Washable - My Pasty, White Behind!

I know it may be a bit early in the morning to be talking about my pasty, white behind, and some may argue there's never a decent moment to throw that subject into a conversation (much less start one with it). But, this is my blog, and I figure it's an attention-grabbing post title. Besides, I don't really want to talk to you about my pasty, white behind (Why would I want to share with complete strangers details about how it's gradually spreading with the birth of each child? What am I going to do? Give you dimensions to compare with your own pale, expanding hindside?). What I really want to share is a little... perhaps we could call it a rant of sorts. You know those washable markers - or, at least, the markers they claim are washable? Yeah, you know the ones. If you're like me, you've spent many an hour attempting to remove the likes of their washable markings from every surface of your home. This is, no doubt, when you learned they weren't really that washable, after all.

Well, yesterday, Jackson Pollock struck again (if you don't know who Jackson Pollock was, click here. If you want to be Jackson Pollock go here, and start moving your arrow around the page. Click on the screen to change colors. You can press the space bar to start over with a clean slate - err, I mean canvas.). For those who don't want to roam around the net, I'll just tell you that he was pretty much the father of splatter paint, an artform Lambchop #2 is working hard to perfect these days. As you can see in the picture here, the little guy decided he got into too much trouble when he used my furniture as a canvas. So, our future tattoo artist decided to use his own skin, instead. Daddy wasn't particularly happy with this masterpiece, but I found it a little funny - especially when I couldn't get the stuff off. I even used alcohol on a pad of cotton. It lightened a bit but was far from gone. Let's just see if it wears off before school on Monday. They're pretty much getting used to me bringing him in with all sorts of stories to tell (like the nice shiner he had on his right eye from taking a plastic swing seat to the face). Actually, they've got stories of their own to tell when I go get him. I seem to recall him coloring his face and the shirt of his friend just the other day at school, as a matter of fact. Got to love him for his entertainment value, if nothing else.


This next photo was taken at Lambchop #2's birthday party. He had tons of fun, but since he barely ever sat still, I couldn't get a decent shot of him. Lambchop #1 is much calmer, so I'll show one of her, instead. This is actually the one good one I've gotten of her, though. She's recently started making a really goofy face in pictures. It's this self-conscious smile that looks really awful. She has such a beautiful natural smile, but she's been replacing it with the weird one in pictures lately. I've pointed it out to her, and she's making an effort to smile more normally. My husband tells me that a good photographer would be able to get them when they're smiling naturally, without them knowing I had taken the picture. True, perhaps, but every time they see me with the camera, the automatically strike a pose. And you should try taking pictures of a moving toddler with a digital camera whose delay is longer than a USA Network commercial break (for those of you who've never watched USA, the longest commercial break I ever timed was over 13 minutes towards the end of a movie).


I've got no pictures of the third Lambchop today. I tried, but they were blurry. I do have pictures of food, though, if that helps. I just wanted to share a couple of yummy shots with you. The first one is the haul of veggies I brought in on December 1st. No, you didn't read August 1st. You read December 1st. Weird, huh? I'll admit the tomatoes weren't quite like the ones you pick in mid-summer, but they weren't bad at all. I made quite a delicious sauce with them. Got the recipe from a novel I was reading the other day (halve an onion, throw it in the pot with a stick of butter and a bunch of tomatoes, simmer for one hour). Not fat-free, by any means, but very tasty.

And, last, but certainly not least is this plate of homemade donuts. In an effort to keep my family healthy, I cook up dishes like that tomato sauce and serve it at the same meal as a batch of these babies - because you can never have too much cholesterol, I guess, huh? I got the recipe from my Baird on Bread book. Actually, it's a book I bought my husband before we were married. At the time, he was attempting to make his own bread about once a week. I know for a fact that I've used the book much more than he did. It's probably why I married him (it is a really good book). I had been wanting to try the yeasted donuts recipe for quite a while but hadn't gotten around to it. I took care of that last night. They look really good, don't they? And, I think they would have been if they had gotten fully cooked on the inside. I guess my oil was too hot, so they were gooey in the center. We tried baking them in the oven this morning, but their sugar coating hardened and browned the outside a bit too much. Oh well. I'll try again some day. They're pretty, though, aren't they?



Maybe next time, I'll show you the progress I've made on the mohair sweater I'm making for Lambchop #1. And, speaking of that sweater, a couple of commenters had mentioned some things about it. First, for the person who asked (forgot who it was, sorry) what was laying next to the body (was it a sock?)... it was the sleeve I had started knitting. I'm knitting this sweater in the round. I've put the body on hold after knitting from the bottom edge up to the arm pits. Now, I'm knitting the sleeves, which will be added onto a circular needle to be joined in with the body later. I was able to get rid of that ugly gap, by the way. So, although the tip about putting the sweater in the freezer may have been helpful for if I wanted to rip it, it wasn't necessary.

Now, I need to go serve up some chocolate-peanut butter bars I made yesterday as well (yeah, we're on a real health kick around here).