More Trouble with Boys

Boys can be rough. Our boys wrestle all the time. They also smack each other on regular occasions. It's a rare thing when we're driving somewhere and I don't have to tell someone to keep his hands to himself. They cuff each other at the dinner table and kick at each other while they're watching TV. The other night all five of them got into a huge wrestling match that raged through the entire downstairs of our home. We'd hear occasional crashes as they bumped into things and knocked things over, but fortunately nothing was broken.
Unfortunately that's not always the case. Monday morning my eleven-year-old and my eight-year-old were wrestling in the family room. I heard the eight-year-old, Nicky, let out a yell and then start crying. I expected to hear him say, "I'm telling Mom!" but instead he just kept crying. So I went downstairs and found a very sheepish Paul standing in the family room. As soon as he saw me, he said, "We were just wrestling around and I accidentally hurt him." My ten-year-old piped up just then to inform me, "I had nothing to do with it."
I found Nicky crying in the living room, favoring his right shoulder. Three hours of emergency room waiting later, we found out that he had a cracked clavicle (collarbone). He's complained some of the pain, but mostly he's enjoying all the attention. I almost suspect he thinks the pain is worth it if it gives him all this attention. He played it up for every hospital employee that he encountered. As each one asked him how he got hurt, he answered in a martyred tone, "Wrestling. Never trust an older brother!" I almost think he'd be willing to go through it all again for the chance to have attention lavished on him. Little does he realize that, with four older brothers, he's probably going to get another chance at this eventually. Boys!

The Trouble with Boys

I've been studying the male species lately and I've learned a few important things. I thought I'd share them with you this week.
First up, boys are bottomless pits. They never stop eating. With five boys in our family, it's a wonder our refrigerator isn't in a permanent state of empty.
Saturday I washed a bowl of grapes and set them on the counter. There were 3-4 pounds of grapes in that bowl, but by that evening they were all gone. Packages of cookies never last more than a day. Cakes are gone in no time, and 5-quart tubs of ice cream just melt away.
Sweets aren't the only things that disappear in our house. We also suffer from a chronic lack of chips, popcorn, crackers, cheese, etc. The list is endless. I've had to start making announcements when I come home with groceries. "Pepperoni is for a meal one night this week. Don't touch it." "Leave the grated cheese alone!" "The tortillas are for Tuesday night!" Every week it seems I go to the pantry for something I know I just put in there, only to find that it's already been used up. Generally speaking, the empty packaging is still sitting in the pantry because the boys can't seem to realize that if they consume something, they need to toss the empty container. But then again, how else will I ever know what happened to it?
We had company for Sunday dinner, so Saturday night I was working on making dessert. I set two boxes of graham crackers out on the counter and then started pulling out the other ingredients I needed. When I turned back to the graham crackers, one of the boxes was open and about one-third of the crackers were missing. The boys strike again!
Of course, they come by it honestly. One Easter I had a little decorative birdhouse that I bought for my secret sister. I bought several packages of those little marshmallow peeps to go with it. The night before Easter I was putting everything together in a gift basket. Imagine my surprise to find the packages of peeps were all open. ALL of them! It's one of my husband's favorite candies.
Boys are just going to eat everything in sight. I have five boys, two of them teenagers. When the other tree reach adolescence, I'm afraid we'll have to take out loans just to keep food in the house. In the meantime, I'm checking into hiding our own stash so we get to eat at times. Top ingredient: chocolate!

Read Any Good Books Lately?

This past week I read one by a newly published author, A. K. Arenz. Arenz wrote The Case of the Bouncing Grandma, Book One in A Bouncing Grandma Mystery Series.
Most grandmas I know don't bounce, so I was curious as to what this book would be about. I found a fun mystery, enjoyable, with really engaging characters that drew you into the story. Glory Harper is an active grandma. At least, she was until she broke her leg. Temporarily confined to a wheelchair, she's bored and reduced to watching the neighbors move in for her daily entertainment. Her boring world gets a shot of adrenaline, though, when she sees a human foot sticking out of the rolled carpet being carried into the neighbor's house.
This cozy mystery is a great read. Fun and light, but with a good story that keeps you turning pages until the end. I definitely recommend it.

Not My Gift

There are certain domestic genes that were left out of my DNA makeup. These are areas where I just don't have much of a knack for doing it right. One is decorating. I don't come up with ideas on my own. I can copy other people's ideas and I've done that in some areas of my home. But the thing is, when I see something nice and apply it to my home one of two things happen. Either it works and then I feel really stupid for not having thought of that myself, or it doesn't quite come off like the original and the I feel stupid for not being able to make it look the same.
Another area where I fell off the domestic wagon is cleaning. Now, I do clean. I like a clean house. I just never feel like it's as clean as it should be. There's always something else that isn't quite up to par. And then this week--well, I've been sick for almost a week so some things are just falling down around my ears. My boys and husband have done pretty well at keeping generally picked up. Most of the dishes are washed every day, and some of the wash is done every day. But there's dirt there. I can see it. I just haven't done anything about it yet.
One of the areas where my domestic lack bugs me the most is in the kitchen. I'm not a great cook, in spite of twenty-two years of practice. I'm better than I was twenty-two years ago, but I still have more flops than I think I should. I'm not bad with everything. I can make potato soup and broccoli soup that are the ultimate in comfort food. I have a pretty awesome chili (thanks, Rachel Ray!) and an assortment of other meals that I can produce well on a pretty regular basis. I've got several great cookie recipes that turn out right almost every time. (HINT: they tend turn out the best when you include all the ingredients.)
But the worst problem I think I have is with some desserts. Certain things in cookbooks sound absolutely mouth-watering. But then when I make them ... not so much. Now a small amount of blame can go toward the cookbook. I have several different cookbooks that are compilations of recipes from ladies in different churches. I think I have four different church cookbooks. Every once in a while you find a recipe where the creator forgot to include a step. Like what temperature to use or how long to bake it. But most of the time it's just me. We had company last week and I decided to make a dessert that I'd made once before. It's kind of like an easy no-bake cheesecake. (No, I did NOT use Jello's convenient boxed products! Although I can mess those up too.) The dessert has a crushed graham cracker crust, so I crushed up graham crackers, mixed them with butter and patted them into the bottom of the serving dish. Part of my problem was that I was in a hurry, so I didn't crush the crackers as fine as I should have. Then the recipe calls for evaporated milk whipped until stiff, according to the recipe. The last time I made this, I used my mixer for over 20 minutes. The milk was not stiff. It worked anyway. So you put the "stiff" evaporated milk with a mixture of cream cheese and sugar and add lemon Jello dissolved in boiling water. Mix all that together and pour over the crust, then refrigerate until set. My mom used to make something like this when I was little, and I was thrilled to find this recipe that's so close to what she used to make. You sprinkle a few crushed graham crackers on the top and it looks very nice and elegant. The problem? Some of the large crushed graham cracker pieces started floating in the cream cheese mixture instead of staying on the bottom, where they belong. We had two families over and both ladies were helping me in the kitchen. All three of us had contributed to the work in making the dessert, so I think we felt a joint sense of accomplishment/guilt over the finished product. We laughingly called it floating graham crackers and hoped it "set" while we were eating dinner.
After dinner I was thrilled to discover that the dessert had set. However, the floating cracker pieces had gotten soggy and expanded slightly. They looked exactly like wet dog food. I jokingly told the ladies it was called Dogfood Delight, and we dished it up. I didn't know one of the men overheard me until he said, "Well, it does look like dogfood, but it tastes pretty good!" His wife buried her face in her hands, but we just laughed until we cried. Then I told him that wasn't really the name of the dessert, and the look of horror on his face at what he'd said made us laugh and cry all over again.
We have a fellowship coming up at church this Sunday and I'm supposed to bring a dessert. I'm thinking a box cake--Betty Crocker or Pillsbury do those very well. And nobody can mess those up. Can they?

Vanity Plates Well-Named

I'm sure you've seen them. They have labels like
"4HZGLRY"
"SU2WIN"
"PHONES2"
"PNKPONI"
"IARGUE"
"LUVMMS"
They're vanity plates. Drive any distance at all and you can amuse yourself for hours reading the license plates of those around you. And getting a glimpse into their lifestyles, personalities, hobbies and egos. So what are you really saying when you have a vanity plate? Just the name would seem to indicate that it's all about you. I don't know how much vanity plates cost, but I know you have to fork out some extra dough. So is the money really worth it to communicate some of these messages about yourself to total strangers?
For instance, when I saw the plate, "SU2WIN", I knew that was one person I wouldn't want to collide with. It was probably a lawyer, but then again these days a lot of people make their money with frivilous lawsuits. I didn't want anywhere near that car. Come to think of it, that's probably a good way to protect your vehicle. Who would want to even park next to it?
The "IARGUE" tag was on an SUV. Personally, I don't want to be known as argumentative, but some people pride themselves on being contradictory. Or maybe that person was on a debate team. Although, then they could have put "DB8". Not quite as eye-catching, though. I think the only other profession that would see the "IARGUE" plate as a plus would be a lawyer.
"LUVMMS" belongs to one of the people in my subdivision. I have to ask myself--do you really love M&M's enough to pay extra for a vanity plate in order to declare it to the world? It just seems to me that if you love M&M's, you would rather spend the money buying more M&M's then simply labeling your vehicle.
"PNKPONI" was on a white mustang with a wide pink stripe up the middle. This is definitely where the little girl fan of "my little pony" met with the teenager who got her first car. I'm sorry, but I find it hard to believe that someone driving a car like that has the maturity to make wise decisions behind the wheel. My daughter suggested that perhaps the car belonged to a fifty-year-old woman. I find that even more disturbing.
Let me leave you with this one final thought: if "SU2WIN" and "IARGUE" got into an accident, who do you think would win the lawsuit?

Cleansing Impurities

Do you take vitamins? I'm a firm believer in them, although I'm not as faithful as I should be in taking them. We've got supplements for sugar control, blood pressure, increased energy, managing stress. But recently someone gave us a mineral supplement that's supposed to cleanse the impurities out of your body and boost your immune system. What could be better than that, huh? Okay, so first of all, the stuff is the most vile tasting of anything I've ever had. Fortunately you can mix it with apple juice because otherwise, I don't think I could get it down. And I know I couldn't keep it down. Plus, it cleanses your impurities. Do I need to explain any further? Suffice it to say, it made us a little sick. But that's good because it shows that it's working.
So strengthening the immune system. That part's not working out so well. I had a mild cough and a very mild case of congestion that's grown steadily worse over the past week. (That would be the week that I've taken this mineral supplement.) I now have a deep, exhausting cough, unbelievable sinus pressure and I've been sick at home for two days. What gives?
Someone suggested that this was another way of cleansing out the impurities. I think that follows along the theory that it's got to get worse before it gets better. It shows that it's working. It's making its way through my system. Say it however you want, but the bottom line is, all those expressions mean this stuff made me sicker than I was before.
One of my friends had an interesting thought. Perhaps I was allergic to the supplement? Try stopping it for a week, let the supplement get completely out of my system, and then see if I'm better. I have to admit, I liked that idea. But then again, I could just have a bad cold. In that case I would probably be better in a week whether I stopped the supplement or not.
My husband, like most men, feels the answer is in "more power". Turns out we're only taking the supplement once a day and we're supposed to take it twice a day. So he feels that if we start taking two doses a day for this week, my health will pick up quickly and all the impurities will be out of my system. So maybe that will work. Or, if I am allergic, maybe it'll make me much worse. One thing's for sure: it will definitely change the status quo.
So what's your opinion? I think I'll go lay down while I wait for your answers.

Late Night Emergencies

Why do emergencies happen at night? We had a mild emergency last night about 11:30, and it got me to thinking about past emergencies in our life. When one of our kids sliced their hand down the middle on an old nail, it was after 10:30. When we rushed our daughter to the emergency room because she couldn't breathe, it was three in the morning. (Pleurisy does that to you.) When we were in Uganda, we had several medical emergencies that happened at night. Or at least, late enough that it was impossible to travel four hours to the hospital until morning. Matt developed a severe allergic reaction to medication. Matt got electrocuted. Joel was so sick he was having trouble staying conscious. Even when Terry had hepatitis, it got really bad later on in the evening. Boyd emergencies seem to come at night.
So what was last night's emergency? Not much on the scale of what I just listed, but it was a crisis to my boys all the same. Since they got home from church late, I let them stay up a little late last night. When I finally told them to get ready for bed, their process of changing into pajamas, brushing teeth and kissing everyone in a five mile radius took forever, as usual. I went to tuck them in and found only two of them in their room. Neither one was in bed because they were arguing over the cat. Skittles sleeps in the boys' room at night, and Joel and Paul have worked out some sort of system so that she alternates sleeping on their beds. Paul had Skittles on his bed, and Nicky was trying to take Skittles because, according to him, it was Joel's turn. Nicky has a talent for mixing into things that are none of his business. Anyway, They're arguing over the cat when one of them felt something sharp. We turned the cat over and found a three-pronged fish hook caught on her belly. At first I thought it was just tangled in her fur, but it was actually caught in her skin. (Ouch!) No one knows how she found a fish hook, much less got caught on it. It had to have hurt, but she lay still while I tried to see if I could get it out.
First thing I did was send one of the boys for scissors. If I could cut her fur away at that point, at least I'd know what I was dealing with. We have two cats, and I'm grateful this happened to Skittles. She's the short-haired one. If Snickers got stuck on a fish hook, I'm not sure we would have ever found it! Anyway, I cut away some hair and saw that the hook had gone through a small section of skin and the tip was out. I couldn't pull it back through without hurting her or making the wound much bigger. My boys panicked and kept asking if we could take her to the vet. I don't know if vets have late night emergency rooms. We don't even have a vet down here yet anyway.
Finally one of the boys decided to get their older brother, Matt. Matt took one look and suggested that, if we cut off the tip with wire cutters, then we could pull it back out without hurting the cat any further. Great idea! Anybody know where the wire cutters are?
Matt went to find tools, and in the meantime, here came my husband. Terry was tired from preaching and he had to get up early this morning, so he was already asleep. I didn't want to disturb him, but apparently one of the boys felt that Daddy needed to be called. Terry's not real fond of the cats, but he loves his boys. He and Matt worked together and finally got the hook out. The cat was relieved, the boys were happy and everyone went back to bed.
I hope our next late night emergency can be solved that easily!