Dirty Socks

Socks; what a great invention. In the winter they keep you feet warm and toasty, in the summer they keep your sneakers from giving you blisters. Just think about it, socks are merely simple cloth tubes with a little Lycra in them to help them stay up. The hole at the top is always big enough, no matter how big you are, to slip your foot into, and of course, big enough to slip your foot out of as well, right?
Well if you are you, that may be correct and if you are me, then I’d agree also, but if you are one of the guys living in my house you’d be scratching you head in confusion
because for you, socks are very hard to get off.
If you’re one of the guys living in my house you never take your socks off, right-side-out, instead you grab the top edge and roll that sock down until it’s free of your foot; an inside out, sweaty glob of cotton. In the spring and fall these little globs can be full of thousands of little splinters of mulch, which provide hours of picking–out-the-mulch fun.
Sometimes these globs are clotted with grass clippings from the yard, the effect, when the sock is pulled right side out again, is much like a cheery little ticker tape parade right in front of the washer. But the best and most mysterious globs are the ones that are sopping wet.
I’ve wavered back and forth, from refusing to touch, let alone clean these socks, to throwing them into the washer in their tight, cue-ball shapes, (only with the offender’s clothes of course). Since my son has been spending his mornings running around at football camp and his afternoons mowing a few lawns for the neighbors, I’ve taken to poking his socks into the basket with a yard stick and throwing them into the wash as is. I figure, he can have the ticker tape parade in his own room, the only one he’s responsible for vacuuming.

Laundry Basket As Suitcase

A quick update on the, laundry-basket-as-suitcase, situation. This morning my son called me into the kitchen while he was watching Sports Center. Look at that, he said pointing at a couple of Eagles football players walking across the screen, did you see what that guy was carrying? I looked at the TV and at the backs of a couple of players carying suitcases across a parking lot. The anouncer was babbling excitedly about the Eagles arriving at training camp, bla, bla, bla. My son sat back, I can't believe you missed it he said, but I swear, one of those guys was carrying a white laundry basket into the dorms, and it was filled to the top with folded clothes. 

Wake-up Call

When we go to the shore, I love waking up early in the morning and walking for miles along the beach. I usually get up at about 6:30 and wake everyone else up so that they can come out and enjoy the ocean breeze with me.
Well, you can guess how that goes over. I end up with two and a half grumpy people, (my daughter is mostly receptive), who are only thinking of the sleep I stole from them.
Like most things, I forget about this every year and every year I end up feeling perplexed by the less than enthusiastic attitudes of those I love; why don’t they see how much fun this is, I think to myself as I try to wake them every morning, year after year.
Ah – but it must be that my advancing age, and all the Oprah shows I watched when my kids were little, actually turned out to be good for something, because this year I only tried to wake them on the first morning. Their furrowed brows and flash of arms as they yanked the covers back over their heads finally popped my, everyone-must-have-fun-together bubble.
So for the rest of the week I got up early, dressed amid the hum and whistle of my sleeping family and walked straight into the rising sun. And you know what? I enjoyed the ocean breeze and the wide sky all by myself. I guess that’s why they say, another year older, another year wiser.

Vacation Snaps

Here are a few shots of our vacation. The yellow building is in Cape May and is called Congress Hall, (notice the cool lobby on the bottom left), it is a beautiful historical building that was completely refurbished a few years ago. We usually stay here, but this time when we arrived they didn't have the room they promissed us so the bumped us up to their new property called The Sandpiper. It is an old hotel, (not as old as Congress Hall), that they refurbished as condos. We loved the absolute quiet and the views of the beach. The pictures of the fish are self-explanatory, they are just pretty to look at. 

We're Outa Here

Today we are heading to the beach for a five day break from the normal routine. Everyone packed themselves again with no interference from me. Keeping my hands and eyes out of their bags doesn't count for much though because I know that there's no place we'll be that will require any kind of appropriate, stuffy attire. One thing I did do was stop my husband from packing all his clothes, (underwear, socks and shoes) in a white plastic laundry basket. "It's easier to carry" he protested. I could just picture him plopping his basket down on the marble floor in front of the fancy check-in desk, turning to the bus boy and saying, "Careful with that, it's a blue-light special".

Ta-Da!

 

My Daisy Cake From Scratch

We were invited to a friend’s house for a 4th of July picnic and I decided to make a cake from scratch. Not only did I decide to make a cake from scratch, I was going to pour it into a fancy Williams - Sonoma cake pan and then glaze the top with sugar, just like the picture on the cardboard wrapper. I enlisted my children to help me; we sifted the flour and baking powder over wax paper, beat room temperature butter until is was creamy, added the sugar and beat some more. Then, I separated the flour mixture into three parts and added 4 eggs, one at a time, and 2 egg yokes into the bowl, interspacing the flour perfectly. My son beat the mix and my daughter helped by folding the batter into the middle; it looked perfect.
OK, so I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking, doesn’t this girl know how to flour a pan? Of course I floured that pan! I sprayed the whole thing with Pam, every stinkin’ little daisy and the whole row of dentil molding detail that sailed around the top edge of the pan. Then I wasted half a bag of flour trying to cover everything. I cooked it, the toothpick came out clean, and then I cooled it on the rack for 10 minutes, just as instructed. Ah, but you know what comes next with a cake pan like this, you must turn the whole thing upside down and watch it slide effortlessly from your heavily floured pan. You then get to walk around your house, cake held out in front of you, a proud smile glowing like a beacon in the night, your family, and then later, your friends will be astonished at your talents, and at that moment you will know that you’ve risen to the top of the baking ladder.
But that’s not what happened to me. I turned the pan over and nothing happened. Now, let me mention that the pan is still hot and hard to hold with oven mitts. So I attempt to tilt the pan up, (with my padded, flipper-type hands) and slide a knife around the outer edge, but it doesn’t budge. After a few more wiggles and some more work with the knife, my cake finally slides free, in several parts. You could say that the scene that followed was an excellent lesson for my children in what NOT to do when you’re frustrated. After my mini breakdown I remembered that I had a couple of packages of chocolate pudding and a pre-made gram cracker crust which turned itself into a lovely chocolate pudding pie that I brought to the picnic. I didn’t hide my lemon cake in shame though, I brought it to the party too, and everyone seemed to like it. My cake fiasco won’t cause me to retreat back to the safety of banana bread land, I’m up for venturing even further into the art of dessert making, but you can be sure I won’t try baking anything in this pan again.