>Supermom’s Super Soup Recipe

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>Look in the vegetable drawer. Dice up one cup of everything available. Add a can of dark red kidney beans. Add a handful of Green Bay Packer beans if ripe at the right moment. Dice the leftover pork (from the rotisserie last night). Add water and broth crystals. Flavor with herbs if available. Turn crockpot on low for a few hours; then add barley and turn to high. Serve when ready.
On the side: make a loaf of bread in the bread machine.

Sure, you may laugh. So do I. But the truth is, my soup “formula” gives us lots of nutritious meals and makes the house smells wonderful. While it simmers, I can finish the laundry for my family and correct papers for my class.

Of course, I couldn’t do it without my appliances, including the crockpot, bread machine, and mini-rotisserie oven. Oh, yeah, and the washer and dryer. And the coffeemaker. Have I missed any?

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>simple pleasures

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>*sitting on a backyard swing after supper and feeling the week’s tension drain from my shoulders
*watching El Grande pet the neighbor’s dog and explain to me, “she’s not whining, she just has anxiety.”
*enjoying the scent of clean red cedar litter in the bunny hutch
*giving a now-healthy bunny his last dose of antibiotics
*harvesting a monster tomato just as it ripens
*seeing two green zucchini trying to grow
*handing a bunny a big leaf from the broccoli plant and seeing him practically inhale it
*knowing the final Jeopardy answer, er, question
*getting email updates from La Petite at college
*snuggling a bunny in the backyard swing, listening to crickets chirping
*knowing that my alarm won’t go off at 5:30 tomorrow morning
Now that’s priceless.

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>Yawn. It’s definitely the start of a new school year. I have that “thank goodness I finished tonight’s papers because I can’t afford to get behind” feeling. It’s a lot like a letdown after a big race or competition, except that it happened every night this week. After coming home, dealing with snail mail and voice mail, making and serving supper, and then helping El Grande with his homework, the time came to finish my own work. It took all of Survivor (don’t ask me the tribe names, I was thinking about reading vocabulary and comprehension) and I missed Wheel of Fortune (which is fine with me because Jeopardy is MUCH better) correcting spelling tests. Early tomorrow morning I’ll huddle at my desk and hope no one interrupts me while I enter the scores in my computer.

But it’s a good kind of tired that I’m feeling. It’s the kind of tired that comes from a full day, a lot accomplished, and all that’s left are the prepare-for-morning routines. I can do that, feed bunnies, and then get into my pajamas. Pajamas. Mmmm…what a delicious thought.

Goodnight.

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>When it’s cold outside

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>Where did this cold weather come from? It was hot, hot humid summer last week, and all of a sudden (and it really was sudden) there were frost warnings for the northwoods. I closed all the windows tightly, put an extra blanket on our bed, and of course made coffee. When it’s 54 degrees outside at school bus time, a warm mug in my hands can steady my train of thought.
This set of mugs isn’t really a set. They kinda-sorta go together in a theme — they’re all about trains. Husband is a train buff and HO-scale modeler. He usually drinks his hot cocoa (not a coffee fiend like me) out of the Green Bay & Western mug on the bottom left. I like the National Railroad Museum mug on the bottom right, and the smaller Hiawatha line mug is perfect for a small cup o’ Joe. Ah, a little history and a little java are just the things to keep me on track on a cool morning. Pun intended, of course.

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>Are you ready for some football?

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>When we married so many years ago, Husband and I discovered that our sports fanaticism was at different levels. Like many couples, we learned to live with that. But it’s not what you might think. It wasn’t the wife learning to live with the husband’s addiction; it was the Husband learning to live with mine.
In high school, my friends liked the quarterback that was “cute”. I liked the one who could pass.
In college, I stunned one of my male friends by knowing more Green Bay Packer trivia than he did.
When we got married, my Husband discovered he could sit down and watch the game with me or do something on his own on Sunday afternoons. Making the obvious choice, he gradually learned the game at my side.
We’d been married two years when we moved to Green Bay and rented a duplex (be still my heart) almost next door to Lambeau Field, directly across the street from the Packers’ practice field. The landlord didn’t know it, but I would have paid almost any rent for the view from that front porch. .
La Petite learned to ride a bike in the stadium’s parking lot. We flew kites there. I pushed the kids’ strollers in Lambeau’s shade on many evening walks. I love the roomy home we live in now, in a nearby town, but I sincerely miss the location of that tiny duplex. The Lambeau Field neighborhood had an atmosphere, an aura of its own.
Eventually, Husband put his technical skills to use in television broadcasting. He decided that since he didn’t get much of my attention on Sundays, he might as well work. Well, now he works in the crew on the sidelines of the Packers’ home football games, and I’m envious because he’s closer to the games than I am.
Ah, well, all’s fair in love, war, and NFL football. Go Pack Go!

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>Did Superman ever get headaches while he was saving the world?

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>Yesterday was one of “those” days. I felt like I’d already worked for hours before I left the driveway. It was the day the cleaning service comes, which requires some advance preparation. It was the second day of school, which means I began the morning already tired out from the day before.
Before breakfast:
I fed both rabbits.
I super-caged the house bunny to keep him out of the way of the cleaning service and keep him from leaving any “rabbit raisins” around the house after they left.
I showered (practically sleep-walked through it) and dressed in my work clothes (Ha! You were expecting my Superhero uniform, weren’t you?!).
Then:
I got a super breakfast for El Grande.
I made sure he brushed his teeth.
And more:
I cleaned the house bunny’s litter box and set it outside to super-dry.
I super-wiped down the floor to get any “misses” around the litter box area.
I packed my super-lunch and cleared the table of breakfast dishes.
I emptied the dishwasher of clean dishes and put the super-dirty ones inside.

THEN I went to work.
For the most part, it was a good day at school with tired but happy students. However, it was a super-busy day with no real breaks except recess — barely enough to zoom to the bathroom.
I tried to work at my super-desk after school, but (due to recent construction) there was a huge super-vacuum truck outside and just below my window. I could deal with the noise (I teach pre-adolescents, after all), but the stench of diesel exhaust was too much. I packed up my super-work and flew (okay, drove) home.

Back home again:
I re-filled the super-clean litter box and brought it inside.
I brought the small furry one inside again.
Small not-so-adorable furry one left a “gift” on the clean bathroom rug to express his displeasure: one tiny rabbit turd.
I put not-so-super supper in the oven. Okay, I admit it, it was from a box (potpies and buttermilk biscuits), but it was a meal.
Then, and only then, I reached for the super-strength ibuprofen.

Did Superman get headaches when he saved the world? Because Supermom sure does. But fortunately, Supermom thinks like Scarlett O’Hara, not like Kal-el — tomorrow will be another day!

This oldie-but-goodie is my entry in Scribbit’s Write-Away contest for July ’08. Her theme is Wonder Woman; I thought the Super Mom parallel was appropriate.

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>"Love" Thursday

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>Some children with autism wander. Escape. Run. El Grande doesn’t, and never has. So when this happened, it wasn’t scary — just odd. I was working on my laptop in the den when he got up to use the bathroom and didn’t come back. When I realized he’d been gone for a while, I got up to see if he had a stomach-ache or other problem. He was out of the bathroom already. He hadn’t come back to the den, he wasn’t upstairs listening to the radio, he wasn’t on the old computer in his sister’s room. I looked outside in the backyard; he wasn’t on the new backyard swing, either. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a tail wag. It was our neighbor’s dog. Sure enough, El Grande was there on the driveway with the dog. This is an old and mellow dog (Shades of the old Beast) who thrives on attention. When she’s outside, she’ll come to the side of the yard and make little noises for El Grande to come pet her. It’s a win-win for both; El Grande gets to develop a relationship with a friendly dog, and the dog gets attention that the neighbors (parents of an adorable toddler) don’t have enough time to give.

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>What do you get when you cross a coffee mug with a duck?

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>


You get a coffee mug like this!
(What, you were expecting a punch line?) This series, not quite a gallery, describes the coffee mugs in my collection. There are no plain ordinary mugs, no plain white ceramic, no basic black. The duck mug was a gift, given to go with the art work on the mantle (below). Husband bought me the piece as a gift for completing my Masters Degree project a few years ago. The day I mailed the project, after many sleepless weeks of planning and work, he presented me with the framed duckling picture as a reward for having “all my ducks in a row”. When my sister-in-law spotted the mug, she thought they would go together well. She was right. I use the mug often, and every time I think of how good it feels to have the degree finished and “all my ducks in a row.”

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