Two days down

So today wasn't nearly as productive as yesterday. It also didn't start out well. Skadi didn't sleep as well as the night before. I KNEW I shouldn't have blogged about her great sleep. Then Leif woke up screaming this morning and was stuck to my side all.morning.long. He had to eat breakfast on my lap and then sobbed when I wasn't going to spend the entire morning sitting on the couch with him on my lap watching Curious George and letting Skadi cry in the bedroom. Misery.

What finally cured him? I should have known. He is behaving just like his father lately, striving to talk like him and such. A hot shower. He took about a 30 minute hot shower and was cured.

This morning I spent about 20 minutes conversing with his teacher about behavior issues. For once even though she said that he has been a challenge in class, she added on the phrase, "but no worse than any of the other kids this week, it's a tough week all around for some reason". She even told me that her granddaughter - also 3, has been exhibiting some "rather bizarre" behavior. I felt better.

Since I didn't care to hang out in my house while my housecleaner cleaned, I headed to Walmart for a few things with Skadi after the preschool dropoff. Then to the mall for a couple presents. I got home and was somewhat happy to see our housecleaner was gone. Partly because I looked forward to not having to hear about her wacky family, but the flip side was that she had only been there 2.5 hours. 2.5 hours and I pay her how much? House better be sparkling.

We got in and I went to go feed the fish. The temp on the tank was down. (Goldfish) It doesn't matter so much because these fish could survive the apocalypse. But I do have a plecostomas and it is getting to that time of year when they go belly up as the temp starts dropping. However, not to 66F. Dang. Killed another pleco.

66F? I have never seen the temp that low. I went to the house thermostat and it read 64F. No wonder we were cold. But I reset the thermostat yesterday knowing I was going to be home all week. It should be a balmy 72F.

Gurr. I made the call.

One way to warm up the house is to bake. Or maybe I just cannot stand to have a clean kitchen. It must just be subliminal. I made the fixings for five Thai chicken pizzas a la K&V and froze them. The fixings, not K&V. Then I also made these ginger cookies. Yum. The texture is amazing.

So I didn't get a jump on my Thanksgiving cooking. And I didn't finish up my photo albums. And I didn't sew curtains.

I did keep my daughter warm until the HVAC people could get there ($251 later and we have heat again). We also have yummy ginger cookies.

A hockey puck and a baseball bat

I was lulled, ever so gently, into a false sense of security. You see I made chocolate chip cookies. They were delicious. AB even commented that he didn't know why I didn't make them more often and told Leif they were going to have to make me make another batch.

I blame them. It is their fault and their inhaling of my chocolate chip cookies that made me think that baking bread was a good idea. In one of my magazines recently they showed a picture of a tangy sourdough loaf filled with decadent chocolate chunks. Ok, so I knew I needed to master the sourdough loaf first before the addition of dark chocolate.

The recipe was easy enough and I have good starter in my fridge (we have been enjoying sourdough pancakes about every other weekend). It's that yeast addition thing in baking that just KILLS me. Absolutely kills me.

Thankfully I had some raising effect throughout the.entire.day due to the sourdough.

AB has been good at humoring me. "Mmm, this is good bread," he announced before dinner while trying to chew a slice. (I rolled my eyes at him.) We had decided to have baked rigatoni so we could have fresh garlic bread with it. We didn't even make garlic bread. Why ruin the meal of baked rigatoni?

The round loaf resembles a hockey puck in consistency and likely durability. The long French loaf probably has that same hollow echoing crack as a baseball bat when used for the same purpose.

Yeast is hereby banned from my kitchen.