Who lets a zebra roam with the buffalo?

I find the end of seasons to be the hardest.  Especially (of course) winter.  Christmas starts too early...mid fall...and then somehow I have to make that energy last until February.  That's about impossible.  I wish Christmas was late January, something to break up the worst of winter.  Now that Summer is ending, my garden is weedy, I've let flower heads form on my herbs, and things are coming to an end.  It's sad to me, because I couldn't keep my gardening energy up to the end. I didn't go swimming or to the beach near as much as I wanted.  We didn't go to a concert in the park.

But, we DID go to the beach more than once, we went to the park a lot, we took walks in the woods, we got muddy, we played in the sprinkler and in the rain, we watched ants, and we did garden, if only a little. Oh, and we ate lots of ice cream. 

Next is fall.  Time for bonfires, the Fall Festival, crisp walks, more parks, darker evenings, Halloween, and decorations.  Fall is my favorite season.  And spring.  I can't decide.

Lilly asked me to kiss her butt today.  I told her no and that that was rude.

I zeroed out my fridge this week, and yet had the most filling dinner last night!  Mostly because we were out of bread and we needed bread to go with the left over pulled pork.  I made it and it was thick and heavy and filling.  Tasted pretty bad though.  Josh couldn't eat it.  I use a recipe for Grant Bread.  You mix water and yeast, and then wait 10 min.  Then mix it with flour and more water and then put it in the pan and wait 30 min.  There is no kneeding.  So it makes a thick, dense bread.  I also didn't cook it long enough because it's the first time i made it in this oven and didn't know how long it would take.  Plus, I have a glass pyrex bread pan (only one) and it doesn't cook bread well.  No matter how many times I try, if I use it for banana bread, the bottom and the top burn and the center is still gooey; like runny gooey.  I also used bad ingredients.  The yeast literally expired yesterday, the day I used it (left over from when Nate and Lianne moved), I used organic bran flour given to me when we moved here and i don't know when it was purchased, and I used white flour that expires next month.  Also, when you use flour other than white flour in bread recipes, it really changes things and it takes a lot of trial and error to figure out the right ratios, cooking times and cooking temps.

That pyrex pan is why I make banana muffins.

Lilly helped make the bread and spread flour all over everything, and mostly on the floor.  Then she spilled the water when pouring it in the bowl too.  (so another factor, my ingredients may not have been at the right ratio b/c it was all played with by a 2 yr old.).  The water went onto the flour on the floor and made a paste in which she walked through it.  I had to dry mop and sweep and the whole time she walked through everything, creating a floor dirt mache (like paper mache only with floor dirt) on her feet.  An hour later, while watching TroTro, she comes up to me and says "me feet dirty."  and boy were they!!  Yeah....I saw her dirty feet earlier, denied it and pretended it didn't happen so I didn't have to clean her up right away.  I said to myself "That'll take care of itself."  Never does in real life.

Josh and I play a game from the move "Eagle Vs. Shark" (worth the watch) where the family calls out "horse!" everytime they see one on a car ride and the person who sees the most wins.  Josh and I don't keep score, but we do try to win.  We were coming home from his mom's house, and we were about to drive past the giant buffalo farm, and we knew there were sometimes horses there, so we were looking, and guess what we saw!?  An M-Fing Zebra! We tied in calling it.  Josh thought maybe it was a horse painted like a zebra, but who paints a zebra horse than lets it roam with the buffalo?

Lazy Sunday

What a wonderful Sunday.  Josh got up first this morning with Lilly, then when it was my turn, he went back to sleep.  (We do that, only usually I'm first).  Later, Lilly and I woke Da up by climbing on him, tickling him, and Lilly says "Good Morning Da!" really loud.  Oh and we also laid in bed as a family and played phone games.  Lilly likes to cook on cooking games.  She made a salad, a pizza, and something with lots of red peppers.  The salad at julienned raw sausage. 

Lilly and I found a giant black ant with wings bug in the kitchen.  We caught it and set it free.  Now I am roasting garlic heads and a sweet potato in the oven.  I'm using one garlic for a salad dressing for noodle salad, and the other garlic and the sweet potato just needed roasting.  I'm thinking they will be part of dinner.

Later we are helping my family with work (unspecified for internet privacy aka none of my business to tell you).  We will have lunch with noodle salad and hotdogs and other foods.

I posted on fb that I am now a member of The Satanic Temple.  Even though it is registered as a religion, I see it more as a political cause that uses our religious policies to promote its' agenda.  I am still a Christian.  Anyways, I didn't just up and join.  Well, okay I did, but really I supported their legal case for women's rights to make decisions about their bodies.  That's what they believe, that their religion says that women can make their own choices and don't need the government to make laws about what women can and can't do.  And I believe that too.  Anyways, I helped crowdsource them, and my reward was a membership, 5 sweet pins, and an activity book.

I want to talk about something I've been thinking about a lot.  Several times a day for the last month.  It started when I went to order new toilet paper from Amazon Pantry.  I love Scott TP, and when I was in Nashville I would do surveys for points that I would turn in for money; these surveys were often about toilet paper and my feelings about toilet paper.  This is where I first heard about Scott's All Natural Toilet Paper that was made from recycled paper.  Not recycled toilet paper.  Just regular paper.  Maybe recycled bills?  That's what I'm going to think.  Anyways, I always wanted to try that...my favorite brand and it's environmentally friendly!  The first time I found it was on Amazon Pantry last month, so of course I got it!  To "help" the environment (I bet it's more of a ploy to get the environmentally concerned to buy it, than that it's proven to be environmentally friendly) Scott removed the cardboard tube from the rolls. 

WORST.IDEA.EVER.

Now all the rolls squish closed because I don't handle my TP with care.  It makes good bombs, TP bowling, and a variety of other games.  The hole for the toilet paper roll holder closes up and then when you try to stick the holder through, the inside of the TP pulls out!  It gets all messed up and looks stupid.  It's a pain in the butt.  It doesn't roll well, and near the end it gets all droopy and falls off.  Not to mention, we never realized how satisfying pulling that little bit of glued TP off the tube was.  We have 5 more rolls, because I always buy toilet paper in bulk.

To be fair, I don't like the recycled paper TP because it is too soft.  That should be good for other Americans though.  I hear Americans love their TP soft.