We were full of the busy yesterday and I managed to get photos of big chunks of it.
First thing was playing with the doll house:
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In the afternoon we were off to hang out with our friends at Hallie and Remy’s house. I made all the girls t-shirts that say “Future Huntsvegas Girl Scout Troop”. They turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself.
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I can’t tell you how busy I’ve been here lately. Between work and home and my own projects–
Fine! I admit it! I’ve been spending all of my free time playing Jade Empire and kicking people in the face! But no worries. I can quit any time I want.
As soon as I finish that last fight in the Arena.
Will and Luke came over to visit yesterday. They brought their mom Chrissy and we played outside and very belatedly celebrated Chrissy’s birthday with hot dogs and chili for dinner.
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Here’s Liza watching “Yo Gabba Gabba!”
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And finally, Liza and her bubble hat.
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I had a friend in grad school who eventually left physics behind to become a brewmaster. He was a fan of beer, which put him in the same league as, oh, say, Wrigley Field spectators, but he backed that up with a lot of knowledge about beer. He also hated Zima, with a passion and ferocity normally reserved for your political opposition. He once stated that he wanted to invent time travel, go back in time, and kill the guy who invented Zima. When the TV show Babylon 5 featured a Zima sign in the space station’s bar, I’m sure his blood pressure skyrocketed.
Now he doesn’t have to invent time travel: a mere sixteen years after its introduction, MillerCoors is killing off the beverage. I love that they’re getting rid of it because of “challenging malternative segment sales and declining consumer interest.” Malternatives! I will have to spend the rest of the day saying “malternative” to people. There’s something about portmanteau words like that that make me feel all tingly and happy.
Now I just have to invent Martineer, the metrosexual malternative.
I’m always looking for a way to sneak some spinach in our diets. This is a great option as the spinach gets flavored by the fajita seasoning so unless you KNOW there is spinach in there you can’t taste it. The dipping sauce you can make more or less hot by adjusting the amounts of red pepper and hot sauce. This is from Southern Living from about a million years ago.
1 (10-ounce) package frozen chopped spinach, thawed
1 (1-ounce) envelope fajita seasoning mix
1/2 cup chicken broth
3 (6-ounce) packages refrigerated Southwestern-flavored chicken breast strips, chopped
1 (15-ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 (11-ounce) can yellow corn with red and green bell peppers, drained
2 cups (8 ounces) shredded Monterey Jack cheese with peppers
6 (10-inch) flour tortillas
Combine spinach and fajita seasoning in a large nonstick skillet; add broth. Cook over medium heat, stirring often, 5 minutes. Stir in chicken and next 3 ingredients; simmer until cheese melts. Let mixture cool slightly before next step.
Spread 1/2-3/4 cup chicken mixture on 1 side of each tortilla, leaving a 1/2-inch border around edges.
Roll up tortillas tightly, and wrap in plastic wrap. Chill 30 minutes.
Unwrap rollups, and cut into slices. (I usually do halves.) For neater slices, avoid overfilling the tortilla, and roll tightly. Before serving, cut the tortilla on the diagonal.
Tex-Mex Mayonnaise for Dipping
1 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons ketchup
2 tablespoons lime juice
2 tablespoons milk
2 to 3 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon ground red pepper
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon hot sauce
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon lemon pepper
Combine all ingredients in a bowl. Cover and chill at least 3 hours.
One: Eli continues his habit of becoming distraught over all kinds of random things. He’s like a Victorian maiden who just so happens to have brought her fainting couch with her. Earlier this week, Misty wouldn’t let him get in bed with her early in the morning. This is not cruelty, it’s self-protection. When Eli says, “I want to get in bed and snuggle with you!” what he means is that he wants to get in bed and then flail around madly. He’s like a bag of ocelots that someone just hit with a stick.
I was getting ready for work, so the first I knew about it was when Eli stumbled past me, shoulders slumped, blanket dragging behind him. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Mom won’t let me snuggle,” he said through his tears.
I picked him up and hugged him, getting my shirt all damp. “You going to be okay?” I asked.
“I’ll try,” he sniffed. “It’s hard.”
Two: When I pulled my new-to-me first-gen XBox apart, turned it into a media player, and put it back together, I got several XBox games to go with it. Nothing says “I am a gamer and I am into your gaming culture” quite like getting a bunch of last-gen console games and playing them. Unless it’s playing them with my good friend Jack Thompson.
Anyway, one of the games I got is Psychonauts, and if you have an XBox or PS2 and haven’t played it, it’s because you hate things that are good. I started playing it while Eli was napping, and after the first hour told Misty, “You know, if Eli sees me playing this, he’s going to want to play it, too.”
Wouldn’t you know it, he saw me playing it. Now it is in the rotation along with Super Paper Mario and Lego Indiana Jones. The other day I heard him making up a story involving Peach, Mario, and Bowser collecting Psychonautsish luggage tags and pairing them with mental baggage. What can I say? He’s a wee little fanfic generator. Just wait until he discovers Torchwood.
Three: Yesterday morning, Eli came bopping into our bathroom while Misty and I were getting ready. He picked up three of Misty’s lipstick tubes and asked, “Which one can I put on?”
Misty calmly looked at them and popped one open. “Here,” she said. “Don’t twist it out any more.” I watched as Eli calmly painted his lips. He looked a little like a toddler Joker by the time he was done.
“Here you go,” he said, handing the lipstick back to Misty. He grabbed some toilet paper, wiped all of the lipstick off, and went back for a second tube. I was surprised to hear Misty say, “Oh, not that one. You tried that one yesterday.”
He’s awfully young to be getting into lipstick. I at least waited until I was 18 before I started with the makeup. But Eli is awfully precocious, and I suppose it’s true that children are growing up faster than ever these days. I can’t help but think, though, that with his lipstick and his singing and dancing he reminds me of someone.
(Photo from a Reddit thread via Making Light)
Thank you, and good night.
A while back I injured my lower back playing racquetball. I say that I injured it playing racquetball, which makes it sound like a real injury that I sustained while doing manly, athletic things, but in reality I injured it bending over to serve.
Once my back got to feeling better, I resumed my real exercise: Dad Jungle Gym. Every night I sit on the floor and let Liza and Eli climb all over me. They have a lot of fun. I mostly have an interesting collection of bruises.
Of course this re-injured my back.
Hindsight being what it is, I only realized that letting Eli push me over, climb on top of my back, and jump up and down might not be the best thing until I woke up the next morning unable to bend over. But I don’t want to give up Dad Jungle Gym! I’d lose the chance to sit with Eli later that night and make new constellations out of my bruises. The only real solution is for Eli and Liza to go on diets.
That’s going to be tricky, given their wildly divergent eating habits. Given Eli’s love of chicken fingers the Atkins Diet is a natural fit, but he wouldn’t be able to cram crackers in his mouth. How can I drain the joy out of his life like that? A life that doesn’t include a cracker-filled mouth every hour or so is not a life worth living. Perhaps I could create a hybrid of the Atkins Diet and the rice diet.
Liza, well, she’ll just have to become a Breatharian.
