, and even take pictures with the camera setting. But there are all kinds of shortcuts, like a text message dictionary, that I’ve discovered and I haven’t used. Yet.
7. Housekeeping. Carol Brady had Alice; I pay a cleaning service to come in once a month and do the basics. Maybe I have learned this one; I learned to pay someone else to do what I can’t.
6. Keep on track with appointments and regular checkups. My hearing aids need service, I’m behind by one dental cleaning, and if I think about it, I’ll realize there’s more. I’ll choose not to think about it, instead.
5. How to eat spaghetti without spilling sauce on myself. I’m getting older, but I’m not Old. Dinner shouldn’t be all over my shirt — yet.
4. Going to bed early means wake up early. If I’m extra tired and go to bed half and hour early, it’s inevitable that I’ll wake up an hour before my alarm.
3. Going back to bed means bad dreams. Always. I’m better off getting up and (if possible) taking a nap later.
2. A little goes a long way. Especially when it’s chocolate, even more when it’s dark chocolate. But if that small piece tastes fabulous, more would be heavenly, right? Uh-huh.
1. Get to know and cheer for a new Green Bay Packer quarterback. Well, give me time, okay? I can do this. Heck, I recovered after Bart Starr left. But I was a lot younger and more resilient back then.
>Ah, mornings. My collegiate-type daughter doesn’t like to do anything that has an A.M. after the numbers. My teen is more of a morning person, but he’s still, well, a teen. He’ll do mornings, but grudgingly.
On a school day, Amigo’s alarm goes off at 6:00. He drags his mind out of sleep mode, drags himself to the dresser for clothes, and slinks downstairs to have breakfast. By this time I’ve already been out of bed with some semblance of coherence since 5:30, showered, dressed, and more while waiting for him. We sleepwalk through breakfast, brushing teeth, morning medicines, and then watch a little morning news and weather before going outside to wait for the bus.
It all runs fairly smoothly unless he oversleeps. Let’s not even suggest the possibility.
Lately we’ve had an additional body in the house. La Petite is home from school and working, which means we have three drivers and only two vehicles. Most mornings now Husband wakes up an hour earlier than his usual, drives me to school, and then takes care of himself and gets to work. La Petite takes her break to run me home in time to meet Amigo’s school bus.
One morning I requested that Husband drive me through Jo to Go, my favorite school day caffeine source, and the barrista simply looked into the car at me and asked, “The usual?” Husband shot me a half-smirk, half eye-roll, and shook his head. Heck, my morning usual is a 16 oz. hazelnut with no cream or sugar. Nothing fancy or expensive, really! It’s a locally owned place, too, so I’m supporting the local economy. The service is fast enough that I waste a minimum of gas, and….well, I can rationalize anything if I try hard enough. Even on a wild and woolly workday morning.
Fortunately, this routine only lasts until school is out and that flexibility that is a teacher’s summer begins. Then I become the chauffeur, taking La Petite to work and Amigo to appointments. And on most summer days, I make my own coffee.
This post is based on a topic recommended by Parent Bloggers Network and Kraft Bagel-fuls. Please feed your children breakfast before school; trust me, they learn better and test better if they’re not hungry.
>The tradition of writing on the board continues. Ever since the day I let my students draw flowers on the chalkboard around the date, they’ve raced to decorate the board every morning. The style morphed from flowers to animals, and some days they get so excited that we end up having three suns. New planet with a tri-solar system, perhaps? There’s a lot of creativity in their fourth grade minds, so I wouldn’t discount it. But more than likely, three kids wanted to draw the sun and none would give in to the others.
>We arrived on our own, our graduate program’s own fab five, each in our own vehicles, usually the family minivan. The five of us, friends and coworkers, were taking yet another graduate class together on a large, sprawling, confusing campus. When the class day was over, four of us couldn’t find our vans in the parking garage, so we all piled into one. As we worked our way out of the maze of parking ramps, constantly on the lookout for any of our missing vans, we ran into construction. One of us got out of the van and ran ahead to see if we could make it out through the wreckage. She came back and said yes, we could get through, so we inched our way through the mess.
At that point, I woke up.
When I told Husband about this, he said it was obvious; I was just trying to survive the last week of school and get out in one piece!
I emailed this to the friends involved for their take on it. One liked Husband’s interpretation but added that maybe it was about the fact that we all stick together through thick and thin, one or all of us are there when we need it, and we all look out for each other no matter what! Another reminded me that even though we may arrive at our destinations separately, we are always together in our hearts – and vans! It wasn’t snowing in the dream like it was the last time we got together, but we had difficulty getting home. And finally, we all agreed that it meant we were way overdue for a girls’ night out.
Any other thoughts, folks? Have I missed any symbolism?
>Ingredients:
1 computer
Internet access
word processing software
file labelled “recipes”
printer and paper
Surf your favorite food sites. Find bloggers who grow their own ingredients and working bloggers who feed their families somehow, just like you do. Copy and save their recipes. Send them thanks!
My favorite sources for recipes online:
Farmgirl Fare — check out her farm blog with its Daily Doses of Cute and many, many recipes. All will make you smile!
Courtesy of Farmgirl and her foodie friends, use this Food Blog Search to find tested and true recipes.
Scribbit posts a recipe once a week. In between, you’ll hear all about life in the real final frontier, Alaska.
Ordering Disorder — a department of Work it, Mom! — this mother of seven (7!) shares her recipes for the crock pot, the grill, and more.
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Patricia at Communication Exchange tagged for a meme: 6 Unspectacular Quirks. The rules are as follows:
1. Link the person(s) who tagged you.
2. Mention the rules on your blog.
3. Tell about six unspectacular quirks of yours.
4. Tag six following bloggers by linking them.
5. Leave a comment on each of the tagged bloggers’ blogs, letting them know they’ve been tagged.
I followed rules 1 and 2 above, so here goes #3.
*Due to the excessive rain and heat lately, my compost bin stinks. It’s rotting at a record pace, which is good, I guess, but Phew, it’s aromatic!
*I snore. I’ve taken to wearing a breathing strip on my nose at night, and it seems to help. Some. *I buy too many books. I read them all, none go to waste, but it’s a weakness of mine.
*I speak a fair amount of Spanish, which is a handy skill for a teacher in my neighborhood where one third of the surnames on my class list are Mexican. Wonderful kids and families, by the way! *If I hadn’t become a teacher, I would have become a nurse.
*When school is out for the summer, it takes me at least a week to adjust to sleeping a little later in the morning.
Trust me, it’s painless. I tag:
Margalit, the creator of MidCentury Modern Moms at What was I Thinking?
Suburban Correspondent at The More, the Messier
Nina (my colleague at MCMM) at Voted off the Island
Ilona (another MCMM writer) at It’s Not All Mary Poppins
Janice (yet another MCMM-er!) at Chasing Myself
Okay, that’s five. Any other volunteers to make six? Leave a comment!
>I confess: I didn’t name my children Amigo and la Petite at birth. Husband has a name, and he complains that he wants to be called something more exciting on the blog.
I confess as well: I don’t blog about everything. Sometimes, despite blogging under creative names, I don’t want to vent about certain topics. Some things, no matter how entertaining they might be, need to remain private.
But anonymity on the blogosphere is dangerous in a way. Anonymous comments can be rude, spiteful, or worse. Many bloggers use comment moderation, personally approving all comments before they’re posted. Most blogs utilize codes to eliminate robot comments or program their comment boxes to reject anonymous comments.
That’s why when MomBlogs opened their new site, anonymousmom.com, I had mixed feelings. Anonymity can promote a false sense of safety or security. Ability to post without identity can lead to flaming, negativity, nastiness, and cyber-bullying.
I’ve enjoyed the MomBlogs, their blogrolls, and their new message boards. Their new site is billed as “No judgements, no advice, no husbands, children or even your own mother finding you. Simply your own place to let it all hang out!”
I’ll check this out, but with caution. How will they deal with the potential negative results of an anonymous message board? If it turns out to be a safe venue, it could be enjoyable.
If you’d like to check them out, the MomBlogs’ new Anonymousmom.com is here.
