Is it really possible that we have 4 snowshovels and no rake? Really?




(I decided that it would be a kindness to our neighbors, some of whom are showing their house, if I cut down and hauled away the most obviously dead of the tropicals from our front 'flowerbed.' So I clipped, and hauled much of the brown stuff away to the woods - but the rest will require a rake. How can we not have a rake? We have a YARD. We have TREES. They make LEAVES.)

On the other hand, we don't have a mower, and that works out fine.

It's not like I want to be in a position of using a rake regularly.
It just seems odd, is all I'm saying.

I also dispensed with the pumpkin. The Halloween pumpkin. I'm sure the squirrels will enjoy eating it in the creekbed just as much as they have on the porch.

I want to point out, to their credit, that our neighbors do not seem to hate us. At all. Despite all this.

I am home with Barf Boy, who has not barfed in more than 28 hours. He's down for a nap, which gave me a chance for a few minutes of house maintenance (also threw in a load of laundry.) I have to get him up soon...

more domestic mysteries: if a family has 3 rubbermaid bins of Christmas decor, and used at least one-and-a-half bins worth (the unbreakable portion) for this year's celebration, why, when I go down to the basement to get something to put stuff away in, ARE THERE THREE OBSERVABLY FULL BINS???

Today's recipe: beef stew in the crock pot. After reading recipes at About.com and other sites, I decided that you could pretty much chuck WHATEVER into a crock pot with some stock and some wine and be able to dish dinner out of it in 7 hours. I'll let you know if this is true.

[edited to add: apparently, YES! $2 worth of meat, some sprouted root vegetables, and a little icky zinfandel + 7 hours = delicious! It's like magic!]


Later tonight, I will go on my neglected mommyblog and tell you The Happy Tale of A Boy and his Lobster.