Chocolate Covered Critters

I am a big fan of educational projects, and boy, did we come up with a good one today. Weston and I were talking about cicadas, and I remembered that I had just read an article about a shop that made cicada ice cream. This reminded Weston that I once promised him that he could try chocolate covered grasshoppers some time, and upon recalling this, he wanted to have them immediately. Since it's not grasshopper season here yet, I told him he would have to wait, and we spent some time speculating on what the best method of dispatching them would be. I favor putting them in the freezer, but Weston prefers poking them with a pin until they bleed to death. He also liked the idea of pinching their heads off, because that way he wouldn't have to eat the eyes.

Then, he spied some ants on the driveway and asked if we could eat chocolate covered ants. DEFINITELY, I said, and the boys set about capturing unsuspecting victims. This occupied them for quite some time, and they ended up with a small handful of black ants and a daddy long legs. Surprisingly, internet recipes for chocolate covered bugs are not super numerous, but I did find this one. It was a little elaborate for my level of ambition, so instead of all the dreary vanilla pod scraping and egg beating, I just melted some chocolate chips with a little butter and let them use that. They gently folded their critters into the chocolate, and then dropped spoonfuls of the mix onto waxed paper. We cooled them in the refrigerator, and voila! Chocolate covered ants, just like the fancy folks eat! They gobbled them right up, too, and said they were delicious.

Next time maybe I'll broaden their horizons and fix up some bugs sans chocolate. You can stir fry, deep fry, roast and shishkebab; did you know that? This is information that will come in super handy after the earthquake, when I have to sleep on the trampoline and drink my own pee. I'm not a girl to miss a meal, so I need to plan ahead. I even got to thinking, maybe we could eat slugs! There is a cornucopia of them around here for sure, but the only recipe I could find was this one for fritters, and I don't like fritters. Too eggy. Plus, after the earthquake, the eggs will probably all be smashed. I'm also not a girl to give up too easily, though. I'm thinking I could slice them open and get all those gross innards out, then stuff them with ants and roast them over an open fire. I'm open to suggestions, though, let me know if you have any ideas! Or if you want to come over for dinner anytime soon.

Homefront

Some of you might be wondering what's going on at home while I'm at my fancy new office. It's been fumigated for the fish juice stench, so I feel okay calling it fancy, considering my frame of reference. Especially now that I have my gargoyles all set up. And don't worry, I'm getting along fine. I have figured out who to kiss up to (the secretary and the security guard) and haven't had any more pants-related issues. I'll keep you posted.

Now, moving on to the homefront: as we all know, household management is a VERY daunting task, particularly when you really just want to lay on the couch and read books all day. In addition to all the usual drudgery, we have just started homeschooling this fall.

I have to admit, I was a TINY bit concerned about leaving Lloyd in charge. He has no interest in laying on the couch reading books, but he is pretty deeply involved in some elaborate projects involving fishing lures and tackle boxes, woodpiles, boats and a rototiller. Oh, and flight instructing on the side. Also, we have completely different philosophies about.... oh, EVERYTHING. Homeschooling, for example. I am a fan of child-led learning, where you can go worksheet and curriculum free. Partly because this is how kids learn the most effectively, but also this seems to be the method that provides the most free time for laying on the couch reading. Unsurprisingly, Lloyd completely hates that approach and insists on a strictly scheduled plan with measurable metrics. He's all checklists and square meals; I'm clothes optional and snacks all day.

So how's it going, you ask? Friends, it is AWESOME! Lloyd has this place humming along like a $150 million dollar jet. After all, if the Government can trust him, maybe I can, too. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, I crack myself up. But really, we should have done this AGES ago. Weston loves his math sheets and his gold stars, who would have guessed? Not me, that's for sure. I NEVER would have tried that. He can't wait for school to start every morning (at 9 a.m. sharp, natch) and he sits there cheerfully for well over an hour, completing his carefully selected tasks for the day. Crazy! Everything would be absolutely perfect if only I could get Lloyd to quit asking me where the book is that gives him all the guidelines for homeschooling. Oh, I just figured out how to solve that problem, yay me! Next time, I'm just going to make motorcycle hands and say, "Vroom, vroom, I can't hear you!"

Work

Today, for the first time in six years, one month and seven days, I left the house to go to work. Pretty zany, huh? I brushed my hair, put on shiny shoes and mascara and teetered out the door at O'dark thirty with a briefcase. Aren't I such a FANCYPANTS?!?!?!?!?!? I felt all smart and PROFESSIONAL, and it was FANTASTIC!

Well, until I got there. I will actually be working in a smallish office very near my house, but had to go into the main office first to fill out reams of paperwork, get my equipment issued and attend a Senior Staff meeting to meet all the muckety-mucks. I'll just skip the part about how the phone box to get through to security to get through the gate is like one of those japanese puzzle boxes with no visible means of opening it and the security guards laughed at me, shall I?

After I finally weaseled my way into the place, which is literally a huge maze-like bunker two floors deep, I was presented with a pile of paper taller than my head and a ratty ballpoint made by blind people in Wisconsin. Or somewhere like that; how the hell would they know?

Then it was time for the meeting. A little backstory might come in handy here: you might recall my recent involuntary diet, during which I dropped a significant bit of weight. This, as you might guess, caused me a significant pants problem, as in, I had none that I could wear, so for the past two weeks I have been frantically shopping for office-appropriate legwear. Desperation does not make shopping fun, friends. Finally, just this past weekend, I cobbled together some suitable attire, or so I thought. Really, you should test drive new office clothes, but pressed for time, I went with the new pants. Which are FINE, don't get me wrong, but they have one of those flat metal tab things that slides into a little catch for a fastener. This is not a secure arrangement, as it can just slide right back out, so there is also a button on the inside. Not being a fan of extraneous fastenings, I went commando on the button and paid the ultimate price while making my way to the cluster of bosspeople. Too bad I wasn't in the pen factory. Note to self: no such thing as extraneous fastenings.

After that smashingly successful meet and greet, I gathered up my equipment, including a mobile device that I'm pretty sure could simultaneously program a missile guidance system and break the Vernam Cipher. Naturally, I can't even turn it on, but I cannot possibly admit this, and am therefore now forced to capitulate and learn to.... do whatever the hell that stupid thing does. I went to the smaller office where I will be working, and got my cube. It's nice and clean, or WAS, until I spilled tea all over my desk. Normally, I would have SOMETHING to sop up spills in my office- gym clothes, paper towels, kleenex, SOMETHING, but since I had just moved in, I had nothing. Nada. Zip. Now that I'm sitting here after the fact with some wine, I realize I should have used the fancy contraption because that totally would have solved two problems at once, but since I wasn't thinking clearly, I wiped it up with my ivory colored coat. It wasn't especially absorbent, and so I just sat on the desk and squirmed around in the offending pants to soak up the excess, and to teach them a lesson. After all, I didn't want to make my new cubicle neighbors think I was WEIRD because I spilled tea, right?

With that accomplished, I set out to send emails to all my friends, find the coffee pot, and do all the other REALLY important stuff. It was going great, until I started smelling something very, very foul in my cube. I sniffed around like some demented little dog until I figured out that it was the floor. I think it's rotten tuna fish juice, and it was fine until I started spilling tea on it and rolling my chair around and walking on it. Lucky for me, I was assigned an office 'sponsor' whose duty it is to help me out. This poor sucker had no clue what he was in for, but he gamely helped me spritz the floor with some carpet cleaner and scrub it with paper towels. Then we started questioning all the folks in the cuberhood about who was there before me and what the stench might be. A little information was gleaned: the previous occupant might or might not have been named 'Don' and he may have left a few months ago to work for the state, but no one knows why. It's BECAUSE OF THE SMELL, fools!

So that's the day one report. I'll keep you posted, but right now I have to find my febreeze, and some super glue for my pants.

Book

Look how fancy I am! LOOK, LOOK, LOOK!!!!!! It's my very own BOOK! Well, it's not a REAL book, of course, like Monica and Alexa have. But it's cool enough to make me think that maybe, perhaps, possibly, I could have a real book one day too. After all, I did enough writing to fill a 438 page book, see? SEE?

I got it from Blurb and they automatically slurped up every single Story from Korea and put them all into a slick and glossy book. They really liked it and said I was a fine author and they would be pleased to publish my fantastic book. Oh, and also I gave them approximately one hundred dollars worth of Lloyd's hard-earned money.

It was super easy and took less than an hour, and I definitely recommend it to all my bloggy friends. If I had a little more patience I could have really cleaned it up nice. But then, if I had a little more patience, maybe I would be writing an actual book for which I might get paid and which might be read by other people, now mightn't I? I mean, if I had a little more patience and also constructed proper sentences with the appropriate number of dependent clauses. But guess what? My new pals at Blurb don't give a rat's ass about my badly structured sentences, and neither do I. Because.... SEE MY ENORMOUS BOOK??!?!?!!??!?! None of that boring patience and hard work foolishness for me, so take that, all you fancy real book writing blog people. Oh, but if you don't mind, put in a good word for me with your... what do you call them? Editors? Yeah, yeah, that's it. Editors! I'm not really sure what they do or nothing but it seems like you gotta get some of that editing stuff. Not that I care, you know, but Lloyd says we can't afford any more of my books.