havocandmayhem.com

I spent June absorbed in a large number of chick lit mysteries. (Thank you county library system. If you love to read please consider donating the cost of a new book to your local library, their budgets are being slashed across the country this year & every little bit helps keep their programs active) Chick lit mysteries, with their modern settings, are not my usual taste in books. I like historic mysteries with lots of period details and witty dialog. Chick lit usually manages the dialog but I find the period details annoying because of the rapid pace of technology. For instance, in two different series’ the characters were suddenly overcome with fascination at these things called ‘digital cameras’. Both books were published in 2005. By 2005 I was on my SECOND digital camera. I’m hardly on the cutting edge of technology either. So the gasping awe shown by both sets of characters upon seeing a digital camera was disconcerting and threw off the pace of the book. Then the

  Ah Potluck! I took a weight lifting class at the gym Friday and I am so sore it still hurts to type, so this is going to be short this week           Havoc has been spending his allowance on Pokemon cards lately. That was/is the popular thing in the primary schools around here for the last couple months of school. He has a stack of them & trades them with friends & explains every single card to me and how you can battle with them. Silly Bandz haven’t hit here yet. You can buy them but they are have not reached ‘must have’ status     Dinner is still not inspiring me but I made some chocolate cocoa cookies earlier in the week after a big rainstorm. It had cooled enough to use the oven.       The word jar gave me lugubrious , which means mournful, dismal, or gloomy, especially to an exaggerated or ludicrous degree. Probably I can work that into a sentence. I know a couple people that it could apply to in certain circumstances      

There was some swimming This guy wasn’t sure about the water at first but he got over it and joined his friends It was also time for my monthly self portrait and a sunset on the solstice For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom . Thanks for stopping by

We’ve swam most days. The pool has not turned green yet but it’s early days. Heat and rain combined cannot be defeated by chemicals & filters as I learned last year but I am trying to keep ahead of it. It’s been in the 90s most of the time, hitting 101 yesterday! And it’s only June. I’d like to take them to the park or something but it’s just too damn hot. Vacation bible school was this week and the little heathens have enjoyed it for the most part, but I think they are done having to be somewhere every morning. We’ve been to both libraries. They read almost daily, but we’ve been slacking off on the workbooks. DH has been gone from 6:30a to 10p weekdays for going on 3 weeks now. I have no idea when that will end. It should have been this week but it turns out large corporations are just as disorganized and screwed up as tiny companies. Which I already knew but seems to surprise some people. I’ve baked cookies twice and been to the gym 5 times. I consider that breaki

So. I promised to make Mayhem a Batman cape, complete with pointy ends, just like Batman. But I can’t sew with the boys around. They are not the problem. They don’t bother me. It’s all the obscene language that accompanies the sewing that is the problem. Don’t get me wrong…I like sewing. Really. I do. It just doesn’t seem that way because of all the swearing sewing causes. It’s not the sewings fault, its the inadequate props. Any sewing project always begins the same way – with the ritual opening cursing of whoever the hell took ALL the effing scissors and failed to put them back where they belong. The curse lasts for awhile and encompasses the whole damn house while I go room to room looking for one effing pair of the dozen or so scissors I know damn well are somewhere in this bloody house and wonder aloud why the hell no one has the common effing decency to replace the freaking scissors when they take them. The ritual opening curse ends when I at last locate some scisso

but with indoor plumbing and a mini van. Just call me Ma. I didn’t intend for it to happen, it just sort of turned out that way. Yesterday I took the kids off to bible school.  Then I came home to clean. I scrubbed the stove and the oven, then I got down on my hands and knees and scrubbed the slate tile in the kitchen. Then I rinsed it, then I dried it with rags. ON MY KNEES! Mops don’t work well with natural slate, too many nooks and crannies. In between scrubbings,I hauled dripping wet laundry (bedsheets) out to the clothes line and wrung the water out with my hands before hanging it up to dry. (Sorry Mrs Ingalls, I’m not scrubbing the laundry too. I wouldn’t have wrung it out but my washer has developed glitch where it stops spinning 3 minutes early & your only options are to rerun the load from the start or wring things out by hand) I also swept and mopped the wood floors and brushed carpet freshener into the carpets. Thank you god prairie dresses, corsets and multi

I drank a lot of wine this weekend, so random is really good for me today. I’m not hung over or anything, just sort of weary in that you spent the weekend drinking alcohol in the hot sun way of being weary. DH was on site all week. Meaning he left the house at 6:30am and came home around 10p. Dinner was soup and sandwiches with your choice of raw broccoli or raw carrots. All week long. It’s hot and my most appreciative eating audience was absent so my effort level was absent too   The boys want super hero capes. Mayhem had a Batman cape I made him out of a small black triangle shawl, but Friday he decided he wanted to have pointy ends like Batman’s & rather than asking me for help & he took some scissors to it with predictable results. So we found some fabric yesterday & this week I’m going to make him a pointy Batman cape & Havoc a Robin cape     I’m still sorting apps for my Droid phone. I download 4 or 5 apps that do the same thing & the f

Some from my 365 project Mussels for dinner Mixing bow from a different angle My favorite bread books Clone troopers reading group   Havoc calls these earthquake cookies because of all the cracks For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom . Thanks for stopping by!

I didn’t do much scrapping in May. I lacked time & motivation but I am getting back into it this month. Here are some of the layouts I have done so far: We set up the pool   My then current book pile   This was based on my yogurt post   This was for a challenge to use roygbiv in a layout

Havoc is 7. In our home this means he has reached an age where his rewards & responsibilities begin to increase. Up until age 7 you mostly get a pass on responsibilities apart from picking up your toys and your rewards are limited to some candy in the check out lane if you were good all day while Mom ran errands. Once you are 7 you get an allowance, a later bedtime and chores. All of these things increase as you get older. The other thing you get when you are 7 is your very own library card (complete with your very own late fees, so save up that allowance). Havoc just got his this week even though he has been 7 since October. He has to be with me to get the library card & he doesn’t get to the county library much during the school year. Havoc immediately checked out 8 books just because he could. I always limited him to 2-4 books depending on how many he already had out and he had to try out his new found book freedom. This made Mayhem no end of jealous because he is stil

I’ve been in need of new workout shoes for longer than DH has been in need of a new phone. But like him I failed to take action because the shoes still worked mostly and would be expensive to replace. But eventually the foot cramps got to me and I made the hour long trek to the running shop to discuss new shoes and take their various foot assessment tests. I have weird feet. I have unnaturally narrow heels, my pinkie toes lay sideways to my foot, arch problems and I run on the outside of my feet and a couple other things that I am forgetting at the moment. I buy pricy athletic shoes to offset these things when I work out & run. And you should see what I spend on boots that fit. (or have spent, being that I could only ever afford one paid of custom made boots & they cost two weeks pay in 1996) My doc & the shoe specialists at the running store both thought barefoot running would be helpful. And I thought it certainly would be cheap! But my gym has policies a

School has been out for 1.5 days, not counting weekends. My brain is already fried.   I twice tried to make buttercream icing this week. The recipe is here . Maybe I over beat it, maybe the butter was too soft or the flour mixture too thick. Or maybe I just have no clue what real buttercream icing looks or tastes like. I know what Pillsbury icing tastes like and the lard/Crisco heavy icing that you get in bakeries. Possibly I am making perfectly fine buttercream icing & just don’t know it. But it seems grainy not creamy. I’m blaming this on my foremothers who started buying premade icing as soon as it was available. Had they made buttercream icing I would be familiar with it & know what was wrong with mine.   Both boys are signed up for the summer reading program at tiny library and have already checked out 3 books each. We sign up at larger library next week when their program starts. They have different themes this year so the activities are all different.

The boys got home at 1pm & were in the pool minutes later. note to self:buy more waterproof sunscreen Followed by whining that they wanted specific friends to come over, but the specific friends live in the next county over & are not out of school until next week. Other friends are not home because their parents both work & they are in day care or with other family members. Obviously I need to call up some of their school friends parents and arrange some play dates or something. Later we went to the county library and signed up for the summer reading program the school sponsors & the boys came home with a few books to start with. Havoc found some age appropriate encyclopedia type books. He has one on science & technology timelines – origins of science. (The series is 8 books each covering a time period) and a couple older Scholastic Star Wars books, written before Phantom Menace & the rest came out. Mayhem has a couple story books featuring trucks and one

We have a bear problem. It’s a sudden development. We’ve lived here in our rural home for 13 years and have never seen a bear. The garbage has been sitting outside for 13 years and no bears have ever taken any interest in it. Many many raccoons have. To their detriment. But, unlike raccoons, you are not allowed to just shoot bears and to be honest, we don’t want to, for a variety of reasons. Not the least being, what do you do with a 200lb dead bear? especially one you are technically not allowed to have shot because bear hunting season is over. And Jeyzus bears are big! You want to be well armed and a good shot if you are going to meet a bear head on like that. And DH isn’t a hunter, he really does not like shooting animals, even the raccoons. He shoot guns for sport. Targets don’t stand a chance around him. Living breathing beings are a different story. Also unlike raccoons, you can’t trap bears & release them elsewhere. Animal control suggests we lock up our garbage

I actually had 7 solid hours of sleep Saturday night. Unmedicated. First time since 2002. Sadly I did not repeat it last night so I’m a bit vague this morning.   Havoc got poison ivy over the holiday weekend and spent all last week covered in it. He is highly allergic & one small patch on his leg get into his system and within 2 days it’s popping up all over his body. He could barely use his right hand Thurs-Sat due to the huge blisters on his fingers. So naturally he has just been a JOY to live with. I understand he is not comfortable & it makes him cranky but seriously…it’s been like living with a 2 year old with all the meltdowns everytime things don’t go his way.   My baking quest this summer seems to be the perfect chewy, yet solid granola bar. I can make great chewy bar shaped granola but as soon as you pick it up it crumbles to pieces. I’ve got about a dozen recipes from the interwebs and I’ve been working with them, making small batches trying to mimic Qu

All from my 365 Photos this week. There was some camping over the holiday weekend Some playing by the river Some swimming Some homemade granola bars (I need a recipe for chewy ones that don’t fall all to pieces when you pick them up) A trip to the library for chick lit mysteries And since my yardwork is done for a couple weeks, I did my nails For more weekly winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom . Thanks for stopping by!

(This was originally posted in 2008 but it happened to me again Monday so I am reposting it because it was such deja vu for me) Just a few. All I wanted was to make some breakfast burritos. I needed maybe 6 corn tortillas. Small ones, but knowing how these things go package wise, I accepted I'd probably end up with 12 large ones or 15 small ones & make enchiladas for dinner one night. HA! I was determined to get corn tortillas, not flour. I like corn better, especially for breakfast burritos. I run into Food Lion & scan the 'international food aisle' for tortillas. They only have taco shells and flour tortillas, so I head back to the refrigerated section. There I find corn tortillas. Except....they only come in bags of 100. Yeah 100 tortillas, when I need maybe 6. There are slots for bags of 36 tortillas and bags of 15 large sized tortillas, but the slots are empty. It's 100 tortillas or no tortillas. The boys were very into having breakfast burritos a