Snowing

Let me just say, this winter has been so nostalgic for me! It reminds me of the winters of my youth (pronounced "yoot" for those of you not in the know).

I would post a beautiful pic here, but I'm tech illiterate. Besides, you are all looking at it too, through your analog windows.

Downstairs, the children are hollering, but in a good way. And me -- I'm making "seafood divan" out of the old Joy of Cooking for dinner. This dish involves canned tuna, cooked broccoli, bechamel sauce, and PIMIENTOES. Dang. I guess I'll have to stock up next time I wear my hair net and shirtwaist to the Piggly Wiggly where they bag your groceries and look at you funny if you aren't wearing white gloves.

One of my favorite -- albeit somewhat irreverent -- blogs is www.junecleaverafterasix-pack.blogspot.com Just thought you'd like to know.

Fruitless Daydreams

In my current daydream -- inspired by a weary, un-Sunday-ish trip to Rainbow -- John and I live on a shady, tree-lined city street that has many children, all well brought up and from intact homes, whose parents do not buy snack packs of anything at all, and where it is always, oh, about 69 degrees and slightly breezy.

I slip on the comfortable shoes that are neatly lined up near the back door, grab my hempen shopping basket, grab the toddler by the hand, and walk out. No need to lock up, my neighbors are looking out for my older children, who are gardening in the vast but somehow manageable vegetable patch over by the babbling creek.

The toddler and I walk two blocks, waving at the happy still independent elderly and the smiling, decent adults who are out doing various constructive things. Finally we come to the corner and there it is: the neighborhood shops! There are three of them, none bigger than an ordinary storefront!

We start at the butcher/dairy. We buy one pound of chicken (locally farmed, fed organic chicken kibble) half a gallon of milk, and a small wedge of parmesan cheese. This takes four minutes. The toddler has not yet even noticed that I am still holding her hand.

Next we wander to the grocer. I buy green beans (from the farmers in 30 minutes out, who don't use pesticides), seven small but sweet pears, dried apricots (OK, probably not local, but lovingly and humanely produced, you understand) and a bottle of red wine, which the state in a fit of practicality has finally allowed grocers to carry. The toddler is getting antsy, so I give her one apricot to chew on. This has all taken 12 minutes. My bag is heavy but not too much.

Finally we go to the bakery/specialty shop, run by Catholic hippies -- Chippies! They donate to the local food shelf and give jobs to the Downs syndrome kids in the neighborhood. Here the toddler and I buy one loaf of their whole wheat bread, paying $3.50 for it but gladly, since the owners have fourteen adopted children and mill their own organic spelt. Five minutes gets us out the door.

Back home after a refreshing and energy-renewing stroll, the toddler plays with the generous and sweet-tempered 11-year-old while I make chicken and potato curry, steam the green beans, set out the bread, crack open the wine.

Superguy comes home and we have a fabulous family meal.

The children do the dishes willingly.

World's Messiest Mom Joins Blog

No more guilt, that's my new motto. As I stare at the heap of children's books in front of the bookshelf, as I avoid the mountain of laundry fermenting on the floor of the revolting laundry room, I pause and take a moment.

Since this is the guilt no more blog, I need to be a founding member, since my house and my brain both provide templates of guilt-no-more housekeeping and thinking, respectively. I think of it as a charitable outreach to all those people who have guilt over the less than perfect state of their organizational lives.

You in the family all know who I am. Hopefully, when Superguy (the DH) shows me how to use our technology, I will post photos and you can all lean back and heave one large sigh of relief and say to your spouses, "At least our house isn't THAT BAD."

Happy "Valentine's" Day!

Happy Valentine's Day, all! Although, to be technical, Valentine's Day was actually yesterday. And if we are going to be really technical, yesterday wasn't really "Valentine's Day" either - it was Cyril and Methodius Day (as mom so helpfully and accurately pointed out). Valentine's day was taken away from him sometime ago, because, let's face facts here , we don't even really know who this St. Valentine IS who has become the Catholic equivalent of Cupid these days. There were Sts. Valentine - several of them, and they seem to have been Roman-era martyrs, but we don't really know more than that, and it does seem a little unfair to have a Feast Day celebrating "That one unspecified Holy guy who had a very common Roman Name." It makes much more sense to give a day to those stalwart (and historically specific) men who converted the Slavs and gave them the beauty/oddity that is the Cyrillic alphabet!!
SO, Happy belated Cyril and Methodius Day!!! Dobrey Dyen!!!

A very merry Pease-ish blog

Hello and welcome to this Guilt No More blog! The blog that comes to you so bad from the very beginning, that you need not feel any guilt about immediately writing it off or feel the need to comment on how "this blog really has gone downhill, hasn't it..." It's already down there, at the bottom of the hill, happy and proud to be superfluous and self-indulgent and poorly-written, as blogs are so apt to become. That's the beauty of it, the Guilt No More blog. You can read it, you can post to it, you can comment on it... or not! If Alicia writes extended musings on paper-clips, from the wasteland of office administration land, no one can feel disappointed or even need read said post! It's guilt no more! If Ed decides to post "cool" pictures of pancreas tumor specimens, well, what did you expect? It's guilt no more! So, without further ado, I invite you all to post, post, post away, without worry, shame, or guilt!

... Or not!