A bunch of random little things have been collecting in my brain, so let’s get them out of my head and into some bullets.
- I have lost my list.
- Inspired by NGS, I am wearing a scarf today. It’s one of my favorites – and something I “inherited” from my husband’s grandmother, who was stylish until her final day. I don’t know that I am quite pulling it off the way NGS does, but sometimes you have to fake it til you make it.
- I just spent… well, far too long trying to photograph myself in the scarf without getting my face in there. That leads to some very unappealing angles, so you’ll just have to picture whatever it is you think I look like with a royal blue scarf tied untidily around my neck.
- Carla has begun keeping a list of license plate numbers when we drive around. I do not know why, except that I think she finds them interesting? I didn’t know she was doing this until the other day when she asked to read them to me. “Sure,” I said, figuring that she’d copied down interesting personalized plates, like U R L8 or GZUS LRD. No. She read me off a series of letters and numbers. RDP 7791. SST 9494. JTI 0138. You get the idea. Then last night she asked me if she could read them to me again, and – not wanting to express any less enthusiasm than her newfound interest deserves – I said, “Why don’t you read me the ones you’ve written down since last time?” She was amenable to this plan, and read each series of letters and numbers off with gravitas. I am not quite sure how to respond, or how she expects me to respond, so I tried to say things like, “Oh wow, that’s a good one.” or “Nice! You don’t see X very often!”
- If it is not clear, I find Carla’s license plate obsession as adorable as I do perplexing.
- We are (maybe?) getting the dinner situation under control. It works like this: I make a “real” dinner Tuesdays and Thursdays. Maybe Saturdays and Sundays, too, who knows. But Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, we all kind of fend for ourselves. For me, this means making a big batch of soup on Sunday or Monday and eating it all week. Or a pot of black beans, and then making tacos for myself. My husband asked me to buy him ham and bread, for sandwiches. We’ll see if this works better than me trying to cram a crockpot meal in every other day.
- (Things have been different since we have visitors. I have been making more Real Dinners for us to eat together, although our guests seem a little flummoxed by how varied our eating schedule is.)
- Speaking of food (which I always am), the Guinness beef stew I made this week was SO GOOD. First of all the recipe includes instructions for how to make it in the slow cooker, so I did that. But… those instructions basically say throw all the ingredients together in the slow cook and I did not do that. I seared the meat and cooked the onions/garlic as well, before adding those things to my crockpot. I don’t know if the flavors would be the same without, but maybe I’ll try it next time because I really hate searing meat. It takes forever and my arms, stove, and floor get speckled with hot oil. The recipe calls for carrots and potatoes. I used baby potatoes and I didn’t chop ANY of them (which may have been a mistake, but oh well). My husband also requested parsnips, so I added a couple of those. And since he was getting parsnips, I also added a container of quartered mushrooms, for me. Then I think I panic-poured a cup or two of chicken stock into the crockpot, in addition to the quart of beef stock, because I was afraid I had over-veggied. My only complaint was that it lacked salt: I poured in a big glug of soy sauce toward the end, and then I had to salt and pepper my bowl of stew. But no one else felt it was under-salted, so maybe it was a Me Thing. The leftovers were better than the initial night. This is a keeper.
- Also, I made a green bean dish to go with tacos one night, for our family member who is pre-diabetic. It was a HUGE hit. Not with me; there is an entire tomato in it. Not Carla; the veggies were cooked, and she is a raw veggie purist. But everyone else loved it. Bonus: it was extremely easy to make. So it will definitely be something I make again.
- Our guests are staying until next Friday, when their local airport reopens, which is conveniently the day that our next set of guests arrives. (So far, it seems like the hurricane spared their home, which is extremely fortunate. They were so smart to leave when they did.)
- Carla just walked into the kitchen and said, “WHAT are you doing?” Um, making breakfast? “No, I mean, WHY are you wearing a SCARF?” I can wear a scarf. It’s a perfectly normal accessory. “But it’s so BLUE. And it doesn’t go with the navy.” (I am wearing dark jeans.) Oh, who knew the critical eye would develop so early!
- Do you want to see the cute little challah Carla made? She did all the work – rolling out the separate strands, braiding the strands together, figuring out how to stuff it into a six-inch cheesecake pan I have. It was light and delicious and super adorable, even though we clearly used a much-too-small pan for it.
- Despite the fact that I have lost my list, I have been chipping away at it. I’ve even made some of the phone calls on the list, which I hope you know by now is A Feat. But the problem with phone calls is that sometimes that’s not the end of the task. One call I made was to our bank, which is just… the most frustrating bank in the WHOLE WORLD. And I left a measured (I hope) but irritated message on the guy’s voicemail, and then he called me back at the exact moment I was in another call, so I couldn’t answer. He left no message at all, so I guess I have to call him back. ARGH.
- Speaking of phone calls: I had a very perplexing set – yes, set – of phone calls with Dairy Queen. My husband wants an ice cream cake this year – or, at least, that was one of two cake options he offered me and it was the one I didn’t have to make, and you know that cake baking is one of my love languages, so I think this is a good indication of the current stress/busyness level around here. So I asked Siri to call Dairy Queen while I was driving from the grocery story to pick up Carla from an activity. The person who answered was unintelligible, so I asked, “Is this is Dairy Queen on street and street?” and she said, “Nah.” So I hung up and looked up the number for the DQ I wanted (when I was parked), and oh look, it is the same number I just called. So I called back. Same person answered, still unintelligibly. Did Google simply have the number wrong? Had the DQ closed without my knowledge? “I am trying to call Dairy Queen?” I said hopefully. “This is Dairy Queen.” Phew. “Oh good, I would like to order an ice cream cake.” The person asked if I could hold on for a moment. Sure. I sat on hold for 56 seconds, and then the call disconnected. I called back. “I am just trying to order an ice cream cake!” Another brief hold, and then finally I was able to place the order. Then the person said, “What time do you want to pick it up?” I said sometime in the morning? Eight o’clock? “Oh, you can’t do that.” Oh, okay. Nine? Ten? What time do you open? “We don’t open until eleven o’clock.” Okay great, eleven o’clock it is. “You can’t do that.” WHAT TIME SHOULD I COME GET THE CAKE. “Well, we open at eleven but the cake won’t be ready until one.” Great. See you at one.
- I rarely go to Target these days because it so unpleasant inside (the latest time was no different; they clearly do not have enough staff to fold/tidy the clothing areas or to work more than one register at a time), but there was additional unpleasantness awaiting me in the parking lot! (Confidential to Nicole: LOOK AWAY.)
- Did I tell you about the bees? We have a nest of bees in/on our chimney. Currently, so far, the nest seems to be on the outside of the chimney, but I can hear them buzzing while I am inside, which is Very Worrisome. Also, they are technically yellowjackets. And also also I want them to GO AWAY.
- I have been in sort of a fiction lull lately. I am in the middle of a book, but I’m not loving it. I’m not disliking it, either, but it doesn’t pull me. I have been reading some non-fiction lately though. Most recently, I’ve been enjoying The Family Firm by Emily Oster. (Thanks to Lisa for mentioning it in my post about extracurriculars!) Oster just seems so soothing and balanced and her advice seems to great. The book is about making decisions for your family (when to give your kid a cell phone? is this extracurricular worth pursuing? etc.) the way a company would make business decisions, and I really like it. It makes me want to go back ten years and have some of these conversations with my husband BEFORE we had Carla. But I guess sometimes you plan ahead and sometimes you just muddle through, and we’ve really been doing a lot of muddling in the realm of parenting choices. Anyway, I am finding it really eye-opening and I hope I can remember to apply some of her advice to future major decisions.
- Fall is upon us, and the trees around here are very very slowly beginning to don their autumn finery. We’ve had a ton of rain (though no hurricanes, for which I am thankful) but today we have sunshine, and I think we’re supposed to have sun all weekend. I hope we can spend some of it outside! Carla would be happy just sticking around our neighborhood; one of the neighbors has a new puppy!
- Related: OCTOBER BEGINS TOMORROW!
- Have you gotten your flu shot yet? I haven’t, but I want to. Carla has a doctor’s appointment today and I’m going to see if they can sneak a flu shot in as well. She will not be pleased, but it sounds like we’re in for a nasty flu season and I want our family to be as protected as possible.
That’s all I’ve got today, Internet. I need to go make yet another phone call. I hope you and your loved ones are safe and dry, and that you have a happy weekend ahead of you.
OH MY GOD THAT SHOPPING CART OH MY GOD THE HUMANITYYYYYYYY
*deep breath*
That challah is ADORABLE and so is Carla’s license plate obsession. My older son kept a list of various bodies of water that we would drive by. Even when they were tiny little creeks. If it was water, it made his list. It totally cracked me up.
Oh, maybe Carla is keeping license plates in case of untoward driving behaviour! If so, smart!!!
That DQ thing? What even. Why. I discovered that – here, anyway – you can order cakes online!!! It was dreamy. Not that we get them often, but you know.
Kids are so weird and funny! I love it so much! And yes, I thought of you as I Very Grumpily removed the cart from my car and walked the six feet over to the cart return. ARGH.
Thank you for that guiness stew recipe, love the inspiration. I think it’s so cute about the license plate list, sounds like she is Type A and will be a boss about making lists and getting shite done when she is older – my kinda girl!
Oh, no! Why did she call you on wearing the scarf?! Now you’re going to be even more self-conscious about wearing it! It’s beautiful and I bet you’re rocking it. One time I was wearing tennis shoes because I had some issues with my leg and I almost never wear athletic shoes unless I’m doing actual athletics and my then 5/6 year old niece looked me up and down before we left the house and said “you’d be pretty if you didn’t wear those shoes and glasses.” I have NEVER worn tennis shoes in front of her again.
My sisters-in-law used to write down the license plates of every car that went down the road where they lived when they were 8-12 or so. Admittedly, it’s not a particularly well-traveled road! My in-laws referred to them as The Neighborhood Watch. Maybe Carla’s just in the early stages of a career in law enforcement!
Hahaha! Kids are brutal! But instead of discouraging me from wearing scarves, I now have new ammunition with which to embarrass her, so I think scarves will be coming out a lot 😉
Carla sounds like my husband! He thinks you can’t/shouldn’t wear a navy sweater/shirt with (blue) jeans. I do all the time and then he says “why so blue.” But Carla’s license plate habit is adorable. I love that she wants you to read them to her. That would be a good project for someone learning how to write their letters/number, like my oldest!
Re house guests – IMO house guests don’t get to be flummoxed about anything! They need to be along for the ride no matter what said ride entails. And they likely had children and remember how crazy the return to school period was especially with an onslaught of activities! I aim to be the easiest house guest possible because I feel guilt if I feel people are trying to do too much for me. I even feel this way at my parents. I know my mom was pressuring herself to make something interesting for us every day during our stay but we told her to take it easier and that we’d happily eat leftovers for lunch every day. And she took us up on it (admittedly the volume of food/leftovers in their fridge stresses me out… so I was trying to help them out on that front! I am weird about fridges not being packed to the gills with stuff).
I’m so glad you liked The Family Firm. Oster is AMAZING!! She was my favorite follow on IG when I was still on IG. She is very good at presenting data and helping you make decisions.
I am newly obsessed with Oster and love her instagram posts! Thanks again for introducing me to her!
I love royal blue and think that all blues go well together. But I’m not exactly a fashionsetter. The meals sound delicious!
The challah is too cute. I actually said “aww” when I saw it.
As for Carla’s license plate obsession that is perplexing to you, I remember as a teenager being told [or maybe read] that random numbers were messages from, I don’t know, the angels or ancestors or some such. Maybe she’s looking for secret messages?
So many things…I’m having flashbacks to Carla’s age and I think I went through a license plate phase with the goal of getting the complete alphabet. Hey it was the 80s and I didn’t have a screen.
Note to self: make soup ASAP. Also get flu shot. I’ve been on a roll of getting them right after I do my fall half marathon (when everything aches I don’t notice that my arm aches too) but since I didn’t run it this year I don’t have the reminder.
Note to you: mad props on getting it all done right now.
Your Dairy Queen and banking phone calls are just so EXACTLY why I don’t understand why EVERYONE doesn’t hate phone calls.
The lil challah is adorable and also I wish to eat it.
I had two frustrating pharmacy calls too – where both people had ample opportunity to shed light on information that would be relevant and clarifying to me, and instead I had to guess and think to ask. Sigh. Phone calls (people???) are the worst.
I am intrigued with the pre-diabetic diet. My husband was recently told he is headed that way, and apparently we live on carbs because I have no idea what to cook. There are only so many salads I can feed him, and I feel badly making him a separate (not as good) side while everyone else has potatoes, for example. Any ideas? We are doing extra veggies but they aren’t as filling.
I honestly don’t know the specifics of what the doctor wants, but as a host I am aiming for more veggies where I can. I am happy to put together some of my favorite veggie sides if that would be helpful, with the caveat that I don’t know how closely they might adhere to a diabetic diet.
Would love ideas! I’m not trying to follow a specific diet, just cook more like I would if I had to. Basically eat better and much lower carb, but not no carb!
I have had my flu shot and so has Matt but we need to get all the kids done. I have a call with Alex and Ryan’s trial on Monday and I will make sure they can get theirs whenever and then I’ll take them after school some day.
Emily Oster used to be my favorite and then she was truly abominable during covid, so much that people began referencing her without using her name (“economists giving bad advice” or “economists who don’t stay in their lane” and “why are people taking epidemiology advice from economists”) because she became so infamous that people knew who they meant just from that and now I view everything she says with suspicion. Which I probably shouldn’t, I’m sure she knows what she’s talking about in some subjects, but I have thrown her out with the bath water.
I never sear anything I put into the crock pot and it all comes out the same.
I can’t wear scarves, I feel like I look ridiculous and I’m sure I look fine but I have a mental block. I feel like everyone else looks SO CUTE in scarves.
I love Carla’s license plate list so much that I want to send her my license plate number so that she can write it down.
Ooooh that is fascinating about Oster! I don’t know what specifically you are talking about but I could certainly imagine… conflicts. (I have been following her for just a couple of weeks but she seems pro covid boosters and pro flu shots, for whatever that’s worth.) I think there is a lot of interesting information in data collection but I also think it is very easy to manipulate and/or misinterpret, so I am trying to listen without taking her word as gospel. But I appreciate knowing that she can be susceptible to the same awfulness that so many have fallen prey to.
100% agree that everyone ELSE looks better in scarves than I do. Pretty sure “everyone” includes you.
I don’t think she’s so much susceptible to awfulness as she’s out there giving bad advice and contributing to the awfulness. Like she’s actively working against public health and she’s either aware of what she’s doing and doing it for clicks or she’s so bad at public health that she is doing it unknowingly and therefore shouldn’t be giving public health advice. Either way, it’s not good. Like her advice is “your kid will be fine” and all the public health experts are saying “please don’t let your kid give covid to someone that it will kill.”
Ah. Yikes.
Ugh, just wrote a long comment and it got deleted. HATE when that happens….
Let’s see, I think I said something along these lines:
Love the dinner idea- especially the soup pot on the weekends. We do something similar, though not intentionally, where I make dinner a couple nights and the other nights we just sort of figure it out. I am not a great meal planner though. We wing it as needed.
I also liked The Family Firm and read it early this year, at recommendation from Lisa!
And my boys got their new COVID boosters last night. I had them scheduled for both flu and COVID, but they threw a Fit about 2 vaccines at once. So I caved and let them just get the COVID booster for now. Thought they might prefer getting them both out of the way instead of having to go through a sore arm again now for the flu shot a different day, but oh well. I ended up passing on mine for now because I had a touch of the sniffles/didn’t feel 100% so was just being cautious. I’ll get both new COVID booster and flu shot from work next week probably instead (hospital I work for has a drive thru clinic for employees).
That is a beautiful scarf and, despite Carla’s criticism, I bet it looked great on you! I usually only wear scarves in the winter and, pre-pandemic only at the office (which means I haven’t worn a scarf in AGES), and I don’t go to a lot of trouble to “style” them.
Kids are funny; have you asked Carla what inspired her to keep a list of license plates?
The shopping cart thing is infuriating. It’s especially egregious since the corral is RIGHT there!
I never wear scarves, but what a happy colour that blue scarf is. NGS will be very proud, I’m sure.
I IMMEDIATELY thought of Nicole when I saw the shopping cart. That is a new low of shopping cart etiquette.
I LOVE Carla’s collection of license plates. How whimsical. And, for her mind at least, likely needs so explanation. It’s an interesting collection and something to make life more interesting during time spent in the car which is often a pretty boring experience!
Good luck with the company. And all your food sounds amazing.
I am going to try that soup and the green bean dish. (I happened upon this post while procrastinating menu planning for next week, my least favorite Saturday chore.) The challah is adorable.
When Noah was about that age, he was trying to spot license plates from all 50 states. He got most of them. I can’t remember which ones he never saw, but I imagine Hawaii was one of them.
Oh come ON, that license plate thing? Sometimes your kid acts like one of those adorably quirky kid characters from a book, and those times are rare and precious. Also the baby challah, my goodness.
I also have had to make phone calls in the past week and UGH. One was to rebook a phone appointment because when checking my messages I found one from my sleep center doc who called me for an appointment that NO ONE EVER TOLD ME WAS BOOKED. Maybe she was hanging out with your Dairy Queen Dumbass. Sigh.
I am bookmarking the Guinness beef stew, although I will have to pry the Guinness out of my husband’s hand.
I used to be “into license plates” when I was a kid, so I think it’s a “normal phase” kids go through 😉
Am I nosy when I say that I’d have loved to see a photo of you with your scarf (I understand why you might not want to have pictures of you on your blog, but I am trying to figure out if you look anything like I imagine you in my head- haha).
I have bookmarked the stew for the colder months… it looks absolutely delicious (but I do think it would lose some of the flavor if you didn’t sear the meat beforehand – my Mom always emphasized to sear meat for stews/goulash!).
P.S. The audacity of the shopper who left the cart in that spot is staggering!
I always get my flu shot at the pediatrician with whatever kid has a fall appointment, Someday I am going to have to use a grown up doctor or a pharmacy, and it’s going to be so weird.
Okay, next time, online order that DQ cake! It will be sooo much easier than calling. Then you don’t have to worry that they’ve even got your order down right, since it will be in an actual system. Can you tell I avoid calling places at every cost?!
I was never the kid who wrote down license plate numbers, but I did love to play the license plate game. Sometimes I’ll play it when I’m doing loops around my apartment complex to keep myself from the boredom of walking, haha. It’s still fun as an adult!
That challah is soooo cute! Good job, Carla!