Mandajuice

The friendly neighborhood sex offender

On Friday it was finally warm enough for us to take Genoa's new trike out for a ride.  Even though she kept climbing off and on it, she LOVED it.  I have to say that the feature wherein I get to completely control the handlebars without having to bend my ancient arse over to do it?  Is AWESOME and totally worth the extra fifteen bucks!

Together we did a big lap around our neighborhood.  I like to look at the houses; Genoa is on the prowl for puppies and meow-ers; Alex hunts for power tools.

Sadly, the only person we encountered that day was the neighborhood's sole registered sex offender.  In a crazy but timely conversion of circumstances, I had only learned about this man's existence 24 hours earlier.  A friend had mentioned him and Dave and I had just looked him up the night before.  He was arrested for "Rape of a minor" fifteen years ago.  I'm not sure how much time he served, but I can tell you the eerie feeling I got walking past the man after just having witnessed his creepy mug shot.

Another neighbor had been out walking her fluffy white dog, the very dog that made the bike ride worth the price of gas for Genoa, and this neighbor stopped in front of the rapist's house to chat with him.  He was outside working in his yard with a leaf blower and the two of them were laughing and enjoying some friendly neighbor rapport.  Alex took one look at the leaf blower, which was still on, and dismounted his bike to walk up and ask about it.  Every hair on my entire body stood on end as I pushed Genoa closer and watched this man show Alex how the leaf blower worked.  The entire exchange lasted no longer than ten seconds before I hurried Alex along and told him we needed to keep going.

Two blocks later when we were finally well out of earshot, I stopped Alex and told him I needed to talk to him.

"Remember that man with the leaf blower?"

"Yeah."

"Well, he's a bad guy.  You didn't know and you didn't do anything wrong, but I don't want you to talk to him ever again." 

"How do you know he's a bad guy?"

"There is a place on the computer where parents can go to see if any bad guys live in our neighborhood.  Last night Daddy and I looked it up and we saw a picture of that man.  He once hurt a child very badly and went to jail for it."

"I won't talk to him ever again!"

"Our neighborhood is very safe, but since we know that man is a bad guy, we should just stay away from him.  When Sister gets older, we'll warn her about him too, okay?"

"Okay.  Can I see his picture?"

"Sure, as soon as we get home."

And as soon as we got home, I pulled up the website and showed Alex the photo.  I could tell he was a little scared by the whole thing, but in my mind, that's pretty much the ideal response.  In hindsight, I'm GLAD we saw him the way we did because it gave me the opportunity to point him out and warn Alex.  The timing was perfect.  I should also say for the record, that our neighborhood is very safe.  I feel exponentially safer living in Washington state for a multitude of reasons [not the least of which is the state's dedication to the 2nd Amendment], and the number of registered sex offenders HERE is actually far far less than the number of them living near our condo in California.

The part that still leaves me annoyed was that the other neighbor was so happily chatting up the child molester.  I'm going to give her a pass and assume she just didn't know, but still!  Part of me wanted to scream, YOU'RE CAVORTING WITH A KNOWN CHILD RAPIST.  How could she DO that?!  Of course, I will never utter a single word to this man.  He's a criminal and I wouldn't want him coming after me or putting my children in danger.  But I'll also never walk by his house and casually nod at him, or even make any eye contact.  As far as I'm concerned, he deserves to be shunned for the rest of his entire life.

[Edited to add: Y'all, he's an OLD man and he raped an under age member OF HIS OWN FAMILY.  He's the WORST kind of predator, soulless enough to hurt someone he should've protected.]

I think it goes without saying that all parents should assume EVERYONE is a child molester.  The only good thing about living near a registered offender is that it's the evil you know and one less person you have to guess about.  Even if you don't have children, I highly recommend consulting the FBI's National Sex Offender Registry.  You can never be too cautious when it comes to the safety of children.

Weekend update

We had yet another busy weekend and as sick as I'm getting of the fact that all I've been writing about lately is we went here, we did this, it's all I can manage at the moment.  I obviously have more meaningful posts to write (surgery stories, our run-in with the friendly neighborhood pedophile, SAHM issues, homeschooling opinions, thoughts on religion, friendship, marriage, money stuff and how I've been giving a lot of thought to going back to work part time), but I just can't seem to find the time to get to them.  I haven't even done my taxes yet!

So for now, here's a quick rundown of our weekend.  I always feel so rushed on Saturdays because it's Dave's ONLY day off, so I need to make use of his presence as much as I can while trying not to make him feel like I only love him for his labor.

After soccer (which Alex is very much enjoying), we headed to the rockery to pick up dirt for my garden box.  One of the two old guys who own the place let Alex sit on his lap and drive the tractor.  It was like the child died and went to heaven.

Dave and I were not in heaven so much as in hell, since we were the ones stuck shoveling dirt into trash bags and then hauling them into the car and back home.  Good times!  We took one load of regular cheap soil and a two-car load of premium planting dirt, which is so rich it almost looks like tar.

Sadly we still have at least one more trip left to get dirt and it will have to wait until next weekend.  Dave keeps telling me those tomatoes better be good, but I can't imagine I could grow anything BAD in this dirt.  So far the kids think the garden box is like a giant sandbox only better because it can get them even more filthy and disgusting than sand can.  The ring around our bathtub nods in agreement.

Which reminds me!  I totally scrubbed all three of our toilets with a pumice stone last night and now I can die a happy woman.  Those stupid blue mineral lines!  They were driving me crazy!  See what I mean about how I have more important things to talk about but no time!  It's because I'm busy worrying about my dirty friggin' toilets!

Dave has also been barbecuing more often when the weather is nice and I can't complain.

In fact, the more I think about it, I have very little to ever complain about.

I've been meaning to post here for days, but I haven't been up to it.  Something bad happened to my new friend Jennifer (the one who hosted Bunco last weekend).  Her husband had a massive stroke at his son's baseball game on Saturday.  He's in the ICU and the outcome is still unclear.  It's been all I can think about all weekend.    Since there's not much I can do to help Jennifer yet myself, all can do is think good thoughts for them and cut my own husband some much-needed slack.  I don't pray, but if you do, I don't mind asking you to include Randy and Jen in your prayers today. 

I'll be back later today with a regularly scheduled update.

No TV week, continued...

I almost gave in and turned on the TV yesterday.  I wasn't sure I could handle another one of Alex's bad days without it.  But I didn't!  We survived and in fact, he was much better behaved.  It helped that we had some new friends over and they got to run around.  It certainly didn't hurt that he had a nap either.

Genoa did get to watch some Lazy Town last night only because Dave and I took Alex with us to Wal-Mart to do a big grocery shopping trip and she stayed home with Grandma.  It was late and I didn't expect Carol to entertain her alone for almost two hours without the help of Rotten Robbie.  The big perk, though, was that watching TV ended up being a Big Deal to Genoa.  She was so excited to watch her show that she didn't even notice that we'd all left for the store.

This morning was the first time I really noticed a difference in the kids' behavior.  Nobody even asked to watch a show!  It finally stopped raining and before 9AM both kids were running around the back yard dressed in super hero costumes and looking for frogs.  And they weren't fighting!  No one ran inside screaming!  WHOSE CHILDREN ARE THESE!?!?

Eventually I see us incorporating earned TV privileges into our daily routine in which the kids can each earn TV via good behavior, completion of chores, academic work, etc.  I like pretty much any system in which I can bribe my children for things they should be doing anyway.

A no good, very bad, terrible, awful day

If you want to make sure you're in a craptastic mood for at least eight hours, here's how to start:

Begin your day by building a tricycle you bought on sale at Target.

On a rainy day.

With two kids "helping".

Then be sure to spend thirty minutes installing the incorrect screws into the seat of the stupid, *&%(*&(* trike and then spend ANOTHER thirty minutes UN-screwing those stupid-ass screws. 

Your day will be PERFECT.  Pinky swear!

How can children SENSE that you're in a bad mood?  I swear to all that is holy, Alex has a second sense in which the WORSE my mood gets?  The worse his BEHAVIOR gets.  It's like he can tell I have no patience and for some reason that means the timing is perfect to TEST it.

Yesterday I was already spitting fire from the stupid trike (and the subsequent screaming from Genoa because it was too cold/windy/rainy for me to take her for a bike ride) and Alex had to go and be naughtier than he's been in MONTHS.  He was 100% disobedient.  If there was a competition for NOT DOING WHAT YOUR MOTHER SAYS, he'd be a contender!  I actually said this sentence to him (and I'm not sharing it because I'm proud.  No, I'm sharing it so you'll understand just how BAD he was.)

"You're lucky tomorrow's not your birthday because you wouldn't be getting a SINGLE SOLITARY PRESENT."

And I didn't even take it back after I said it!

The worst of the worst was when I asked him to clean up the eight million tiny pieces of red paper he'd cut up with his wavy scissors.  The first time I asked, he ignored me.  Then he said no.  Then when I screamed at him to do it OR ELSE, he picked it all up and put it on the windowsill.  When I discovered the remains of the mess and instructed him to place it in the trash, he refused, again.  Then he swept it into a pile under his sister's chair at which point I asked him if he'd cleaned up ALL the paper.

And he said yes.

When I found the pile, I was NOT happy.  Lying is one of my biggest pet peeves and how lame is it to lie when you leave evidence of your crime.  Anyway, round what?  fourteen?  eight hundred and thirty-six?  of this stupid paper dilemma continued.  At which point he refused, and said no, and got yelled at and then instead of putting into the damn trash already, he swept the pile UNDER THE TABLE.  Literally.  When I saw it suspiciously peeking out from under the table, I asked him AGAIN if he'd cleaned up his mess.

And he said yes.

And I almost lost my shit with him.  TWO BIG FAT LIES!  Right to my face!  SO. NOT. COOL.

But instead of spanking him, which took every ounce of self-control I had, I angrily shoved the table away to reveal his big fat lie and screamed at him in my loudest, most angry voice and eventually the stupid paper got picked up and thrown into the trash along with his scissors.  (Like I'd ever let him play with those again!)

And after witnessing just how mad I was at him, you'd think he might just have chilled out and started doing what I asked him to do, right?  But no.  It was just one thing after another and by the time 7:30 came around I was gladder than I've ever been to kiss that boy goodnight and shut the door to his room.  Before doing so, I gave him a big hug and promised that tomorrow would be a better day for both of us.

Thankfully, I was right.

New Washer & Dryer

Years ago Dave's mom used to try to give us money.  We hated to take it because even though we were broke and technically could use it, we were okay.  And Carol had her own bills to worry about.  We tried to refuse it, but she was annoyingly persistent.  Eventually we gave in and hatched a plan.

We decided to put everything she gave us into a savings account at our credit union with the plan of some day giving it back to her as a retirement present.  For close to a decade, I have been making deposits to this account and they have been earning interest.  On Saturday, we cashed it all in at Sears and sprung for a brand-new washer and dryer for Carol.  Only, we didn't TELL HER about it, hoping it would be a big surprise.

So yesterday, while she watched the kids here, I escaped over to her house to "unpack some boxes" and wait for the Sears truck to arrive.  They came at the back-end of the appointment window, so I actually ended up having enough time to almost completely unpack her living room, vacuum half the house and give some major thought to her furniture dilemmas.  (Nothing fits right!)

Then Sears called my house to confirm that they'd be there in five minutes and Carol answered the phone.  Surprise over!  Well, not at first.  But she definitely freaked out when she saw her garage door open and a big truck in the street.  I think at first she thought I was having something hauled away.  She was also worried that we'd bought her something KENMORE brand.  Personally I've had excellent luck with Kenmore, but she HATES them, so she was worried we were giving her something she didn't want.

Anyway, she had already picked out the Maytag top-loader set she wanted at Best Buy and we ended up getting her a much nicer version of what she wanted.  Needless to say, she was thrilled.

TV Free experiment

I'm going to be honest and admit how difficult Day One was yesterday.  Halfway through the morning I noticed two phenomenon:

1) A blog post that should have taken me twenty minutes, took me two hours (and I published it full of typos!).

2) When my kids play together, somebody ALWAYS gets in trouble.

By 11AM, I had removed all the toys from Alex's bedroom after witnessing him take away his sister's bottle of bubbles and dump it out in the bushes.  This was AFTER he'd already been reprimanded for stealing her toys earlier and I was looking for a punishment with some marrow in it.  He still hasn't totally earned them all back!!

So if the TV is off, I have to actually PAY ATTENTION to my children or they just get in trouble, which wouldn't be so bad if I didn't mind not getting anything done.  We're only one day into this experiment, but I already feel like it won't have much sticking power after the week is up.  I deserve to be able to write a blog post in peace (can I get an amen!) and if my kids get an hour of screen time every day as a result, so be it.

Killer Chocolate Chip Cookies

It's recipe time again!  And this time I'm not going to hold back on the bragging: these are the best chocolate chip cookies you'll ever taste.  I'll qualify that only by adding that I assume everyone likes their chocolate chip cookies the same way I do: slightly crispy on the outside, chewy, soft and almost cake-like in the middle, a tiny bit salty and sweet, but not too too sweet.

Years ago, when we were first married, Dave used to tease me CEASELESSLY about how horrid my cookies were.  Burnt. Flat.  Dry. Hard.  You name the recipe, I found a way to ruin it.  I could cook a mean steak, but Girlfriend, I could not bake a cookie to SAVE MY LIFE.  But instead of throwing in the towel and giving up, I dug in and started researching.  I tried every recipe, every combination of flour vs. butter, every possible permutation.  And finally, a decade later, I am no longer ashamed of my cookies!

KILLER CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

The cast of characters is pretty basic.

2.25 cups all-purpose flour (I get good results using King Arthur brand)
.5 teaspoons of baking soda
.75 cups of granulated sugar
.25 cups of light brown sugar
1 teaspoon of coarse salt (a little less if you use salted butter)
Also included, but not pictured above since I forgot about them until it was time to add them to the mix:

2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large eggs 

And of course, the magic ingredient:

7 tablespoons of Butter-flavored CRISCO and
7 tablespoons of soft butter

If you have a good chocolate chip cookie recipe that you just want to make better, you can just stop here.  The secret to perfect cookies is TERRIBLY AWFULLY BAD FOR YOU, but I'm guessing you're not eating these FOR YOUR HEALTH.  And Pioneer Woman puts food coloring in her chicken soup, so what's a little CRISCO!?  Honestly, though, this is the secret to good cookies: however much butter your recipe calls for?  Use half butter-flavored Crisco and half real butter.  I promise it's like magic.

I always make cookies in my stand mixer, but you can do it by hand or with a hand mixer and still get excellent results.  First up, preheat your oven to 350 degrees if you have a regular oven.  I heat mine to 360 because I've noticed it's never as hot as I'd like.

Then, measure out your sugars.

And throw them into your mixing bowl with the butter and Crisco.

Set your mixer to low speed and then measure out your flour and baking soda in a separate bowl.  I always whisk my flour instead of sifting and that seems to work just fine.  Also be sure that your baking soda is FRESH.  I always assumed it was the kind of thing that lasted forever but a recent article in one of my cooking magazines proved me very, very wrong.  NINE MONTHS, that's how long baking soda lasts!  So I threw mine out and spent a whopping 97 cents on a fresh (store-brand) box.

Next scrape the sides of your mixer and then add two large eggs, two teaspoons of vanilla and a teaspoon of coarse salt.  If you used salted butter, reduce the amount of salt you add by not quite half.  Or not.  Last time I added half the salt and the cookies weren't salty enough for me.  I don't have any pictures of this step because did I mention I had "helpers" while I was making this batch of cookies?  It was at this point in the process that I was already losing my head while Genoa asked me for the 8,008th time if it was, "COOKIES READY!?  COOKIES READY YET?!?"

Once that is well combined, you can start slowly adding your flour.  Or you can make the same mistake I did and let your four-year-old add it for you, in which case about a third of it will end up on the counter.

Once combined it will hopefully look something like this:

And then your "helpers" will REALLY start to bother you.  "I wanna YICK IT!"

Next add a bag of chocolate chips.  I'm not picky about chocolate chips.  I usually buy Ghirardelli or the tasty ones they sell at Trader Joe's.

This is a good step for a four-year-old.  Then I use my spatula to both scrape the bowl and mix in my chocolate chips. 

Next, get out your parchment paper and use it to line three baking sheets. 

If you've never used parchment for cookies, you'll find it to be almost as magical as the Crisco.  The cookies don't stick and best of all, you can be like me and never, ever clean a baking sheet again.  I always bake cookies on the double baking sheets with the air inside.  It prevents the bottoms of the cookies from burning.

Next start dropping heaping teaspoons of batter onto your cookie sheets.  Keep a good two inches of space between the cookies.  Like so:

Try to keep your "helpers" from helping too much.

Pop them in the oven and bake for 12 to 14 minutes.

Another good thing about parchment is that you can remove the whole sheet and plop it right onto your counter to cool the cookies.  They look like this when they're done:

And see the chewy delicious center?

Just try not to eat them all in one sitting. 

No seriously, go ahead and TRY.

Turn off the TV week

This morning I read in the paper that National Turn Off Your TV Week starts tomorrow.  Even though I generally shy away from anything quite so bandwagonish, we're going to participate.  There are a few things I feel strongly about and not letting my children grow up to passively waste away their lives sitting in front of the TV is definitely one of them.  Just ask me if our kids will ever have TV's or computers in their own rooms?  (On a cold day in hell!)

Part of my TV fear is that I am completely and totally addicted to television myself.  And so is Dave.  We will NOT be turning off the TV ourselves this week since it's our favorite form of after-the-kids-are-asleep entertainment, a fact about which we have zero shame.  We LOVE TV.  (In fact we're shopping for a big gaudy 46" LCD right now).   

But when it comes to the kids, we're obviously more careful.  I'm sure you might have noticed, but one thing I'm pretty confident we didn't pass on to our children is the THIN gene.  So avoiding television is pretty obvious for our family.  Right now I usually turn it off mid-morning and don't let the kids watch anything again until it's time for me to make dinner.  But even though I turn it off, the kids are still watching too much TV, enough that I know every episode of Lazy Town by heart.

This should be an interesting week!

Drugs, hair, Bunco night

1.  I think I might be addicted to sleep aids.  I've been sick for so long that every night it seems like I'm either popping Tylenol PM or prescription cough syrup.  The other night, just for kicks, I decided to see if I could sleep the old fashioned un-medicated way and my body responded with a resounding: NO.  If that's not bad enough, I'm pretty sure I'm coming down with something AGAIN even though I'm still blowing my nose from the cold I caught on the plane home from California TWO WEEKS AGO.

2.  I'm totally going to cut off my hair.  Like, SHORT.  It's the clavicles, people.  I finally have them and they need to be seen.  A hair appointment is currently set for June 20th, but I'm not sure I won't chop it myself before then.  It will be the first time in my entire adult life that my hair won't rest on my shoulders.

3.  Quick follow-up back story for #2:  My friend Tonya e-mailed me something that stopped me in my tracks a few weeks ago.  We were talking about how sick we've all been and how one day at preschool pick-up time, she was coming home from taking her daughter to the doctor (she lives right near the school) and how she was sad because she could see all us moms out in front of the school chatting and she even noticed I had my hair down!  For the first time she'd ever seen it that way!  Our kids went to preschool together and I saw Tonya five days a week for something like 7 months and she had NEVER seen me without my hair in a ponytail.  WAKE. UP. CALL.  Also?  I'm sick of looking like Textbook Poison Fan Circa 1987.

4.  Dave is going to kill me when I do it.  In fact, he might not be able to bring himself to look at me for several days.

5.  Last weekend I mentioned attending the HOA meeting, right?  Well one of my neighbors ended up slipping me an invitation for Bunco on Friday night.  I put on my big girl panties and headed over and ended up having the BEST time.  Not only was Jennifer (center, below) lovely and her house DIVINE, but she has the craziest group of mom friends ever.  I had way too much fun.

6. Genoa had her first potty accident yesterday, but it was really my fault, not hers.  It was first thing in the morning and apparently I'd forgotten to clean out her potty from the night before and while I was cleaning it, she peed on the floor.  Poor thing couldn't hold it.  We had friends over for dinner Saturday night (Tonya, the one who has only seen me in ponytails) and BOTH of the big kids had accidents, but not Genoa.  In my mind her potty training so easily has almost made up for her being such a pain in the ass newborn and never sleeping.

7.  My other blog is broken, at least until I fix my old computer and figure out my password.  Sadly, it's also my last month of writing for Disney.  I haven't decided what I'll do next, but maybe I'll finally find the time to revamp the Naked Ledger.

8.   Recipe for kick ass chocolate chip cookies is in the works.  I have a killer secret ingredient!