Apparently, yes, spices do expire.  I settled in today to clean out my pantry. A job that has been screaming at me since at least Christmas, if not earlier.  Every time I would open up a door to get a seasoning, it would yell “Hey lazy lady, clean me.” It really  happened in my head.

I have three doors to my pantry.  Each door has 4 shelves and a bottom space (aka dust collector spot) and all sixteen shelves were in bad shape. I started with the spices.  I cannot believe how many spices were duplicated or outdated. It was shameful. I usually make fun of my mom and mother-in-law for having outdated stuff and here I am with outdates myself. My head is hung in shame and I will await the teasing calls once my moms have read this.  The worst offending item was a unopened bottle of sage that expired in 2006. This is horrible. We moved to this house in 2008. I moved expired stuff with me!

After sorting out all my things and realizing that I  had four canisters of bread crumbs I was ashamed of the waste I had been apart of. I tried to recycle the containers, and keep the lids for a project Meg is working on, but it was still weighed heavy on me. 

So in the spirit of my goal this year to become more organized, I have decided to make a list of all the spices I have in the cupboard and have it handy, that way when I see a new recipe I can check my list. This will keep me from buying new items because I was to lazy or to unorganized to find out if I had them or not.

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The rest of the pantry turned out fine. No big messes to clean, no traces of mice. It looks nice for now and it up to date which gives me a happy feeling. I dropped off a bag of items  I don’t use anymore at the Goodwill and feel all reusey now. A real word I swear.

So fess up. What is the most expired item you have ever pulled out of your cabinets?  I know that my mom in law had ipecac syrup from the 1980′s in 1999 (shhhh, don’t tell her I told you!).

Happy April Fool’s Day everyone. I have no jokes to play on you. In fact I am bad at the whole April Fool’s Day in general. I can never get anyone and I doubt most people during the entire day so I don’t always fall for jokes either and it is funny to be in a funny fool’s day joke. Sometimes. If it is a not to mean one.

This morning I got the bright idea to tell the girls it was a two-hour delay for school. I made me phone ring, answered it, did some really bad acting and told the girls there was a two-hour delay.  Meg moaned that she could have slept in. Enu was furious because there was no snow on the ground. Elle did her happy Who-hoo with her hands held high. Mita just kept saying “Are you joking”. After they went on like this for a minute I shouted April Fool’s Day! I then danced and tried to do the moonwalk, then sang a bit. In general I rubbed it in and celebrated that I actually pulled off a Fool’s Day joke.

They were not amused, but for the most part were happy that their mom was happy :)

What is the best Fool’s Day joke you have been apart of?

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I’m really missing my social media.  I feel like I don’t know what is going on with anyone.  One might read this and say, “Who cares?” and to some degree I don’t care. I know that it is not necessary to see the recipe that a  friend is making for dinner, or to see the latest picture of your baby.  Not necessary, but still important non-the-less.  That may not make sense to some, but I don’t get to see my friends and family everyday. We are all busy with kids, school, jobs and appointments. Seeing a little bit of a friend’s day does make me feel closer to them, that I am involved in their lives. Even if it is just a comment on a post, it lets them know I am thinking of them.

So I am missing my connection with the world. I can still call and email and even in real life visit, and  I do.  Social media just makes things fun and easy, if not necessary to survive.

Again, as I posted last week. I am spending more time with my Bible study and in prayer and using this exercise of Lent to make me a better person ( I hope!).

This experience is not useless, nor is it easy. It is a bit lonely. Only a few weeks left!

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(Denim, Beer and Tools = My dad.)

Sometimes they still like you enough to goof around.

To tease and hug you. To act silly and not worry about being cool.

I wish this could last forever.

We starting watching the Back to the Future series with the girls.  Well the older two, the younger two didn’t make it through the opening credits.

We told them that we were ten when this movie came out.  Comments such as “They had flashlights, back then?” ” They had Diet Pepsi back then?” got old very quickly!  They really think we are ancient, but I guess I thought my parents were as well when I was eleven.  They also though the Delorian was a GMC.

It is fun to watch a movie I haven’t seen in decades.  I totally forgot how funny it was, how great the music was (Earth Angel is the best), the dances and dresses all fun to watch with the girls.  It was also a decent series to watch with the kids. We recorded it off the TV so it was edited for us and had a few minor cuss words and no sex, just a bit of kissing and a make out scene.  Wow. A movie with no sex in it. Amazing.  With the eleven year olds a make out scene produces giggling, but they giggle at everything anymore.

Hubby said if he had a time machine he would go back into time and live as a Native American. I said I wanted to be Laura from Little House. He then made a few remarks about me not being domestic enough to be a pioneer girl. Whatever. I could so be Laura.

What time would you go back to?

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I don’t iron clothes.  I have zero experience with this. I grew up with a mom who treated ironing like an Olympic sport. She loved to iron, so I let her iron all of my clothes. I have  driven to her house to have her iron things for me (Not in the recent decade though as I have grown up a bit.).  I am sure that she tried to teach me.  I am also sure that I didn’t even try to listen as when I was a teenager I treated ignoring my mother like an Olympic sport.

Hubby used to iron all his own clothing. Then he started buying wrinkle-free clothes and I made sure to get them from the dryer in record time so I could just hang them up and not worry about it.  He recently bought some new shirts from Kohl’s. He is normally a JC Penny guy, but I had major Kohl’s cash from buying my Dyson.  These new shirts claim to be wrinkle free. I beg to differ.

For two weeks I have had three of these shirts hanging up, a reminder to iron them.  I ignored them for as long as I could, then realized that they were not going away.  I donned my trusty Domestic Goddess Apron ( it gives me confidence to try all things homey. I even canned in it last year.) and set up the ironing board. I brought the board and iron up from the basement as I didn’t want to be stuck down there in the dark, dreary room on top of having to iron and I channeled my grandma.

I thought about how all clothes had to be ironed back in the day and how my grandma with seven kids must have ironed a lot. Or made her seven kids do it…I should check on that one  and put it to use in my own home!  Anyway, I set up in the kitchen, turned on the iPod to U2 and got to work.

Or tried to get to work. After filling up the steam resivor, it leaked everywhere. I don’t know if this is normal or if the iron is broken, but everything was soaked. I dried it all before plugging it in as I didn’t want to do any “Death by ironing” that day.

I ironed the shirt. It looked just as bad as it had before, which is the normal to my ironing forays.  This time though I got mad, I mean how hard can this be?  I did what my grandma never would have thought of doing. I got out my laptop and found a YouTube video on how to iron a shirt. There are several out there. Some annoying, some helpful. One lady with a British accent was good, but she different names for the parts of the shirt and I got all messed up.

The older girls got home from school while I was ironing and looked at me in amazement.  They couldn’t believe that I didn’t know how to iron. They thought it was a riot that I was learning from a YouTube video. They treated me as if I was as old as a grandma.

Their time is coming. Once I get the hang of this, I will gladly pass the talent on down the line.

All in all, I learned something. The shirts look okay enough to put in the closet, but next time they will be better.  Next time I’ll try this starch thing and see how it works.

Are you an ironing queen or do you have to dust the ironing board off every time you use it?  Be truthful now!

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Last night Meg decided to become a weekday vegetarian.   She was eating a piece of KFC (busy night for mom) and was grossed out by the bones. She doesn’t want to give up bacon, so she decided to eat it only on the weekends.   Tonight we had our rainbow dinner * and at the beginning of dinner she announced again that she was a vegetarian.  Mita quickly stated that she too was giving up meat.  As Enu passed the pepperoni to Mita she started to take some, we told her that she couldn’t eat that if she was a vegetarian. She looked so surprised and said,”Pepperoni is meat?”  She quickly recanted her announcement and is now carnivore once again.

This reminds me of how we can sometimes jump into things without realizing the full reality of what we have committed to. When I gave up social media for Lent I hadn’t realized how isolated I would feel. I like my on-line friends, I like keeping up with my real life friends on the computer as well.

I  do not know how many days it has been now since I gave up Social Media for Lent.  It has been over two weeks maybe? I am surviving, as one will not die from lack of tweeting.  I read a blog on BlogHer about people giving up social media for Lent. I guess there are a lot of us out there. I am so very trendy aren’t I?!

I did get on Facebook this past week to send a message to a friend who was going through a hard time.  I told her that God would understand.

Since Lent started I have had more Bible study time, journal time and prayer time. My world has slowed down a bit.  All of these things are good.  I will be happy to get back in the Tweet, but I can wait. I’m feeling really good about me decision to give up something for Lent, remember this was my first time observing Lent this way.

*The rainbow dinner came about because the girls were not eating enough fruits and veggies. One night I served only raw fruits, veggies, cheese, crackers, pepperoni and several dips to choose from.  I had platter of familiar and not so familiar fruits/veggies and told the kids they had to eat all the colors of the rainbow. I ask the kids to try at least two new foods. They like it, Hubby likes it and I have already cut up food items for lunch boxes the next few days! I need to do this more often, this was our second rainbow dinner.

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It may seem like I am on a roll in my adoption book challenge and I guess I am, if not by choice, by the fact the library  had the last two books in and sent to me at the same time! I hate waiting on books, so I wanted to read these while I had them.  I do have to say that back-to-back non-fiction adoption books can be a bit heavy and I have promised my self some time off the heavy reading for a while. I need some fluff – mind numbing fluff! 

The title of this book says so much, The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade .  Written by Ann Fessler, and adoptee, this book’s heart-wrenching stories and startling facts make it a difficult book to read at times.  The book was published in 2006, so it is fairly recent and very much tells a story that one of your (or my) own family members could have lived through.

I have  listened to my mom talk of having to wear skirts to school because pants on girls where not allowed or how my mother-in-law was on a basketball team that organized themselves becauses schools didn’t have athletics for girls.  These stories make me shake my head. So much has changed in just a few decades it really is like two different worlds in many ways.

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Fessler points out that it was the post WWII years of conformity that brought about this time of adoptoin coersion.  I don’t even know if coersion is the right word as deceit and unlawfulness was the normal to unwed mothers and there children were basically stolen from them. I’m sure that not all adoptions were this way, but after reading this book you cannot help but see the similarities of the stories.  So many girls were told that their baby was going to a new family of a “Doctor and stay at home mom” or were asked “Do you want your child to be called a bastard on the playground?”. As one birth-mother said in the book, it was as if they had a script on how to get a pregnant woman to give up her baby.

I am not surprised that the parents of the pregnant women were upset. I do find it reprehensible that so many went way passed upset and were just plain mean and cruel to their own daughters and grandchildren.  Socital pressure was that strong? Unbelievable.  This again reaffirms to me that there has never been a time of  “good old days” that people look fondly at.

Hearing these stories from birth mothers and adoptees reinforcess how imperative it is that there is more openness with adoption.  If not fully open adoptions, medical histories, photos, letters and for heaven sake OPEN RECORDS. 

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 It is 2011 the age of  at our fingertips is mind whirling and yet there are people who have been told they have no right to find out who and where they came from. If more people would just stop and think about this issue, I dare to say that  records wouldn’t be closed anymore. It just makes sense.

While the numbers of “girls” who disappear for an unplanned pregnancy have diminished, there is still a lot of ethical problems with adoption.  You don’t have to look hard to find articles of pregancy distress centers working with adoption agencies or authority figures telling pregnant moms that their baby deserves better. As sick as it sounds adoption is big business and when there is big business there seems to be a flourish of ethical issues.

It is imperative that adoptions are ethical. I have heard so many comments of how adoption is to complicated, that adoptive parents have to wait to long, that if a child needs a home she should have it now and not have to wait for paperwork.  I have personally felt all of those things during my adoption process, but I can honestly say that knowing that my adoption was ethical is so comforting to me now.  If there had been any doubt in my mind that my girls’ family was coerced, paid, bribed or even worse my conscience would forever be marked.

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If you know of a family member or friend who has had a “quiet” adoption in her past I encourage you to read this book, try and see the experience she is having and be a very good friend to her. This is also an informative book for all members of the adoption triad.

At my Girl Scout Cadette meeting last Friday I brought up the crisis in Japan.  We are doing a Journey (A new Girl Scout badge book) named Breathe this year and are learning about the aspects of air.  Radiation leaks seemed to fit in nicely(okay, that sentence is weird) so I thought we would discuss it.

First off  I asked them “What is going on in Japan?”  Several girls ( I had about 14 girls there) shout out “Earthquake, Tsunami, Flooding, It is flattened”.  Then after some time someone says “Radiation”.  Bingo.

What is radiation? ” Um, bad for you.” “Gives you Diarrhea.”

Where does radiation come from? “Bombs from war.” “Nuclear power.” Bingo.

What is Nuclear Power? “Bad.”For War.” “Dangerous”

Is there anything good about Nuclear  Power? ” No.” “No.” No.” “Well, it does give us power.”

So Nuclear Power can be useful and dangerous? “Yeah.” “You have to be careful with it.” Bingo.

So in about five minutes fourteen girls were able to concentrate, after school no less, on a current event.  They knew what was going on, even though they wanted to act as if they didn’t. They are listening to what we talk about, they are catching some of the news we watching. They can figure out problems and solutions even though they act like they cannot.  We need to realize that and make sure we are talking things out with our kids so they are getting the full side of the story and are able to verbalize thoughts and fears.

I am editing out the diarrhea conversation that happened between the above comments.  Once the word diarrhea entered the subject matter they all got silly and talk of atomic toilets and nuclear flushers went rampant.  Fourteen 11, 12 and 13 year-old-girls silly. Who would have thought?

To end out the lessons we wrote Haiku to send to the Girl Scouts in Japan.  They wrote two. On silly diarrhea one and one serious one.  Here are some samples, don’t pay to close attention to the 5-7-5 rule please!

Were sorry about

What happened things will turn out

Do not lose your hope.

DH age 11

Did you hear the news

Japan is having problems

Our prayers are with you

LT age 13

Your flag is still

Waving white and red

Haiku is for you

EN age 11

White flying Japan

Stand proud honor repeat yeah

You’re in our thoughts yeah

RS age 12

This one is great, though not quite a Haiku

True-fully I am

Sad to see your destruction

Your arches, once so beautiful

Are tearfully torn apart

Rain is before the rainbow

Your luck is to start.

JGK age 12

Some things are not good

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What’s happening is not good

Good things are coming

MM age 11

 

I love these girls!