Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Good, Bad or What?

After a hectic, not always that nice a weekend, Monday arrived -warm, sunny, nice. Actually, by 1 p.m. when Sammy and I headed out for our walk (about 1.5 miles total distance), it was simply awesome weather to behold. Warm, with a light breeze that was barely noticeable but did the trick of not letting a person get too warm while walking anyway!

Let me back up a bit here though and tell you a little about the weekend though.

We had sort of staggered celebrations, if you will, from a small one Friday evening for Kurt's actual 6th birthday and he got his presents from his Mommy then. Plus, Gram had made a little dessert mix that Mommy thought he would enjoy -it had a chocolate cookie crumb base, with a peanut butter filling on top of that and then, a thin coating of chocolate on the top! Kind of like eating a peanut butter chocolate Easter egg but in a form a tad like cheese cake then too.

Maya, Mandy and I very much enjoyed the little treat but Kurtis took one look at it and declared hewasn't eating THAT! All he wanted at that point to make him happy and his day complete -a glass (or sippy cup) of chocolate milk! Mandy got him that and as he drank the milk, he kept glancing at his piece of this chocolate-peanut butter concoction and finally, he decided to take the plunge and try a bit of it.

It disappeared quickly and just about as fast, he headed off to don pj's and off to bed he went giving us the benefit then of a quiet and very peaceful night!

Saturday, the plan was that Aunt Carrie and cousin Alex were coming up for supper, Uncle Clate and Elizabeth were coming too along with a good fried of Clate's who is also a very good friend of Mandy's too -Jeff -was going to be here with us too. So Gram had to fix supper!

Because, after all, this dinner was in honor of Kurt's birthday, I figured it made good sense to make his favorite thing -Macaroni and Cheese, of course and so I set out to fix a big batch of homemade Mac 'n'Cheese and along with that, picked up some chicken breasts that already had barbeque seasoning on them to bake up as well. That plus a tossed salad and presto magic, easy fix supper -well, except for the time it required for me to be on my feet all afternoon ya know.

Carrie was supposed to be bringing an ice cream cake with her -and Kurtis knew that was coming so of course, he was all excited over that prospect. We had said that dinner would be served between 6 and 6:30 but as always in this house, with older daughter going to be present, a time for a meal is usually just a "ballpark" figure but one that I do try to meet if at all possible.

Carrie phoned around 4 p.m. to say she just woke up (she works midnight shift) and had to shower and get dressed but then, she and Alex would be on their way up here for supper and dessert.

I have yet to figure out how long it take her to get a shower and dress but boy, must be one hell of a long shower and dressing for any occasion is apparently a very long drawn out process too. It was shortly after 8 p.m. by the time they arrived!

Darned near missing Kurtis as he was starting to wear down by then since his normal bedtime is between 8 and 8:30 p.m.

And I was ticked off over their late arrival too -more because I knew that on the way up here, they had also stopped at a McDonald's to get something to eat! What the hell had I cooked all this damned chicken and huge batch of macaroni and cheese for anyway? Christmas?

Things like that really do tick me off and after having put up with this for the past several years now, Saturday night I was ready to blow a gasket and informed them that I will no longer cook large family dinners. I will cook for us, for whoever I KNOW will be here and if they arrive late and there is nothing remaining, well so be it!

The rest of the evening and even Sunday, I don't think the older daughter said more than 10 words to me then that whole time.

She may not feel my actions, my words, my feelings too, were justified but by damn, I do and I'm just plain tired of working to put a decent meal on the table and have it eaten while the flavor is still good, the temperature is okay too and all that only to have someone ignore my efforts in that manner! She -by the way -ate nothing! The grandson did have about 3/4 of a chicken breast but that was all.

So, Mandy, the kids and I have thus eaten chicken breast and mac 'n' cheese three days in a row now till it was all gone tonight. Finally!

At supper this evening, we had to play the normal game of 20 Questions from Kurtis and another 20 or better too from Maya as they flooded us with inquiries about everything and anything.

Maya didn't want this mac'n'cheese because she said it wasn't cheesey enough to suit her tastes so I had to doctor it up a bit by placing several slices of cheese on top of the leftover casserole in order to make it cheesey enough for her! Kurtis didn't want any chicken either because after all he doesn't like chicken -even though on Saturday when I had to run into town for a few last minute items I needed and we stopped at McDonald's for lunch, he and Maya each had a small container of their new product -McBites -the $1.99 size -which was just the right size for one pack per child and they ate every last bite of that stuff then too!

So, don't be giving me this "I don't like chicken" routine, Kiddo!

As I sliced up into tiny bite sized portions a small piece of chicken breast for him, he kept carping to me about how he doesn't like chicken, yatta yatta, and I kept telling him how he was full of bull pucky too! Told him this was just like what he had eaten on Saturday except it didn't have a coating on it!

So then he starts with the questions -"Is this supper, Gram?" And being the smart alec I am at times and liking, as I do, to occasionally play head games with the kids, I told him no, this wasn't supper, it was breakfast. That got a rise out of Maya who said no, this couldn't be breakfast and finally, Kurtis looks at me and asks me, "Are you just kidding me, Gram?"

Yes, baby -that's exactly what I was doing and it was fun to see him realize the difference between a joke and truth.

Somehow or other, the conversation from Maya at supper turned to shaving then. How it got in that direction, I really don't know but it started with Kurtis making a statement about animals and that people are animals -he was meaning "mammals" but it was coming out as "Mamimals" and anyway, Maya commented then that animals all have hair. From there it led to shaving, and what do people shave, etc? Her response to that was that they have to shave their hairy butts!

Yeah go figure where that came from, huh?

But all in all, it ended up being a fairly peaceful meal with both kids eating the food on their plate after all and that's the most important part of any meal in this house, ya know!

Mandy picked up the photos she had taken of the kids a couple weeks back by a photographer over in Clearfield and I finally got my prints then from the group. I scanned them in last night and it is with great pride tonight that I'm gonna share them with you! Well, not all of 'em -but at least a couple of them anyway!

And, last but certainly not least -here's the "family" portrait then too!
Can you tell how proud I am of them and these photos? So nice to get a photo of Kurtis especially in which he looked at the camera and smiled nicely -not one of his normal clowning around type of picture. And Maya -well, she is just a definite little ham, isn't she!

And finally -this evening I managed to end my ordeal and fight with my Reader! At least for now it is working again and doing a better job than it has done for a long, long time now too!

How did I get that to happen? Well, I don't know if this was really the cure but it sure seems to have done the trick. I had opened my blog and gone to the "My Dashboard" page and decided to take a chance and try Google's "New integrated page" suggestion. When it opened my blog, it also showed my reader plus, off to the side, there was an area you could click to go to one's reader which I did and voila, the darned thing began to work, fine and dandy, again!

Now I ask you, why couldn't the Google people have noted that solution (if that is what this actually was for me) or at least, given it as a suggestion to try instead of leaving people like myself in the dark, fighting, struggling to get something to work so as to be able to utilize the darned Reader once again!

Oh well, we shall see if that was the cure-all or not as I test drive it over the next couple of days.

If it doesn't fail on me then, I will assume this was all it needed to be fixed. Thankfully, if that's the case, it was a good and also pretty darned easy cure -just one that took the better part of the day for me to find it!

And, that's all!

1 comment:

Suldog said...

I say cook what you want to eat, and let everybody else like it or lump it!

(Although, if I had to deal with kids that cute, I'd probably make a few concessions here and there, too.)