Ugly Blog

It's been a few days since my last post and it feels like a year. I swear, so much has gone on in the last couple of weeks that i'm not sure where my mind was when i left off. We had a full week of family vacation, a vehicle failure, a date, another car failure, and a whole pile of memo boards and bread. I will try to explain some of this, though if you don't understand take comfort in knowing i was present for these events and i don't understand either.

I should preface this paragraph with the declaration that; i love my wife. Yes, of course, there is a but coming, so please try to be patient. Donna K and i have been together for many years. Some of them have been good and some have been less than ideal, but most have been horribly comfortable. She gets up and goes to work and is a brilliant tyrant all day. I am acclimated to this arrangement and definitely have my own routine. Okay, get ready for that But. BUT, when she goes on vacation and we are all together for a week, our world is total chaos. She doesn't know what to do with herself all day and my routine is just blown. There's simply no hope for me doing any of my normal things when she's home. This year was made worse by her car deciding to go on holiday as well. So, as far as our going to New Braunfels or Alpine went; it didn't. We did some stuff locally, but i really wanted to get away to a place where i could no longer see concrete and asphalt. Football starts for the guys next week, so this summer is gone. So much for i'm going to make it to San Jacinto this summer if it kills them all.

At some point here in the last week or so, i decided i needed a memo board to hang in my kitchen that i could put my master bread recipe on and shopping notes and stuff like that. Well, i found one of those memo boards and couldn't believe what they cost. The other thing is that they are so plain. It's like you have two choices, black or white. If you are lucky, you might find one that's more of an ecru. ACKKK!!! I took a good look at the damn thing and said thirty bucks my ass. Instantly, i could see it. Foam core, cotton batting, half yard of fabric, ribbon to match and some buttons, oh and that all too important appliance, the hot glue gun. The first one took me about two hours to make. I no sooner finished it and Donna K had to have one, then we added one more for "The Ridley" and i was done. Okay, so maybe not quite. Her boss saw them and had to have one for her daughter. Okay, so that's four. Well, i turned my sewing room around so make that five. They really are pretty easy to make, they just take some time.

Our fifteen year old son went out on his first date last Friday. Oh he's been out before, but it's always been for an occassion like a quinceanera, or a party or something like that. This time it was just him and this nice little girl. I guess this ushers in a new era in our house. I hope i'm prepared for this one. I know one thing is for sure, he better keep making his grades if he wants to keep going out.

The other thing i did besides give the mechanic all of my money was to pull "The Bachelor's Guide" out of moth balls. TBG is a cookbook i have been working on for years. It's not your typical recipe book like so many others, but instead it's more of a reference for the kitchen. Ideally, it's most applicable for people with marginal to adequate skills in the kitchen. It shows you how to save time, money, face (in some instances), while improving your overall skill set with confidence. It's not finished, so that's not a plug!!!

I've been teaching my boys how to do some cooking using the book as a guide. It's hard for me to stand by and watch someone do something, i do regularly, struggle at it. I know they can't learn if i don't let them struggle along the way. It's just one of those things that's hard to do.

UUUGH, i'm hating blogger today.................... I want to use word and have my pictures migrate too. Someone pleez, tell me how you get everything to sit the way you want it to. I'm posting this and i am only doing it to get out of this endless loop of fix a problem and get two more.

I'm going to post that promised recipe next, so stick around. D