I Am A Bad-ass

Ghastly IPhone lighting, but still.
Impressive, right?

So, early last week, I made a cake.  From scratch.  As in flour, butter, eggs, the whole shebang.  And it was awesome.  Cream cheese buttercream.  Lemon curd filling (more on that later).  Almonds on the side to cover up the really hideous frosting job. And it was awesome.  Not everyone liked the cream cheese frosting.  Not everyone liked the lemon curd.  Not everyone had a leftover piece at lunch and at dinner for three days.  What?

And then later last week, T and I finally made the leap into the cash-only-everything-accounted-for-beans-and-rice-hard-core-like-when-we-lived-in-an-Airstream-trailer-because-we-had-no-money budget process that we like to call getting ready to pay for college.  And let me tell you that every $18 purchase you ever made because it was only $18 makes you feel really, really stupid.  It is amazing how much money I was spending on absolutely nothing.  They were nothings that I thought I really wanted/needed, but they were nothings nonetheless.  So, in less than a week, I have become an obsessive, miserly shrew. "No, you can't have new Vans, we don't get clothing money until November 9." "Okay, I've bought five bags of candy for Halloween, but we're only opening them one at a time.  I need the $7.50 if we can return the ones we don't use."  I'm not wearing this at all well.  Financial discipline is not my color.

But the short of this long story is that the budget COMBINED with this project is turning me into some kind of Depression era loony, as if the massive amount of canned goods in my pantry weren't enough evidence.  The cake recipe called for 5 eggs -- one whole and four whites.  Now, I buy the organic eggs from chickens with beaks and access to sunshine.  It's important to me, not as much to others.  I don't judge.  I merely point this out because those eggs are almost $5 a dozen, which translates to roughly 41 cents per egg.  Which means that for the four eggs that I'm only using the whites for is a waste of 82 cents, if you assume that the white is half the egg.  And 82 cents is almost a refill of a Diet Coke at the Sac-N-Pac.  I just couldn't let that kind of waste happen.  It is also possible that I desperately need a job.

So, unlike Washington, I took steps to achieve full utilization.  I made lemon curd.  And no ordinary lemon curd, either.  I made Martha Stewart's lemon curd.  Now, this link isn't the exact recipe in the original bible that is the 1995 Martha Stewart Cookbook (don't hate), but it's close.  And if I were better at math, I could actually verify that it's the same recipe increased by a third.  Potato, potato-ah.  It was good.  Dangerously good.  Heart-attack good.

And this isn't even why I am a bad-ass.  Can you believe it?  All of above was performed in the line of duty as part of my job as amazing, freaky, wheat bread and granola, no-baggies, composting mom.  It doesn't even count.

I am a bad-ass because I discovered today that if you stir one little teaspoon of lemon curd into your low fat Greek yogurt, which you don't even like but are required to eat because you get no dairy and therefore no calcium and because you need the protein, it transforms said yogurt into a culinary masterpiece of untold delight.  And I have convinced myself that such a little tiny bit of cholesterol-laden, sweetened fat droplets is totally okay.

If I'm wrong, I don't want to be right.

Mother May I

It really is one of life's great ironies that Mother's Day falls squarely in the middle of May.   When no mother ON EARTH has time to take a day off to do anything.  Now, don't get me wrong.  I like cards and presents just as much as the next girl, but seriously, any other month would be better.   The week before Christmas would be better.  We hear all the time about how busy the holidays are, how stressful, etc.  That's for everyone involved in the retail business.  Everyone involved in the parent business knows that May is the busiest, most stressful time of the year.

Every special occasion, dance, concert, band clinic, band tryout, tennis clinic, tennis lesson, and any extracurricular activity you can think of falls in May.  Because God forbid we spread it out.  No, no.  We've got to get our testing in.  I feel like we haven't been home in months.  And I'm tired.  So tired.  And doesn't it always just seem like there's one more little hiccup to make May busier?  The in-laws drop in (for a three day stay), a friend has knee surgery (and I love to cook), the college-aged son is back in town (with all of the weird negotiation over limits that that entails), or a beloved mother's home must be sold (in another town).  Each of these are things we each take on with joy and dignity and grace, but isn't it odd how these additional blessings/burdens always seem to come in May? Maybe it's God's way of making summer that much more of a relief.

And this is where it really gets weird.  I was a teacher for so long that I learned to look only toward summer for my freedom and release.  If I can just make it to Spring Break. . .if I can just make it to TAKS. . . if I can just make it to Memorial Day. . . only three days left!!!!  Only now, with a full year of home-working under my belt, it suddenly seems weird that my days are going to get fuller.  As in, there will be more people in them.  And more things to do.  I haven't decided whether that's a good thing or not.

But I'll tell you what is a good thing.  Vegetables.  And canning.  Today's harvest includes:  8 tomatillos, a dozen assorted peppers, and the year's first cucumbers.  Three of them turned out great.  Two of them look like alien heads.  Perhaps for them, relish.  Off to can.

Okay, So This Looks Really Bad

So, yesterday, on my pilgrimage of awesomeness during which I shopped at Boggy Creek, helped a friend pack up her house for a move, got a mammogram-O and bone density scan, made quiche, cleaned dishes, watered plants, took kids to tutoring, did errands, and came home, this was on my dashboard:

Yep.  That's right.  On my list were underwear, flea treatments, coffee, toilet paper, and probiotics.  So, all day, while traipsing about central Austin like a total badass, I had a post-it stuck on my dash in full view of the groovy, but fashionable populace which made it look like I had a raging case of diarrhea necessitating new undergarments and probably brought on by too much coffee.  Oh, and fleas.

I'm not even going to tell you about the underwear.  It wasn't for me.  Really.  I swear.

So much for feeling like a badass.