It Was Bound to Happen

It happened. I knew it would, and it finally did.

We went to buy mice to feed our snakes. They come home from the pet shop in a little cardboard box. Sometimes the shop keeper tapes it up really well; sometimes not so much. Well, H put the box on the floor of the car, and proceeded to step on it (accidentally) just enough to cause the box to collapse on one end. (In his defense, the box was not taped very well this time, even though I mentioned my concern to the pet shop worker when we were checking out. Also in H's defense, nobody else wanted to hold the box all the way home either, so the burden was not entirely on him.) We didn't know the box had a gaping hole in it until H looked down and saw a white mouse in the car. He hollered, and the mouse ran! He climbed into the panel that covers the wiring, etc. in the front seat foot area of the car. Now what?! H saved the day, redeeming himself! He coaxed him out with a crumb of food, and H caught him. Phew! That was a close one.

And let's just hope we learned a few lessons from this.

Food, Quilting, and More

I have GOT to get us out of our little food rut. I have not been doing good enough providing a wider variety of GFCF meals for my family. We eat the same things over and over again. Fresh blueberries are ready, so I made blueberry muffins, TWICE. First batch very dry and lumpy. We ate them anyway. But I thought I could do better, so on the second time, more liquid. They puffed up nicely, but fell when I took them out, even though they were cooked throughout. We ate them too, and they were better, but I felt really let down. A friend of mine and I were chatting about this briefly at the park. Part of the reason I don't try much GFCF baking (as I have more success with cooking than baking) is because it's so deflating to my ego when it doesn't go well. I am a perfectionist by nature, and it doesn't sit well with me to fail time and time again with anything. But the only way I can experience baking success is to try, so I am *trying* to try more things. That is my wimpy pledge. I will hereby experiment more often with my baking. I guess I should pledge a certain frequency, but alas, I can't bring myself to go that far, yet! (Wink, wink....) Can you see in this picture how much the muffins shrank once they had cooled? It's because they rose so high and then shrank about 40%. I might try again with less baking powder.

Along the experimenting theme, I got stuff to make Chinese food at home tonight. I made it alright, and boy! I really tip my hat to any so-so Chinese chef, let alone a great one. It's hard to co-ordinate the different dishes and keep everything going all at once. It felt like a three-ring circus, even without the kids' help tonight! I think that a large part of the problem was that I wasn't using any recipes. I cook a lot just by "winging it" and can do it pretty well (I know, just not the baking!) I guess that's not going to work very well for me with Chinese food. But it was so cute. C and H were eating their supper tonight, and they both relayed to me that the egg foo yong was very good, but the other "dish" wasn't my best. But...."I'm sure you'll do better next time. This was a learning experience for you tonight that you can learn from." If there's one thing the GFCF business has done for my kids other than the out-and-out healing of symptoms, they are getting very flexible with what they'll eat. They've been so patient with it all.

I've been meaning to do it, and finally did. I started our juice keifer up again today. It wasn't hard; why did I put it off? We haven't been making it since I broke my keifer jar about a year ago. This jar is still pretty small, and I have to get a bigger one. I know we felt better when we were drinking it on a regular basis.

C seems to have a much better appetite lately, and I believe it's due to the 5HTP he's started. Whatever the reason, it's wonderful. He's actually starting to gain some weight on his skinny little bod. He surprised us all today when not too long after dinner, he vomited up what seemed to be his entire supper. No sooner was he done bringing it up, he asked for something to eat because he was really hungry. He had no symptoms whatsoever, and neither do the rest of us. Just so you don't go blaming his trouble on my Chinese cooking, I recalled that he had a massively large glass of water with his meal. I think it was all just too much volume for him.

I found a full-grown green tree frog sitting on the window sill of our master bathroom this evening. I have no idea how he got in there, but it must not have been too long ago because he was quite moist. (Come on. We've all found dried frogs or lizards in our Florida homes, haven't we?) Our windows have not been open and the bathroom's not near any doors that open to the outside. I quickly rescued him and put him outside where he can find more bugs and water.

We had to feed the snakes today. The mice the pet shop sold us must have been bigger than usual. Both the snakes took much longer to swallow them than usual. This fascinated the kids. Sorry to be so graphic, but that was part of our day.

I was excited to find a praying mantis on the ceiling of our garage today. I told the kids about it, but they had already seen it too. Tif--what can we house him in if we capture him for another pet? He's bigger than a baby, but no where near as big as an adult.

And my last prominent recollection from today: I finally received the walking foot in the mail today that I ordered before we left for our trip. My sewing machine is about 18 yrs. old, and it was very inexpensive (or should I say cheap??) The quilting phase of my quilts were not going very well and I was told that a walking foot would feed the top layer through the machine like the feed dogs feed the bottom layer through. So I tried it out tonight. It was like learning to sew all over again!! I think I need an adjustment or two on the machine. The presser foot does not want to lift off the floor of the machine now. Maybe because the walking foot is heavier than the other presser foot? Anybody know of a local sewing machine repair shop? I'm sure it's just a minor adjustment that is required.

Wormy Conversation

Various statements made by my 4 yr. old, quite the chatterbox tonight, as we checked on the status of our worms:

• Mom, these worms are my friends. I know worm language so I know what they're saying. They tell me that they like my hand a lot. They tell me if they're hungry or not, too.
• They only talk to me during the day. When they're tired at night, they just want to sleep.
• Mom, this worm is a mama and she's getting ready to have her babies. She told me that just now. If you ever find a long, long, worm with a pink, pink round dot, she's having a baby tonight. And that is a good thing because we need more baby worms.
• Mama and Daddy worms don't take care of their babies, because they're scared of the babies. People take care of their kids, but not worm mamas.
• This worm is a school kid. There's lots of school kid worms in here.
• This worm right here is a teenager.
• Worms like to eat lots of rotten fruit that you don't care for. Their favorite rotten fruit is fruit that's been cut up that people won't eat.

I think I learned a few things just now. Some kid philosophy.

More New Pets

Our family's pet population is exploding. We just got 2000 new pets. What are they, you ask? Why, worms, of course! Working worms. They're composting our way to a better blueberry field, hopefully healthier, happier, bug-free plants! We are having serious discussions about whether we should go organic or not. Organic is healthier, yes, but will it result in good fruit? I've always admired organic produce, but have heard it's very hard to do successfully. So, we got the Can-O-Worms composting condo and we're trying it out. Here are pictures of us setting it up. It comes from Australia, of all places!! (They are light-years ahead of us here in the states for their "green" philosophy and practices.) The starter bedding the condo comes with is dried up coconut fiber. You have to add a LOT of water to get the small hard brick to expand sufficiently.

This picture of B with the worm cracks me up. She thinks that she needs to personally touch every single one and tell them each how much we love them. Then I remember that I had a fascination with worms when I was just 4 or 5 yrs. old. I can remember digging worms up in our garden when I was very small. They were my "friends".

Our New Pets

A homeschool family in our group needed to find a home for these 2 corn snakes, and so we took them up on the offer. The kids couldn't be more thrilled to be giving these guys a place to live. For the first several days, I had to lock the snakes up so that they could get some rest! These snakes eat live mice. We fed them already and it went off without a hitch.

Our Crazy Dog Charley

We got home from Thanksgiving dinner at C's brother's house and discovered that our beloved black lab was missing from our back yard. Our chocolate lab was home, but conspicuously alone. Now, I should tell you that our dog Charley was misnamed. We named her Charley because she was born on the eve of Hurricane Charley that hit the state of Florida. It also hit our old house pretty hard, shattering a window (what a mess that made!), downing some of our trees and branches, knocking down our fence, and messing with a few shingles. We were quite lucky, though, because many of our neighbors did not fair as well as us. So somehow, this dog received her name in commemoration of how God kept us safe in the storm. We will never forget that time in our lives. Why would we sometimes think that we should have called her something else? Because she's constantly getting out of where she's supposed to be. We jokingly call her Houdini based on her personality. It's been a constant battle for the 3+ years we have had her in our family.

Well, we all hopped on our Kubota ATV and drove around our property, and that of several surrounding neighbors. We kept calling for Charley, and searching for a black dog in sometimes dense shrubby land on a very black night. The Kubota is diesel and quite noisy, so we had to stop and turn off the engine while we called for her and listened for her response. Only trouble is, she's not much of a barker. Our chocolate lab Cocoa barks a lot. In fact she barks so much that we kept hearing her barking the whole time we were gone looking for Charley! Her voice really travels the distance. "You're not helping us find her, Cocoa!"

After about 45 min. of searching in the dark, we finally found her. She never did bark out to alert us. We ended up seeing her eyes shining in the light of the ATV. But we found her trapped! We live near a dried up lake (glorified pond!). There are a bunch of tall and thick cattails near the edge of our property. She likes to charge into them to see all the birds she can kick out of them. Evidently, she got through the cattails, and found herself in a fenced in open area, surrounded by cattails in every direction. She couldn't find her way out. It was dark outside so we couldn't see much either other than what the headlights of the Kubota would shine on depending on where we parked. Both boys had to climb over the fence and try and lift a 55 lb. wriggling dog up high enough that C could reach over the fence and grab her. They tried a few times and failed because Charley does not like to be picked up. She's her "own dog" and doesn't like people messing with her ears for cleaning, her toenails for clipping, or apparently her body for saving! The guys finally got her into the back bed of the Kubota, and we made our way home. But not without a scolding about how naughty she had been and why on earth couldn't she be a dog content to stay out of trouble? Instead, she remains, our Houdini.