girlfiend

I don’t vacation like most people. I’m on vacation right now, I just finished a Tae Bo workout, and I just wrote a blog post about the four cooler’s worth of food I brought on vacation at Farm to Philly. Here’s a full list (as opposed to my abridged list of local foods) of all of the food I packed.

Fruit

2 quarts of Peaches
Cantaloupe
Pint of apricots
quart of cherries
Quart of blueberries
Two bananas
12 limes

Vegetables

Beets
Bunch of kale
3 zucchini
4 green peppers
bunch walla walla onions
half pint of sun gold cherry tomatoes
garlic
quart of green beans
quart of wax beans
pint of new potatoes
bunch of swiss chard
bunch of carrots
one shallot
6 ears of corn

Fresh herbs from my garden

Rosemary
Basil
Tarragon
Parsley (not from my garden)
thyme

Meat
2 lbs hamburger
2 filet mignon
4 new york strip steaks
1 whole chicken
lb bacon
short ribs
spare ribs
4 smoked sausage links

dairy
cheddar
Jack
Raw milk Colby dill
Raw millk herbed jack
Herbed goat cheese
Parmesan
Amish butter- both salted and unsalted
half and half from pastured cows

Miscellaneous

Tofurkey Italian sausage
Morningstar grillers (veggie burgers)
whole wheat pasta (2 bags)
whole grain brown rice
whole wheat hamburger buns
whole wheat hot dog buns
peanut butter Puffins
blueberry cereal bars (from Trader Joes)
salt and pepper kettle chips
lightly salted chips
peanut butter
2 jars bruschetta (from Trader Joes)
newman os
2lbs coffee
sugar
olive oil
peanut oil
seasoned salt
garlic salt
red pepper flakes
pepper grinder
kosher salt
pizza seasoning
spicy seasoning
nutmeg
balsamic vinegar
ketchup
mustard

And I forgot the Cheddar Bunnies. I was forced to buy Goldfish.

If you think the food list is nuts, you’d never believe the packing/to do list. All four pages of it.  Perhaps I’ll scan it in all of it’s glory upon my return home. Until then, I may or may not write again. I am on vacation. Many adorable Fiendling at the beach photos are on flickr.

For the low, low price of $22.95 I am the proud owner of:

If this doesn’t work I don’t know what will. I hope my eggplants are still there when we get back from vacation.

Dear Squirrel,

I still don’t like you and I still blame you for eating my green bean seedlings. However I must apologize for calling you fuckers for eating my eggplant. I’m sorry. It was not you. It was a motherfucking raccoon. A fucking raccoon, squirrel. In my garden, eating my eggplant.
My sincerest apologies,

Girlfiend

p.s. I still don’t want you in my garden. Back off.

I haven’t been writing much because there’s not a whole lot going on. We’ve been back to my mom’s house a couple of times and she’s still crazy but she hasn’t been making me crazy enough to warrant a long, ranting post.

Things that bother me but not enough to make my head spin include

• Smoking in the house because she doesn’t want me to know she hasn’t actually given up smoking
• Dressing the Fiendling in plaid overalls then spending an hour telling him how handsome he looks because she dressed him and his mom never dresses him well
• Giving the Fiendling shrimp and saying, “What a coup! He’s eating shrimp. Can you believe he’s eating something so exotic? See I told you he’d like what I gave him.” Then he promptly scraped the chewed shrimp out of his mouth and handed it to me.
• After me saying, “He doesn’t want it.” she cut a single wedge out of an uncut melon, handed it to the Fiendling who didn’t want it, and said, “Will you clean that up for me?”
• She gave the Fiendling a whole, uncut grape and let him walk around with it. Hello, choking hazard.
• When watching the baby she often lets him wander into other rooms unattended.
• To get my attention from halfway down the block she’ll yell, “Girl? Girlfiend? Girlfiend? Girl? Girlfiend? Girlfiendina? Girl? I ignore here and she eventually mutters “nevermind.”
• To get my attention from halfway down the block after deciding she has something she wants to do she yell, “Mom? Mommy? Mom? Mom? Mommy? Mommy? Mom?” at which point Boyfiend will usually respond.

I don’t know. Despite the fact that her supervision is lax on occasion the Fiendling has suffered no injury around her and clearly adores her as much as she adores him. It’s nice that this summer she’s able to spend time with him and give me a bit of a break. Because I appreciate her babysitting I didn’t mention that I knew she was smoking in the house. Instead I stole her matches and threw out her cigarettes when she wasn’t looking.

I believe I’ve mentioned before that squirrels are fuckers. I hate them. Lower Merion has a deer hunt, my backyard should have a squirrel hunt. This time they’ve eaten my cute little not even as big as ping pong ball eggplant. I may have to buy some fox urine. I can’t believe I just typed that and meant it.

I finally found the information I’ve been looking for since the Fiendling was born- A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality. After I download and listen to the audio I plan to whip out my credit card to purchase the book. I’m sure the author has great advice and practical tips to equip and empower me to raise an emotionally healthy heterosexual.

If you don’t think it will change the way you parent, just read this insightful comment I found on the website:

Our God made us male and female. We do not need fake man or fake woman,marriage is between man and woman….if we think that homosexuality is normal or we born like that…we are supporting them …loosing our faith in God.

I ate the first green beans from my garden last night. Haricots verts. I dropped them in boiling water for about a minute then tossed them with olive oil, kosher salt, pepper and minced garlic. They were the best green beans I’ve ever eaten. Fresh makes a world of difference.

I finished Shopaholic and Baby last night. I do not get the Shopaholic series. I read Shopaholic and Sister, thought it was terrible, saw the baby book and couldn’t resist. It was equally as terrible, if not worse.

The first pepper turned orange. It looks like it will be red soon.

We are officially living without cable. Boyfiend never wanted it in the first place and most of what I watch is on network TV anyway, so we turned in our cable boxes. I feel so subversive.

I let my ancient subscription to SELF magazine lapse. I got a very angry letter about it, telling me how disappointed they are in me. It seems that without SELF magazine I may lose my will to live. I had every intention of transcribing the letter for you, but sadly I can’t seem to find it.

Anyone want to write a guest post for Kids Dish? I’m going on vacation and need two weeks worth of posts. If you’re interested leave a comment or email me. The link to the site is in the sidebar.

He climbs into our laps for stories

He climbs onto chairs, leans back, puts his hands behind his head and relaxes.

He looks at pictures of me and B and says “mama! dada!”

He kisses pictures in books.

When we read the Eight Silly Monkeys book he points to his head when they fall off and bump theirs.

He’s talking more and more. His new vocabulary words include playground, tired, his cousin’s name, his aunt’s name, pop for grandpop, and he now repeats a great deal of what we say.

He’s been hungrier and has been eating almost regularly

He’s now brave enough to go down the big boy slide all by himself without even holding my hand.

He claps and grins when he gets what he wants, especially when he’s hungry and I guess the right food.

Finally, he’s learned to nod yes in addition to no, so it’s much easier to give him what he wants.

He often wants things he cannot have.

He learns quickly- he saw a glimpse of his dad painting a room and the next day when he saw a (dry, thank god) paintbrush he picked it up, walked to a wall and started to paint.

He still refers to almost all animals as cats and is a little obstinate about it. He’ll make barking noises when he sees the neighbor’s dog, but insist he’s a cat all the same.
He can be very serious, but he laughs out loud when we read Blue Hat, Green Hat

He knows all the words to Moo Baa La La La and fills in the right animal sound when we get to it. He sings the la la la and his “oink” is perfect.

He’s weaning. He hasn’t nursed in five days and the only time he asked for it was yesterday, when I was sandy from the beach and told him to wait until I was out of the shower. He ate some noodles and peas and forgot all about it.

He has no interest in me when my mom, my in-laws, or my sister-in-law are around.

I can’t think of anything that makes me happier than one of his sloppy wet unsolicited kisses.

The unidentified peppers are officially out of control but I don’t know when to pick them. They seem too big to be Serrano, not lumpy enough to be the California Chile, and not yellow enough to be banana peppers, but maybe they’ll turn yellow if I leave them long enough? I don’t know.

I have two green pepper plants (California Wonder bell peppers they say, but who believes the labels anymore?) that are slowly growing. One is starting to get little blooms. The one banana pepper (so it says, but again, you can’t believe what you read) plant is also getting little blooms.

The eggplants have survived all aphid attacks and are currently flowering, which I hope means eggplants to come. The blossoms are beautiful purple and are oddly spiky. They hurt.

The zucchini (yellow, and definitely considered zucchini) is pathetic. Right now I have one measly, spindly little guy about 4 inches big, a bunch of male blossoms and a couple of less than an inch long zukes that appear to have rotted well before their time. More blossoms appear to be on the horizon, but I have little faith.

My green beans (the skinny, french variety) are flowering like crazy.

Tomatoes, planted after weeks of sitting in my father-in-law’s backyard, appear to be growing slowly. Nothing yet, but I have faith.

The basil is officially too much. I have hours of pesto making in my future. Somehow the two measly little basil transplants have become 5 enormous monsters. I’ve been trying not to use it to discourage growth but it’s not working.

Aphids are easily controlled by swift application of the garden hose. Squirrels hate me. They have eaten all of my cilantro seeds and a few green bean seedlings I planted after the first round. They’ve also eaten a geranium. Fuckers.

The rose of sharon is in bloom but the tiger lilies have sort of crapped out on me- two bloomed, but the rest are just standing there, threatening to, while the rest of the neighborhood’s lilies have been in bloom for weeks. Of the annuals, the petunias, impatiens, begonias and coleus are doing well and the geraniums look like shit. I blame the lack of full sun as well as the squirrels.