Some Lessons You Just Have to Learn the Hard Way

As most of you know, my hubby and I are homeschooling our two little girlies. We also homeschooled our two grown children way back in the day.

In addition to scholastic knowledge, we have also striven to teach our children life skills like managing money, making wise purchases, how to care for a home and how to cook. Unfortunately, it appears that some of these lessons didn't "take", if you know what I mean. This is because adult children stubbornly insist on learning things the hard way.

Take Funsocksgirl, for instance. She managed to learn to do a bit of baking, but most of the rest of our cooking lessons seemed to...............well, here. See for yourself.

Here's a slightly edited portion of an email she just sent me:

My brother-in-law and wife gave us some of the venison from their freezer (he got two deer last year) so on a day i can't remember in the not-so-distant past i decided to make some of it up and we had dad over for dinner (mom is in colorado with her sister). i learned some new things about meat which grossed me out and shocked me greatly. for instance, thawed venison is bloody. oh my gosh, i almost threw up...it was gross, sitting there in its own bloody pool and i hadn't even unwrapped or touched it yet. with plastic baggies on my hands i freed it from the paper it was wrapped in, only gagging twice as i threw the dripping bloody paper in a bag. then i had to cut it up some, which i did carefully while looking in another direction. the cuts were sloppy, but i still have all my fingers. i would just like to say again how gross and unnecessary all that blood was. how dare it bleed so profusely! it had been dead and frozen for a long time, which in my mind meant that all of the blood should have magically disappeared.

then i used the broiler. first off i didn't know we had a broiler and i surely didn't know what it was. secondly it took me a while to figure out which pan we had was actually a 'broiler pan'. (that betty crocker cookbook is sooo handy at explaining things) so finally i slabbed some gross chunks of raw venison on the broiler pan and broiled away. this led to another shocking discovery: meat shrinks when you cook it. what?! i've somehow missed that completely during other cooking ventures and was quite disappointed. i mean, i thought i had enough meat in the first place, but now it was all shrunk down and looked like not nearly enough...but it was. we chowed on mr. deer with lemon/green onion/parsely/pepper butter like betty crocker told me to make and it was surprisingly (for me) quite tasty and not a disaster.

It was her first big meat adventure and I'm so proud of her for pulling it off with edible results. Sometimes the school of life really pays off! :-D

Brain Drivel

Greetings, O Patient Ones! I have returned.

I think.

Even as I type this I am twitching because my free Saturday is only half free.

Remember how I was filling in as a sub for one of the janitors at our church? She was supposed to be back to work this week, but Monday she slipped on the treacherous ice and fell right on the incision from her carpal tunnel surgery, so I was on for one more week.

I never want to see a public toilet again - at least not to CLEAN it.

I was going to clean the youth building on Friday so as to all of my Saturday free, but it was not possible. All the teens spent Friday night there for a part of their 30 Hour Famine and aren't planning to clear out of the building until 1pm. That's when my mom and I will swoop in to scrub and polish and mop and vacuum and restock and play ping-pong.

I have actually enjoyed my stint as church janitor in some ways, but more than anything I have been reminded how very blessed I am to be able to NOT work. I love being a SAHM. I do NOT love working outside my home.

Not even for money.

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I get a new fridge Tuesday. Whoo-Hoo!!!!! The old one is a 1999 Frigidaire and it is unequivocally the worst loser of a fridge I've ever had the misfortune to rot food in. I will do the dance of joy when it is gone!!!

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I always do our taxes myself and we have already received both our Federal and State tax returns while most of you have not even filed yet. Bwa-hah-hah-hah!

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My Mom is next in line to move into Senior Housing. This is a wonderful thing because the apartment she is currently in is less than stellar (to put it mildly). This is stressful because it means ANOTHER move! Of course it won't be anywhere near as difficult as the last one. I hope.

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I just bought a Diva Cup. (not that you really wanted to know that.) I'm sick of spending good money on paper "products" that just end up in the landfill. So there.

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Other than my asthma (which is comparatively mild) none of us have been sick all winter long. (so far...yet) Praise the Lord!

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Tis snowing
and blowing
cold and wintry

I long for Spring!
with robins
and flowers
and bike rides (mud splayed up my back!)

For now I have to settle
for more daylight and
occasional days of melting,
dripping eaves and
teasing warm winds
Followed by a deep freeze

O for some Maine-al Warming!

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Just this morning I figured out how to PERMANENTLY make the font bigger on all my internet browser screens. O my happy (old and not so groovy) eyeballs!

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Oh look, ANOTHER MEME! However, this one is very cool. It was designed by my dear internetty friend Heather (who is not Hannah). It's called:

Look at This Stuff. Isn't it Neat?

Here's the low-down according to Heather:

The "Look At This Stuff. Isn't It Neat?" Meme rules:

Find five things around your house that say something about the person you are and snap a picture of them.

Tell us about them.

Link back to me in your post so I can be all nosy.

Tag five (or more...or less...I'm easy like Sunday morning, my loves) folks via their comments and tell us who you tagged.

OK. It was hard to limit it to five, but here we go:



First I present you with my Bible. it says everything we need to know about God and His plan for mankind and frankly, it says quite a bit about moi as well.

In addition to the the obvious (I'm a sinner in need of a Savior), it also reveals many of my defining characteristics. First of all I am a visual learner. See all those colors? They tell you that I need things to be marked and underscored and highlighted and annotated in order to remember it. Couple that with my Biblical version of choice - New American Standard - and you will discern that I am a stickler for accuracy (the NAS is one of the more literal translations) and that I am one who likes to really dig in and study my Bible as opposed to just reading it.

I despise paraphrases and "modern" versions. To my mind they are nothing more than pap.



Aha, what could this be? Why it's my wonderful iMac on a lovely rolltop desk. And gee, what's that on the computer screen? Ooooohhhhh. It's Groovy's Ruminations!

I am a Mac lover and proud of it. See that monitor? That's my whole, entire, complete computer. No cumbersome towers, no monster size monitor that takes up all your desk space, just sweet, glorious, virus proof simplicity - and my iMac weighs less than most laptops!

Then there's the whole blogging thing. Groovy really digs blogging when she's not scrubbing church toilets!



Blue Phrogs: I collect 'em. You can read more about that and see more pics HERE.



I am a musician. I play percussion, sing, and play my Fender shortscale Mustang Bass. it's the perfect guitar for gals with little hands!



Then of course, Groovy loves to cook. I've been making wedding and party cakes for about a million years or so. I love to host big dinner parties and do oodles of baking and experiments in my great big, monstrously huge kitchen. It truly is a dream kitchen, in spite of its lack of state of the art equipment. I am very thankful to have it. The only thing I'm not crazy about is having to clean the floor!

Alrighty. Here's the place where I'm s'posed to tag five people. But folks, I'm too tired to run today, especially considering all that work I have to do this afternoon, so you all take this meme and run with it, K? I won't be able to catch anyone until my asthma simmers down and the snow melts a bit so I can ride my bike.

Speaking of bikes (I'da posted a pic of mine for the meme, but that woulda broke the rules because it would have been SIX pics) and asthma, Mulletman and I are in training to ride in the Trek Across Maine this June. We're raising money for the American Lung Association of Maine.

I'll be making a more extensive post on the subject Monday or Tuesday (God willing), but if you want to get a headstart on sending in your support or learning more about the Trek, you can find some great links in my sidebar.