Casserole

When I was growing up if I went into the kitchen and asked my mother what was for dinner, 90% of the time the answer was the same.

Casserole.

On good days I would groan and slunk out of the kitchen.  On bad days I would groan, stay in the kitchen and  complain about it.

Casserole meant that whatever contents of the kitchen could be rounded up would be tossed in the frying pan and cooked up en suite. This post is like that.  Whatever I can round up in my head will be tossed in.  Sometimes my mama's casseroles turned out really good, sometimes they were awful, most of the time they just were.  Not too good, not too bad just...food. (we ate really good food too, it's just that the really good dishes all had actual names) I imagine that's how this post will turn out. 

Duke got a wool diaper cover for Christmas.  Thrilling gift, no?  I've been reading about the wonders of wool since I started investigating cloth long ago while expecting Enzo. Diaper covers made simply of yarn? No plastic? And somehow your babe does not wake up lying in a pee puddle? Not to mention the claims that the wool was soft rather than scratchy. It was magic I wanted desperately to believe in.  I begrudged myself my lack of faith in the matter.  

I finally got around to using the wool cover today.  Guess what.  The magic is real!  He wore it all morning with no dampness seeping through.  When I changed him out if it I found myself contemplating wool covers of all kinds.  

Tomorrow it's my turn to teach pre-school again. This week, the letter O.  This letter is much more fun than the other letters I've been dealt.  I think I'll bring the blender to the table and let them help make orange julius for snack time one day.

I'm going to be re-painting my table soon.  I'd planned to do it this week but I just now realized the flaw in that plan.  I'll need the table for pre-school. What happened is, the table top that I spent so much time sanding, went all to hell once I got it in the house. 

The Polycrylic recommended by the man in the paint department is what did it.  That stuff grabs messes and holds tight with both hands.  If you write on a piece of paper, turn it over and write on the back the graphite from the front side will transfer to the table top.  Removing the resulting marks will take buckets of elbow grease and leave a dull smudge on the table's finish.  Imagine the trouble caused by substances more stubborn than pencil.  Substances that at times wind up being applied to the table top directly rather than transferred from the backs of papers.  

It wasn't long after I finished the project that I accepted the reality that I'd need to re-do the most time consuming portion of it. Meanwhile, as I've been working up to the task I decided to change the colors in the house so now, instead of just the table top I'll be painting it in it's entirety.

Zizza is sitting by me.  She ran out of things to do elsewhere.  She insists that she can sit beside me quietly without disturbing.  She cannot.  She tries, but she just has to talk to me.  She has to.  Right now she's crying at me about a preschool project she wishes she'd been able to participate in seven weeks ago.  Even when she has a book to read she can't manage to sit here quietly as I type.  More than once I've come out from under a paragraph to realize she's been reading a passage aloud and now wants a response from me on the hilarity of it's content. 

You'll have to excuse the lack of conclusion to this casserole, as my child is now pouncing and whispering the word "Pecaw" repeatedly.  This inhibits my ability to form sentences.