A few other projects and notes....

My wonderful sisters!



Thought of a few other things while sitting at the desk (almost done printing Little Man's 3rd grade science things!).....



1) I realized last night how important it was to let Precious know about hormones. When women live in the same house, they tend to get on the same cycle. She is not "cycling" yet, but her hormones are very much in drive. The past few months, about the time of my cycle, she has become bewildered by why she is particularly anxious, upset, irritable. She did not understand why she is "suddenly" always on the edge of crying. It did not occur to me to give her a heads up when MY cycle is so that she can have some idea of what is going on. I find that once i can chalk something up to hormones, I realize that I do not HAVE to give in to them---the world is not coming to an end and my life is not really that bad, I am just feeling the effects of hormones and I can choose to indulge them or not.



Last night precious was beside herself with panic because she had spent the past three nights in terror of "what if I died". She did not realize that a)because she is growing older, she will be exploring issues such as mortality and injustice and fairness and such b)when either of us is on our cycle, the other's hormones will be affected and therefore we will be more likely to be emotional before we catch it.



When I explained to her that her thoughts were normal, when we talked about death and salvation, when she understood that what she was physically feeling (upset tummy, etc) was all part of physically overbreathing, when she realized that the severity of her emotions was due to her body reacting to mine, she was MUCH relieved, and I learned a very important lesson: keep her informed AND things are happening sooner than I thought they were!



So keep your daughters informed! Your hormones might be affecting their bodies more than either of you realize, and vice versa. Likewise, if there are sisters, they also might be playing a role in each other's emotions via hormones.





Projects:

I have a project I am fairly eager to undertake. I plan to make warm fur mittens for us this winter. I have discovered that fur really is the warmest thing to use. Thisulate, down, and sorel boots just are not enough at 40 below, at least for me. There are antique shops where my grandmother lived that generally carry old furs for mere dollars. I had my mother send some of them to me and I hope to make nice warm mittens, and maybe booties, for the children and me.



I also think I am going to wear bunny boots this winter. They are not rabbit fur, but rather are severe arctic boots that are white and are totally sealed. They are supposed to be extremely warm (if not fashionable).

Chocolate covered graham crackers....I made chocolate covered graham crackers the other day. WOW I am glad I did not discover how easy it was earlier on in my life....I would be another 50 pounds heavier! They are VERY nummy and SO easy! I mixed hershey bars and semi sweet chips in a bowl, micro'd them until they were melty, and dipped the crackers in there. I scraped off some of the extra chocolate, as it was a little cool and made too thick of a covering. I also dipped a couple of oreos in there, but TWS and I were not terribly impressed.

The egg roll I made last night seemed to be a big hit. It was so TERRIBLY easy as well: cook the meat (I used ground pork) in a frying pan, mix it in a bowl with a bag of premade coleslaw mix (I do not buy salad stuff at the store, but since this was being fried, I figured it would be ok), and add soy, pepper, ginger, salt, onion powder. I also added some sweet warm curry powder, but think I will forego that. I really like that flavor, but it is VERY cloying and overpowering. You could smell and taste that so much, even though I used probably half a teaspoon for probably 2o egg rolls.

Anyway, separate the egg roll wrappers and put about 1-2T of the pork and coleslaw mix in them and roll them up. Add more oil to the pork drippings and get it up to temp and fry the egg rolls. It does not take too long to fry them at all. They hold their heat VERY VERY well, in fact, there were some that were still very hot on the inside by the end of the meal.

My only suggestion would be to separate your wrappers before the oil gets hot. I was scrambling to keep the cooking egg rolls from burning while I wrapped the next batch. I would have been much better off taking the time to separate the sheets first.

Oh, during this time I also had put on a pot of rice, so we had that with the egg roll. I keep calling them egg rolls, but they were actually more like lumpia. I was using lumpia wrappers.

Supper tonight is supposed to be texmex soup with cornbread. Colastie gave me some White Lily cornbread mix (I will tell y'all about our family's obsession with White Lily flour some time!).

My wonderful TWS just came home, so I need to for now! God bless you my sisters!